William Blake

by Arthur Symons

III

After Robert's death Blake gave up the print-shop and moved out of Broad Street to Poland Street, a street running between it and Oxford Street. He took No. 28, a house only a few doors down from Oxford Street, and lived there for five years. Here, in 1789, he issued the Songs of Innocence, the first of his books to be produced by the method of his invention which he described as 'illuminated printing.' According to Smith, it was Robert who 'stood before him in one of his visionary imaginations, and directed him in the way in which he ought to proceed.' The process is thus described by Mr. Sampson: 'The text and surrounding design were written in reverse, in a medium impervious to acid, upon small copper-plates, which were then etched in a bath of aqua-fortis until the work stood in relief as in a stereotype. From these plates, which to economize copper were in many cases engraved upon both sides, impressions were printed, in the ordinary manner, in tints made to harmonise with the color scheme afterwards applied in water-colors by the artist.' Gilchrist tells an improbable story about Mrs. Blake going out with the last half-crown in the house, and spending 1s 10d of it in the purchase of 'the simple materials necessary.' But we know from a MS. note of John Linnell, referring to a somewhat later date: 'The copper-plates which Blake engraved to illustrate Hayley's life of Cowper were, as he told me, printed entirely by himself and his wife in his own press—a very good one which cost him forty pounds.' These plates were engraved in 1803, but it is not likely that Blake was ever able to buy more than one press.

The problem of 'illuminated printing,' however definitely it may have been solved by the dream in which Robert 'stood before him and directed him,' was one which had certainly occupied the mind of Blake for some years. A passage, unfortunately incomplete, in An Island in the Moon, reads as follows: "Illuminating the Manuscript—Ay," said she, "that would be excellent. Then," said he, "I would have all the writing engraved instead of printed, and at every other leaf a high finished print, all in three volumes folio, and sell them a hundred pounds a piece. They would print off two thousand. Then," said she, "whoever will not have them, will be ignorant fools and will not deserve to live."' This is evidently a foreshadowing of the process which is described and defended, with not less confident enthusiasm, in an engraved prospectus issued from Lambeth in 1793. I give it in full:—

October 10, 1793.

TO THE PUBLIC.

The Labours of the Artist, the Poet, the Musician, have been proverbially attended by poverty and obscurity; this was never the fault of the Public, but was owing to a neglect of means to propagate such works as have wholly absorbed the Man of Genius. Even Milton and Shakespeare could not publish their own works.

This difficulty has been obviated by the Author of the following productions now presented to the Public; who has invented a method of Printing both Letter-press and Engraving in a style more ornamental, uniform, and grand, than any before discovered, while it produces works at less than one-fourth of the expense.

If a method of Printing which combines the Painter and the Poet is a phenomenon worthy of public attention, provided that it exceeds in elegance all former methods, the Author is sure of his reward.

Mr. Blake's powers of invention very early engaged the attention of many persons of eminence and fortune; by whose means he has been regularly enabled to bring before the public works (he is not afraid to say) of equal magnitude and consequence with the productions of any age or country: among which are two large highly finished engravings (and two more are nearly ready) which will commence a Series of subjects from the Bible, and another from the History of England.

The following are the Subjects of the several Works now published and on Sale at Mr. Blake's, No. 13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth:—

1. Job, a Historical Engraving. Size 1 ft. 7 1/2 in. by 1 ft. 2 in. Price 12s.

2. Edward and Elinor, a Historical Engraving. Size 1 ft. 6 1/2 in. by 1 ft. Price 10s. 6d.

3. America, a Prophecy, in Illuminated Printing. Folio, with 18 designs. Price 10s. 6d.

4. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, in Illuminated Printing. Folio, with 8 designs. Price 7s. 6d.

5. The Book of Thel, a Poem in Illuminated Printing. Quarto, with 6 designs. Price 3s.

6. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in Illuminated Printing. Quarto, with fourteen designs. Price 7s. 6d.

7. Songs of Innocence, in Illuminated Printing. Octavo, with 25 designs. Price 5 s.

8. Songs of Experience, in Illuminated Printing. Octavo, with 25 designs. Price 5s.

9. The History of England, a small book of Engravings. Price 3 s.

10. The Gates of Paradise, a small book of Engravings. Price 3 s.

The Illuminated Books are Printed in Colors, and on the most beautiful wove paper that could be procured.

No Subscriptions for the numerous great works now in hand are asked, for none are wanted; but the Author will produce his works, and offer them to sale at a fair price.

By this invention (which it is absurd to consider, as some have considered it, a mere makeshift, to which he had been driven by the refusal of publishers to issue his poems and engravings according to the ordinary trade methods) Blake was the first, and remains the only, poet who has in the complete sense made his own books with his own hands: the words, the illustrations, the engraving, the printing, the coloring, the very inks and colors, and the stitching of the sheets into boards. With Blake, who was equally a poet and an artist, words and designs came together and were inseparable; and to the power of inventing words and designs was added the skill of engraving, and thus of interpreting them, without any mechanical interference from the outside. To do this must have been, at some time or another, the ideal of every poet who is a true artist, and who has a sense of the equal importance of every form of art, and of every detail in every form. Only Blake has produced a book of poems vital alike in inner and outer form, and, had it not been for his lack of a technical knowledge of music, had he but been able to write down his inventions in that art also, he would have left us the creation of something like an universal art. That universal art he did, during his own lifetime, create; for he sang his songs to his own music; and thus, while he lived, he was the complete realization of the poet in all his faculties, and the only complete realization that has ever been known.

To define the poetry of Blake one must find new definitions for poetry; but, these definitions once found, he will seem to be the only poet who is a poet in essence; the only poet who could, in his own words, 'enter into Noah's rainbow, and make a friend and companion of one of these images of wonder, which always entreat him to leave mortal things.' In this verse there is, if it is to be found in any verse, the 'lyrical cry'; and yet, what voice is it that cries in this disembodied ecstasy? The voice of desire is not in it, nor the voice of passion, nor the cry of the heart, nor the cry of the sinner to God, nor of the lover of nature to nature. It neither seeks nor aspires nor laments nor questions. It is like the voice of wisdom in a child, who has not yet forgotten the world out of which the soul came. It is as spontaneous as the note of a bird, it is an affirmation of life; in its song, which seems mere music, it is the mind which sings; it is lyric thought. What is it that transfixes one in any couplet such as this:

'If the sun and moon should doubt
They'd immediately go out'?

It is no more than a nursery statement, there is not even an image in it, and yet it sings to the brain, it cuts into the very flesh of the mind, as if there were a great weight behind it. Is it that it is an arrow, and that it comes from so far, and with an impetus gathered from its speed out of the sky?

The lyric poet, every lyric poet but Blake, sings of love; but Blake sings of forgiveness:

'Mutual forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the gates of Paradise.'

Poets sing of beauty, but Blake says:

'Soft deceit and idleness,
These are Beauty's sweetest dress.'

They sing of the brotherhood of men, but Blake points to the 'divine image':

'Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.'

Their minds are touched by the sense of tears in human things, but to Blake 'a tear is an intellectual thing.' They sing of 'a woman like a dewdrop,' but Blake of 'the lineaments of gratified desire.' They shout hymns to God over a field of battle or in the arrogance of material empire; but Blake addresses the epilogue of his Gates of Paradise 'to the Accuser who is the God of this world':

'Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce,
And dost not know the garment from the man;
Every harlot was a virgin once,
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan.
Though thou art worshipped by the names divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The son of morn in weary night's decline,
The lost traveller's dream under the hill.'

Other poets find ecstasy in nature, but Blake only in imagination. He addresses the Prophetic Book of The Ghost of Abel 'to Lord Byron in the wilderness,' and asks: 'What doest thou here, Elijah? Can a poet doubt of the visions of Jehovah? Nature has no outline, but Imagination has. Nature has no time, but Imagination has. Nature has no supernatural, and dissolves. Imagination is eternity.' The poetry of Blake is a poetry of the mind, abstract in substance, concrete in form; its passion is the passion of the imagination, its emotion is the emotion of thought, its beauty is the beauty of idea. When it is simplest, its simplicity is that of some 'infant joy' too young to have a name, or of some 'infant sorrow' brought aged out of eternity into the 'dangerous world,' and there:

'Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.'

There are no men and women in the world of Blake's poetry, only primal instincts and the energies of the imagination.

His work begins in the garden of Eden, or of the childhood of the world, and there is something in it of the naïveté of beasts: the lines gambol awkwardly, like young lambs. His utterance of the state of innocence has in it something of the grotesqueness of babies, and enchants the grown man, as they do. Humour exists unconscious of itself, in a kind of awed and open-eyed solemnity. He stammers into a speech of angels, as if just awakening out of Paradise. It is the primal instincts that speak first, before riper years have added wisdom to intuition. It is the supreme quality of this wisdom that it has never let go of intuition. It is as if intuition itself ripened. And so Blake goes through life with perfect mastery of the terms of existence, as they present themselves to him: 'perfectly happy, wanting nothing,' as he said, when he was old and poor; and able in each stage of life to express in art the corresponding stage of his own development. He is the only poet who has written the songs of childhood, of youth, of mature years, and of old age; and he died singing.