EXTRACT FROM VARLEY'S ZODIACAL PHYSIOGNOMY
With respect to the vision of the Ghost of the Flea, seen by Blake, it agrees in countenance with one class of people under Gemini, which sign is the significator of the Flea; whose brown color is appropriate to the color of the eyes in some full-toned Gemini persons. And the neatness, elasticity, and tenseness of the Flea are significant of the elegant dancing and fencing sign Gemini. This spirit visited his imagination in such a figure as he never anticipated in an insect. As I was anxious to make the most correct investigation in my power, of the truth of these visions, on hearing of this spiritual apparition of a Flea, I asked him if he could draw for me the resemblance of what he saw: he instantly said, 'I see him now before me.' I therefore gave him paper and a pencil, with which he drew the portrait, of which a facsimile is given in this number. I felt convinced by his mode of proceeding that he had a real image before him, for he left off, and began on another part of the paper to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch, till he had closed it. During the time occupied in completing the drawing, the Flea told him that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of such men as were by nature blood-thirsty to excess, and were therefore providentially confined to the size and form of insects; otherwise, were he himself, for instance, the size of a horse, he would depopulate a great portion of the country. He added, that if in attempting to leap from one island to another, he should fall into the sea, he could swim, and should not be lost. This spirit afterwards appeared to Blake, and afforded him a view of his whole figure; an engraving of which I shall give in this work.
[(VII.) BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF BLAKE BY J. T. SMITH (1828)]
[The Memoir of Blake by John Thomas Smith, Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, is the last of the 'Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of several Artists and others contemporary with Nollekens,' contained in the second volume of 'Nollekens and his Times: comprehending a Life of that celebrated Sculptor; and Memoirs of several contemporary Artists, from the' time of Roubiliac, Hogarth, and Reynolds, to that of Fuseli, Flaxman, and Blake.' (London: Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street, 1828.) It contains more facts at first hand than any other account of Blake, and is really the foundation of all subsequent biographies. I have added a page, which is not without its significance, from a later book by Smith, 'A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the last Sixty-five Years' (1845), where it occurs under date 1784, on pp. 81, 82.]
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF BLAKE
I believe it has been invariably the custom of every age, whenever a man has been found to depart from the usual mode of thinking, to consider him of deranged intellect, and not infrequently stark staring mad; which judgment his calumniators would pronounce with as little hesitation, as some of the uncharitable part of mankind would pass sentence of death upon a poor half-drowned cur who had lost his master, or one who had escaped hanging with a rope about his neck. Cowper, in a letter to Lady Hesketh, dated June 3, 1788, speaking of a dancing-master's advertisement, says, 'The author of it had the good hap to be crazed, or he had never produced anything half so clever; for you will ever observe, that they who are said to have lost their wits, have more than other people.'
Bearing this stigma of eccentricity, William Blake, with most extraordinary zeal, commenced his efforts in Art under the roof of No. 28 Broad Street, Carnaby Market; in which house he was born, and where his father carried on the business of a hosier. William, the subject of the following pages, who was his second son, showing an early stretch of mind, and a strong talent for drawing, being totally destitute of the dexterity of a London shopman, so well described by Dr. Johnson, was sent away from the counter as a booby, and placed under the late Mr. James Basire, an artist well known for many years as engraver to the Society of Antiquaries. From him he learned the mechanical part of his art, and as he drew carefully, and copied faithfully, his master frequently and confidently employed him to make drawings from monuments to be engraved.
After leaving his instructor, in whose house he had conducted himself with the strictest propriety, he became acquainted with Flaxman, the sculptor, through his friend Stothard, and was also honored by an introduction to the accomplished Mrs. Mathew, whose house, No. 27, in Rathbone Place, was then frequented by most of the literary and talented people of the day. This lady—to whom I also had the honor of being known, and whose door and purse were constantly open and ready to cherish persons of genius who stood in need of assistance in their learned and arduous pursuits, worldly concerns, or inconveniences—was so extremely zealous in promoting the celebrity of Blake, that upon hearing him read some of his early efforts in poetry, she thought so well of them, as to request the Bev. Henry Mathew, her husband, to join Mr. Flaxman in his truly kind offer of defraying the expense of printing them; in which he not only acquiesced, but, with his usual urbanity, wrote the following advertisement, which precedes the poems: