Blake says, with reference to this movement:
"That the scheme he was engaged upon was a good work, because it will in some measure stop the mouths of Papists, who are prone to say, Where are your works, and how few are your hospitals, and how small is your charity, notwithstanding your great preaching?"
A remarkable little book, and a very fit companion for the Silver Drops of William Blake, to which it bears a striking similarity, is the Pietas Hallensis of Dr. Franck. In this, the German divine relates, in a style which bears more than an accidental resemblance to the work of the Covent Garden Philanthropist, how, little by little, by importunity and perseverance, he nursed his own charitable plans, of a like kind, into full life and vigour; and both Drs. Woodward and Kennett endorse and command the "miraculous footsteps of Divine Providence" in the labours of Dr. Franck. "Could we," says Dr. Kennett, "trace the obscurer footsteps of our own charity-schools, the finger of God would be as evidently in them." Why the Bishop of Peterborough should be ignorant of these earlier efforts to the same end in his own country, is somewhat marvellous. Franck began his charitable work at Glaucha in 1698; while Blake was labouring to establish his Highgate School in 1685. That Franck should know nothing about our pioneer in charitable education, is probable enough; but that the English divines I have mentioned, with Wodrow, Gillies, and a host of others, should be unaware that the proceedings at Halle were only the counterpart of those done fourteen years before by Blake in their own land, is certainly surprising, and affords another proof of the proneness of Britons to extol everything foreign to the neglect of what is native and at their own doors.
Perhaps some of your readers will think I over-estimate the importance of the question, whether the charity-school movement is of British or foreign growth; or whether the honour of its application to the poor (for all charity-schools are not for such) belongs to my subject William Blake, or
some other philanthropic individual; if such there be, let them repair to our Metropolitan Cathedral on the day of the annual assemblage of the London charity children: and if, on contemplating the spectacle which will there meet their eye, they do not think it an object of interest to discover who, as Dr. Kennett says, "first cast in the salt at the fountain-head to heal the waters, and broke the ground that was before barren," I pity them.
In concocting this Note, I have had before me the following:
1. Lysons's Environs of London, 1795, where will be found a short notice of Blake. The author, following Gough, makes my subject a madman, and says his scheme "failed after laying out 5000l. upon it."
2. Sermon preached for Charity-schools, by Dr. Kennett, 1706.
3. Sermons of Dr. Smalridge and T. Yulden, 1710 and 1728. These divines give the precedence to Westminster School, "erected 1688."
4. Wodrow's Letters, edited by Dr. McCrie, 3 vols., Edin. 1843.