The work Blake did during the Felpham period included the designs and engraving of animals to Hayley’s “Ballads,” some of the engravings for “The Life of Cowper,” and, above all, the writing of two long prophetic books, the “Milton” and the “Jerusalem,” which, however, he did not finish till he had returned to London.

CHAPTER III

THE PROCESSION OF THE PILGRIMS

Blake’s course was now definitely chosen. He had turned his back on patronage and voluntarily married poverty, like St. Francis, in order that he might be free to work out his own poetic and artistic ideas without reference to popularity, patronage, or pecuniary advantage. His wants and Catherine’s were simple indeed, and to pay for them, from week to week, was all he desired. South Molton Street, in which they now took up their abode, was closely shut in by streets and houses. There was no garden, no summer-house or vine with pattering green leaves against the window as at Lambeth,—no trees even to recall the natural beauties of Felpham. But Blake seems to have been almost glad to be delivered from the agitating beauty of the natural or “vegetative world,” as he called it, which was to him error and not truth—the visible shadow that darkened and hid invisible and eternal ideas. Now indeed, with nothing to distract him, he could open his eyes inward into the “World of Thought,” into “Eternity,” which is imagination. Gilchrist’s Life enables us to realize how he could live in this imaginative world, and yet, at the same time, fulfil with great practical ability such a work, for instance, as collecting material for Hayley for the “Life of Romney,” which the latter was now beginning. The letters he wrote to Hayley at the time, which are all given in the Life, are the letters of a kindly business-like man, intent on giving only such information as will be useful. The good sense, the sanity, the mediocrity (I had almost said) of these letters are a pledge of Blake’s ability to act and express himself as other men when he wished so to do.

[Larger Image]

FROM BLAIR’S “GRAVE”: THE RE-UNION OF
THE SOUL AND THE BODY

Engraving by L. Schiavonetti after Blake’s design. Published 1808