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THE SOUL RELUCTANTLY PARTING FROM THE BODY, FROM BLAIR’S “GRAVE”

Engraving by L. Schiavonetti after design made by Blake. Published 1808

“States change,” Blake wrote, “but Individual Identities never change nor cease.”

And now take last of all, but not least, the plate called the “Day of Judgment.” Nothing daunted by the long array of “Last Judgments” that have been executed from Orcagna to Michael Angelo, Blake must needs give his rendering of the subject; and an original one it is, though he can hardly avoid—even he!—the traditional disposition of the main parts of the picture.

But what freshness, what new life and new motives he has introduced into this subject, hoary with extreme age. The spirits ascending into Paradise are as lovely as heart and eye of man could wish. Orcagna’s conception of the beatified souls in Santa Maria, whose profiles Ruskin likened to “lilies laid together in a garden border,” is not more delightful in its artless way than is Blake’s. The children of wrath, snake-encircled, howling, and falling head foremost into the abyss, recall the terrors, the uncouth and wild imagination of “Urizen” and one of the plates in “America.” But here Schiavonetti’s graceful and civilizing hand has passed over each figure, and he has contrived in some indefinable way to smooth away the too austere and savage strength of this latest born of the “Dies illa” of art.

I have not mentioned the first plate, which represents Christ with the Keys of the Grave in his hand, because my function is chiefly that of praise. But I ought perhaps to point out, what is however painfully obvious, that Blake always failed in any attempt to represent Jesus. Whether he was hampered to a degree beyond his strength of liberation by the traditional likeness, the type ascribed to the Saviour, and so could not work in freedom, it is impossible to say authoritatively. But this traditional face of Christ, ploughed as it is into the heart and memory of humanity, probably arose and disturbed his own soul’s independent vision whenever he tried to fix his imagination on the ideal lineaments.

If this were the case, then indeed it is proved beyond question that Blake’s work is almost valueless when it is not dependent on his own naked perceptions, his inward recognition of facts, disregardful of all outward corroboration.

Blake’s next work in illustration was done for Dr. Thornton, who projected an English edition of Virgil’s “Pastorals” for the use of schools, with Ambrose Philips’ imitation of Virgil’s first eclogue. They were the first and the only woodcuts Blake ever did, and though they bear traces of an unpractised hand, “he put to proof art alien to the artists,” and showed his essential mastery of this means of expression in a manner which more than reconciles one to his slight defects of method.