On entering the room, as he related to me, he found himself
alone. With a wise prescience of the inevitable future scarcity
of that remarkable brocJiure, the Descriptive Catalogue, he
purchased four copies for himself and friends — Charles
Lamb among them. When, after that wholesale purchase,
he inquired of James Blake, the custodian of the unique
gallery, whether he could not come again free i* — ' Oh ! yes ;
free as long as you live!' was the reply of the humble
hosier, overjoyed at having so munificent a visitor, or a
visitor at all.

This James Blake is characterized, by those who remember
him, as an honest, unpretending shopkeeper in an old-world
style, ill-calculated for great prosperity in the hosiery, or any
other line. In his dress he is described to me as adhering to
knee-breeches, worsted stockings, and buckles. A3 primitive
as his brother he was, though very unlike : his head not in
the clouds amid radiant visions, but bent downwards and
studying the pence of this world — how to get them which he
found no easy task, and how to keep. He looked upon his
erratic brother with pity and blame, as a wilful, misguided
man, wholly in a wrong track ; while the latter despised
him for his grovelling, worldly mind, — as he reckoned it.
Time widened the breach. In after years, when James had
retired on a scanty independence and lived in Cirencester
Street, becoming a near neighbour of Mr. Linnell, at whose
house Blake was then a frequent visitor, they did not even
speak. At James's shop, ladies yet living, friends of Blake's,
remember to have made their little purchases of gloves and
haberdashery.

Lamb preferred Blake's Canterbury Pilgrimage to Stothard's..
' A work of wonderful power and spirit, hard and dry, yet
with grace,' he says of it, on one occasion. That rare critic
was delighted also with the Descriptive Catalogue. The
analysis of the characters in the Prologue — the Knight, the

T 2



276 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1808— 1810.

Prioress, the Friar, &c. — he pronounced the finest criticism of
Chaucer's poem he had ever read.

In Southey's Doctor, special allusion is made to one of the
pictures in this exhibition. * That painter of great but insane
' genius, William Blake, of whom Allan Cunningham has
written so interesting a memoir, took this Triad' (the story
of the three who escaped from the battle of Camlan, where
Arthur fell — ' the strongest man, the beautifullest man, and
the ugliest man ') — ' for the subject of a picture, which he
' called TJie A ncient Britons. It was one of his worst pictures (!)
' which is saying much ; and he has illustrated it with one of
' the most curious commentaries in his very curious and very
' rare Descriptive Catalogue of his own pictures.'

The Catalogue is excessively rare. I have seen but three
copies ; heard of, perhaps, three more. Here is the title : ' A
' Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures ; Poetical and Historical
' Inventions ; Painted by William Blake in Water-colours, being
' the ancient inetJiod of Fresco Painting resumed : and Draw-
' ings, for Public Inspection and for Sale by Private Contract.
' London -.printed by D. N. S/mry, 7, Berwick Street, S oho, for
' y. Blake, 28, Broad Street, Golden Square. 1809.' It is
reprinted entire in Vol. II.

Another curious waif, bearing a record of this exhibition,
has floated down, and is now in the possession of Mr. Alex.
C. Weston, — a printed programme dated in Blake's autograph.
May 15, 1809, and directed to Ozias Humphrey; containing
one page of print preceded by an elaborate title-page. It
shows that the picture of the Ancient Britons had ' the figures
full as large as life.'

* In the last battle that Arthur fought^ the most beautiful was one
' That returned, and the most strong another : with them also returned

* The most ugly ; and no other beside returned from the bloody field.
' The most beautiful, the Roman warriors trembled before and

worshipped.
' The most strong they melted before and dissolved in his presence.

* The most ugly they fled with outcries and contortions of their limbs.'



-CT. 51—53] APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC. 277

Let it be added that Mr. Kirkup thought this the finest of
Blake's works, remembering to the last, reports Mr. Swinburne,
' the fury and splendour of energy there contrasted with the
' serene ardour of simply beautiful courage, the violent life of
' the design, and the fierce distance of fluctuating battle.'

In treacherous Cromek's despite, Blake had resolved to
engrave, as well as exhibit, the Pilgrimage. On opening his
exhibition, he issued a printed prospectus of his intended
engraving, almost as curious as the Catalogue. It is a literary
composition which halts between the monologue of a self-
taught enthusiast and the circular of a competing trades-
man. Observe how he girds, parenthetically, at Cromek
and Schiavonetti. Date, May i^th, 1809.

BLAKE'S CHAUCER,

THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS.

The Fresco Picture,

Representing Chaucer's Characters, painted by

WILLIAM BLAKE,

As it is now submitted to the Public.

' The Designer proposes to engrave [it] in a correct and
' finished line manner of engraving, similar to those original
' copper-plates of Albert Durer, Lucas von Leyden, Aldegrave,
' and the old original engravers, who were great masters in
' painting and designing ; whose method, alone, can delineate
' Character as it is in this Picture, where all the lineaments
'are distinct.

' It is hoped that the Painter will be allowed by the public
' (notwithstanding artfully disseminated insinuations to the
* contrary) to be better able than any other to keep his own
' characters and expressions ; having had sufficient evidence
' in the works of our own Hogarth, that no other artist can
' reach the original spirit so well as the Painter himself,



2/8 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1808— 1810.

' especially as Mr. B. is an, old well-known and acknowledged



engraver.



' The size of the engraving will be three feet one inch long,
' by one foot high. The artist engages to deliver it, finished,
' in one year from Septeniber next. No work of art can take
' longer than a year : it may be worked backwards and for-
' wards without end, and last a man's whole life ; but he
' will, at length, only be forced to bring it back to what it
' was, and it will be worse than it was at the end of the first
' twelve months. The value of this [the ?] artist's year is
' the criterion of Society ; and as it is valued, so does
' Society flourish or decay.

' The price to Subscribers, FOUR GUINEAS ; two to be
' paid at the time of subscribing, the other two, on delivery
' of the print.

' Subscriptions received at No. 28, corner of BROAD
' Street, Golden Square, where the Picture is now
' exhibiting, among other works, by the same artist.

' The price will be considerably raised to non-subscribers.'

Singularly artful announcement, — surely a suggestion of
brother James's ! The swan walks very ungracefully. Cromek
had little cause for alarm at such naive self-assertion; so
innocent an attempt to divide the public favour. In reading
this, and similar effusions of Blake's, allowances must be
made for a want of early familiarity with the conventions of
printed speech, parallel to his want of dexterity with
those of the painter's language ; which explains a good
deal of the crudeness and eccentricity.

It was a favourite dogma of Blake's, not, certainly, learned
of the political economists, that the true power of Society
depends on its recognition of the arts. Which is his meaning
v/hen, pardonably regarding himself as a representative of
high art, he mysteriously announces, ' The value of this artist's
' year is the criterion of Society, and as it is valued, so does
'society flourish or decay.' Society had little to congratulate
itself upon in its recognition of ' tJiis artist's year.' Miserably



.'ET. 51—53.] APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC. 2/9

did she undei*value it, to her discredit and our loss. This
artist's fresh and daring conceptions it would have been well
to have embodied in happier, maturer, more lucid shape, than
' society ' ever vouchsafed him the slenderest help towards
realizing. As it is, one of his archaic-looking drawings is
often more matterful and suggestive, imprisons more thought
and imagination, than are commonly beaten out thin over the
walls of an entire exhibition.

In September or October 1809, the engraving of his
Canterbury Pilgriniage was commenced. And, fulfilling the
voluntary engagement recorded in the prospectus, the print, —
somewhat smaller in size than the picture, — was issued on the
8th of the following October ; a year or two before the plate
after Stothard's picture emerged from the difficulties which
befel it. Blake thus forestalled his forestaller, to the indigna-
tion of Stothard in his turn ; the print being of the same size
as Cromek's intended one, and having inevitable resemblances
to it, in general composition.

It Avas launched without the slightest help from the
elaborate machinery usually put in motion to secure a
welcome for an important engraving, and, by energetic
Cromek, worked on so unprecedented a scale. As may
readily be believed, the subscribers might almost have been
counted on the hand. Blake's work, indeed, lacks all the
alluring grace of Stothard's felicitous composition, in which a
wide range of previous art is indirectly laid under contribu-
tion, or, to speak plainly, cribbed from, after the fashion of
most well-educated historical painters ; whereas Blake boldly
and obstinately draws on his own resources. Bare where
Stothard's composition is opulent, yet challenging comparison
as to the very qualities in which Blake was most deficient,
his design creates an unfavourable impression before the
superficial spectator has time to recognise its essential merits.
A good notion of the work may be obtained from our reduced
outline with the series of heads, on the same scale as the
original, engraved below it. ' Hard and dry,' as Lamb



28o LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1808— 1810.

observes, it is, — uncouth compared with Stothard's ; but, tested
by the poetry and spirit of Chaucer, it is, in all points of
character and arrangement, undoubtedly superior. There
is, too, a mediaeval look about Blake's which does not
distinguish Stothard's version.

I have heard that Blake retouched the plate of the
Canterbury Pilgrimage, and did not improve it. There
are impressions, rather black and heavy in effect, which
would seem to confirm this rumour.

To judicious counsel from a friend Blake was always
amenable, but was stiffened in error by hostile criticism.
Unaided by the former, while at work on his fresco and
engraving, he had been in the very worst mood for realizing
success, or even the harmonious exercise of his powers. He
was in the temper to exaggerate his eccentricities, rather
than to modify them. If Cromek, instead of throwing up
Blake's drawing when he could not dictate terms, had gone
on and gently persuaded the designer to soften his peculi-
arities ; or if Blake had suffered his design to be engraved by
Schiavonetti, and doctored (as that engraver so well knew
how) by correct smooth touches, some of Blake's favourite
hard, 'determinate outline' being sacrified a little, a different
fortune would have awaited the composition. It might
have become almost as well known and admired as
Stothard's, certainly as the Blair, instead of being a
curiosity sought only by collectors of scarce things.

Blake was at no pains, throughout this business or after-
wards, to conceal his feelings towards Stothard. To the end
of his life he would, to strangers, abuse the popular favourite,
with a vehemence to them unaccountable. With friends and
sympathizers, he was silent on the topic. Such was the
mingled waywardness and unworldliness of the man ; ex-
aggerating his prejudices to the uncongenial, waiving them
with the few who could interpret them aright. He was blind
to the fact that his motives for decrying Stothard were liable
to misconstruction ; and would have been equally unguarded



ACT. 51— 53-] APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC. 28 1

could he have perceived it. For Stothard's art — in his eyes
far too glib, smooth, and mundane in its graces — he enter-
tained a sincere aversion ; though, as in the case of Reynolds,
some degree of soreness may have aggravated the dislike.
And the epithets he, in familiar conversation, applied to it,
would, repeated in cold blood, sound extravagant and puerile.

On his part, too, the ordinarily serene Stothard, the inno-
cent instrument of shifty Cromek's schemes, considered
himself just as much aggrieved by Blake. Up to 1806 they
had been friends, if not always warm ones ; friends of nearly
thirty years' standing. The present breach was never healed.
Once, many years later, they met at a gathering of artists —
of the Artists' Benevolent, I think. Before going in to dinner,
Blake, placable as he was irascible, went up to Stothard and
offered to shake hands ; an overture the frigid, exemplary man
declined, as Mr. Linnell, an eye-witness, tells me. Another
time, Stothard was ill : Blake called and wished to see him
and be reconciled, but was refused. There is something of
the kingdom of heaven in this — on the one side. Such men
are not to be judged by wayward words. Warm hearts
generally spend their worst violence in them.

This squabble with Cromek was a discordant episode in
Blake's life. The competition with Stothard it induced placed
him in a false position, and, in most people's eyes, a wrong
one. In Blake's own mind, where all should have been, and
for the most part was, peace, the sordid conflict left a scar.
It left him more tetchy than ever ; more disposed to wilful
exaggeration of individualities already too prominent, more
prone to unmeasured violence of expression. The extremes
he again gave way to in his design and writings — mere
ravings to such as had no key to them — did him no good
with that portion of the public the illustrated Blair had
introduced him to. Those designs most people thought wild
enough ; yet they were really a modified version of his style.
Such demand as had existed for his works, never considerable,
declined.



282 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1808— iSio.

Now, too, was established for him the damaging reputation
' Mad,' by which the world has since agreed to recognise
William Blake. And yet it is one — and let the reader note
this — which none who knew the visionary man intimately,
at any period of his hfe, thought of applying to him. And,
in his time, he was known to, and valued by, many shrewd,
clear-headed men ; of whom suffice it to mention Fuseli,
Flaxman, Linnell. More on this point hereafter.



CHAPTER XXVI.

ENGRAVER CROMEK. 1807— 1812. [^T 50—55.]

While Blake had been nursing his wrath against Cromek
and Stothard, and making ineffectual reprisals by exhibition
and engraving, the course of Cromek's speculation had not run
smoothly. As intimately, if indirectly, bearing on Blake's life of
struggles, this matter ought, perhaps, to be glanced at here.
We must first go back a little, and track Cromek in his
versatile career. The retrospect will, here and there, throw a
vivid ray of light on the real character of the man, and so
enable us to construe Blake aright in the critical relation in
which the two, for a time, stood to one another. It may help
the reader to a conclusion as to the rights of that difficult case
— for so Smith and Cunningham seemed to find it — Blake v.
StotJiard and Another.

During the progress, under the engraver, of his first publish-
ing scheme, the active Yorkshireman had been turning his
literary tastes to account. He had made a tour in Dumfries-
shire, in quest of unpublished fugitive pieces by Robert Burns ;
a tour undertaken, according to his own statement, from pure
interest in the poet. He discovered many previously un-
known ; others rejected ' on principle ' by the great man's
posthumous patron, prim Currie, of now seldom blessed
memory. The visit was well timed. Burns had been dead
ten years ; but everything by him, everything about him, was
already carefully treasured by those privileged enough to



284 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1S07— 1812.

have aught to keep or remember. His mother, and others of
his family and friends, were still living. Cromek returned
with well-filled wallet ; though he too, squeamish as Currie,
must needs keep back TJie Jolly Beggars and Holy Willie s
Prayer. Of these gleanings he made an octavo volume,
supplementary to Currie's four, entitling it TJie Reliqiies of
Burns. It was published by Cadell and Davies in 1808, —
the year in which the Blair came out, — and is a volume on
which subsequent editors and biographers of Burns have
freely drawn. It had the peculiar fortune of calling forth
memorable manifestations of bad feeling towards the poet,
of tepid taste and supercilious vulgarity, from two persons
high in the world of letters, — the articles of Jeffrey in the
Edinburgh, of Walter Scott in the Quarteidy.

Here, again, Cromek's well-directed industry bore off, I
fear, the profits, to part of which another — Burns's widow —
was entitled. Cromek might, indeed, plead in self-defence,
the lapse of ten years during which no one else had had the
pious zeal to glean the open field.

The following summer, which was that of Blake's exhibi-
tion, Cromek, encouraged by the success of his first literary
venture, revisited Dumfries, with Stothard as a companion
and with new schemes in his head. One was an enlarged
and illustrated edition of Burns's works, for which materials
and drawing were now to be got together ; an enterprise
which, in the sequel, failing health prevented his carrying
out. The other was a Collection of Old Scottish Songs,
such, especially, as had been the favourites of Burns, to-
gether with the poet's notes already printed in the Reliques,
and any other interesting scraps that could be picked up,
could be begged, borrowed, or filched from various con-
tributors. Two duodecimo volumes were got together, and,
in the summer of 18 10, published under the above title, with
three vignettes after Stothard, characteristically cut on wood
by clever, hapless Luke Clennell, hereafter the tenant of a
madhouse.



/ET. 50—55.] ENGRAVER CROMEK. 285

During this visit of 1809, the bookmaker fell an easy victim
to the hoax devised by a stalwart young stone-mason, after-
wards known to fame as poet, novelist, biographer, and art
critic. This was Allan Cunningham, then in his twenty-fifth
year, earning eighteen shillings a week as a working mason.
Cromek, we learn from Mr. Peter Cunningham's interesting
introduction to his father's collected Poems and Songs (1847),
looked coldly on the mason's acknowledged verses, but caught
eagerly at the idea of discoveries of old Songs, to be made
among the Nithsdale peasantry. He greedily swallowed
Allan's happy imitations, and ever * called out for more ! '
On quitting Dumfries for Newman Street, he put a MS. book
into Allan's hands with the modest written injunction, ' To be
'filled with old unpublished songs and ballads, with remarks
' on them, historical and critical.' Another milch-cow has
turned up !

Under pretence of collecting a world of previously unknown
local song from the well-gleaned land of Burns and Scott, the
young man, finding in Cromek (who had more natural taste
than reading or acumen) a good subject for the cheat, and a
willing one, palmed off, as undoubted originals, a whole desk-
ful of his own verse, in slightly antique mould. Verse, it
proved, bold, energetic, and stirring, or tender, sentimental,
and graceful ; the best of modern Scottish songs and ballads
since those of the Ayrshire peasant, though wide the interval!
Cromek, who reminds one of Burns's Johnson, of Mttsical
MiLsewn memory, a man of the same type, was, as usual,
only too happy to avail himself of another's genius and
labours ; too ready a recipient to be over-curious as to
authenticity. But his letters to Cunningham reveal often
pertinent doubts as to any high antiquity, even while he
and the eager domestic circle in Newman Street, whom a
northern raven was feeding, were receiving the poems with
delighted wonder. ' I have read these verses,' he writes of
one song {She's gone to dwell in Heaveit), ' to my old mother,
my wife, sister, and family, //// all our hearts ache.' Cromek



286 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1807— 1812.

spared neither urging nor vague hints of a future ' kind
return ' for all services, to extract from his young friend an
original and striking volume of verse, and even copious prose
notes, illustrative of local traditions. The poet was lured to
London to help to push the volume through the press.
Cromek gave him free quarters the while, and then left him
to hire himself as a sculptor's mason, at six-and-twenty
shillings a week. Subsequently Cromek spoke a good word
for his protege to Chantrey, young then, and with little to
employ a second pair of hands, but who, some years later,
took Allan as a workman. The engagement, as Chantrey's
fortunes rose, transformed itself into a higher one, which
lasted till the end of the sculptor's life.

The volume was swelled to due dimensions by a few poems
collected from other sources, and by plausible, loose-spun
letter-press of Cromek's own, — an ' Introduction ' and critical
* Notices ' of the poems ; including grave details of how one
had been taken down from the recitation of such and such
' a young girl,' or 'worthy old man.' The Remains of Niths-
dale and Gallozvay Song, printed by Bensley, was published
by Cadell and Davies, at the latter end of 18 10, with a
spirited woodcut vignette by Clennell, after Stothard. It
is now scarce.

Some general expressions of ' obligation to Mr. Allan
Cunningham ' for ' guidance and interesting conversation,'
was the sole acknowledgment accorded the gratis contributor
(as author and collector) of the bulk and all the value of the
volume. To which add a presentation copy, accompanied by
the candid assurance, ' It has been a costly work, and I have
' made nothing by it, but it is d — d good, let the critics say
' what they will, and ivhen it goes to a second edition, I will
^ give yon something handsome V The book was well received
and sold well, but never went to a second edition ; our pub-
lishers having taken care to make the first a large one. None
of Cromek's clients grew sleek on his bounty. Nine years
later, Cunningham's true share in the volume became known.



.CT. 50—55.] ENGRAVER CROMEK. 287

And further cultivation of the profession (or trade sometimes)
of hterature, while he was still clerk of the works to Chantrey,
was rendered easy to him on the strength of that volume
alone.

On this, as on other occasions of the kind, Cromek fulfilled
to admiration his legitimate part as publisher. While he
picked the brains of his proti^rs^Blake, Stothard, Cunning-
ham — and stopped the pay, he could not help doing them
incidental good service, in dragging them forward a stage
with the public ; a service which genial Allan Cunningham
seems always to have remembered with a kind of tenderness.

One more illustrative anecdote. * Cromek,' as Mr. Peter
Cunningham mildly puts it, ' had rather lax ideas about meiuji
*■ et tmnn when valuable autographs were laid before him. I

* remember an instance of this, which I have heard my father
' relate. Sir Walter Scott was talking to him of some of the
' chief curiosities he possessed at Abbotsford. " I had once
' (I am sorry to say once) an original letter from Ben Jonson
' to Drummond of Hawthornden, all in Ben's own beautiful
' handwriting : I never heard of another." My father men-
' tioned one he had seen in London in Cromek' s hands. Scott

* used some strong expression, and added, " The last person
' I showed that letter to w^as Cromek, and I have never seen
it since.'" Cromek had favoured Scott with a visit during
his Dumfries tour of 1809.

After this unexpectedly vivid ray of evidence as to character
Mr. Cromek's bare word cannot be taken, when he contradicts
the positive assertion of simple, upright, if visionary Blake,
that Cromek ' had actually commissioned him to paint the
Pilgrimage before Stothard thought of his! We doubt the
jocose turn given the denial — ' that the order had been given
in a vision for he never gave it,' will not serve. The order
was a viva voce one. And that, like a previous viva voce
agreement, is even easier to forget than the ownership of an
autograph worth, perhaps, ten pounds in the market. Mr.