When a little girl of extraordinary beauty was brought to him, his kindest wish, as he stood stroking her long ringlets, was, "May God make this world to you, my child, as beautiful as it has been to me!" His own testimony declares,—
"The angel who presided at my birth
Said,—'Little creature, formed of joy and mirth,
Go, love without the help of anything on earth!'"
But much help from above came to him. The living lines that sprung beneath his pencil were but reminiscences of his spiritual home. Immortal visitants, unseen by common eyes, hung enraptured over his sketches, lent a loving ear to his songs, and left with him their legacy to Earth. There was no looking back mournfully on the past, nor forward impatiently to the future, but a rapturous, radiant, eternal now. Every morning came heavy-freighted with its own delights; every evening brought its own exceeding great reward.
So, refusing to the last to work in traces,—flying out against Reynolds, the bland and popular President of the Royal Academy, yet acknowledging with enthusiasm what he deemed to be excellence,—loving Fuseli with a steadfast love through all neglect, and hurling his indignation at a public that refused to see his worth,—flouting at Bacon, the great philosopher, and fighting for Barry, the restorer of the antique, he resolutely pursued his appointed way unmoved. But the day was fast drawing on into darkness. The firm will never quailed, but the sturdy feet faltered. Yet, as the sun went down, soft lights overspread the heavens. Young men came to him with fresh hearts, and drew out all the freshness of his own. Little children learned to watch for his footsteps over the Hampstead hills, and sat on his knee, sunning him with their caresses. Men who towered above their time, reverencing the god within, and bowing not down to the dæmon à la mode, gathered around him, listened to his words, and did obeisance to his genius. They never teased him with unsympathetic questioning, or enraged him with blunt contradiction. They received his visions simply, and discussed them rationally, deeming them worthy of study rather than of ridicule or vulgar incredulity. To their requests the spirits were docile. Sitting by his side at midnight, they watched while he summoned from unknown realms long-vanished shades. William Wallace arose from his "gory bed," Edward I. turned back from the lilies of France, and, forgetting their ancient hate, stood before him with placid dignity. The man who built the Pyramids lifted his ungainly features from the ingulfing centuries; souls of blood—thirsty men, duly forced into the shape of fleas, lent their hideousness to his night; and the Evil One himself did not disdain to sit for his portrait to this undismayed magician. That these are actual portraits of concrete object? is not to be affirmed. That they are portraits of what Blake saw is as little to be denied. We are assured that his whole manner was that of a man copying, and not inventing, and the simplicity and sincerity of his life forbid any thought of intentional deceit. No criticism affected him. Nothing could shake his faith. "It must be right: I saw it so," was the beginning and end of his defence. The testimony of these friends of his is that he was of all artists most spiritual, devoted, and single-minded. One of them says, if asked to point out among the intellectual a happy man, he should at once think of Blake. One, a young artist, finding his invention flag for a whole fortnight, had recourse to Blake.
"It is just so with us," he exclaimed, turning to his wife, "is it not, for weeks together, when the visions forsake us? What do we do then, Kate?"
"We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake."
To these choice spirits, these enthusiastic and confiding friends, his house was the House of the Interpreter. The little back-room, kitchen, bedroom, studio, and parlor in one, plain and neat, had for them a kind of enchantment. That royal presence lighted up the "hole" into a palace. The very walls widened with the greatness of his soul. The windows that opened on the muddy Thames seemed to overlook the river of the water of life. Among the scant furnishings, his high thoughts, set in noble words, gleamed like apples of gold in pictures of silver. Over the gulf that yawns between two worlds he flung a glorious arch, and walked tranquilly back and forth. Heaven was as much a matter-of-fact to him as earth. Of sacred things he spoke with a familiarity which, to those who did not understand him, seemed either madness or blasphemy; but his friends never misunderstood. With one exception, none who knew him personally ever thought of calling his sanity in question. To them he was a sweet, gentle, lovable man. They felt the truth of his life. They saw that
"Only that fine madness still he did retain
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain."
Imagination was to him the great reality. The external, that which makes the chief consciousness of most men, was to him only staging, an incumbrance, and uncouth, but to be endured and made the most of. The world of the imagination was the true world. Imagination bodied forth the forms of things unknown in a deeper sense, perhaps, than the great dramatist meant. His poet's pen, his painter's pencil turned them to shapes, and gave to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. Nay, he denied that they were nothings. He rather asserted the actual existence of his visions,—an existence as real, though not of the same nature, as those of the bed or the table. Imagination was a kind of sixth sense, and its objects were as real as the objects of the other senses. This sense he believed to exist, though latent, in every one, and to be susceptible of development by cultivation. This is surely a very different thing from madness. Neither is it the low superstition of ghosts. He recounted no miracle, nothing supernatural. It was only that by strenuous effort and untiring devotion he had penetrated beyond the rank and file—but not beyond the possibilities of the rank and file—into the unseen world. Undoubtedly this power finally assumed undue proportions. In his isolation it led him on too unresistingly. His generation knew him not. It neglected where it should have trained, and stared where it should have studied. He was not wily enough to conceal or gloss over his views. Often silent with congenial companions, he would thrust in with boisterous assertion in the company of captious opponents. Set upon by the unfriendly and the conventional, he wilfully hurled out his wild utterances, exaggerating everything, scorning all explanation or modification, goading peculiarities into reckless extravagance, on purpose to puzzle and startle, and so avenging himself by playing off upon those who attempted to play off upon him. To the gentle, the reverent, the receptive, the simple, he, too, was gentle and reverent.
Nearest and dearest of all, the "beloved Kate" held him in highest honor. The ripples that disturbed the smooth flow of their early life had died away and left an unruffled current. To the childless wife, he was child, husband, and lover. No sphere so lofty, but he could come quickly down to perform the lowliest duties. The empty platter, silently placed on the dinner-table, was the signal for his descent from Parnassus to the money-earning graver. No angel-faces kept him from lighting the morning fire and setting on the breakfast-kettle before his Kitty awoke. Their life became one. Her very spirit passed into his. By day and by night her love surrounded him. In his moments of fierce inspiration, when he would arise from his bed to sketch or write the thoughts that tore his brain, she, too, arose and sat by his side, silent, motionless, soothing him only by the tenderness of her presence. Years and wintry fortunes made havoc of her beauty, but love renewed it day by day for the eyes of her lover, and their hands only met in firmer clasp as they neared the Dark River.