from Young and Gray, which number 537 and 118 subjects
respectively ; and, from the profound interest and the variety
and special nature of the subject, not to speak of the merits
of the designs themselves, they maintain a high rank among
his performances. It was a great labour for a man of ' three-
score years and ten ' to undertake ; and a labour which, in its
result, exhibits no symptom of age or feebleness. The de-
signs, it is true, are scarcely ever carried to full completion,
and are often extremely slight ; but the power of mind, eye,
hand — the power of grappling with a new subject matter,
and making all its parts, so to speak, organic — is in no wise
dimmed. The conception is not always such as most students
of Dante will be willing to admit as Dantesque, though cer-
tainly much more Dantesque than the refined performance
of Flaxman, or than any other known to me ; it is, at any
rate, the highly creative mind of Dante filtered through the
highly creative, sympathetic mind of Blake.
Blake lived to engrave only seven, published in 1827,
These seven, all from the Hell, are —
1. The Circle of the Lustful — Paolo and Francesca.
2. The Circle of the Corrupt Officials — The Devils torment-
ing Ciampolo.
3. Same Circle — The Devils mauling each other.
4. The Circle of the Thieves — Agnolo Brunnelleschi at-
tacked by the serpent.
5. Same Circle — Buoso Donati attacked by the serpent.
ALT. 67-70.] DECLINING HEALTH : DESIGNS TO DANTE. S77
6. The Circle of the Falsifiers.
7. The Circle of the Traitors — Dante's foot striking Bocca
degli Abati.
TH1-; CIRrt.E OK TITK IKAITOR3.
These engravings are, like the designs, uncompleted works.
They are executed in Blake's strict, sharp-lined manner; and,
though they are more than outlines, do not aim at entire
finish of light and shade, or at any strong effects. It will be
observed, in the hst of engravings, that the two circles of the
Corrupt Officials and of the Thieves receive a more than pro-
portionate share of illustration, and the same is stiir more
strikingly apparent in the list of the complete series of de-
signs. Blake flapped, like a moth round a candle, time after
2,yS LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1824— 1827.
time at the grotesqueness of the pitchforked devils, and the
horror of the transforming serpents.
The agreement between the two friends as to the Dante
was, that Mr. Linnell should go on paying Blake 2/. or 3/. a
week, as he wanted money, Blake doing as little or as much
as he liked in return. The payments on account amounted
in the end to 150/. By this truly genial and friendly arrange-
ment, the ease and comfort of Blake's declining years were
placed on a sure footing ; which was the object Mr. Linnell
had at heart.
These drawings are unique, no duplicates having been
executed : two of them (as shown in the Appendix) are
known in a preparatory stage also. They still remain in
the congenial keeping of their first owner, and have never
been engraved, except the seven just mentioned, nor otherwise
made use of.
While, in 1825, the designs from Dante were progressing, I
find Mr. Linnell a purchaser also of twelve drawings from
Milton's Paradise Regained, a sequel to those from the
Paradise Lost, executed for Mr. Butts, which are now scat-
tered in various hands. Mr. Linnell had unsuccessfully
endeavoured to persuade the jovial, affluent Chantrey, to buy
the Paradise Regained for ;^20. They are of great beauty, re-
fined in execution, especially tender and pure in colour, and
pervading feeling. Like all Mr. Linnell's other purchases
from Blake, they have been retained by him.
A letter from Blake, in November, 1825, shows him still
adding final touches to the plates of the Job. It is addressed
John Linnell, Esq., Cirencester Place, Fitzroy Square, and
is dated Thursday Evening, loth Nov. 1825, from Fountain
Court, Strand: —
Dear Sir,
I have, I believe, done nearly all that we agreed on. And if
you should put on your considering cap, just as you did last time we
met, I have no doubt that the plates would be all the better for
it. I cannot get well, and am now in bed, but seem as if I should
JET. 67—70.] DECLINING HEALTH : DESIGNS TO DANTE. 379
be better to-morrow. Rest does me good. Pray take care of
your health this wet weather; and though I write, do not venture '
out on such days as to-day has been. I hope a few more days will
bring us to a conclusion.
I am, dear Sir,
Yours sincerely,
William Blake.
Amonsf the new friends to whom Mr. Linnell had intro-
duced Blake was Mr. Aders, a wealthy merchant of an old
German family ; a liberal and art-loving man, whose doors
were always open to literary men and artists. To his house
came Coleridge and Lamb and, as we saw, Lawrence, James
Ward, Stothard, Linnell ; finally Blake, with whom, I think,
Coleridge here became acquainted. Of Blake Mr. Aders
bought copies of the So)tgs of Innocence and Experience and
a few others of the illustrated books. His house in Euston
Square was filled with pictures, chosen with excellent judg-
ment, of a class not commonly selected in those days, viz. :
examples of the early Italian and, above all, early Flemish
and German schools. It was as much a picture gallery as a
house. The walls of drawing-room, bed-rooms, and even
staircase, were all closely covered ; with gallery railings in
front to protect the pictures from injury. The collection
was a remarkable and celebrated one, and has left lasting
traces of itself in the history of picture-collecting. It com-
prised many works deeply interesting in the annals ol
painting. Among these was a fine old copy of the famous
Adoration of the Lamb, of Hubert and Jan van Eyck ; one
of the chief landmarks in the history of Art (Hubert's sole
surviving composition). In this copy — formerly in the Hotel
de Ville, Ghent — could be alone seen the effect of the altar-
piece as a whole ; for the various compartments, both of the
original and of Coxcie's copy, are widely scattered. There were
several other precious and authentic pictures of the school
of the Van Eycks : a very interesting small altar-piece,
attributed to Margaretta van Eyck, but since assigned to
o3q life of WILLIAM BLAKE. [1824-1S27.
Ouintin Matsys ; the Portrait of an Artist, by Hans
Memling, or, as some say, Dierick Stuerbout, afterwards in
Mr. Roger's collection ; one or two undoubted small pieces
from the hand of Hans Memling, some in the school of
Roger Vander Weyden, and one of the dozen (or fewer)
certain examples of Martin Schon known to exist.
The collection was visited by Passavant, the biographer of
Raphael, during his visit to England in 183 1, and the
Flemish and German portion of it is described at length
in his Tour of a German Artist. It is characteristic of our
National Gallery management, that not one of these often
invaluable examples of rare masters was secured for the
nation (it was the regime of Seguier, of liquorice-brown var-
nish fame), when the opportunity arose. For, in a subsequent
year, — 1836,— a terrible reverse in trade shattered the fabric
of the munificent merchant's prosperity, and involved the
dispersion of this interesting collection,
Mrs. Aders, a daughter of Raphael Smith, the engraver and
painter, was herself an amateur artist, sufficiently mistress of
painting to execute clever copies after the old masters, and
original pictures which extorted the praise of Blake — always
candid to amateur merit. She was a beautiful and accom-
phshed lady, of much conversational power, able to hold her
own with the gifted men who were in the habit of frequenting
her house. It is to her Coleridge's poem of The Two Founts
was addressed. '
After the ruin of her husband's fortunes she withdrew
from society, dying only a few years since. She remembered
Blake with especial interest, and to the last delighted to
talk of him.
At Mr. Aders' house the German painter, Gotzenberger,
met Blake. On his return to Germany he declared : ' I saw
* in England many men of talent, but only three men of
' genius — Coleridge, Flaxman, and Blake ; and of these Blake
' was the greatest.' There, too, a gentleman first saw Blake,
whom, so long ago as 1809, we beheld a solitary visitor to the
.^■T. 67—70.] MR. CRABB ROBINSON'S REMINISCENCES. 381
abortive exhibition in Broad Street ; and who was, in 18 10,
writing an account of the memorable man for the Patriotische
Aiinalen of good Dr. Perthes, of Hamburg. Mr. Crabb
Robinson, a gentleman who began Hfe as a barrister, but
who, throughout his career, cultivated the acquaintance
of distinguished men of letters, had, during twenty years,
heard much of Blake from Flaxman. The sculptor, if he did
not go so far as to speak of him as an actual seer, was still
further from joining in the ordinary derision of him as a
madman. But it was not till 1825 that Mr. Crabb Robinson
met the visionary man, at Mr. Aders' table in the company
of Mr. LinrTell. ' This was on the loth December,' writes
Mr. Robinson, in the very interesting Reminiscences (based on
his Jonrnals), with the sight of a portion of which I have
been kindly favoured. His account of Blake is from a point
of view widely different from those of the artist's enthusiastic
young disciples, yet, in all essentials, corroborates them.
Many of the extravagances and incoherences recorded as
falling from Blake's lips at these interviews indicate, to one
familiar with his habits of mind, that he was often, in the
course of them, ruffled by his friendly but very logical and
cool-headed interlocutor into extreme statements. He
allowed himself to be drawn out pretty considerably, but
not with closed eyes.
' . . . I was aware of his idiosyncrasies, and therefore I was, to a
' great degree, prepared for the sort of conversation which took place
' at and after dinner : an altogether unmethodical rhapsody on art,
* poetry, religion ; he saying the most strange things in the most
' unemphatic manner, speaking of his visions as any man v/ould of
' the most ordinary occurrence. He was then sixty-eight years of
' age. He had a broad pale face, a large full eye, with a benignant
' expression, — at the same time a look of languor, except when ex-
' cited ; and then he had an air of inspiration ; but not such as, with-
' out previous acquaintance with him, or attending to tvhat he said,
* would suggest the notion that he was insane.^
The italics are mine. Mr. Robinson, I should mention, was
among those who thought Blake to have been an ' insane man
382 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1824— 1S27.
' of genius,' or, at any rate, a victim of monomania ; and M^as
the only one to think so of all I have met who actually knew
anything of him.
' There was nothing wild about his looks. Though very ready to
be drawn out to the assertion of his favourite ideas, yet there was
no warmth, as if he wanted to make proselytes. Indeed, one of
the peculiar features of his scheme, as far as it v/as consistent, was
indifference, and a very extraordinary degree of tolerance and
satisfaction with what had taken place — a sort of pious and humble
optimism ; not the scornful optimism of Candide. But at the same
time that he was very ready to praise, he seemed incapable of envy,
as he was of discontent. He warmly praised some compositions of
Mrs. Aders'; and having brought for A. an engraving of his Canter-
bury Pilgrims^ he remarked that one of the figures resembled a
figure in one of the works then in Aders' room, and that he had
been accused of having stolen from it. But he added that he had
drawn the figure in question twenty years before he had seen the
original picture. *' However, there is no wonder in the resemblance^
as in my youth I was always studying that class of paintings." I
have forgotten what the figure was. But his taste was in close
conformity with the old German school. This was somewhat at
variance with what he said, both this day and afterwards, — implying
that he copied his visions.
' It was at this first meeting that, in answer to a question from me
he said, " The Spirits told me." This led me to say : " Socrates
used pretty much the same language — he spoke of his Genius.
Now, what affinity or resemblance do you suppose was there be-
tween the Genius which inspired Socrates and your Spirits ? " He
smiled, and for once it seemed to me as if he had a feehng of
vanity gratified. " The same as in our countenances." He
paused and added : " I was Socrates, or a sort of brother. I
must have had conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ ;
I have an obscure recollection of having been with both of them."
As I had for many years been familiar with the idea that an eternity
a parte post was inconceivable without an eternity a parte ante^ I
was naturally led to express that thought on this occasion. His eye
brightened on my saying this. He eagerly assented — "To be
sure ! We are all coexistent with God ; members of the Divine
Body, and partakers of the Divine Nature." . . .
' . . . From something Blake said, drawing the inference, — then
.ET. 67—70.] MR. CRABB ROBINSON'S REMINISCENCES. 383
' there is no use in education, — he hastily rejoined : " There is no
' use in education — I hold it wrong — it is the great Sin ; it is eating
' of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, That was the fault of
* Plato : he knew of nothing but the virtues and vices. There is
' nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes." On my
* asking whether there is nothing absolutely evil in what man does,
*he answered: "I am no judge of that — perhaps not in God's
'eyes." Nothwithstanding this, he, however, at the same time,
* spoke of error as being in Heaven ; for on my asking whether
'Dante was pure in writing his Vision, — "Pure!" said Blake, "is
' there any purity in God's eyes ? No ! He chargeth His angels
' with folly." He even extended this liability to error to the Supreme
' Being. " Did He not repent Him that He had made Nineveh?"
* My y^oiernalhtrQ has the remark that it is easier to retail his personal
' remarks than to reconcile those which seemed to be in conformity
* with the most opposed abstract systems.'
Perhaps, indeed, the attempt to methodise them into a
system was so much labour lost .'' The key to the wild and
strange rhapsodies Blake would utter can be supplied by-
love, but not by the intellect. To go with Blake, it almost
required that a man should have the mind of an artist — and
an artist of a peculiar kind — or one strongly in unison with
that class of mind.
' He spoke with seeming complacency of his own life in connection
' with art. In becoming an artist he acted by command : the Spirits
' said to him, " Blake, be an artist ! " His eye glistened while he
'spoke of the joy of devoting himself to divine art alone. "Art
' is inspiration. When Michael Angelo, or Raphael, in their day, or
' Mr. Flaxman, does one of his fine things, he does them in the
' spirit." Of fame he said : " I should be sorry if I had any earthly
* fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted
' from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit ; I want
' nothing ; I am quite happy." This was confirmed to me on my
' subsequent interviews with him. His distinction between the
' natural and spiritual worlds was very confused. Incidentally,
* Swedenborg was mentioned : — he declared him to be a Divine
* teacher ; he had done, and would do, much good : yet he did
' wrong in endeavouring to explain to the Reason what it could
' not comprehend. He seemed to consider — but that was not
384 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1S24— 1827.
' clear — the visions of Swedenborg and Dante as of the same kind.
' Dante was the greater poet. He, too, was wrong, — in occupying
' his mind about poHtical objects. Yet this did not appear to affect
' his estimation of Dante's genius, or his opinion of the truth of
* Dante's visions. Indeed, when he even declared Dante to be
'an atheist, it was accompanied by expression of the highest
' admiration ; " though," said he, " Dante saw devils where
' I saw none."
' I put down in my journal the following insulated remarks : Jacob
' Boehmen was placed among the divinely inspired men. He praised
' also the designs to Law's Translation of Boehmen. " Michael
* Angelo could not have surpassed them." — " Bacon, Locke, and
' Newton, are the three great teachers of atheism, or Satan's doctrine."
' — " Irving is a highly gifted man : he is a sent man ; but they who
* are sent sometimes go further than they ought." " I saw nothing
' but good in Calvin's house ; in Luther's there were harlots." . . . He
' declared his opinion that the earth is flat, not round, and just as I
* had objected, — the circumnavigation, — dinner was announced. Ob-
'jections were seldom of any use. The wildest of his assertions
'was made with the veriest indifference of tone, as if altogether
' insignificant. It respected the natural and spiritual worlds. By
' way of example of the difference between them, he said : " You
' never saw the spiritual Sun ? I have. I saw him on Primrose
' Hill. He said, Do you take me for the Greek Apollo ? No !
* That (pointing to the sky), that is the Greek Apollo : he is Satan."
' Not everything was thus absurd. There were glimpses and flashes
' of truth and beauty : as when he compared moral with physical evil.
< — " Who shall say what God thinks evil ? That is a wise tale of the
' Mahomedans, — of the angel of the Lord who murdered the Infant."
' (The Hermit of Parnell, I suppose.) " Is not every infant that dies
' a natural death in reality slain by an angel ? " And when he joined
' to the assurance of his happiness that of his having suffered, and
' that it was necessary, he added : " There is suffering in Heaven ;
' for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is the capacity
' of pain." I include among the glimpses of truth this assertion :
' " I know what is true by internal conviction ; — a doctrine is stated ;
' my heart tells me it must be true." I remarked, in confirmation
' of it, that, to an unlearned man, what are called the external
' evidences of religion can carry no conviction with them ; and this
' he assented to,
'After my first evening with him at Aders', I made the remark in
/ET. 67—70.] MR. CRABB ROBINSON'S REMINISCENCES. 385
' my y^ournal, that his observations, apart from his visions and
' references to the spiritual world, were sensible and acute. In the
' sweetness of his countenance and gentiUty of his manner, he added
' an indescribable grace to his conversation. I added my regret,
' which I must now repeat, at my inability to give more than inco-
' herent thoughts — not altogether my fault, perhaps.
'On the 17th, I called on him at his house in Fountain Court in
' the Strand. The interview was a short one, and what I saw was
' more remarkable than what I heard. He was at work, engraving,
' in a small bedroom, — light, and looking out on a mean yard —
' everything in the room squalid and indicating poverty, except him-
* self. There was a natural gentility about him, and an insensibility
' to the seeming poverty, which quite removed the impression.
' Besides, his linen was clean, his hand white, and his air quite un-
' embarrassed when he begged me to sit down as if he were in a
' palace. There was but one chair in the room, besides that on which
' he sat. On my putting my hand to it, I found that it would have
' fallen to pieces if I had lifted it. So, as if I had been a Sybarite,
* I said, with a smile, " Will you let me indulge myself? " and sat on
' the bed near him. During my short stay there was nothing in him
•' that betrayed that he was aware of what, to other persons, might
' have been even offensive, — not in his parson, but in all about him.
' His wife I saw at this time, and she seemed to be the very woman
' to make him happy. She had been formed by him ; indeed other-
* wise she could not have lived with him. Notwithstanding her
' dress, which was poor and dirty, she had a good expression in her
* countenance, and, with a dark eye, remains of beauty from her
* youth. She had an implicit reverence for her husband. It is quite
' certain that she believed in all his visions. On one occasion — not
' this day — speaking of his visions, she said : " You know, dear, the
* first time you saw God was when you were four years old, and He
' put His head to the window, and set you screaming." . . .
* He was making designs, or engraving — I forget which. Gary's
' Dante was before him. He showed me some of his designs from
' Dante, of which I do not presume to speak. They were too much
' above me. But Gotzenberger, whom I afterwards took to see them,
' expressed the highest admiration. . . . Dante was again the subject
' of our conversation. Blake declared him a mere poHtician and
' atheist, busied about this world's affairs ; as Milton was till, in
' his old age, he returned back to the God he had abandoned in
' childhood. I, in vain, endeavoured to obtain from him a qualification
VOL. I. â– C C
^86 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1824— 1827.
* of the term atheist, so as not to include him in the ordinary reproach,
' Yet he afterwards spoke of Dante's being then with God. I was
' more successful when he also called Locke an atheist, and imputed
' to him wilful deception. He seemed satisfied with my admission,
* that Locke's philosophy led to the atheism of the French school.
' He reiterated his former strange notions on morals — would allow of
' no other education than what lies in the cultivation of the fine arts
' and the imagination,
* As he spoke of frequently seeing Milton, I ventured to ask, half
' ashamed at the time, which of the three or four portraits in HoUis's
' Memoirs was the most like ? He answered : " They are all like, at
* different ages. I have seen him as a youth, and as an old man,
* with long flowing beard. He came lately as an old man. He came
' to ask a favour of me ; said he had committed an error in his
' Paradise Lost, which he wanted me to correct in a poem or picture,
' But I declined ; I said I had my own duties to perform." " It is a
'presumptuous question," I replied, "but might I venture to ask
' what that could be ? " " He wished me to expose the falsehood
' of his doctrine taught in the Paradise Lost, that sexual intercourse
* arose out of the Fall." ... At the time that he asserted his own
' possession of the gift of vision, he did not boast of it as pecuhar
* to himself: " All men might have it if they would."
' On the 24th December I called a second time on him. On this
' occasion it was that I read to him Wordsworth's Ode on the sup-
' posed pre-existent state {Lntimations of Immortality), The subject of
' Wordsworth's religious character was discussed when we met on
'the i8th of February, and the 12th of May (1826). I will here
' bring together Blake's declarations concerning Wordsworth, I had
' been in the habit, when reading this marvellous Ode to friends, of
' omitting one or two passages, especially that —
— " But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone :
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat :
Whither is fled the visionary gleam ?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"
' lest I should be rendered ridiculous, being unable to explain pre-
' cisely what I admired. Not that I acknowledged this to be a fair
' test. But with Blake I could fear nothing of the kind. And it
^T. 67—70.] MR. CRABB ROBINSON'S REMINISCENCES. 387
' was this very stanza which threw him almost into an hysterical
•rapture. His delight in Wordsworth's poetry was intense. Nor
' did it seem less, notwithstanding the reproaches he continually cast
' on his worship of nature ; which, in the mind of Blake, constituted
' atheism. The combination of the warmest praise with imputations
' which, from another, would assume the most serious character, and
' the liberty he took to interpret as he pleased, rendered it as difficult
* to be offended as to reason with him. The eloquent descriptions
* of nature in Wordsworth's poems were conclusive proofs of atheism :
'"For whoever believes in nature," said B., "disbelieves in God;
* for Nature is the work of the devil." On my obtaining from him
' the declaration that the Bible was the Word of God, I referred to
' the commencement of Genesis, " In the beginning God created the
' heavens and the earth." But I gained nothing by this ; for I was