In 1790 he produced the “Songs of Innocence,” printed and published, as well as designed, engraved, and composed by himself. In the long and romantic history of art, nothing is more strange than the story of how this little book came into being. Blake was unknown to the world and had no credit with publishers, nor had he the wherewithal to publish at his own expense the poems which he had written and called “Songs of Innocence.” Yet he greatly desired to see them set forth in a book with appropriate and significant designs. But how was this to be accomplished? He pondered the matter long, till at last light and leading came. In the silence of one midnight his dead brother Robert appeared to him and instructed him as to the method—an entirely original one—which he should use. The very next day, Blake being urgent to begin his work, his wife went out early with half-a-crown (all the money they had in the world), and laid out one and tenpence on the necessary material. And in faith and gladness, relying on that mystical power in himself which took and used his hand and eye and brain almost without his will, he began to make the first of his lovely engraved and painted books. This is the alpha of a long series of engraved books which issued from his hand at intervals for some years. While in Poland Street he wrote, but did not publish till long after, the “Ghost of Abel,” in 1789 the “Book of Thel,” in 1790 the “Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” and in 1791 a poem, the first of a projected series of seven books, called “The French Revolution.”

This so-called poem owed its birth to the fact that about this period Blake became one of a literary, artistic, and political set who met at the house of Johnson the publisher. At these gatherings Mary Wollstonecraft arrayed her charms to storm the citadel of Fuseli’s cynical heart, unavailingly. Among other guests were Tom Paine, author of “The Rights of Man,” whom eventually Blake was the means of saving, by a timely word of warning, from arrest in England. He judiciously advised his flight to France, at the right moment for his safety. Godwin and Holcroft and several revolutionary dreamers were members of this coterie. Blake’s enthusiasm was set all aglow by a philosophy which saw in the French Revolution a great renovating process,—the fire to burn up the ignorance and superstition and class boundaries of the ancient order, the introduction of a new reign of righteousness and peace.

In effect, this new philosophy which fired the imagination of Blake had a basis of materialism and violence which would have found no answering response in his soul, had he sought to investigate it. His sympathy with the group was intellectual, and with the higher manifestations of its creed alone. It led to no political action. He had far other work to do than that of a political agitator, but all expansive doctrines which made for liberty and individuality fired the imagination and fed the intellect of Blake. Democracy was his ideal, and democratic virtues won his admiration; indeed, he dared to flaunt the “bonnet rouge” of liberty in London streets in this agitated period, but after the Days of Terror in ’92 he tore off the white cockade and never again donned the Cap of Liberty. But if his work was not to be in the political arena, he was in his own way hastening the coming of that better and more immaterial kingdom which these young liberators only half conceived.

In 1792 died the great leader of English art, Sir Joshua Reynolds. His work, concerned as it was with the exquisite graces of this passing world, had nothing to say to Blake, who regarded it in the light of his own artistic standpoint, with positive aversion. It often happens that a man who feels it his burning mission to work out and reveal some hitherto neglected or unseen aspect of truth, does so at the cost of a one-sidedness which is a necessary defect of his quality. Blake could no more appreciate Sir Joshua—at least at this stage of his being—than Sir Joshua could appreciate Blake. The veteran Reynolds once told him, when a young man, “to work with less extravagance and more simplicity, and to correct his drawing.” Blake never got over that. We can imagine the suppressed heat with which he listened choking to the advice of the popular artist who was so utterly ignorant of his aims and ideals. To us, who may enter into the soul of each, it is given to realize that they, and all the company of the world’s great artists, have furthered the true work of art; have all helped, and are helping, according to their gifts and in their degree, to rear the walls and set with windows and crown with battlements and towers, the palace of beauty for the soul of man to dwell in with delight and worship. That the workers have not always recognized each other is matter for regret, though it is scarcely perhaps to be wondered at, seeing that each is set on emphasizing and relieving against its background the one point which seems to him necessary and valuable.

The characteristic notes which Blake appended to Reynolds’ “Discourses” many years later, express much of his dislike. Truly, it is easy to conceive of a mind offering nothing but delight and admiration to Reynolds’ practice, yet excited to a grave disapproval by much of his theory, or what he states as his theory. For Reynolds actually taught that genius—such as his own, for instance—was a state to be inducted into by precept, and evolved through study, instead of being a thing of fire, a tongue of flame from on high, set on a man as a seal, from which he cannot escape. I am reminded of Rossetti here, who quite sincerely told Mr. Hall Caine, “I paint by a set of unwritten but clearly-defined rules, which I could teach to any man as systematically as you could teach arithmetic.” Ah! that such genius might thus be taught!

However, Reynolds, his practice and theory alike, were by Blake swept into a limbo of unconditional condemnation, though occasionally, in spite of the prejudice he nursed against Sir Joshua, he flashed out notes of emphatic approval, on certain utterances in the great man’s “Discourses.”

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PAGE FROM “AMERICA, A PROPHECY,” 1793

Printed in blue, from the Print Room copy