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Alexander Gilchrist.

Life of William Blake, with selections from his poems and other writings (Volume 1)

. (page 11 of 36)

During the last few years, I have observed only three copies
turn up — two at the fancy prices of ;;^i 8j. and £1 ys.Gd. ; the
other, secured by myself at a more moderate outlay. They
are once again printed in Vol. 11. in the succession, so far as



^:t, 37] THE SONGS OF EXPERIENCE. 121

can be ascertained, in which their author first issued them.
Consisting, as they did, of loose sheets, the Sou£;-shave seldom
been bound up twice alike, and are generally even numbered
wrong. Dr. Wilkinson printed them in an order of his own,
and too often with words of his own ; alterations which were
by no means improvements always. They are now given
in strict fidelity to the original, the correction of some
few glaring grammatical blemishes alone excepted, which
seemed a pious duty.^

A few words of bibliographic detail may perhaps be per-
mitted for the collector's sake, considering the extreme beauty,
the singularity, and rarity of the original book.

The illustrated Son^s of Innocejice aiid Experience was
issued to Blake's public, to his own friends that is, at the
modest price of thirty shillings or two guineas. Its selling
price 710W, when perfect, varies from ten and twelve guineas
upwards. From the circumstance of its having lain on hand
in sheets, and from some purchasers having preferred to buy
or bind only select portions, the series often occurs short of
many plates — generally wants one or two. The right number
is fifty-four engraved pages.

Later in Blake's life, — for the sheets always remained in
stock, — five guineas were given him, and in some cases, when
intended as a delicate means of helping the artist, larger
sums. Flaxman recommended more than one friend to take
copies, a Mr. Thomas among them, who, wishing to give
the artist a present, made the price ten guineas. For such
a sum Blake could hardly do enough, finishing the plates
like miniatures. In the last years of his hfe, Sir Thomas
Lawrence, Sir Francis Chantrey, and others, paid as much as
twelve and twenty guineas ; Blake conscientiously working up
the colour and finish, and perhaps over-labouring them, in
return ; printing off only on one side of the leaf, and expand-
ing the book by help of margin into a handsome quarto. If
without a sixpence in his pocket, he was always too justly

^ See note prefixed to the Songs in Vol. II.



122 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1794.

proud to confess it : so that, whoever desired to give Blake
money, had to do it indirectly, to avoid ofifence, by purchas-
ing copies of his works ; which, too, might have hurt his pride,
had he suspected the secret motive, though causelessly ; for
he really gave, as he well knew, far more than an intrinsic
equivalent.

The early, low-priced copies, — Flaxman's for instance, —
though slighter in colour, possess a delicacy of feeling, a
freshness of execution, often lost in the richer, more laboured
examples, especially in those finished after the artist's death
by his widow. One of the latter I have noticed, very full
and heavy in colour, the tints laid on with a strong and
indiscriminating touch.

Other considerable varieties of detail in the final touches
by hand exist. There are copies in which certain minutiae
are finished with unusual care and feeling. The prevailing
ground-colour of the writing and illustrations also varies.
Sometimes it is yellow, sometimes blue, and so on. In
one copy the writing throughout is yellow, not a happy
effect. Occasionally the colour is carried further down the
page than the ruled space ; a stream say, as in TJie Lamb, is
introduced. Of course, therefore, the degrees of merit vary
greatly between one copy and another, both as a whole
and in the parts. A {^^n were issued plain, in black and
white, or blue and white, which are more legible than the
polychrome examples. In these latter, the red or yellow
lettering being sometimes unrelieved by a white ground,
we have, instead of contrasted hue, gradations of it, as
in a picture.

Out of the destruction that has engulfed so large a portion
of Blake's copper-plates, partly owing to the poverty which
compelled him often to obliterate his own work, that the
same metal might serve again, partly to the neglect, and
worse than neglect, of some of those into whose hands they
fell, we have happily been able to enrich our pages from
a remnant, — ten plates, taking off sixteen impressions (a



^KT. 37.]



THE SONGS OF EXPERIENCE.



^23



few having been engraved on both sides), — of the So/igs of
Innocence and Experience. The gentleman from whom they
were obtained had once the entire series in his posses-
sion ; but all save these ten were stolen by an ungrateful
black he had befriended, who sold them to a smith as
old metal.




CHAPTER XIV.

PRODUCTIVE YEARS. 1794—95. [>et. 37—38.]

To the Songs of Experience succeeded from Lambeth the
same year (1794) volumes of mystic verse and design, in
the track of the Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and
the America. One of them is a sequel to the America,
and generally occurs bound up with it, sometimes coloured,
sometimes plain. It is entitled Europe, a Prophecy:
Lambeth, printed by William Blake, 1794 ; and consists of
seventeen quarto pages, with designs of a larger size than
those of America, occupying the whole page often. The
frontispiece represents the ' Ancient of Days,' as shadowed
forth in Proverbs viii. 27 : ' when he set a compass upon
the face of the earth ; ' and again, as described in Paradise
Lost, Book vii. line 236 : a grand figure, ' in an orb of light
' surrounded by dark clouds, is stooping down, with an
* enormous pair of compasses, to describe the world's
' destined orb ; ' Blake adopting with childlike fidelity, but
in a truly sublime spirit, the image of the Hebrew and
English poets. This composition was an especial favourite
with its designer. When colouring it by hand, he 'always
bestowed more time,' says Smith, 'and enjoyed greater
pleasure in the task, than from anything else he produced.'
The process of colouring his designs was never to him, how-
ever, a mechanical or irksome one. Very different feelings
were his from those of a mere copyist. Throughout life,
whenever for his few patrons filling in the colour to his







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-+;t. 37—38.] EUROPE. 125

engraved books, he lived anew the first fresh, happy ex-
periences of conception, as in the high hour of inspiration.

Smith tells us that Blake ' was inspired with the splendid
'grandeur of this figure, '^ TJie Ancient of Days," by the
* vision which he declared hovered over his head at the top
' of his staircase' in No, 13, Hercules Buildings, and that
' he has been frequently heard to say that it made a more
' powerful impression upon his mind than all he had ever
' been visited by.' On that same staircase it was Blake, for
the only time in his life, saw a ghost. When talking on
the subject of ghosts, he was wont to say they did not
appear much to imaginative men, but only to common
minds, who did not see the finer spirits. A ghost was a
thing seen by the gross bodily eye, a vision, by the mental.
< Did you ever see a ghost .'' " asked a friend. ' Never but
once,' was the reply. And it befel thus. Standing one
evening at his garden-door in Lambeth, and chancing to
look up, he saw a horrible grim figure, 'scaly, speckled,
very awful,' stalking down stairs towards him. More fright-
ened than ever before or after, he took to his heels, and
ran out of the house.

It is hard to describe poems wherein the dramatis personcs
are giant shadows, gloomy phantoms ; the scene, the realms
of space ; the time, of such corresponding vastness, that
eighteen hundred years pass as a dream : —

Enitharmon slept.
* * * *

She slept in middle of her nightly song
Eighteen hundred years.

More apart from humanity even than the America, it is
hard to trace out any distinct subject, any plan or purpose
in the Eiirope, or to determine whether it mainly relate to
the past, present, or to come. And yet its incoherence has
a grandeur about it as of the utterance of a man whose eyes
are fixed on strange and awful sights, invisible to bystanders.
To use an expression of Blake's own, on a subsequent



126 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1794—5.

occasion, it is as if the ' Visions were angry,' and hurried
in stormy disorder before his rapt gaze, no longer to bless
and teach, but to bewilder and confound.

The Preludium, and the two accompanying specirnen pages,
which give a portion of both words and design, will enable
the reader to form some idea of the poem. -There occurs
in one of the latter an allusion to the Courts of Law at
Westminster, which is a striking instance of that occasional
mingling of the actual with the purely symbolic, before
spoken of. Perhaps the broidery of spider's web which so
felicitously embellishes the page, was meant to bear a typical
reference to the same.

The 'nameless shadowy female,' with whose lamentation
the poem opens, personifies Europe as it would seem ; her
head (the mountains) turbaned with clouds, and round her
limbs, the ' sheety waters ' wrapped ; whilst Enitharmon
symbolizes great mother Nature : —

Prehidiitm.

The nameless shadowy female rose from out

The breast of Ore,

Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon :

And thus her voice arose : —

' O mother Enitharmon, wilt thou bring forth other sons ?

' To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found ?

' For I am faint with travel !

' Like the dark cloud disburdened in the day of dismal thunder.

* My roots are brandish'd in the heavens ; my fruits in earth

beneath,
'Surge, foam, and labour into life ! — first born, and first consum'd,
' Consumed and consuming !
' Then why shouldst thou, accursed mother ! bring me into Ufe ?

* I weep ! — my turban of thick clouds around my lab 'ring head ;
' I fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs.

' Yet the red sun and moon

'And all the overflowing stars rain down proUfic pains.



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F,»m EUROFE.



.tr. 37—38] URIZEN. 127

* Unwilling I look up to heaven : unwilling count the stars,
'Sitting in fathomless abyss of ray immortal shrine.

' I seize their burning power,

* And bring forth howling terrors and devouring fiery kings !

' Devouring and devoured, roaming on dark and desolate mountains,

* In forests of eternal death^ shrieking in hollow trees,

* Ah ! mother Enitharmon !

' Stamp not with solid form this vig'rous progeny of fire !

' I bring forth from my teeming bosom, myriads of flames,
'And thou dost stamp them with a signet. Then they roam
abroad,

* And leave me, void as death.

* Ah ! I am drown'd in shady woe, and visionary joy.

'And who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band?

'To compass it with swaddling bands? And who shall cherish it

'With milk and honey?

' I see it smile, and I roll inward, and my voice is past.'

She ceas'd; and rolled her shady clouds
Into the secret place.

So rapid was the production of this class of Blake's
writings that, notwithstanding their rich and elaborate
decoration, and the tedious process by which the whole had
to be, with his own hand, engraved and afterwards coloured,
the same year witnessed the completion of another, and the
succeeding year, of two more ' prophetic books.' T/ie Book
of Urizen (1794), was the title of the next. The same may
be said of it as of its predecessors. Like them, the poem
is shapeless, unfathomable ; but in the heaping up of gloomy
and terrible images, the America and Europe are even
exceeded.

The following striking passage, which describes the ap-
pearing of the first woman, will serve as an example of
Urizen : — •

At length, in tears and cries, embodied
A female form trembling and pale
Waves before his deathly face.



128 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1794—5-

All Eternity shudder'd at sight"

Of the first female form, now separate.

Pale as a cloud of snow,

Waving before the face of Los !

Wonder, awe, fear, astonishment,-
Petrify the eternal myriads
At the first female form now separate.
They call'd her Pity, and fled !

* Spread a tent with strong curtains around them :

* Let cords and stakes bind in the Void,

* That Eternals may no more behold them ! '

They began to weave curtains of darkness.
They erected large pillars round the void ;
With golden hooks fastened in the pillars ;
With infinite labour, the Eternals
A woof wove, and called it Science.

The design, like the text, is characterized by a monotony
of horror. Every page may be said as a furnace mouth to

' Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame,'

in the midst of which are figures howling, weeping, writhing,
or chained to rocks, or hurled headlong into the abyss. Of
the more striking, I recall a figure that stoops over and seems
breathing upon a globe enveloped in flames, the lines of fire
flowing into those of his drapery and hair ; an old, amphibious-
looking giant, with rueful visage, letting himself sink slowly
through the waters like a frog ; a skeleton coiled round,
resembling a fossil giant imbedded in the rock, &c. The
colouring is rich, — a little overcharged perhaps in the copy
I have seen, — and gold-leaf has been freely used, to heighten
the effect.

Still another volume bears date 1794, — a small quarto,
consisting of twenty-three engraved and coloured designs,
without letter-press, explanation, or key of any kind. The
designs are of various size, all fine in colour, all extraordinary,
some beautiful, others monstrous, abounding in forced




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til ••■•■■■' ^'^



^T. 37—38.] THE SONG OF LOS. 1 29

attitudes, and suspicious anatomy. The frontispiece, adopted
from Urizen, is inscribed Lajubeth, printed by Will. Blake,
1794, and has the figure of an aged man, naked, with white
beard sweeping the ground, and extended arms, each hand
resting on a pile of books, and each holding a pen, where-
with he writes. The volume seems to be a carefully finished
selection of favourite compositions from his portfolios and
engraved books. Four are recognizable as the principal
designs of the Book of Thel, modified in outline, and in
colour richer and deeper. One occurs in the Visions of tJie
Daughters of Albion. Another will hereafter re-appear in
the illustrations to The Grave : — ' The spirit of the strong
wicked man going forth.'

The Song of Los (1795), is in metrical prose, and is divided
into two portions, one headed Africa, the other Asia. In
it we again, as in the America, seem to catch a thread of
connected meaning. It purports to show the rise and influ-
ence of different religions and philosophies upon mankind ;
but, according to Blake's wont, both action and dialogue
are carried on, not by human agents, but by shadowy im-
mortals, Ore, Sotha, Palamabron, Rintrah, Los, and many
more : —

Then Rintrah gave abstract philosophy to Brama in the East ;

(Night spoke to the cloud —

* So these human-formed spirits in smiling h)^ocrisy war

' Against one another : so let them war on !

' Slaves to the eternal elements ! ')

Next, Palamabron gave an ' abstract law ' to Pythagoras ;
then also to Socrates and Plato : —

Times roll'd on o'er all the sons of men,
Till Christianity dawns. Monasticism is spoken of: —

* * * The healthy built

Secluded places : * * *

VOL. I. K



130 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [i 794— 95-

Afterwards it becomes a fruitful source of spiritual cor-
ruption : —

Then were the churches, hospitals, castles, palaces,

Like nets and gins and traps to catch the joys of eternity ;

And all the rest a desert,

Till like a dream, eternity was obliterated and erased.

Prior to this, however —

Antamon call'd up Leutha from her valleys of delight,

And to Mahomet a loose Bible gave.

But in the North to Odin, Sotha gave a code of war.

A gradual debasement of the human race goes on —

Till a philosophy of five senses was complete !

Urizen wept, and gave it into the hands of Newton and Locke.

Clouds roll heavy upon the Alps round Rousseau and Voltaire.

And on the mountains of Lebanon round the deceased gods of

Asia,
And on the deserts of Africa round the Fallen Angels.
The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent !

Under the symbol of the kings of Asia, the Song describes
the misery of the old philosophies and despotisms ; their
bitter lament and prayer that by pestilence and fire the race
may be saved ; ' that a remnant may learn to obey ' : —

The Kings of Asia heard

The howl rise up from Europe !

And each ran out from his web.

From his ancient woven den :

For the darkness of Asia was startled

At the thick-flaming, thought-creating fires of Ore.

And the Kings of Asia stood

And cried in bitterness of soul : —

' Shall not the King call for Famine from the heath ?

* Nor the Priest for Pestilence from the fen ?

* To restrain ! to dismay ! to thin,

* The inhabitants of mountain and plain !
' In the day of full- feeding prosperity,

' And the night of delicious songs ? '



-i^.T. 37— 38-] AHANIA. I3I

Urizen heard their cry : —

And stretched his clouds over Jerusalem :
For Adam, a mouldering skeleton,
Lay bleached on the garden of Eden ;
And Noah, as white as snow,
On the mountains of Ararat.

He thunders desolately from the heavens ; Ore rises ' like
a pillar of fire above the Alps,' the earth shrinks, the resurrec-
tion of the dry bones is described, and the poem concludes.

Of the illustrations, two are separate pictures occupying
the full page ; the rest surround and blend with the text
in the usual manner ; and if they have not all the beauty,
they share a full measure of the spirit and force of Blake.
The colour is laid on with an iinpas to which, gives an opaque
and heavy look to some of them, and the medium being
oil, the surface and tints have suffered. Here, as elsewhere,
the designs seldom directly embody the subjects of the
poem, but are independent though kindred conceptions — the
right method perhaps.

As if the artist himself were at length beginning to grow
weary. The Book of Ahania (179s), last of this series, is quite
unadorned, except by two vignettes, one on the title, the
other on the concluding page. The text is neatly engraved
in plain black and white, without border or decoration of
any kind. There are lines and passages of much force and
beauty, but they emerge from surrounding obscurity like
lightning out of a cloud : —

* And ere a man hath power to say — Behold !
The jaws of darkness do devour it up.'

The first half of the poem is occupied with the dire warfare
between Urizen and his rebellious son, Fuzon. Their
weapons are thus describled : —

The broad disk of Urizen upheaved,
Across the void many a mile.
It was forged in mills where the winter
Beats incessant : ten winters the disk
Unremitting endured the cold hammer.

K 2



132 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1797-

But it proves ineffectual against Fuzon's fiery beam : —

* * Laughing, it tore through
That beaten mass ; keeping its direction,
The cold loins of Urizen dividing.

Wounded and enraged, Urizen prepares a bow formed of
the ribs of a huge serpent — ' a circle of darkness ' — and
strung with its sinews, by which Fuzon is smitten down
into seeming death. In the midst of the conflict, Ahania,
who is called ' the parted soul of Urizen,' is cast forth : —

She fell down a faint shadow wand'ring

In chaos and circling dark Urizen,

As the moon anguish'd circles the earth ;

Hopeless ! abhorr'd ! a death-shadow

Unseen, unbodied, unknown !

The mother of Pestilence !

Her lamentation, from which we draw our final extract,
fills the concluding portion of the poem : —

Ah, Urizen ! Love !
Flower of morning ! I weep on the verge
Of non-entity : how wide the abyss
Between Ahania and thee !

I cannot touch his hand.

Nor weep on his knees, nor hear

His voice and bow ; nor see his eyes

And joy; nor hear his footsteps and

My heart leap at the lovely sound !

I cannot kiss the place

Whereon his bright feet have trod.

But I wander on the rocks

With hard necessity.

While intent on the composition and execution of these
mystic books, Blake did not neglect the humble task-work
which secured him a modest independence. He was at this
time busy on certain plates for a book of travels, Captain
J. G. Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against
the Revolted Negroes of Surinam. This work, * illustrated



'ET. 37-38-] AH AN I A. 133

' with eighty elegant engravings from drawings made by
' the author,' was pubHshed by Johnson the following year
(1796), Of these 'elegant engravings' Blake executed four-
teen ; Holloway and Bartolozzi were among those employed
for the remainder. Negroes, Monkeys, * Limes, Capsicums,
Mummy-apples,' and other natural productions of the
country, were the chief subjects which fell to Blake's
share.

Also among the fruit of this period should be particularised
two prints in which the figures are on a larger scale than in
any other engravings by Blake. They are both from his
own designs. Under the first is inscribed: — Ezekiel : ' Take
azuay from tJiee the desire of thine eyes.' Ezek. xxiv. 17.
Painted and Engraved by W. Blake. Oct. 27, 1794. 13,



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