wealthy merchant employed him but little now, and during
the few remaining years of Blake's life they seldom met.

One of the last, if not the very last, works bought by
Mr. Butts of Blake, was the original series of twenty-one
water-colour drawings or Inventions from the Book of Job,
the longest and most important series executed since The



328 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1823— 1825.

Grave, in 1805 ; still loftier in theme, nobler in achievement ;
most original and characteristic of all his productions. TJiis
set of drawings to Job has passed from Mr. Butts' son into
the possession of Lord Houghton.

It is to the credit of the Royal Academy that, at this
conjuncture, Blake, in the year 1822, received from its funds
a donation of £2.^. Collins and Abraham Cooper recom-
mended him for the grant ; Baily and Rd. Bone were the movers
and seconders of the vote according it. The Forty of that day,
as the testimonial in favour of the Grave showed, numbered
many who could recognise Blake's high, artistic genius.

With no remaining patrons for his design, few to employ
him as an engraver, Blake, in age, was on the verge of want.
Grim poverty had, throughout life, stared him in the face.
Throughout life he had calmly looked back into Jier eyes.
For him she had no terrors. He would have been in actual
want but for one friend, himself an artist, himself not over-
burthened, at that time, with the gifts of Fortune ; who had,
as other rising artists have — but in 1823 it was a still tougher
struggle than in t86o — to toil hard for himself and family
at often ungenial task-work. The drawings of Job had been
borrowed from Mr. Butts to be shown to such as might seem
likely to prove employers. From Mr. Linnell alone they
drew a commission. He engaged Blake to execute and
engrave a duplicate set. The agreement, recorded in writing
in a business-like way, bears date 25th March, 1823. It was
such an one as Blake had never set hand to before, nor
could have obtained in any other quarter. Blake was to
receive ;^ioo for the designs and copyright, to be paid from
time to time; and another ;^iOO out of the profits. No
profits were realised by the engravings, their sale hardly
covering expenses. But as the designs and stock of engrav-
ings remained with the purchaser, Mr. Linnell subsequently
paid over, from time to time, £^0 more, making a total of
;^i5o, — the largest sum Blake had ever received for any one
series. The drawings, the remainder of engravings and



.CT. 66—68.] INVENTIONS TO THE BOOK OF JOB. 329

plates, are still in the hands of this liberal friend, who dis-
counted, as it were, Blake's bill on posterity, when none else
would. While the Job was in progress, Blake received his
money in the way handiest to him, — instalments of £2 to
i^3 a week ; sums amply sufficient for all his ordinary wants,
thanks to his modest menage and simple habits. More he
would hardly have spent, if he had had it. I have heard
from one who himself had it from an authentic source, that
but for this commission of Mr. Linnell's, Blake's last years
would have been employed in engraving a set of Morland's
pig and poultry subjects !

The set of drawings made for Mr. Linnell varies much in
detail from that for Mr. Butts, and is often finer. The
engravings were still further altered ; faces in profile in the
drawings are given full view in the prints, and so on. Both
sets of designs are very finely drawn, and pure in colour ;
necessarily very much finer than the prints. No artist can
quite reproduce even his own drawings. Much must be lost
by the way.

The engravings are the best Blake ever did : vigorous,
decisive, and, above all, in a style of expression in keeping
with the designs, which the work of no other hand could
have been in the case of conceptions so austere and primeval
as these. Blake's manner of handling the graver had been
advantageously modified since his acquaintance with Mr.
Linnell. The latter had called his attention to the works of
Albert Diirer, Marc Antonio, and the Italian's contemporary
and disciple Bonosoni, a more elegant and facile, if less
robust, Marc Antonio. From Bonosoni, especially, Blake
gleaned much, and was led, on first becoming familiar with
his work, to express a regret that he had been trained in
the Basire school, wherein he had learned to work as a mere
engraver, cross-hatching freely. He now became an artist,
making every line tell. The results of this change of style
are manifest in the engraved Inventions to Job. In them, too,
Bonosoni's plan was adopted, of working wholly with the



330 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1823— 1825.

graver and etching nothing ; so that the plates lose little by
having a few hundred impressions taken ofif.

These Inventions to the Book of Job, which may be regarded
as the works of Blake's own hand, in which he most unre-
servedly competes with others — belonging as they do in style
to the accepted category of engraved designs — consist of
twenty-one subjects on a considerably smaller scale than
those in the Grave, each highly wrought in light and shade,
and each surrounded by a border of allusive design and in-
scription, executed in a slighter style than the subject itself.
Perhaps this may fairly be pronounced, on the whole, the
most remarkable series of prints on a scriptural theme
which has appeared since the days of Albert Diirer and
Rembrandt, widely differing, too, from either.

Except the Grave, these designs must be known to a
larger circle than any other series by Blake ; and yet they are
by no means so familiar as to render unnecessary such im-
perfect reproduction of their intricate beauties as the scheme
of this work made possible, or even the still more shadowy
presentment of verbal description.

The first among them shows us the patriarch Job worship-
ping among his family under a mighty oak, surrounded by
feeding flocks, range behind range, as far as the distant
homestead, in a landscape glorified by setting sun and rising
moon. ' Thus did Job continually,' the leading motto tells
us. In the second plate we see the same persons grouped,
still full of happiness and thanksgiving. But this is that day
when the sons of God came to present themselves before the
Lord, and Satan came also among them ; and above the
happy group we see what they do not see, and know that
power is given to Satan over all that Job has. Then in the
two next subjects come the workings of that power ; the
house falling on the slain feasters, and the messengers hurry- .
ing one after another to the lonely parents, still with fresh
tidings of ruin. The fifth is a wonderful design. Job and his
wife still sit side by side, the closer for their misery, and still.



.CT. 66-68.] INVENTIONS TO THE BOOK OF JOB. 33 1

out of the little left to them, give alms to those poorer than
themselves. The angels of their love and resignation are
ever with them on either side ; but above, again, the unseen
Heaven lies open. There sits throned that Almighty figure,
filled now with inexpressible pity, almost with compunction.
Around Him His angels shrink away in horror ; for now
the fires which clothe them — the very fires of God — are com-
pressed in the hand of Satan into a phial for the devoted
head of Job himself. Job is to be tried to the utmost ; only
his life is withheld from the tormentor. How this is wrought,
and how Job's friends come to visit him in his desolation,
are the subjects which follow ; and then, in the eighth design,
Job at last lifts up his voice, with arms uplifted too, among
his crouching, shuddering friends, and curses the day when
he was born. The next, again, is among the grandest of
the series. Eliphaz the Temanite is telling Job of the thing
which was secretly brought to him in the visions of the night ;
and above we are shown the matter of his words, the spirit
which passed before his face ; all blended in a wondrous
partition of light, cloud, and mist of light. After this, Job
kneels up and prays his reproachful friends to have pity on
him, for the hand of God has touched him. And next — most
terrible of all — we see embodied the accusations of torment
which Job brings against his Maker : a theme hard to dwell
upon, and which needs to be viewed in the awful spirit in
which Blake conceived it. But in the following subject there
comes at last some sign of soothing change. The sky, till
now full of sunset and surging cloud, in which "the stones of
the ruined home looked as if they were still burning, has here
given birth to the large peaceful stars, and under them the
young Elihu begins to speak : ' Lo ! all these things worketh
God oftentimes with man, to bring forth his soul from the
pit.' The expression of Job, as he sits with folded arms,
beginning to be reconciled, is full of delicate familiar nature ;
while the look of the three unmerciful friends, in their turn
reproved, has something in it almost humorous. And then



332 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1823— 1825.

the Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind, dreadful in its
resistless force, but full also of awakening life, and rich with
lovely clinging spray. Under its influence, Job and his wife
kneel and listen, with faces to which the blessing of thankful-
ness has almost returned. In the next subject it shines forth
fully present again, for now God Himself is speaking of His
own omnipotence and right of judgment — of that day of
creation ' when the morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy.' All that He says is brought
before us, surrounding His own glorified Image ; while below,
the hearers kneel rapt and ecstatic. This is a design which
never has been surpassed in the whole range of Christian
art. Very grand, too, is the next, where we see Behemoth,
chief of the ways of God, and Leviathan, king over the
children of pride. The sixteenth plate, to which we now
come, is a proof of the clear dramatic sense with which Blake
conceived the series as a whole. It is introduced in order
to show us the defeat of Satan in his contest against Job's
uprightness, Here, again, is the throned Creator among His
angels, and beneath Him the Evil One falls with tremendous
plummet-force ; Hell naked before his face, and Destruction
without a covering. Job with his friends are present as awe-
struck witnesses. In the design which follows, He who has
chastened and consoled Job and his wife is seen to bestow
His blessing on them ; while the three friends, against whom
' His wrath is kindled,' cover their faces with fear and
trembling. And now comes the acceptance of Job, who
prays for his friends before an altar, from which a heart-
shaped body of flame shoots upward into the sun itself ; the
background showing a distant evening light through broad
tree-stems — the most peaceful sight in the world. Then Job's
kindred return to him, ' every one also gave him a piece
' of money and every one an earring of gold.' Next he is seen
relating his trials and mercies to the new daughters who were
born to him — no women so fair in the land. And, lastly,
the series culminates in a scene of music and rapturous joy,



.•ET. 66-68.] INVENTIONS TO THE BOOK OF JOB. 333

which, contrasted with the calm thanksgiving of the opening
design, gloriously enbodies the words of its text, ' So the
' Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning.'

In these three last designs, I would specially direct attention
to the exquisite beauty of the female figures. Nothing proves
more thoroughly how free was the spiritualism of Blake's
art from any ascetic tinge. These women are given to us no
less noble in body than in soul ; large-eyed, and large-armed
also ; such as a man may love with all his life.

The angels (and especially those in plate 14, * When the

' morning stars sang together,') may be equally cited as proofs

of the same great distinctive quality. These are no flimsy,

filmy creatures, drowsing on feather-bed wings, or smothered

in draperies. Here the utmost amount of vital power is

the heavenly glory they display ; faces, bodies, and wings, all

living and springing fire. And that the ascetic tendency,

here happily absent, is not the inseparable penalty to be paid

for a love of the Gothic forms of beauty, is evident enough,

when we seen those forms everywhere rightly mingling with

the artist's conceptions, as the natural breath of sacred art.

With the true daring of genius, he has even introduced a

Gothic cathedral in the background of the worshipping group

in plate i, as the shape in which the very soul of worship is

now for ever embodied for us. It is probably with the fine

intention of symbolizing the unshaken piety of Job under

heavy affliction, that a similar building is still seen pointing its

spires heavenward in the fourth plate, where the messengers of

ruin follow close at one another's heels. We may, perhaps, even

conjecture that the shapeless buildings, like rude pagan cairns,

which are scattered over those scenes of the drama which

refer to the gradual darkening of Job's soul, have been

introduced as forms suggestive of error and the shutting out

of hope. Everywhere throughout the series we meet with

evidences of Gothic feeling. Such are the recessed settle and

screen of trees in plate 2, much in the spirit of Orcagna ; the

decorative character of the stars in plate 12 ; the Leviathan

and Behemoth in plate 15, grouped so as to recall a mediaeval



334 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1823— 1S25.

medallion or wood-carving ; the trees, drawn always as they
might be carved in the woodwork of an old church. Further
instances of the same kind may be found in the curious sort
of painted chamber, showing the themes of his discourse, in
which Job addresses his daughters in plate 20 ; and in the
soaring trumpets of plate 21, which might well be one of the
rich conceptions of Luca della Robbia.

Nothing has yet been said of the borders of illustrative
design and inscription which surround each subject in the
Job. These are slight in manner, but always thoughtful
and appropriate, and often very beautiful. Where Satan
obtains power over Job, we see a terrible serpent twined
round tree-stems among winding fires, while angels weep,
but may not quench them. Fungi spring under baleful dews,
while Job prays that the night may be solitary, and the
day perish wherein he was born. Trees stand and bow
like ghosts, with bristling hair of branches, round the spirit
which passes before the face of Eliphaz. Fine examples
also are the prostrate rain-beaten tree in plate 13 ; and, in
the next plate, the map of the days of creation. In plate
18 (the sacrifice and acceptance of Job), Blake's palette
and brushes are expressively introduced in the border, lying,
as it were, on an altar-step beside the signature of his name.
That which possesses the greatest charm is, perhaps, the
border to plate 2. Here, at the base, are sheepfolds watched
by shepherds : up the sides is a trellis, on whose lower rings
birds sit upon their nests, while angels, on the higher ones,
worship round flame and cloud, till it arches at the summit
into a sky full of the written words of God.

Such defects as exist in these designs are of the kind
usual with Blake, but far less frequent than in his more
wilful works ; indeed, many among them are entirely free
from any damaging peculiarities. Intensely muscular figures,
who surprise us by a sort of line round the throat, wrists,
and ankles, but show no other sign of being draped, are
certainly to be sometimes found here as elsewhere, but
not many of them. The lifted arms and pointing arms in



.*:t. 66-68.] INVENTIONS TO THE BOOK OF JOB. 335

plates 7 and 10 are pieces of mannerism to be regretted, the
latter even seeming a reminiscence of Macbeth's Witches
by Fuseli ; and a few other slight instances might, perhaps,
be cited. But, on the whole, these are designs no less well
and clearly considered, however highly imaginative, than
the others in the small highest class of original engraved
inventions, which comprises the works of Albert Diirer, of
Rembrandt, of Hogarth, of Turner, of Cruikshank in his
best time, and some few others. Like all these they are
incisive and richly toned to a degree which can only be at-
tained in engraving by the original inventor, and have equally
a style of execution all their own. In spirit and character
they are no less independent, having more real affinity, per-
haps, with Orcagna than with any other of the greatest men.
In their unison of natural study with imagination, they re-
mind one decidedly of him ; and also of Giotto, himself the
author of a now almost destroyed series of frescos from Job,
in the Campo Santa at Pisa, which it would be interesting
to compare, as far as possible, with these inventions of Blake.

To the high artistic value of this series Mr. Ruskin has
borne witness. In his Elements of Draiving for Beginners
(1857), it is specified among the 'Things to be Studied.'
'The Book of Job, engraved by himself (by Blake, that is),
it is there said, ' is of the highest rank in certain characters
' of imagination and expression ; in the mode of obtaining
' certain effects of light, it will also be a very useful example
' to you. In expressing conditions of glaring and flickering
' light, Blake is greater than Rembrandt.'

March 8th, 1825, was the publishing date on the plates ;
the date by which Blake had expected to have finished them.
But March, 1826, is the date given on the cover, and the
correct one. The publishing price was three guineas ; proofs,
five ; India paper proofs, six. The circulation was limited ;
the mode of publication, for one thing, being a very quiet one.

In April, 1825, another lingerer in the small knot of
Blake's earliest friends was summoned away by Death "•
Fuseli, whose health and bodily strength had, for the last



336



LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE.



[1823—1825.



year or two, been failing, but not his faculties. He died in
his eighty-fourth year ; neglected by picture buyers, honoured
by all in his own profession, by men of letters, by sonne
among ' the great,' and not without a fair share of the goods
of fortune. Of Fuseli Blake had always been a warm and
generous admirer, and was wont to declare, ' This country
' must advance two centuries in civilisation before it can
'appreciate him.' Let us hope ^ few of that remarkable
man's original, if mannered and undisciplined, works will
survive the extraordinary and disproportioned neglect which
has exiled them to the cellar and the garret.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

HAMPSTEAD ; AND YOUTHFUL DISCIPLES. 1825—27.

[^T. 68—70.]

TilE following letter is the first in a brief series preserved
by Mr. Linnell, interesting as among the comparatively small
number of Blake's writing extant. Apart from those which
were the result of his stay at Felpham, I think he wrote but
few. It is to ' Mrs. Linnell, CoUins's Farm, North End,
Hampstead,' and is dated Tuesday, nth October, 1825 ; —

Dear Madam,

I HAVE had the pleasure to see Mr. Linnell set off safe
in a very comfortable coach. And I may say I accompanied him
part of the way on his journey in the coach. For we both got in,
together with another passenger, and entered into conversation,
when at length we found that we were all three proceeding on our
journey. But as I had not paid, and did not wish to pay for or
take so long a ride, we, with some difficulty, made the coachman
understand that one of his passengers was unwilling to go, when
he obligingly permitted me to get out — to my great joy. Hence,
I am now enabled to tell you that I hope to see you on Sunday
morning as usual, which I could not have done if they had taken
me to Gloucester.

I am, dear Madam,

Yours Sincerely,

William Blake.

Blake was, at this period, in the habit, when well, of
spending frequent happy Sundays at his friend's Hampstead
VOL. I. z




338 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1825— 1827.

Cottage, where he was received by host and hostess with
the most cordial affection. Mr. Linnell's manner was as
that of a son ; Mrs. Linnell was hospitable and kind, as
ladies well know how to be to a valued friend. The children,
whenever he was expected, were on the qui vive to catch
the first glimpse of him from afar. One of them, who has
now children of her own, but still cherishes the old reverence
for ' Mr. Blake,' remembers thus watching for him when
a little girl of five or six ; and how, as he walked over the
brow of the hill and came within sight of the young ones,
he would make a particular signal ; how Dr. Thornton,
another friend and frequent visitor, would make a different
one, — the Doctor taking off his hat and raising it on a stick.
She remembers how Blake would take her on his knee, and
recite children's stones to them all : recollects his kind
manner ; his putting her in the way of drawing, training
her from his own doings. One day he brought up to Hamp-
stead an early sketch-book, full of most singular things,
as it seemed to the children. But, in the midst of them,
they came upon a finished, pre-Raphaelite-like drawing of
a grasshopper, with which they were delighted.

Mr. Linnell had first taken lodgings at Hampstead in June,
1822 ; and in March, 1824, moved his family to a farm-house
there, part of which was let off as a separate habitation, as
it is to this day. For Collins's Farm yet stands, altered by
the erection of new out-buildings, and the loss of some of
its trees, but not so much altered as most things in Hamp-
stead. It is on the north, or countryward side, beyond the
Heath, between North End and the ' Spaniards.' North
End, as every cockney knows, lies in a hollow over the
Heath, — a cluster of villa residences, amid gardens and
pleasure-grounds, their roofs embosomed in trees. As you
walk from it towards the ' Spaniards,' a winding lane to the
left ^-" T^s you back into the same high road. A little off
is another winding way, in the middle of which
-J Collins's Farm, at the bottom of another hollow. The



^.T. 68—70.] HAMPSTEAD ; AND YOUTHFUL DISCIPLES. 339

house, an old one, looks out in front upon the heathery hill-
side; at back, upon meadows and hedgerows, in summer one
monotonous tint of heavy green. From the hill-side, the
well-pitched red roof of the farm-house picturesquely peeps
out among the trees below. To London children the place
must have been a little Paradise. Blake, too, notwithstanding
a theoretic dislike to Hampstead, practically enjoyed his
visits. Mr. Linnell's part of the house, — a later erection
than the rest, and of lower height, with a separate entrance
through the garden which stretches beside, — was small and
humble, containing only five rooms. In front it commanded
a pleasant southern aspect. Blake, it is still remembered,
would often stand at the door, gazing, in tranquil reverie,
across the garden toward the gorse-clad hill. He liked
sitting in the arbour, at the bottom of the long garden, or
walking up and down the same at dusk, while the cows,
munching their evening meal, were audible from the farm-
yard on the other side the hedge. He was very fond of
hearing Mrs, Linnell sing Scottish songs, and would sit by
the pianoforte, tears falling from his eyes, while he listened
to the Border Melody to which the song is set com-



mencmg-



'O Nancy's hair is yellow as gowd.
And her een as the lift are blue.'

To simple national melodies Blake was very impression-
able, though not so to music of more complicated structure.
He himself still sang, in a voice tremulous with age, some-
times old ballads, sometimes his own songs, to melodies of
his own.

The modest interior of the rustic cottage was rendered
delightful, as artists can generally render their houses, by
tasteful fitting up and by fine prints and pictures hanging
on the walls. Many an interesting friendly gathering took
place there, comprising often a complete circle of what are
vulgarly called ' characters.' Sometimes, for instance, it

Z 2



340 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1825— 1827.

would be, besides Blake and Mr. Linnell, Dr. Thornton, John
Varley, and his brother Cornelius, — the latter living still,
well known in the scientific world and a man devoted to
the ingenious arts ; all, as one of them confessed to me, men
' who did not propose to themselves to be as others,' but to
follow out views of their own. Sometimes Mulready would
be of the company : Richter also — a name familiar to
frequenters of the old Water-colour Society's exhibitions —
who was a fervent disciple of Emanuel Kant, and very fond