Perhaps the strangest trait the engraving exhibits in comparison with Stothard’s is that it looks so antique. It might have been executed a hundred years earlier than the other picture, so wilfully grotesque and archaic is it. Yes, wilfully is the word, for Blake wished to make his procession as stiff and quaint and rich as the stately Chaucerian language that first painted the scene, forgetting perhaps that the two arts of poetry and painting achieve the same end through widely different conditions, and according to processes contiguous, but non-interchangeable. The want of ease, of careless and familiar naturalism in the engraving, may recall to those who look for it the splendid and ceremonious language of the old story-teller. The description written by Blake of his own design (it will be found in Gilchrist) shows how he loved and understood Chaucer, and, we may add, how very loosely the poem was grasped, and with what want of truth to the original it was represented by his rival. Lamb said of the engraving itself that it was “a work of wonderful power and spirit, hard and dry, yet with grace,” and the Descriptive Catalogue—a copy of which was given him by Crabb Robinson—pleased him greatly; the part devoted to an analysis of the characters in the “Canterbury Pilgrimage” he found to be “the finest criticism of Chaucer’s poem he had ever read.”
Savagely powerful as it is, the engraving is merely an interesting and not a vital utterance of Blake. The tempera picture from which it was engraved was bought by Mr. Butts, but has been lost sight of now for many years. Stothard’s oil painting of the same subject is in the National Gallery.
Turning to the other original single engravings of Blake in the Print Room, we find several of interest. There is that early one, designed and engraved in 1780, which has been called “Glad Day,” and is the expression of a mood oftener felt in Blake’s early manhood than in the ensuing years of chafing complexity and multitudinous emotions. I have wondered whether it be not the pictorial embodiment of the vision which he saw of the “Spiritual Sun on Primrose Hill,” described by him to Crabb Robinson.
Among the original engravings here may be seen the broadsheet of “Little Tom the Sailor,” executed by Blake for Hayley while at Felpham in 1800, for a charitable purpose.
Hayley’s verses and Blake’s designs were bitten in with stopping-out varnish on the pewter plate of the original from which the prints are taken.
In the designs setting out the misfortunes of a poor widow and the heroism of her little son he has given us one theme of natural scenery—a winding path, a little wood surmounted by bare folded downs—testifying to the invasion which the obvious beauty of Felpham had made on his artistic consciousness; while the other illustration represents the tragic moment when little Tom on the wreck is about to be drowned; over the trough of deep sea the spiritual form of his father appears ready to receive and embrace his soul. Mrs. Blake’s hand unfortunately has coloured the Print Room copy.
And now let us turn to the pen-and-ink etchings to Dante, designed and executed for Mr. Linnell between the years 1824 and 1827, the year of Blake’s death.
There are seven of them, wrought by the pen, which had become so deliberate, careful and delicate in execution during these last years of his life.
Let us linger over two of them for a moment.
Among the many pictures of Paolo and Francesca that exist, was there ever seen anything like this of Blake’s imagining?