Blake’s sympathy here equals that of the elder poet. Like him he sees the fleshly weakness of the monks and friars, but he sees also, as Stothard could not, their strength and significance. The cook, the manciple, and the pardoner are low and coarse types affording the shade, but the parson, the knight, the squire, the abbess, the Oxford student, and the yeoman are bright types of human excellence that appear at all times, even in the eighteenth century, as Blake knew, though in a different dress.
The host on his good stout horse rightly holds the central place. The knight and squire lead the party as they ought. The religious types—monk, friar, abbess, nun, three priests—are grouped together. The most dignified figure is the parson—the person—seated on a wretched cob, for he cannot afford a better; and near him, happy in his company, are the man of law and the yeoman. The wife of Bath, the miller, and the cook are different studies in sensuality. In the rear are the clerk of Oxenford and Chaucer himself, the philosopher and the poet, the poet being more prominent, since he with his poetic genius means more to us finally than the philosopher. Last of all comes the reeve, whose position accords with his office as steward.
Hence there is a spiritual significance in the picture. The pilgrims are real Chaucerian people on a real pilgrimage, grouped by a compelling spiritual kinship. The artist and poet are wedded. Yet the artist never loses his individuality, because the poet is so universal that he allows the artist to read his private experience into his own. The picture may not at first be so attractive as that of Stothard, but when one has grown accustomed to the exterior charms of the two pictures, there still remains in Blake’s a rich field for fertile gleaning, while when the eye has become satiated with Stothard’s sweetness there remains nothing else as food for the spirit.
CHAPTER XI
THE SUPREME VISION
Blake did well to be angry—so he believed. The years were slipping by, and the gleams of light that had promised a glad day now seldom came. Hayley had passed out of his life. Cromek could make the money out of him that he could not make for himself. Stothard, he believed, had acted with his eyes open. As he brooded on these things, anger and resentment took possession of him. His courage was failing. His resentments secreted poison that was surely spreading through his entire being and threatening to turn the once overtrustful Blake into a disillusioned and bitter old man.
Then he turned to the gospel, not like tens of thousands to find comfort, but to justify himself in his attitude of defiance, and to assure himself that his anger was godlike. He fixed his eyes on to the figure of Jesus, and essayed the difficult task of seeing Him as He was.
There was not much help coming even from those contemporaries whom he admired.