William Blake, Painter and Poet

by Richard Garnett

Portrait of William Blake. From the engraving by L. Schiavonetti, after T. Phillips, R.A.

Blake, who had settled at 17, South Molton Street, Oxford Street, was in the meantime dealing with a very different patron from Hayley, Robert Cromek, a “stickit” engraver turned print-seller, who tricked if he did not actually defraud him, but who is entitled to the credit of having recognised his genius, and of having brought forward works of his more adapted to attract public notice than anything he had yet done. These were the twelve illustrations to Blair’s Grave, full of Blake’s peculiar genius and at the same time intelligible to all. They had been executed in 1804 and 1805. Cromek, who afterwards admitted that they were worth sixty guineas, obtained them for twenty from the artist, who had intended to publish them himself. It had been understood that Blake should have engraved them, but Cromek, wisely from his own point of view, but wrongfully as regarded Blake, intrusted the task to Schiavonetti. As a frontispiece, they were accompanied by a portrait of Blake from a drawing by Phillips, also engraved by Schiavonetti, which we have reproduced. Thanks to Cromek’s judicious engineering, and the popularity of the poem illustrated, the adventure proved a considerable success. “It is the only volume with Blake’s name on the title-page,” says Mr. Gilchrist, “which is not scarce.” The publication took place in 1808. In the interval Cromek, calling upon Blake, had seen a pencil sketch of a design for the procession of Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims. Failing to obtain a finished drawing from the artist, who resented his previous treatment, he proposed the subject to Stothard, withholding as apart from all questions of Stothard’s “frigid and exemplary” character would be most natural for him to do, all mention of Blake’s drawing. Stothard accepted the commission; his elaborate oil picture was exhibited in 1807 with great success, but at the cost of a breach with Blake, who went so far in his denunciation, not only of Cromek’s underhand dealing but of the defects which he found in Stothard’s work, that when he afterwards sought a reconciliation Stothard remained impervious. Determined to vindicate his superiority, Blake completed, exhibited, and engraved his own fresco. The exhibition, accompanied by a remarkable “descriptive catalogue,” to which we shall return—was not the success it might have been in the hands of the shrewd Cromek. The exhibition room was watched by Blake’s brother James, whom Crabb Robinson asked whether he should be allowed to come again free in consideration of having bought four copies of the descriptive catalogue. “As long as you live,” answered the overjoyed custodian. The success of the engraving was proportionate to that of the exhibition; though it might have been otherwise if the roughness of the original design had been smoothed down by the deft Schiavonetti. “Blake’s production,” says Mr. Rossetti, “is as unattractive as Stothard’s is facile; as hard and strong as Stothard’s is limp; one face in Blake’s design means as much on the part of the artist, and takes as much scrutiny and turning over of thought on the part of the spectator, as all the pretty fantoccini and their sprightly little horses in Stothard’s work.” The engraving of the Pilgrimage in Gilchrist’s biography evinces the justice of this criticism; though Ellis and Yeats rightly add that Blake has given all his personages the eyes of visionaries. “A work of wonderful power and spirit, hard and dry, yet with grace,” says Charles Lamb. The original fresco was purchased by Elijah’s raven, the ever-ready Butts.

We must now return to the illustrations to Blair’s Grave, which are not only the most popular of Blake’s works, but among his greatest. He showed in general more vigour in dealing with the conceptions of another than with his own, the latter imbibing an element of fanciful grace from the gentle spirit which produced them. Hence The Soul Exploring the Recesses of the Grave, reproduced from Thel, though one of the most poetical of the designs, is one of the least powerful. His rendering of Blair’s thoughts is marvellously direct and impressive, whether the passion depicted be joy, as in The Reunion of the Soul and the Body (given here), or horror, as in The Death of the Strong Wicked Man, or an intermediate shade, as in The Soul hovering over the Body. None of these and few of the series, once seen, will easily be forgotten. The most famous, and deservedly so, is the marvellous one, a combination of two designs in America and The Gates of Paradise, where the aged man, impelled by a strong wind, totters towards the portal of the sepulchre, on the summit of which sits the rejuvenated spirit, personified by a strong youth, rejoicing in his deliverance, but dazzled by the as yet unwonted light. In all these designs the element of seemly, yet slightly formal and conventional grace which Blake had learned from Stothard, is very conspicuous. The least successful, as seems to us, is The Last Judgment, where Blake appears as a minor Michael Angelo, but this work as engraved differs widely from his description of the work as exhibited. It may well be believed that the modified version was distinguished by great splendour of colouring.

Other works of this period were two small frescoes exhibited at the Academy in 1808, Christ in the Sepulchre and Jacob’s Dream; the “ornamental device” engraved (by Cromek) along with the frontispiece to Malkin’s Father’s Memoirs of his Child, a graceful and pathetic composition; three illustrations to Shakespeare, one of which, the highly imaginative conception of the appearance of the Ghost to Hamlet, is engraved in Gilchrist’s biography; The Babylonian Woman on the Seven-headed Beast (1809) reproduced here; a continuous series of designs produced for Mr. Butts, to be mentioned more fully hereafter; and the pictures displayed along with The Canterbury Pilgrims at its exhibition (1809). We must now devote some attention to Blake’s appearance as an æsthetic writer in the Descriptive Catalogue he put forth on this occasion, with which his other principal deliverances on the subject of art may be advantageously grouped.

The Reunion of Soul and Body. From Blair’s “Grave,” illustrated by W. Blake.

Blake’s Descriptive Catalogue and his Appeal to the Public to judge between himself and his rivals in the department of engraving, are a singular mixture of gold and clay. The dignity which characterised his demeanour in life forsakes him as soon as he takes the pen into his hand, and he reviles Stothard, Woollett, and others in a strain inconsistent with self-respect on his own part, even had his criticism been well founded. As a matter of fact, it seems to have had no foundation, and assuredly has not affected the reputation of his antagonists in the smallest degree. At the same time it is impossible not to be moved by his earnestness. He is evidently contending for principles of great importance to himself, and through the mist of his confused and ungrammatical expression we seem to catch glimpses of high and serious truth. A refreshing contrast is afforded by the passages devoted to Chaucer, which are truly admirable for their felicitous insight into the old poet. “For all who have read Blake,” justly say Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, “Chaucer is something more than the sweet spinner of rhyming gossip that he seems to most.” Like Ruskin, and indeed all men of creative power, Blake is on much safer ground when he extols than when he censures. To much the same period belongs a remarkable paper on his Last Judgment, published by Gilchrist from his MS. Nothing of his admits us so fully into the sanctuary of his mind. “The Last Judgment,” he begins, “is not fable or allegory, but vision. Fable, or allegory, is a totally distinct and inferior kind of poetry. Vision, or imagination, is a representation of what actually exists, really and unchangeably.” Then follows an extremely graphic and vivid description of the painting, interspersed with profound remarks, such as “Man passes on, but states remain for ever; he passes through them like a traveller, who may as well suppose that the places he has passed through exist no more as a man may suppose that the states he has passed through exist no more; everything is eternal.” “I have seen, when at a distance, multitudes of men in harmony appear like a single infant.”[6] “In Hell all is self-righteousness; there is no such thing there as forgiveness of sin. He who does forgive sin is crucified as an abettor of criminals.” “Angels are happier than men and devils, because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another, and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan’s gratification.” “The Last Judgment is an overwhelming of bad art and science.” Finally, in words that state his own case as respects his reputed delusions, he says: “I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. ‘What!’ it will be questioned, ‘when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire, somewhat like a guinea?’ Oh! no! no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!’ I question not my corporeal eye, any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it.”