"In lächerlichem Zuge Erblickt man Ochs und Flügelpferd am Pfluge."

This partnership was dissolved in 1787, soon after the death of Blake's brother Robert, by whose bedside the artist watched day and night with more than womanly tenderness, and whose released spirit he saw ascending heavenward through the ceiling, "clapping its hands for joy." Two years later Blake pub. lished his Songs of Innocence, the first of a series of illustrated poems, to which a second series was added in 1794, under the title of Songs of Experience. Although the two series are usually bound together in one volume, there is a marked contrast between the poems composing them, a contrast which the discriminating words Innocence and Experience admirably express. The former are sweeter, both in rhythm and sentiment, and reflect with crystalline purity the childlike thoughts and heavenly temper of the author's soul; while the latter are of sterner stuff, utterances of the grander and gloomier wisdom that is born of struggle and of sorrow. As typical of the whole first series, we may refer the reader to "The Lamb," which begins as follows:

"Little lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bade thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?

Little lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?" On the other hand, the prevailing tone of the second series is well represented by "The Tiger," beginning thus:

"Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands,"

as they are grouped like "flowers of London town" under the high dome of the cathedral, while

"Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor."

But how differently does the same sight affect him in the Songs of Experience (p. 50), when he exclaims,

"Is this a holy thing to see,

In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery

Fed with a cold, usurious hand?"

In our opinion, however, the best and most characteristic of the Songs of Innocence is The Little Black Boy (p. 30), a poem rarely equalled for grand simplicity and deep pathos :·

-

"My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black; but oh my soul is white. White as an angel is the English child,

But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree;

And, sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissed me,

And pointing to the East began to say:

'Look on the rising sun: there God does live,

And gives His light, and gives His heat

away,

And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

'And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of

love;

face

The designs, with which Blake accompanied the Songs of Innocence, are in originality of conception and finish of execution, as well as in intelligibility and pertinence to the several poems, far superior to the drawings which illustrate the Songs of Experience. These productions are also additionally interesting from the fact that in bringing them before the public the author devised a method of being his own printer and publisher, to which he adhered in all his subsequent works. This process, which was revealed to him in a vision by his departed brother Robert (for Blake never did anything except through supernatural agency), consisted in a reversal of the ordinary process of engraving. The verses, illustrations and arabesque embellishments were first inscribed with stoppingout varnish on the copper-plate, the remaining parts of which were then eaten away with aquafortis, so as to leave the letters and designs in relief. From the plates thus formed, impressions were printed off in any required ground tone, the letter-press being uniformly red. The print was then colored by hand in

free ornamental border being tinted with a variety of hues, and the whole page finished with any degree of elegance and elaborateness desired.

Blake ground and mixed his watercolors in a way of his own, using common carpenter's glue as a binder; in the use of this material, however, he only acted on a suggestion made to him in a dream by "Joseph, the sacred carpenter." In these labors Mrs. Blake showed herself an enthusiastic and skilful helpmeet; she not only acquired great delicacy of manipulation in taking off the impressions, but also learned to color them with a fine discriminating touch and a good deal of genuine artistic feeling. At the close of the second volume of The Life of Blake, Gilchrist gives sixteen impressions from these plates,* but as they are printed in the monotonous red of the letter-press, they fail to furnish an adequate idea of the brilliantly illuminated originals (a fine specimen of which may be seen in the print-room of the British Museum), to which the monocromatic outline bears about the same relation that the cartoon does to the finished picture. This consideration is one of peculiar importance in the study of Blake's productions; for it is as a colorist that he stands supreme among the artists of his age. About this time (1789-90) Blake engraved another poem, called the Book of Thel, a strange allegory, full of vague poetic mysticism, and pregnant doubtless with enigmatic meaning, but "caviare to the general," it is to be feared. Schelling was wont to reply to those who could not comprehend his speculations, that "Philosophy should pay no attention whatever to Incapacity;" and much of Blake's later poetry

* Two of these plates in Mr. G.'s arrangement are misplaced. No. 5, representing the figure of a woman standing under a leafless tree aghast at a dead babe lying on the ground, belongs to the Songs of Experience; and the "Nurse's Sg," with the children playing in a circle on the green, is one of the Songs of Innocence.

seems to have been written with the same cool contempt for "comprehensibleness." This mystical tendency reached the climax of daring conception and gorgeous illustration in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, an attempt to solve; in the spirit of Swedenborg, the ever-recurring problem of the origin and purpose of evil. The designs to this volume are exquisitely finished, the blending of rich and tender colors, which often have the lustre of jewels, making the page appear to move and quiver, so that "you lay the book down tenderly, as if you had been handling something sentient." The text is partly in irregular unrhymed verse, and partly in wild rhapsodic prose; and it is hard to tell which of the two kinds of composition is the more perplexing to him who seeks to interpret these visions, and to deduce from them a coherent philosophic or theosophic system. The fundamental idea, however, that the author aims to unfold is the necessity of contraries to progression, of antagonism to life. "Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil." The most intelligible portions of the volume are the so-called "Proverbs of Hell," a series of maxims which not only corroborate the reputed wisdom of the "Old Serpent," but also imply a very nice perception of truth and a fair degree of growth in virtue on the part of the infernal inhabitants. Many of these aphorisms are mere prudential sayings, that might have suited well the pages of Poor Richard's Almanac; whilst others have a higher, transcendental character, and might have fallen very naturally from the lips of Milton's devils during that famous metaphysical discussion, when they

66 -sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and

fate,

Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute."

As specimens we quote the following:

“The busy bee has no time for sorrow. The fox condemns the trap, not himself. The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow. The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. What is now proved lion and ox is oppression. The cistern was once only imagined. One law for the contains, the fountain overflows. Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. The weak in courage is strong in cunning. The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit, watch the roots; the lion, the tiger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits. Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep. Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps. Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."

Of the other visions or prophecies, such as the Gates of Paradise, Daughters of Albion, America, Europe, Jerusalem, Abania, &c., nothing need be said. Many of the designs show great power and beauty, but the literary value of these productions is so slight that the text scarcely enters into the account, except for its picturesque effect as a purely decorative element in the composition. Still, in the midst of this manycolored chaos of words and images, which have for us now chiefly a painful psychological significance, there appear here and there acute sententious utterances, sufficient to reveal how keen and deep was the poet's insight into spiritual laws, before the balance of his faculties had been disturbed by the absolute tyranny of his imagination over his perceptions.

More enjoyable than these independent productions is some commissioned work that Blake was employed to do about this time (1795-99) by the Bond Street publishers, Miller and Edwards. For the former he illustrated Stanley's translation, or rather paraphrase, of Bürger's Leonore; for the latter he made a set of forty-three drawings, illustrating the first four nights of Young's Night Thoughtsa book which was at that time not only printed, but also actually read.

The

ghostly bridegroom, on his black, firebreathing steed, and the attendant imps and spectres, that form the chief characters of the German ballad, were just the subjects to attract the pencil of this "most supersensuous of the sons of art." In the illustrations to the Night Thoughts the artist has often given us designs which have only very remote reference to the text, and are sometimes entirely independent of it; so that, so far from the engravings serving to elucidate the poem, it was found necessary to append an explanation of the engravings themselves. To appreciate them they must be studied as bold and original conceptions, and not as a mere commentary to the monotonous prosings of Dr. Young. Occasionally the directness of Blake's vision of spiritual things, and his familiarity with the supernatural world, are betrayed in designs more startling for their naïveté than felicitous for their fitness; as, e.g., when Death is represented as summoning his victims by vigorously ringing a handbell, like a hotel waiter. Usually, however, they possess a wealth of imaginative beauty and artistic amplification far superior to ordinary translations of verse into outline, as where, e.g., in illustration of the passage in Night II. 376,

Schiavonetti, who proved himself a graceful mediator between the transcendental world of the artist and the matter-of-fact world of the British public, and brought within the comprehension of all who have any feeling for what is most delicate and suggestive in art the visions which his soul had seen,

66 -borne on solemn wing From the vast regions of the grave." One of the most forcible of these delineations is the "Death of the Strong Wicked Man," illustrative of the passage in Blair's poem where, lying on his bed,

the strong man, By stronger arm belabored, gasps for breath,

Like a hard-hunted beast." Blake pictures the affectionate wife bending in mingled horror and sympathetic anguish over the convulsed body, near which the terrified daughter stands with her hand over her eyes. The terror of the scene is concentrated in the face and the uplifted, imploring hands of the dying man, whose wicked soul vanishes amid flames through the window. Another design in striking contrast to this one is the "Meeting of a Family in Heaven," a simple and expressive group, the faces radiant with the happiness of mutual

hours,"

the hours are portrayed as aërial, shadowy beings of various shapes, flitting around the inquirer, some presenting to him scrolls on which is written the history of his past life, whilst others are bearing similar records to heaven. The same spirit pervades also the illustrations to The Grave, a once popular but quite mediocre poem by Robert Blair, a Scotch Presbyterian divine, which Blake designed eight years later. This was by far his most successful, and is by many regarded as his best and sanest work. The designs are certainly more mature and equal, and less extravagant than those to Night Thoughts. doubtless due in a great degree to the fact that they were etched by an excellent and conscientious Italian engraver,

This was

them with their wings.

Many of these designs were used to illustrate different authors, even during the artist's life, and about twenty years after his death some of them reappeared on this side of the Atlantic, in an edition of Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy! As an illustrator Blake was very prolific, and, in addition to a long series of Biblical themes, interpreted with his pencil Homer, Hesiod, Dante, Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, Ariosto, Gray, Cowper, Lavater's Physiognomy, Ritson's English Songs, Philips' Pastorals, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The last-mentioned work is "painted in fresco," as Blake says; by which he means a kind of tempera, or, more correctly speaking, watercolor on a ground of glue and whiting, which he laid either on canvas or on

board, like plaster on a wall. It represents the jolly pilgrims as they quit, at early dawn, the "gentil hostelrie, that highte the Tabard," and wend their way to Canterbury. Charles Lamb speaks of it as "a work of wonderful power and spirit," and praises also the analysis of the several characters of the Prologue, which Blake has given in his Descriptive Catalogue, as "the finest criticism of Chaucer's poem that he had ever read." The artist certainly takes a broad view of his theme, and regards these

“—nine and twenty in a compagnie Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle In felawship,"

as representative persons, "characters which compose all ages and nations," and "are the physiognomies or lineaments of universal human life, beyond which Nature never steps." This idea he sets forth in the grouping of the different personages, and is in general conception, as well as in minute details, far more faithful to the spirit and the letter of the poet than Stothard, an engraving of whose composition forms the frontispiece of Pickering's edition of Chaucer's works.*

We have space here to speak of only one more of Blake's works, namely, his Inventions to the Book of Job, consisting of two sets of water-color drawings, which are pronounced by some connois

*Indeed we do not believe that Chaucer has ever had a commentator equal to Blake in philosophic comprehension and penetrating insight since the Canterbury Tales were first put into print by William Caxton. The key-note to the poem is touched in such passages as these from the Descriptive Catalogue: "As Newton numbered the stars, and as Linnæus numhered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the

Chaucer's char

classes of men. acters live age after age. Every age is a Canterbury Pilgrimage; we all pass on, each sustaining one or other of these characters; nor can a child be born who is not one of these characters of Chaucer." He then analyzes the various groups in proof of this thesis.

seurs to be the most original and characteristic of his productions. Mr. Gilchrist may not be far out of the way in declaring the engravings from them to be "the most remarkable series of etchings, on a scriptural theme, which has appeared since the days of Albert Dürer and Rembrandt." Even admitting that in some of the plates, as we see them in the reduced photo-lithographic copies published by Mr. Gilchrist, the grandeur approaches very near to the perilous verge of the grotesque, reminding us, in this respect, of average medieval painting; yet, through all these technical defects, the spirit of primeval pastoral life in the "Land of Uz" is caught and rendered with a clearness and sublimity that rival, while they interpret, the conceptions of the old Hebrew poet. Ruskin assigns to them "the highest rank in certain characters of imagination and expression," and advises young artists to study in them especially the effects of "glaring and flickering light," in which, he says, "Blake is greater than Rembrandt." The only works of art with which they can be compared are the frescoes of Francesco de Volterra on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa, The theme is the same, but Blake's treatment of it is more vigorous and animated, and, especially in the audience which Jehovah gives to the sons of God and to Satan, the Ancient of Days is more majestically conceived than in the Giottoseque pictures of the Italian master. The least effective, perhaps, are plates seven and ten, in which the three figures with uplifted hands and pointing fingers are both in attitude and feature more like the three witches of Macbeth than the three friends of Job. The finest, in our opinion, are plates fourteen and eighteen, representing respectively the morning stars singing together, and the sons of God shouting for joy (xxxviii. 7), and Job offering sacrifice and praying for his friends (xlii. 8), both of which furnish a grand opportunity for Blake in his peculiar province as a painter of light. The vignette borders are also very thoughtful and apposite as interwoven with the central pictures, having the same symbolical