Exhibition of his own Works (1809). In the Descriptive
Catalogue he speaks of it with some complacency as ' proving
' to the author, and he thinks to any discerning eye, that the
' productions of our youth and of our maturer age are equal in
' all essential points.' To me, on inspecting the same, it
proves nothing of the kind ; though it be a very exemplary
performance in the manner just indicated. The central figure
of Jane Shore has however much grace and sweetness ; and
the intention of the whole composition is clear and decisive.
One extrinsic circumstance materially detracts from the ap-
pearance of this and other water-colour drawings from his
hand of the period : viz. that, as a subsittute for glass, they
were all eventually, in prosecution of a hobby of Blake's,
varnisJied — of which process, applied to a water-colour
drawing, nothing can exceed the disenchanting, not to say
destructive effect.

There is a scarce engraving inscribed ' W. B. inv. 1780'
(reproduced at the head of this chapter,) which, within certain
limitations, has much more of the peculiar Blake quality and
intensity about it. The subject is evidently a personification
of Morning, or Glad Day : a nude male figure, with one foot
on earth, just alighted from above; a flood of radiance still
encircling his head ; his arms outspread, — as exultingly bring-
ing joy and solace to this lower world, — not with classic
Apollo-like indifference, but with the divine chastened fervour
of an angelic minister. Below crawls a caterpillar, and a
hybrid kind of night-moth takes wing.

Meanwhile, the Poet and Designer, living under his father
the hosier's roof, 28, Broad Street, had not only to educate
himself in high art, but to earn his livelihood by humbler
art — engraver's journey-work. During the years 1779 to 1782
and onwards, one or two booksellers gave him employment in
engraving from afterwards better known fellow designers.
Harrison of Paternoster Row employed him for his Novelists



^T. 21-25.] STUDENT AND LOVER. 33

Magazine, or collection of approved novels ; for his Ladies'
Magazine, and perhaps other serials ; J. Johnson, a constant
employer during a long series of years, for various books ;
and occasionally other booksellers, — Macklin, Buckland, and
(later) Dodsley, Stockdale, the Ca<lells. Among the first in
date of such prints, was a well-engraved frontispiece after
Stothard, bold and telling in light and shade (' The Foyr
Quarters of the Globe'), to a System of GeograpJiy (1779):
and another after Stothard (' Clarence's Dream ') to Enfield's
Speaker, published by Johnson in 1780. Then came with
sundry miscellaneous, eight plates after some of Stothard's
earliest and most beautiful designs, for the Novelists Maga-
zine. The designs brought in young Stothard, hitherto an
apprentice to a Pattern-draftsman in Spitalfields, a guinea
a-piece, — and established his reputation : their intrinsic grace,
feeling, and freshness being (for one thing) advantageously
set off by very excellent engraving, of an infinitely more
robust and honest kind than the smooth style of Heath and
his School which succeeded to it and eventually brought
about the ruin of line-engraving for book illustrations. Of
Blake's eight engravings, all thorough and sterling pieces
of workmanship, two were illustrations of Don Quixote,
one of the Sentimental Journey (1782), one of Miss Fielding's
David Simple, another of Lawicelot Greaves, three of Gran-
dison (1782-3).

One Trotter, a fellow-engraver who received instructions
from Blake, engraved a print or two after Stothard, and was
also draftsman to the calico-printers, had introduced Blake to
Stothard, the former's senior by nearly two years, then
lodging in company with Shelly, the miniature painter, in
the Strand. Stothard introduced Blake to Flaxman, who
after seeing some of the early graceful plates in the Novelists'
Magazine, had of his own accord made their designer's
acquaintance. Flaxman, of the same age and standing as
Stothard, was as yet subsisting by his designs for the first
Wedgwood, and also living in the Strand with his father who

VOL. I. D



34 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1780.

there kept a well-known plaster-cast shop when plaster-cast
shops were rare. A wistful remembrance of the superiority
of ' old Flaxman's ' casts still survives among artists. In
1 78 1 the sculptor married, taking house and studio of his
own at 27, Wardour Street, and becoming Blake's near
neighbour. He proved — despite some passing clouds which
for a time obscured their friendship at a later era — one of the
best and firmest friends Blake ever had, as great artists often
prove to one another in youth. The imaginative man needed
friends ; for his gifts were not of the bread-winning sort. He
was one of those whose genius is in a far higher ratio than
their talents : and it is Talent which commands worldly
success. Amidst the miscellaneous journey-work which
about this period kept Blake's graver going, if not his mind,
may be mentioned the illustrations to a show-list of Wedg-
wood's productions, specimens of his latest novelties in
earthenware and porcelain — tea and dinner services, &c.
Seldom have such very humble essays in Decorative Art —
good enough in form, but not otherwise remarkable — tasked
the combined energies of a Flaxman and a Blake ! To the
list of the engraver's friends was afterwards added Fuseli, of
maturer age and acquirements, man of letters as well as Art,
a multifarious and learned author. From intercourse with
minds like these, much was learned by Blake, in his art and
out of it. In 1780, Fuseli, then thirty-nine, just returned
from eight years' sojourn in Italy, became a neighbour,
lodging in Broad Street, where he remained until 1782. In
the latter year, his original and characteristic picture of Tlie
Nightmare made ' a sensation ' at the Exhibition : the first
of his to do so. The subsequent engraving gave him a
European reputation. Artists' homes as well as studios
abounded then in Broad Street and its neighbourhood.
Bacon the sculptor lived in Wardour Street, Paul Sandby
in Poland Street, the fair R.A., Angelica Kaufifman in Golden
Square, Bartolozzi with his apprentice Sherwin in Broad
Street itself and, at a later date, John Varley, ' father of



MT. 23.] STUDENT AND LOVER. 35

modern Water Colours,' in the same street (No. 15). Lite-
rary celebrities were not wanting : in Wardour Street, Mrs.
Chapone ; in Poland Street, pushing, pompous Dr. Burney,
of Musical History notoriety.

In the catalogue of the now fairly established Royal
Academy's Exhibition for 1780, its twelftJi, and first at
Somerset House — all previous had been held in its ' Old
Room ' {originally built for an auction room), on the south
side of Pall Mall East — appears for the first time a work by
' W. Blake.' It was an Exhibition of only 489 ' articles ' in
ail, waxwork and ' designs for a fan ' inclusive ; among its
leading exhibitors, boasting Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mary
Moser, R.A., Gainsborough and Angelica Kaufi"man, R.A.
Cosway, and Loutherbourg, Paul Sandby and Zoffany,
Copley (Lyndhurst's father), and Fuseli, not yet Associate.
Blake's contribution is the Death of Earl Godwin exhibited
in ' The Ante-room ' devoted to flower-pieces, crayons, minia-
tures, and water-colour landscapes — some by Gainsborough.
This first Exhibition in official quarters went off with much
eclat, netting double the average amount realized by its
predecessors : viz. as much as 3,000/.

In the sultry, early days of June, 1780, the Lord George
Gordon No-Popery Riots rolled through Town. Half London
was sacked, and its citizens for six days laid under forced
contributions by a mob some forty thousand strong of boys,
pickpockets, and ' roughs.' In this outburst of anarchy, Blake
long remembered an involuntary participation of his own.
On the third day, Tuesday, 6th of June, 'the Mass-houses'
having already been demolished — one, in Blake's near neigh-
bourhood, Warwick Street, Golden Square — and various pri-
vate houses also ; the rioters, flushed with gin and victory,
were turning their attention to grander schemes of devastation.
That evening, the artist happened to be walking in a route
chosen by one of the mobs at large, whose course lay from
Justice Hyde's house near Leicester Fields, for the destruction
of which less than an hour had sufficed, through Long Acre,

D 2



36 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1780—82.

past the quiet house of Blake's old master, engraver Basire
in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and down Hol-
born, bound for Newgate. Suddenly, he encountered the
advancing wave of triumphant Blackguardism, and was forced
(for from such a great surging mob there is no disentangle-
ment) to go along in the very front rank, and witness the
storm and burning of the fortress-like prison, and release
of its three hundred inmates. This was a peculiar experience
for a spiritual poet ; not without peril, had a drunken soldier
chanced to have identified him during the after weeks of
indiscriminate vengeance : those black weeks when strings
of boys under fourteen were hung up in a row to vindicate
the offended majesty of the Law. ' / never saw boys
cry so I ' observed Selwyn, connoisseur in hanging, in his
Diary.

It was the same Tuesday night, one may add, that among
the obnoxious mansions of magistrate and judge gutted of
furniture, and consigned to the flames. Lord Mansfield's in
Bloomsbury Square was numbered. That night, too — every
householder having previously chalked the talisman, ' No
Popery,' on his door, (the very Jews inscribing ' This House
True Protestant ! ') every house showing a blue flag, every
wayfarer having donned the blue cockade — that night the
Londoners with equal unanimity illuminated their windows.
Still wider stupor of fear followed next day : and to it, a
still longer sleepless night of prison-burning, drunken in-
fatuation, and onsets from the military, let slip at last from
civil leash. Six-and-thirty fires are to be seen simultaneously
blazing in one new neighbourhood (Bloomsbury), not far from
Blake's and still nearer to Basire's ; whence are heard the
terrible shouts of excited crowds, mingling with the fiercer
roar of the flames, and with the reports of scattered musket-
shots at distant points from the soldiery. Some inhabitants
catch up their household effects and aimlessly run up and
down the streets with them ; others cheerfully pay their
guinea a mile for a vehicle to carry them beyond the



^T. 23—25.] STUDENT AND LOVER. 37

tumult. These were noi favourable days for designing, or
even quiet engraving.

Since his twentieth year, Blake's energies had been ' wholly
directed to the attainment of excellence in his profession' as
artist : too much so to admit of leisure or perhaps inclination
for poetry. Engrossing enough was the indispensable effort
to master the difficulties of Design, with pencil or in water-
colours. With the still tougher mechanical difficulties of
oil-painting he never fairly grappled ; but confined himself
to water-colours and tempera (on canvas), with, in after years
a curious modification of the latter — which he daringly
christened 'fresco.' Original invention now claimed more
than all his leisure. His working-hours during the years
1780 to 1782 were occupied by various book-plates for the
publications already named. These voluminous, well-illus-
trated serials are not infrequently stumbled on by the Col-
lector at the second-hand booksellers. Very few are to be
found in our Museum Library, professedly miscellaneous as
that collection is. In the Print Room exists a fine series
of engravings after Stothard ; which, however, being undated,
affords little help to those wishing to learn something about
the engravers of them.

These were days of Courtship, too. And the course of
Blake's love did not open smoothly. ' A lively little girl '
in his own, or perhaps a humbler station, the object of his
first sighs readily allowed him, as girls in a humbler class will,
meaning neither marriage nor harm, to ' keep company ' with
her ; to pay his court, take mutual walks, and be as lovesick
as he chose ; but nowise encouraged the idea of a wedding.
In addition to the pangs of fruitless love, attacks of jealousy
had stoically to be borne. When he complained that the
favour of her company in a stroll had been extended to
another admirer, ' Are you a fool } ' was the brusque reply
— with a scornful glance. * That cured me of jealousy,'
Blake used naively to relate. One evening at a friend's
house he was bemoaning in a corner his love-crosses. His



38 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [17S2.

listener, a dark-eyed generous-hearted girl, frankly declared
' She pitied him from her heart.' ' Do you pity me ? ' ' Yes !
I do, most sincerely.' ' Then I love you for that ! ' he replied
with enthusiasm : — such soothing pity is irresistible. And a
second more prosperous courtship began. At this, or perhaps
a later meeting, followed the confession, I dare say in lower
tones, ' Well! and I love you!' — always, doubtless, a pretty
one to hear.

The unsophisticated maiden was named Catherine Sophia
Boucher — plebeian corruption, probably, of the grand historic
name, Bourchier ; — daughter of William and Mary Boucher of
Battersea. So at least the Register gives the name : where,
within less than ten years, no fewer than seven births to the
same parents, including two sets of twins in succession,
immediately precede hers. Her position and connexions
in life were humble, humbler than Blake's own ; her edu-
cation — as to book-lore — neglected, not to say omitted. For
even the (at first) paltry makeshift of National Schools had
not yet been invented ; and Sunday Schools were first set
going a little after this very time, namely in 1784. When,
by and by, Catherine's turn came, as bride, to sign the Parish
Register, she, as the same yet mutely testifies, could do no
more than most young ladies of her class then, or than the
Bourchiers, Stanleys, and magnates of the land four centuries
before could do— viz. make a X as * her mark : ' her surname
on the same occasion being misspelt for her and vulgarized
into Butcher, and her second baptismal name omitted. A
bright-eyed, dark-haired brunette, with expressive features
and a slim graceful form, can make a young artist and poet
overlook such trifles as defective scholarship. Nor were a fair
outside and a frank accessible heart deceptive lures in this
instance. Catherine — Christian namesake, by the way, of
Blake's mother — was endowed with a loving loyal nature, an
adaptive open m.ind, capable of profiting by good teaching,
and of enabling her, under constant high influence, to become
a meet companion to her imaginative husband in his solitary



-CT. 25.] STUDENT AND LOVER. 39

and wayward course. Uncomplainingly and helpfully, she
shared the low and rugged fortunes which over-originality
insured as his unvarying lot in life. She had mind and the
ambition which follows. Not only did she prove a good
housewife on straitened means, but in after-years, under his
tuition and hourly companionship, she acquired, besides the
useful arts of reading and writing, that which very few
uneducated women with the honestest effort ever succeed
in attaining — some footing of equality with her husband,
She, in time, came to work off his engravings as though she
had been bred to the trade ; nay, imbibed enough of his very
spirit to reflect it in Design which might almost have been
his own.

. Allan Cunningham says she was a neighbour. But the
marriage took. place at Battersea, where I trace relatives of
Blake's father to have been then living. During the course
of the courtship, many a happy Surrey ramble must have
been taken towards and around the pleasant village of the
St. Johns. The old family-seat, spacious and venerable, still
stood, in which Lord Bolingbroke had been born and died,
which Pope had often visited. The village was ' four miles
from London' then, and had just begun to shake hands with
Chelsea by a timber bridge over the Thames ; the river bright
and clear there at low tide as at Richmond now, with many a
placid angler dotting its new bridge. Green meadow and
bright cornfield lay between the old-fashioned winding High
Street and the purple heights of Wimbledon and Richmond.
In the volume of 1783, among the poems which have least
freshness of feeling, being a little alloyed by false notes as of
the poetic Mocking Bird, are one or two love-poems antici-
pating emotions as yet unfelt. And Love, it is said, must be
felt ere it can be persuasively sung. One or two stanzas, if
we did not know they had been written long before, might
well have been allusive to the ' black-eyed maid ' of present
choice and the ' sweet village ' where he wooed her.



40 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1782.

When early morn walks forth in sober grey,
Then to my black-ey'd maid I haste away ;
When evening sits beneath her dusky bow'r
And gently sighs away the silent hour,
The village-bell alarms, away I go,
And the vale darkens at my pensive woe.

To that sweet village, where my black-ey'd maid

Doth drop a tear beneath the silent shade,

I turn my eyes; and pensive as I go.

Curse my black stars, and bless my pleasing woe.

Oft when the summer sleeps among the trees,
Whisp'ring faint murmurs to the scanty breeze,
I walk the village round ; if at her side
A youth doth walk in stolen joy and pride,
I curse my stars in bitter grief and woe.
That made my love so high and me so low.

* * * * #

The last is an inapplicable line to the present case, —
decidedly ?/«prophetic. In a better, more Blake-like manner
is the other poem, apposite to how many thousand lovers, in
how many climes, since man first came into the planet.



My feet are wing'd while o'er the dewy lawn

I meet my maiden risen with the morn :

Oh, bless those holy feet, like angel's feet !

Oh, bless those limbs beaming with heavenly light !

As when an angel glitt'ring in the sky
In times of innocence and holy joy,
The joyful shepherd stops his grateful song
To hear the music of that angel's tongue :

So when she speaks, the voice of Heav'n I hear;
So when we walk, nothing impure comes near;
Each field seems Eden and each calm retreat;
Each village seems the haunt of lioly feet.



^T. 25.] STUDENT AND LOVER. 41

But that sweet village where my black-ey'd maid
Closes her eyes in sleep beneath Night's shade,
Whene'er I enter, more than mortal fire
Burns in my soul, and does my song inspire.



The occasional hackneyed rhyme, awkward construction,
and verbal repetition, entailed by the requirements of very
inartificial verse, are technical blemishes any poetical reader
may by ten minutes' manipulation mend, but such as clung to
Blake's verse in later and maturer years.

The lovers were married, Blake being in his twenty-fifth
year, his bride in her twenty-first, on a Sunday in August
(the 1 8th), 1782, in the then newly rebuilt church of Battersea :
a ' handsome edifice,' say contemporary topographers. Which,
in the present case, means a whitey-brown brick building in
the church-warden style, relying for architectual effect ex-
ternally, on a nondescript steeple, a low slate roof, double
rows of circular-headed windows, and an elevated western
portico in a strikingly picturesque and unique position, almost
upon the river as it were, which here takes a sudden bend to
the south-west, the body of the church stretching alongside it.
The interior, with its galleries (in which are interesting seven-
teenth and eighteenth century mural tablets from the old
church, one by Roubiliac), and elaborately decorated apsidal
dwarf-chancel, has an imposing effect and a strongly marked
characteristic accent (of its Day), already historical and in-
teresting. There, standing above the vault wherein lies the
coronetted coffin of Pope's Bolingbroke, the two plighted
troth. The vicar who joined their hands, Joseph Gardnor,
was himself an amateur artist of note in his day, copious
'honorary contributor' (not above customers) to the Ex-
hibitions ; sending ' Views from the Lakes,' from Wales, and
other much-libelled Home Beauties, and even Landscape
Compositions ' in the style of the Lakes,' whatever that may
mean. Specimens of this master — pasteboard-like model of
misty mountain, old manorial houses as of cards, perspective-



42 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1782.

less diagram of lovely vale — may be inspected in Williams'
plodding History of Monmouthshire, and in other books of
topography. Engravers had actually to copy and laboriously
bite in these young-lady-like Indian ink drawings. Con-
spicuous mementoes of the vicar's Taste and munificence
still survive, parochially, in the ' handsome crimson curtains '
trimmed with amber, and held up by gold cord with heavy
gold tassels, festooned about the painted eastern window of
the church : or rather in deceptively perfect imitations of such
upholstery, painted ('tis said) by the clergyman's own skilled
hand on the light-grained wall of the circular chancel. The
window is an eighteenth century remnant piously preserved
from the old church : a window Xxi^xd^^y painted not stained —
the colours not burnt in, that is ; so that a deluded cleaner on
one occasion rubbed out a portion. The subjects are ar-
morial bearings of the St. Johns, and (at bottom) portraits of
three august collateral connexions of the Family : Margaret
Beauchamp, Henry VII. and Queen Elizabeth. The general
effect is good in colour, not without a tinge of ancient harmony,
yellow being the predominating hue. From the vicar's hand,
again, are the two small 'paintings on glass,' — TJie Lamb
bearing the sacred monogram, and TJie Dove (descending), —
which fill the two circular side-windows, of an eminently
domestic type, in the curvilinear chancel-wall : paintings so
' natural ' and familiarly ' like,' an innocent spectator forgets
perhaps their sacred symbolism — as possibly did the artist
too ! Did the future designer of The Gates of Paradise, the
Jerusalem, and the Job, kneel beneath these trophies of
religious art .-'



CHAPTER VI.

INTRODUCTION TO THE POLITE WORLD. 1782—84. [^x. 25—27.]

t

To his father, Blake's early and humble marriage is said to
have been unacceptable ; and the young couple did not return
to the hosier's roof. They commenced housekeeping on their
own account in lodgings at 23, Green Street, Leicester Fields ;
in which Fields or Square, on the north side, the junior
branches of Royalty had lately abode, and on the east (near
Green Street) great Hogarth. On the west side of it Sir
Joshua, in these very years, had his handsome house and noble
gallery. Green Street, then the abode of quiet private
citizens, is now a nondescript street, given up to curiosity-
shops, shabby lodging-houses and busy feet hastening to and
from the Strand. No. 23, on the right-hand side going city-
wards, next to the house at the corner of the Square, is one —
from the turn the narrow Street here takes — at right angles
with and looking down the rest of it. At present, part
tenanted by a shoemaker, the house is in an abject plight of
stucco, dirt, and dingy desolation. In the previous year, as
we have seen, friendly Flaxman had married and taken a
house.

About this time, or a little earlier, Blake was introduced
by the admiring, sympathetic sculptor to the accomplished
Mrs. Mathew, his own warm friend. The 'celebrated
Mrs. Mathew ? ' Alas ' for tenure of mortal Fame ! This



44 LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE. [1782—83.

lady ranked among the distinguished blue-stockings of her
day ; was once known to half the Town, the polite and
lettered part thereof, as the agreeable, fascinating, spiritiielle
Mrs. Mathew, as, in brief, one of the most ' gifted and
elegant ' of women. As she does not, like her fair comrades,
still flutter about the bookstalls among the half-remerribered
all-unread, and as no lettered contemporary has handed down
her portrait, she has disappeared from us. Yet the lady,
with her husband, the Rev. Henry Mathew, merit re-
membrance from the lovers of Art, as the first discoverers
and fosterers of the genius of Flaxman, when a boy not yet
in teens, and his introducer to more opulent patrons. Their
son, afterwards Dr. Mathew, was John Hunter's favourite
pupil. Learned as well as elegant, she would read Homer
in Greek to the future sculptor, interpreting as she went,
while the child sat by her side sketching a passage here and
there ; and thus she stimulated him to acquire hereafter some