manding ability, or not touched at all. The identity of the visible and invisible, or rather, the recognition of the ideal world as the true real (forcibly set forth in his Notes on a drawing of the 'Last Judgment,' vol. ii.), the mystery of evil, the real meaning of sin, these, and a few other like subjects of high import, haunted Blake with all the intensity of his imaginative nature. Here and there he says on them a few words of marvellous force and tenderness. It is possible that, had his whole training and career been different, he might have been the Coleridge of his time. But he was born an artist; and only by this standard is it fair or possible to judge him. Nothing can withstand the fury of my course among the stars of God, and in the abysses of the accuser.' 'I have composed an immense number of verses on one grand theme, similar to Homer's Iliad or Milton's Paradise Lost,' wrote the enthusiastic Blake to his friend Mr. Butts, an immense poem, which seems to be the labour of a long life, all produced without labour or study.' There are, certainly, few proofs of labour or study' in the instalment of the work hitherto published. But this was not his métier. Nos alio mentes, alio divisimus aures, It is in the brief stanzas which Blake wrote before the evil spirit of mysticism and the chimera of regenerating England by a new Christianity of Art took possession of his mind, that we find his genuine claims to rank among our poets. Such are eminently The Lamb,' 'The little Black Boy, The Blossom,' 'The Chimney-sweeper,' the Laughing' and 'Cradle' Songs, 'Infant Joy,' the first Nurse's Song,' and the Wild Flower.' Some of these little pieces, by their melody and a certain suppressed symbolism of meaning, remind us of Shelley. We quote two, regretting that we have not space for a fuller analysis:— Nurse's Song. When the voices of children are heard on the green, And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast, And everything else is still. Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies. No, no, let us play, for it is yet day, Besides, in the sky the little birds fly, And the hills are all covered with sheep. Well, Well, well, go and play till the light fades away, The little ones leapt, and shouted, and laugh'd, The Songs of Innocence,' Blake's first publication, are a specimen of that original and truly artist-like manner in which almost all his own independent works were produced. Each poem is surrounded by a beautiful arabesque, with figure-vignettes interspersed, which bear reference to the poem. The words, with the outline of the decoration, are engraved on metal, in a style so eminently simple and effective that it is wonderful it should not have been more often employed. The process may be described as a reversed etching, the lights being bitten out with acid, and the darks printed from the surface left, in the manner of a woodcut. The chiaroscuro of these outlines is admirable; anything less mechanical, or further from the neat work which delights the vulgar in all ranks, cannot be imagined.* They may be fairly compared, in these respects, with the famous * Blake, much later in his life, engraved a few woodcuts, specimens of which are included in the Life.' Rude as these are in a technical way, they are perfect examples of imaginative power. Every touch tells. Albert Dürer's work, or Bewick's, is hardly more original; and, like all really high art, with their simplicity they leave an impression of strange mysteriousness-of something that one cannot exhaust. It is to be regretted that engraving of this quality should have been almost extinguished in England in favour of that tricky sparkle and mindless minuteness which too often predominate in the popular landscape-series. Many of the cuts in Dr. N. Macleod's periodical, Good Words,' are, however, honourable exceptions to the Book of Beauty' style just noticed. Blake, with a truth which his epigrams do not always touch, has marked with legitimate bitterness of sarcasm a trait in the English mind which is certainly not less salient now than in the age that neglected him : Give pensions to the learned pig, etchings etchings which Turner made for his Liber Studiorum.' Turner's were the foundation for the light and shade of the mezzotint in which the plates were finished. Blake's were similarly meant for completion in colour. And the colour is not less original and perfect in its way than the etching and the designs. Nothing so tenderly vivid, so gay with almost rainbow lucidity and sweetness (not excluding more forcible effects), has been seen in art since the days of Angelico. The little 'Songs of Innocence,' in Blake's most finished copies (for the copies differ in merit), are like what one might fancy of a fairy's missal. Some valuable and sympathetic remarks on the colour-system of this and of the artist's later works will be found in Mr. G. Rossetti's supplementary chapter, and in his concluding note to the second volume. Blake, in the steady friendship of Flaxman and Stothard, possessed a powerful lever to move public recognition; and the Songs of Innocence' appear to have had as fair a success as originality in its first essay can ever hope for in this country. Unhappily for himself and for us, that obstinate element which is rarely absent from genius, and which natural quickness of mind combined with imperfect mental culture always intensify to the uttermost,* led Blake into that unsafe prophetic region, where, whilst we sympathise throughout with the noble nature and unworldly loftiness of the man, and are amazed at the imaginative power of his work, we have to lament that so much grandeur and so much skill should be wasted on the unintelligible. We must refer our readers to the careful account which Mr. Gilchrist has given of the singular illustrated poems which Blake produced between 1789 and 1804. The artist has kept his faculty most within bounds in the 'Songs of Experience; Thel' is the most purely graceful and idyllic of the series; the Marriage of Heaven and Hell,' perhaps, the most characteristic of Blake's fervent sensibility, and of his vivid insight into a philosophy which he could not grasp or master. There is an irony, in the Greek sense, about some of the 'Proverbs of Hell,' as he names them, which is truly sublime. Occasional glimpses of political reference occur: the American and French revolutions loom before us, in allusions much like those which Indians or Africans may make on debates in Parliament: in the Milton,' traces of Blake's personal dispute with Hayley and Flaxman are dimly perceptible; but there is no coherence in the tale. * We cannot name a better or a sadder instance than the career of David Gray, whose Luggie' and other poems have been lately edited by the pious care of R. M. Milnes (Lord Houghton). The book is on many accounts well worth study; though non res, sed spes, might have been the poor boy's epitaph. Velut in somnis, oculos ubi languida pressit Succidimus. .. Even so the visions fade and fleet in these Sibylline volumes. From the very rare Gates of Paradise' (a collection of small etchings) we give two designs. Blake in this case refrained from his customary accompanying text: is it to the absence of any text that we may ascribe the comparative clearness of these singularly powerful emblems ? Si sic omnia, we may again say, and Blake need not have been so long Pictor Ignotus.' Meanwhile, turning from the resolute visionary's esoteric labours to his outer life, in 1797 we notice the first important work on which he was employed on commission as a designer, the illustrated edition of part of Young's 'Night Thoughts.' Though this cannot rank with the 'Grave' and the Job,' it has great power in Blake's peculiar way, and must have, we should think (even if not very successful as a speculation), made his name known to a larger public than had been reached by the 'Songs.' At any rate, in 1800, Blake was introduced by Flaxman to Hayley, the somewhat vain and affected but good-hearted and cultivated biographer of Cowper. Hayley's property property lay in one of the most beautiful regions of the Sussex coast; and there, at the village of Felpham, he settled Blake in a pretty cottage for some four years, employing him partly to design and engrave illustrations for a series of Fables (to which we may fairly say that Hayley supplied the verse, and Blake the poetry), partly in those varnished tempera pictures which the artist maintained were legitimate frescoes. This was Blake's first, and as it proved, his only experience of country life. Wrapt up in his inner world as he was, pure in heart as a child, and little vexed by the busy and harassing amusements of society, London had not been to him that utter antithesis to a sweet and happy existence which it must be to most poets. Yet the first draught of existence among woods and farms, green pastures and blue sea, worked on him with a kind of intoxication. We know little so Theocritean in its tender enthusiasm little also so genuinely characteristic of Blake-as the letter in which he announced his arrival at Felpham to Flaxman : Dear Sculptor of Eternity,-We are safe arrived at our cottage, which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It is a perfect model for cottages, and I think for palaces of magnificence, only enlarging, not altering its proportions, and adding ornaments and not principles. Nothing can be more grand than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple without intricacy, it seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to the wants of man. No other formed house can ever please me so well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be improved either in beauty or use. I Mr. Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. have begun to work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates: her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace. Our journey was very pleasant; and though we had a great deal of luggage, no grumbling. All was cheerfulness and good humour on the road, and yet we could not arrive at our cottage before half past eleven at night, owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage from one chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises, and as many different drivers. We set out between six and seven in the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy boxes and portfolios full of prints. And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life; and those works are the delight and study |