Baptism ; and on the left hand the Lord's Supper is administered
by Angels, from the hands of another aged Apostle ; these kneel on
each side of the throne, which is surrounded by a glory : in the glory
many infants appear, representing Eternal Creation flowing from the
Divine Humanity in Jesus ; who opens the Scroll of Judgment, upon
His knees, before the Living and the Dead.

Such is the Design which you, my dear Sir, have been the cause
of my producing, and which, but for you, might have slept till the
Last Judgment.

William Blake.

February iS, 1808.

TJie Last Jiidgment was, in the final years of Blake's life,
once more repeated as a 'fresco,' into which he introduced
some thousand figures, bestowing much finish and splendour
of tint on it.

The reader will find in the Second Volume a very curious
paper by Blake, concerning the Last Judgment, appearing to
be partly descriptive of his picture, partly, as usual with him,
running off into vision, and speculation about vision, and ex-
planations of what a last judgment is and is not. This paper
is printed verbatim from a piecing together of many scattered
paragraphs or pages in the MS. Book by Blake, belonging to
Mr. Rossetti, elsewhere already referred to ; most of the
fragments certainly, and all of them very likely, forming a
continuous whole. The descriptive portion of the paper is
valuable in proportion to the interest appertaining to the



.i:t. 49-51] GLEAMS OF PATRONAGE. 26



J



fresco, one of the most important of the culminating produc-
tions of Blake's life. One would give a good deal to have a
similar sort of explanation by Orcagna, Michael Angelo, or
Rubens, of the Last Judgment, as conceived and painted by
those painters respectively ; and none of them certainly was
more capable of co7iceivmg the subject than Blake, whatever
may be the connoisseur's verdict as to the relative powers
for executing it. How close, in many respects, the affinity
of treatment, of framework and detail of incident, in all these
paintings : yet how immense the divergence of the feeling, of
the minds embodied in the works, of the aspects under which
the subject, the Dies ilia presented itself within the inner pre-
cincts of the painters' intellects • As regards the visionary
or speculative portion of the paper referred to, a remarkable
resemblance to Swedenborg may be observed in it here and
there, as in the ' Doctrine of Correspondences ' which it im-
plies — the principle that spiritual conditions are represented
by material objects, properties, and events. With these few
remarks, we refer the reader to the paper itself.

Ozias Humphrey, a miniature painter of rare excellence,
whose works have a peculiar sweetness of painting and
refined simplicity in a now old-fashioned style, was himself
a patron as well as friend, for whom Blake had expressly
coloured many of his illustrated books. Humphrey had
passed three years of his life, 1785 — 88, in India, and had
reaped a golden harvest in Oude by painting miniatures of
the native princes. What has become of these, I wonder }
1858 may have brought some of them across seas as the
work of native artists ! His sketches and note-books during
that period are in the British Museum. When, in 1790, his
sight first became imperfect, he took to crayons and oils
with ill success. His eyes failed him altogether in 1799,
after which he lived at Knightsbridge.

At the Academy's Exhibition in Somerset House for 1808,
Blake, after nine years' intermission, exhibited two works,
hung, as usual, in the Drawing and Miniature Room. Both



264



LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE.



[1806— I 8g8.



were subjects eminently suited to show, in his enemies
despite, what he could do : CJirist in the Sepulchre guarded by
Angels, and JacoVs Dream. Jacob's Dream, a fresco, using
the word in Blake's peculiar sense, now in the possession of
Lord Houghton, is a poetic and beautiful composition, of far
deeper imaginative feeling than the much-praised landscape
effect of Allston, the American, or the gracefully designed
scene of Stothard, whose forte, by the way, did not lie in
bringing angels from the skies, though he did much to raise
mortals thither. In Blake's fresco, angelic figures, some
winged, others wingless, but all truly angelic in suggestion,
make radiant the mysterious spiral stairs heavenward ; and
some among them lead children — a very Blake-like touch.

This was the last time Blake exhibited at the Royal Aca-
demy ; he had done so but five times in all. No wonder that
his name was little known to an exhibition-going public. And
in truth, dreams so devout as his, and brought from very
different worlds, were ill suited to jostle in the miscellaneous
crowd. Solitude and silence are needed to enter into their
sequestered spirit.



^-^^



CHAPTER XXIV

THE DESIGNS TO BLAIE. 1804—8. [.et. 47—51.]

From July 1805 to May 1808 the twelve admirable etchings
after Blake's designs had been in progress under the skilful
and conscientious hands of the Italian workman, — etchings
which have not a line too much nor too little. They were, as
I have said, a really favourable medium for introducing Blake
to the many : although admirers might prefer the artist's own
characteristic expression of himself with the graver. There
were no such thorough-paced admirers then, perhaps there
are not above half a dozen now. Schiavonetti's version is,
in fact, a graceful translation, and, as most would think, an
improvement.

The boldly-engraved portrait of Blake after Phillips' fine
drawing, prefixed to Tlie Grave, was considered like. We, in
it, recognise the high visionary brow, the speculative eyes
characteristic of William Blake. But the aspect is a too
idealized and made-up one, too studiously inspired, and does
not therefore convey a wholly reliable impression. You
would hardly, for instance, suspect its original to have been
short in stature, as he really was. {See Frontispiece, Vol. II.)

In the autumn of 1808, the book was published by Cromek,
in alliance with Cadell and Davies, Johnson, Payne, and
other leaders in the trade. It was beautifully printed in
quarto by Bensley, the best printer of his day, and was
indorsed with Fuseli's testimonial, and the credentials from
the R.A.'s again. Cromek had certainly worked hard for his



266 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1804— iSoS.

own profit and Blake's fame, in obtaining subscriptions. His
list comprises no less than five hundred and eighty-nine
names, from London and the chief provincial towns, —
Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh,
Newcastle. Native Yorkshire, — Leeds, Wakefield, Halifax, —
contributes a large contingent. There are, however, only one
or two titled subscribers. The artists, always best apprecia-
tors of one another, muster in strength as supporters of the
enterprise, not without importunity on busy Cromek's part.
We particularize with interest the names of Bewick, from far
Newcastle, and ' Mr. Green, landscape draughtsman, Amble-
side.' A few literary men came forward ; among them
Holcroft, and Hayley, bringing with him Mrs. Poole of
Lavant, and printer Seagrave. Vigilant Cromek had, at the
outset, taken care not to neglect these old friends of the
designer's. The subscriptions at two and a half guineas
amount to above ;^ 1,800 ; besides proof copies at four
guineas, and a margin of unsubscribed-for copies on sale.
This makes Cromek pretty sure of a good profit by his
protege's genius and his own activities, after all outlay to
designer (twenty guineas), engraver (perhaps ;^5oo), printing,
advertising, puffing, travelling expenses, and allowances to
the trade.

While the engravings were in progress, the name of the
Queen as a subscriber had been somehow obtained, and per-
mission to dedicate the designs to her ; of which Blake
availed himself in the following simple and earnest stanzas, —
a mere enigma, I should fancy, to old Queen Charlotte. The
vignette, which was to have accompanied it, Cromek, as
we saw, returned on his hands : —

The door of death is made of gold,
That mortal eyes cannot behold ;
But when the mortal eyes are clos'd.
And cold and pale the limbs repos'd.
The soul awakes, and, wond'ring, sees
In her mild hand the golden keys.



.ITT. 47—51.] THE DESIGNS TO BLAIR. 2()'J

The grave is heaven's golden gate,
And rich and poor around it wait ;
O Shepherdess of England's fold,
Behold this gate of pearl and gold !

To dedicate to England's Queen
The visions that my soul has seen,
And, by her kind permission bring
What I have borne on solemn wing
From the vast regions of the grave,
Before her throne my wings I wave,
Bowing before my sov'reign's feet :
The Grave produced these blossoms sweet,
In mild repose from earthly strife ;
The blossoms of eternal life !

William Blake.

When Blake speaks of —

The visions that my soul has seen,
*****
borne on solemn wing
From the vast regions of the grave,

it is no metaphorical flourish, but plain facts he means
and feels. This is cultivating ' the Arts ' in a high spirit
indeed.

The simple beauty and grandeur of the illustrations to
Blair's Grave are within the comprehension of most who
possess any feeling for what is elevated in art. Fuseli's
evidence in their favour, despite turgid Johnsonianism, which,
a* usual with him, fails to conceal the uneasy gait of a man
not at home in our language, is, in part, lucid and to the
purpose.

* The author of the moral series before us,' he writes,
after some preliminary generalizing on the triteness of the
ordinary types employed in art, ' endeavoured to awake
* sensibility by touching our sympathies with nearer, less
' ambiguous, and less ludicrous irhagery than what mytho-
' logy, Gothic superstition, or symbols as far-fetched as



268



LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE.



[1804— 1808



inadequate, could supply. His invention has been chiefly
employed to spread a familiar and domestic atmosphere
round the most important of all subjects ; to connect the
visible and the invisible world, without provoking proba-
bility ; and to lead the eye from the milder light of time to
the radiations of eternity.

* Such is the plan and the moral part of the author's inven-
tion. The technic part and the execution of the artist,
though to be examined by other principles, and addressed
to a narrower circle, equally claim approbation, sometimes
excite our wonder, and not unseldom our fears, when we see
him play on the very verge of legitimate invention. But
wildness so picturesque in itself, so often redeemed by taste,
simplicity, and elegance, what child of fancy, what artist
would wish to discharge ? The groups and single figures,
on their own basis, abstracted from their general composi-
tion and considered without attention to the plan, frequently
exhibit those genuine, unaffected attitudes, those simple
graces, which nature and the heart alone can dictate, and
only an eye inspired by both discover. Every class of artists,
in every stage of their progress or attainments, from the
student to the finished master, and from the contriver of
ornament to the painter of history, will find here materials
of art and hints of improvement.'
The designs to Blair are in the same key as those to The
Night TJioiigJits of eight years previous ; but are more
mature, purer, and less extravagant. Both sets of designs
occupy, to some extent, the same ground. And thus similar
motives occur, and even compositions, as already noticed.
Blake's previous etching, by the way, of the Skeleton Re-
animatedy compares favourably with the present one by
Schiavonetti, showing, as do all the etchings to Young, that
he could have executed his own designs to The Grave. The
chief want of those etchings was what engravers call colour.

Blair's Grave, a poem written before the Night Thoughts,
though published the same year (1743), was, sixty-two years




■X f ij f Kti ^t Is .SOiiaivtutlb



DEATH S DOOR.



/ET. 47—51.] THE DESIGNS TO BLAIR. 269

later, still a popular English classic. Blake's designs form a
strangely spiritual commentary on the somewhat matter-of-
fact homily of the dry, old Scottish divine : they belong
to a more heavenly latitude. Running parallel to the poem
rather than springing out of it, they have, in some cases,
little foundation in the text, in others absolutely none ; as,
for instance, the emblematic ' Soul exploring the recesses
of the Tomb.' The Series in itself forms a poem, simple,
beautiful, and exalted : what tender eloquence in ' The Soul
hovering over the Body ; ' in the passionate ecstasy of * The
Re-union of Soul and Body ; ' the rapt felicity of mutual
recognition in ' TJie meeting of a Family in Heaven! There
meet husband and wife, little brothers and sisters ; two angels
spread a canopy of loving wings over the group, one remark-
able for surpassing, sculturesque beauty. Such designs are, in
motive, spirit, manner of embodiment, without parallel, and
enlarge the boundaries of art. Equally high meaning has
the oft-mentioned allegory, DeatJis Door, into which ' Age on
crutches is hurried by a tempest,' while above sits a youthful
figure, 'the renovated man in light and glory,' looking upwards
in joyful adoration and awe. And again the Death of the
Strong Wicked man : the still-fond wife hanging over the
convulsed body, in wild, horror-struck sympathy, the terrified
daughter standing beside, with one hand shutting out the scene
from her eyes ; while the wicked soul is hurried, amid flames,
through the casement. What unearthly surprise and awe
expressed in that terrible face, in those uplifted deprecating
hands ! The Last Judgment, unlike the other designs, is a
subject on which great artists had already lavished imagina-
tion and executive skill. But Blake's conception of it is an
original and homogeneous one, worthy of the best times of
art. What other painter, since Michael Angelo, could have
really designed anew that tremendous scene }

These are not mere exercises of art, to be coldly measured
by the foot-rule of criticism, but truly inventions to be read
and entered into with something of the spirit which conceived



270 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1804—1808.

them. The oftener I have looked into them, the more mean-
ing and eloquence I have discovered, and the more freshness.
Never, surely, were the difficulties of human speech (whether
with word or outline) more fearlessly encountered. A poor
designer moves in shackles, when handling such topics ; has,
for instance, but the same tangible flesh and blood wherewith
to express material body and immaterial soul. And that
anomaly alone leads many a practical person to dismiss the
designs at once, as absurd and puerile. But if we stay to
consider how this allegorical mode is a necessary convention
to symbolize a meaning beyond the reach of art, we are soon
reconciled to the discrepancy, and begin to value aright the
daring and the suggestive beauty with which these meanings
are indicated. That shuddering awe of the strong wicked
man's naked soul (even though a material form express it),
as he enters the unknown Avorld; the living grace of the
draped feminine figure, emblem of a purer human soul,
which lingers a moment yearningly over the stiffening mortal
frame it has forsaken, its mute eloquence so strangely en-
hanced by that utterly lonely, mountain landscape into which
it is about to vanish, seen through the open casement : I say
such art ranks with that of the greatest eras ; is of the same
sublime reach and pure quality. What signifies it that these
drawings cover but a few inches, and are executed in water-
colours instead of oils or fresco .-*

Now, in maturity, as when in youth producing the Songs
of Innocence, or in age the Inventions to yob, we see Blake
striking always the same mystic chord. The bridge thrown
across from the visible to the invisible world was ever firm
and sure to him. The unwavering hold (of which his
' Visions ' were a result) upon an unseen world, such as in
other ways poetry and even science assure us of, and whose
revelation is the meaning underlying all religions, — this
habitual hold is surely an authentic attainment, not an hal-
lucination; whether the particular form in which the faith
clothes itself, the language of Blake's mind, — souls entering




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.r.T. 47—51.] THE DESIGNS TO BLAIR. 2/1

and departing from material forms, angels hovering near poor
human creatures, and the like emblems, — be adequate or not.
In such intensity as Blake's, it was truly a blissful possession ;
it proved enchanted armour against the world, the flesh, and
the devil, and all their sordid influences.

I have still a word to say apropos of one of these twelve
designs, and a water-colour drawing formerly in Mr. Butts'
collection, illustrative of the verse —

* But Hope rekindled only to illume
The shades of death, and light her to the tomb.'

It is a duplicate, probably, of one of the unengraved designs
from Young. The main feature, a descending precipice broken
into dark recesses, is the same as in that grand and eloquent
tableau in the Blair, of the Descent of Man into the Vale of
Death. The figures are different, but the same motive
pervades both designs.

Of the composition in the Blair, an intelligible summary
occurs in Cromek's Descriptive List at the end of the volume.
' The pious daughter, weeping and conducting her sire

* onward ; age, creeping carefully on hands and knees ; an
' elder, without friend or kindred ; a raiser ; a bachelor, blindly
' proceeding, no one knows whither, ready to drop into the
' dark abyss ; frantic youth, rashly devoted to vice and passion,

* rushing past the diseased and old who totter on crutches ;
' the wan, declining virgin ; the miserable and distracted
' widow ; the hale country youth ; and the mother and her
' numerous progeny, already arrived in this valley, are among
' the groups which, &c. — are, in fact, allihe groups.'

The fate of the original copper-plates has been somewhat
singular. Aftei;^eing used by Ackermann to illustrate a
Spanish Poem, Meditaciones Poeticas por Jose Janquin de
Mora: Londres : asimismo en Colombia, Buenos Ay res. Chili,
Pero y Guatemala, 1826, they, at a more recent period, I have
been told, found their way across the Alantic, serving for an
American edition — not of Blair's poem, but of Martin Tupper's
Proverbial Philosophy.



272 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1804— 1S08.

In the unengraved drawing I have referred to, we have
the Soul departing from the dying Narcissa, over whose lifeless
form her lover, with lamenting, outstretched arms, is bending ;
the bright figure of Hope, with lighted lamp, beckons to the
shades below, down the rocky stairs leading to which old
and young are wending, as in the Blair design ; the timid,
hesitating girl, the strong man hurrying, age creeping, the
tender mother (a very beautiful figure) leading her infant
children. In the recesses of the tomb below, we again
encounter emblematic, sorrowful deathbeds. On the hills, in
the background above, are faintly seen the dim populations of
the earth, all journeying to the same bourne. The principal
figures are of exceeding grace and loveliness ; as, in particular,
the heavenly one of Hope, and that of the little girl who
accompanies her youthful brothers, with reluctant step, with
drooping head, and face hidden in her hand, shuddering and
sad to exchange the fair daylight for the gloomy tomb — a
figure which, for its expressive beauty, Raphael himself might
have sketched.

About this date (1806) were also produced some designs to
Shakespeare which were neither commissioned nor engraved.
An account of them will be found in the Annotated
Catalogue, Vol. II. Nos. 83-85. They are now, with a few from
other hands, bound up in a quarto edition of Shakespeare,
which was executed for the Rev. Ker Porter, who himself
contributed one or two well-conceived designs ; notably, that
of Falstaff between the Merry Wives. There is also an early
sample of Mulready's art, evidently showing the influence of
Fuseli. But by far the most remarkable of the collection is
the Ghost from Hamlet, by Blake, of which a print is here
given. The Ghost has led Hamlet to the verge of the sea,
far from the Castle ; and, on the solitary moonlit sands, he has
fallen on his knees in the act of swearing to obey his father's
behest of vengeance on the perpetrators of his ' most foul,
strange, and unnatural murder.' The volume is now in the
possession of Mr. Alexander Macmillan.




"adieu, auieu, adieu! remember me." — Haiiiid, Act I., Scene V.



CHAPTER XXV.

APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC. 1808— lo. [/ET. 51—53.]

SciHAVONETTi was, by 1808, engaged on the plate from
Stothard's Canterbiivy Pilgrimage. At the end of the Blair,
published, as we saw, in the autumn of 1808, appeared, to
indignant Blake's unspeakable disgust doubtless, a flowery-
Prospectus of Cromek's, for publishing by subscription and
'under the immediate patronage of H.R.H. the Prince of
'Wales, a line engraving after' the now 'well-known Cabinet
' Picture ; which, in fact, Cromek had exhibited throughout
the three kingdoms at a shilling a head.

It was now that Blake finished Jus ' fresco ' of the Canterbury
Pilgrimage, with the view of ' appealing to the public,' — the
wrong kind of tribunal for him. To this end, also, he painted
or finished some other ' frescos ' and drawings. The com-
pletion of the Pilgrimage was attended by adverse influences
of the supernatural kind — as Blake construed them. He had
hung his original design over a door in his sitting-room, where,
for a year perhaps it remained. When, on the appearance
of Stothard's picture, he went to take down his drawing, he
found it nearly effaced : the result of some malignant spell of
Stothard's, he would, in telling the story, assure his friends.
But as one of them (Flaxman) mildly expostulated, ' Why !
' my dear sir ! as if, after having left a pencil drawing so long
'exposed to air and dust, you could have expected otherwise ! '
llMt fresco was ultimately bought by a customer who seldom
failed — Mr. Butts ; and was afterwards in the possession of

VOL. L T



274 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1808— 1810.

the late Sir William Stirling Maxwell. It was sent to the
International Exhibition of 1862.

Thinking to take a leaf out of Cromek's book, Blake
determined to sJiozv his work, and ' shame the fools ' who
preferred Stothard ; to show it under more advantageous con-
ditions than were to be had in the Academy Exhibitions. In
May, 1809, — the year in which our old friend Hayley brought
out his Life of Roinney, and made a second marriage even
more ill-advised than the first ; — in May, Blake opened an
Exhibition of his own, on the first floor of his brother the
hosier's house, at the corner of Broad Street. The plan had
the merit of cheapness, at any rate, involving little outlay or
risk ; the artist, in fact, not having money to venture. The
Exhibition comprised sixteen ' Poetical and Historical Inven-
tions,' as he designated them, — eleven ' frescos,' seven draw-
ings : a collection singularly remote from ordinary sympathies,
or eveYi ordinary apprehension. Bent on a violent effort to-
wards justifying his ways to men and critics, he drew up and
had printed a Descriptive Catalogue of these works, in which
he interprets them, and expounds at large his own canons
of art. Of which more anon. The price of this Catologue,
which included admission to the Exhibition, was half a crown.

A singular enterprise, for unpractised Blake, was this of
vying with adroit, experienced Cromek ! As if a simple-
minded visionary could advertise, pufif, and round the due
preparatory paragraphs for newspaper and magazine, of
' latest fine arts intelligence.' An exhibition set going under
such auspices was likely to remain a profound secret to the
world at large. A few, however, among the initiated were
attracted by curiosity to see a picture which was the subject
of a notorious quarrel between two friendly artists, and
which had been painted in rivalry of Stothard's already
famous work. An English artist who died lately at Florence,
above ninety years of age, — Mr. Seymour Kirkup, celebrated,
among other things, as the discoverer of Giotto's fresco in
the Chapel of the Podesta, — was one of these i&w : Mr. Henry



.'ET. 51—53.] APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC. 2/5

Crabb Robinson, a gentleman of singularly wide intercourse
with the distinguished men of two generations, was another.