In 1821 Blake had performed another work of moment, his first and last wood-engravings. These were to illustrate Phillips’s imitation of Virgil’s first pastoral, republished by Dr. Thornton, a physician and botanist. Blake was a novice in this branch of art, and the cuts answer to Dr. Thornton’s own description of them: “They display less of art than of genius.” But nothing could more effectually confirm the principle enunciated by their critic in the Athenæum: “Amid all drawbacks there exists a power in the work of the man of genius which no one but himself can utter fully.” Rude as they are, their force is extraordinary; few things can be more truly magical than the glimpse of distant sea in the second of those engraved by Gilchrist. At the same time they are not in the least Virgilian, and in this respect form an instructive contrast with the exquisite though unfinished Virgilian illustrations of Samuel Palmer. Palmer, though putting in a cypress now and then as a tribute to couleur locale, provides Virgil substantially with the same style of illustration as he had been producing all his life for other ends, and yet this seems as appropriate to the text as Blake’s is discrepant. It is interesting to speculate what effect an Italian residence of two or three years, such as Palmer had enjoyed, would have produced upon Blake beyond the inevitable one of dissipating his monstrous delusions about Italian artists. He would probably have gone chiefly with the view of studying Michael Angelo, but we suspect that the influences of Italian landscape would in the long run have proved fully as potent.
In 1821 Blake removed from South Molton Street to Fountain Court, Strand, near the Savoy, where he occupied two rooms on the first floor. The reason may have been that the house was kept by a brother-in-law of Mrs. Blake’s named Baines, the only trace we have of any connection with his wife’s family. Economy too may have had its influence; his means were very low, not yet improved by the donation of £25 he received from the Academy next year, or his arrangement with Linnell in the year following. At the worst, however, the rooms were always clean and neat, thanks to Mrs. Blake’s industry and devotion; and Blake’s manner always had the simplicity and dignity of a gentleman. That his circumstances improved was almost entirely the doing of Linnell, who not only provided for his wants by commissions, but made him what his genius had never made him, the patriarch of a band of admirers, almost disciples. Coming frequently to visit Linnell at Hampstead, Blake fell in with a group of young men who resorted thither, four of whom at least—Samuel Palmer, Edward Calvert, George Richmond, and F. O. Finch—became artists of great distinction. One characteristic these young men had in common: they were as far as possible from the theory of art for art’s sake, but only valued art as the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace of consecration to the Power behind Nature. The biographies of Palmer and Calvert disclose the priestlike spirit in which they wrought, a spirit akin to that of their pre-Raphaelite successors, but apparently less impregnated with the ordinary atmosphere of the studio. These were just the men to treat the aged Blake as the antediluvian youth ought to have treated the aged Jubal; and the patriarchal influence is visible both in their writings and their works, not always to the advantage of the latter, if we may judge by the examples preserved of Palmer’s early labours. But all seemed fair in the light of fond retrospect. Twenty-eight years after Blake’s death Samuel Palmer addressed a letter to Mr. Gilchrist, long and full of interesting particulars relating to Blake’s opinions on art; but the gist of the estimate of the man is conveyed in few words. “In him you saw at once the Maker, the Inventor; one of the few in any age; a fitting companion for Dante. He was energy itself, and shed around him a kindling influence, an atmosphere of life, full of the ideal. He was a man without a mask; his aim single, his path straightforwardness, and his wants few; so he was free, noble, and happy.”
The Destruction of Job’s Sons and Daughters. From the “Book of Job.” By W. Blake.
A very important witness to Blake’s demeanour and opinions in his later years is Henry Crabb Robinson the diarist, whom we have already met as a visitor to Blake’s exhibition, and who had made him the subject of an essay in a German periodical. Robinson was the right man in the right place, not being a mystic or enthusiast to fall down at Blake’s feet, nor yet a man of the world to deride him as a visionary, but an inquisitive observer of great intellectual range and most kindly and tolerant disposition, ready to allow that things might exist of which his philosophy had not dreamed, and whom abnormal opinions, if held in evident sincerity, might startle but could hardly shock. “It is strange,” says he, “that I who have no imagination, nor any power beyond that of a logical understanding, should yet have a great respect for religious mystics.” Thrown into Blake’s company in 1825, he has recorded his conversations with him at considerable length in his delightful diary, as yet but partially published. His description of Blake’s “interesting appearance” agrees with that of his own circle. “He is pale, with a Socratic countenance, and an expression of great sweetness, though with something of languor about it except when animated, and then he has about him an air of inspiration. The tone and manner are incommunicable. There are a natural sweetness and gentility about him which are delightful.” Having heard of Blake’s visions, Robinson was not surprised to find him asserting that the visionary gift was innate in all men, and only torpid for want of cultivation; but he must have had much ado to digest such statements as that the world was flat, that Wordsworth was a Pagan, and that “what are called the vices in the natural world are the highest sublimities in the spiritual world.” Not understanding that by atheism Blake meant, in his own words, “whatever assumes the reality of the natural and unspiritual world,” Robinson was naturally aghast when Locke was classed with atheists, and ventured what must have appeared to him the conclusive rejoinder that Locke had written in defence of Christianity. Blake, who probably understood Robinson’s definition of atheism as little as Robinson did his, “made no reply.” Some of Blake’s remarks are well worthy of preservation. “Art is inspiration. When Michael Angelo, or Raphael, or Mr. Flaxman does any of his fine things, he does them in the spirit.” “Irving is a sent man. But they who are sent go further sometimes than they ought.” “Dante saw devils where I see none.”
With Dreams upon my Bed thou scarest me. From the “Book of Job.” By W. Blake.
Dante must have been much in Blake’s thoughts just then, for Robinson found him occupied with the long series of illustrations of the poet commissioned by Linnell, the last important work of his life. The history of the commission is thus related by Linnell’s biographer, Mr. Story. “Although the Job had been paid for, Linnell continued to give him money weekly. Blake said, ‘I do not know how I shall ever repay you.’ Linnell replied, ‘I do not want you to repay me. I am only too glad to be able to serve you. What I would like, however, if you do anything for me, is that you should make some designs for Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.’ Blake entered upon the work with alacrity, concurrently with the engraving of the Job designs, and the two together occupied the old man for the rest of his life.” During all this period Linnell was remitting Blake money, as the latter’s notes in acknowledgment prove. Linnell undoubtedly acquired the designs at a low price, but immediately upon Blake’s death he endeavoured to dispose of them for the benefit of the widow. Failing in this he kept them, never attempting to make anything by them; and they are still in the possession of his family.
Blake studied Italian to qualify himself more effectually for his task, and is said to have acquired it; when Robinson saw him, however, at an early stage of the commission it is true, he was working by the aid of Cary’s English version. He executed no less than ninety-eight drawings, several of which were left in an unfinished state. Seven have been engraved. The merits of the series have been variously estimated. Mr. Rossetti considers them “on the whole a very fine series, though not uniformly equal in merit.” Mr. Yeats, so well qualified by his own imaginative gift to enter into the merit of Blake’s work, thinks them the finest of all his productions. Robinson, who saw Blake at work upon them, says, “They evince a power I should not have anticipated of grouping, and of throwing grace and interest over conceptions monstrous and horrible.” For our own part, we must regretfully admit that when we saw them at the Old Masters’ exhibition the monstrosity and horror appeared more evident than the grace and interest. We could not deem Dante’s conceptions adequately rendered; the colour, too, often seemed harsh and extravagant. Blake went on working upon them until his death, when Mrs. Blake sent them to Linnell. They thus escaped the fate of Blake’s other artistic and literary remains left in his widow’s possession, which after her death were appropriated, apparently without any legal authority, by a person named Tatham, who had been much about Blake in his later years, and who ultimately destroyed them in deference to the mandate of a religious sect with which he had become connected![9]
