Mr. Linnell, deeply impressed with the lofty and imaginative character of the water-colours done for Mr. Butts, commissioned a complete set of engravings to be executed from them by Blake’s hand, for which he paid £150 in instalments of £2 to £3 weekly—the largest sum Blake had ever received for any one series.

On glancing through them it will at once be noticed that his style of engraving had undergone a change during the last period of his life.

“The Canterbury Pilgrimage,” which he had executed fifteen years previously, exhibited the old hard and dry manner of engraving which he had adopted from Basire in its most accentuated form. (For the convenience of classification I have included that picture among the loose drawings, engravings, and water-colours for consideration in a later chapter, but it would be well for the student to look at it now, the better to appreciate the freedom, grace and power of the engravings in the “Job” series.)

On one of the many pleasant days Blake spent with Linnell at North End, Hampstead, the latter showed him some choice engravings of Marc Antonio and his pupil Bononsoni, and from this latter’s work Blake suddenly apprehended the possibilities, the scope, that lay for him in the engraver’s art. In the school of Basire much of the work was accomplished by a laborious and indiscriminate process of cross-hatching.

It is true that Blake by the sheer force of his genius had made this style answer in a manner to his needs of expression, but it was work performed in an unnecessarily confined technique.

When he came to study the Italian school of engraving he found to his delight that every stroke was made to tell. Nothing blotchy or muddled, no careless cross-hatching, no “lozenges or dots” were admitted, and Blake quickly appreciated the wider range of effects obtainable by this Italian manner, and engrafted its main principles on to his own characteristic style. Of that characteristic style, as we know, the beauty of outline, the care for its preservation whenever possible, was the main principle. And here in the school of Marc Antonio and Bononsoni he found that principle adopted as the basis of beauty in engraving, every other consideration being made subservient to it. The conflict and want of unity of effect, resultant on making compromises with other principles of art,—such as subtlety of modelling, delicate distinctions in values, imitation of textures, intricacy of detail,—had not disturbed the dignity of the Italian school, which consciously sacrificed variety and a wide range of effects in order to keep the work of the burin as broad and simple as possible, the outline always being insisted on as the chief subject of alterations, while the shading and modelling were comprehensively indicated by long curved lines, close together, only crossing and intersecting in the darkest parts. The beauty and freedom of the “Job” engravings are a revelation of the final grace and power achieved by Blake through his appreciation of the legitimate functions of an art pre-eminently concerned with line.

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PLATE II FROM “THE BOOK OF JOB”

Engraving, published March, 1825