Blake affirmed that Hogarth’s execution could not be copied or improved. He borrowed from his Satan, Sin and Death at Hell’s Gate, which is hardly one of Hogarth’s masterpieces, for a water-colour of the same subject, and he engraved, after Hogarth, When my Hero in Court Appears in the Beggar’s Opera (1790).
Blake produced two water-colours in 1784 which show that his thoughts on war were already undergoing a change. These are War unchained by an Angel—Fire, Pestilence and Famine following, and A Breach in a City—the Morning after a Battle.
Blake had been watching closely the course of affairs on the other side of the Atlantic. While men’s minds were becoming more and more inflamed with the thought of war, he was criticizing it with the searching rays of his spiritual vision and finding himself compelled to revise his ideas, which he had taken without question from Shakespeare, and had expressed in the Poetical Sketches. Then, in spite of seas of blood, he glorified war; now, as he began to consider the abominations that it lets loose on overburdened mankind—Fire, Pestilence and Famine—he included it in the abominations as a thing altogether useless and despicable. He felt a peculiar joy when peace was this year signed with the North American States.
During these years (1773-84) Blake accomplished an immense amount of engraving, chiefly after Stothard. These engravings must come as a surprise to those who only know his own sublime designs, that reveal might, power, terror, and immense energy, and not the softer things that we associate with grace. It is sufficient to mention those plates that Blake engraved after Stothard in Ritson’s English Songs to show that he, like Michael Angelo and Milton, could do not only the works that call for massive power, but also the graceful and lovely things that can be done by genius not quite so rare. But I must leave the consideration of Blake’s relation, personal and artistic, to Stothard to a later chapter, when I come to speak about the Canterbury Pilgrims.
Blake’s songs, poems, and designs came to birth side by side. Where the engravings were not after his own designs, but after other artists, he knew exactly what to do with them. But sooner or later, as his own productions of wedded poem and design grew under his hands, the anxious question of publication arose, and by this time it was perplexingly clear to him that his spiritual productions were not for every taste, and that it would be difficult to find anyone who would run the risk of being his publisher. His Poetical Sketches were printed, though not published, through the kindness of Mrs Mathew, but there was no likelihood that any of the Blue-stockings would be kind in a helpful way to him again.
While pondering this difficulty day and night, and increasingly urged by poverty, his brother Robert came to him and directed him what he was to do. He told him to write his poems and designs on copper with an ineffaceable liquid, and with aquafortis to eat away the remainder of the plate until the writing and designs were left in clear relief. Then he might take as many copies as he liked, and just touch them up by hand.
According to Gilchrist, Mr and Mrs Blake possessed just half-a-crown, with which Mrs Blake went out and bought the necessary materials, returning with eightpence change in her pocket. At once they set to work, the wife proving an apt pupil, and thus, with the exception of The French Revolution, Blake engraved and published his own creations, experiencing the rare joy of being at once both the creator and the handicraftsman of his works.
Robert visited William continually to the end of his life, bringing him consolation and encouragement during times of anxiety and stress.
These supernatural happenings in the life of Blake read as simply and naturally as the beautiful stories of St Francis converting brother Wolf or receiving the sacred stigmata. There was nothing of the modern spiritualist’s paraphernalia—no medium, no trance, no tappings. Blake was born with his inner spiritual eye open, his outer bodily eye, contrary to general custom, proving sluggish. Hence he was able to keep a natural simplicity amidst things which are too apt to stir only the thaumaturgic appetite of other people.