Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853. Various
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and Künstler in England und Paris, Berlin, 1837, Tome i. p. 148.
"Le Tome iii. était à vendre dans ces dernières années, au prix de 3000 francs, chez M. Techener (Bulletin du Bibliophile, année 1850, No. 1222. et p. 910.); nous ne savons où il est actuellement.
"Notre volume est le plus précieux des trois. Il l'emporte sur les deux autres par le nombre des peintures (le Tome i. n'en a que 14, et le Tome iii. seulement 12) et par l'intérêt qu'offrent ces peintures elles-mêmes.
"La première, charmante miniature en camaïeu gris et or, représente François Ier à cheval, courant le cerf; la dernière montre la prise du cerf.
"Parmi les autres sujets, également traités en grisaille, on remarque plusieurs batailles entre les Romains et les Gaulois, rendues dans leurs divers détails avec une finesse admirable d'exécution. Mais ce qui, par-dessus tout, donne un prix infini à ce manuscrit, ce sont sept portraits, en médaillons, qui reproduisent les traits de quelques hommes de guerre du temps de François Ier. Ils sont peints avec une vérité et une délicatesse vraiment merveilleuses; des noms Romains, qui figurent dans les Commentaries de César, sont écrits à côté des portraits; les noms véritables ont été tracées au-dessous, mais un peu plus tard, et par une main différente. Voici ces noms:—
"1o. Quintus Pedius, le grand-maistre de Boisy, âgé de 41 ans; 2o. le Fiable Divitiacus d'Autun, l'Amiral de Boisy, Seigneur de Bonivet, âgé de 34 ans; 3o. Quintus Titurius Sabinus, Odet de Fones (Foix), Sieur de Lautrec, âgé de 41 ans; 4o. Iccius, le Mareschal de Chabanes, Seigneur de la Palice, âgé de 57 ans; 5o. Lucius Arunculeius Cotta, Anne de Montmorency, âgé de 22 ans, et depuis Connestable de France; 6o. Publ. Sextius Baculus, le Mareschal de Fleuranges, Seigneur de la Marche (Mark), premier Seigneur de Sédan, âgé de 24 ans; 7o. Publius Crassus, le Sieur de Tournon, qui fust tué à la bataille de Pavie, âgé de 36 ans.
"La plupart des miniatures du volume sont signées G., 1519. La perfection qui les distingue les avait d'abord fait attribuer au célèbre miniaturiste Guilo Clovio; maintenant on croit pouvoir affirmer qu'elles appartiennent à un peintre nommé Godefroy. Il se trouve à la bibliothèque de l'Arsenal une traduction française des Triomphes de Pétrarque, avec des miniatures qui sont incontestablement de la même main et de la même époque. Or, l'une de ces miniatures est signée Godefroy.
"On peut voir le rapprochement que fait entre les deux manuscrits M. Waagen, dans l'ouvrage cité ci-dessus, Tome iii. p. 395. Il ne saurait, du reste, y avoir aucun doute sur le nom de l'artiste, lorsqu'on lit dans le Bulletin du Bibliophile (pages déjà citées) que plusieurs des miniatures du Tome iii. sont signées Godofredi pictoris, 1520.
"Ce précieux manuscrit ne sera pas vendu; il a été légué par M. de Bure au département des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale."
WILLIAM BLAKE
I venture to send you another Note regarding William Blake, claiming for that humble individual the honour of being the pioneer in the establishment of charity-schools in Britain, from which department of our social system who can calculate the benefits accrued, and constantly accruing, to this country!
We look in vain through the Silver Drops of William Blake for any record of an existing institution, such as he would have his "noble ladies" rear at Highgate. Among the many incentives he uses to prompt the charitable, we do not find him holding up for their example any model (unless it be "Old Sutton's brave hospital"); in all his amusing "Charity-school Sticks," his tone is that of a man trying to persuade people that the thing he proposes is feasible. "Some of them," says the sanguine Blake, "have scarce faith enough to believe in the success of this great and good design. Nay, your brother Cornish himself," continues he, in addressing one of his ladies, although full of good works, "would have persuaded me to lay it down" upon the ground of its impracticability. The language of Blake is everywhere advocating this "new way of charity." "If it be new," says he to an objector, "the more's the pity;" and, with reference to the possibility of failure, he would thus shame them into liberality. Speaking of his "fine, handsome, and well cloathed boys; not too fine, because they are the ladies'!" our enthusiast adds to this soft sawdur:
"But now, if a year or two hence they should be grown, which God forbid! poor ragged, half-starved, and no cloaths, country folks would say, who ride or go that way, Were there not good ladies enough in and about London to maintain one little school?"
Here then is primâ facie evidence, I think, that my subject, poor crazy William Blake, was the originator of one of the greatest social improvements of modern times.
The charity-school movement had obtained a strong hold upon the public mind early in the past century; but although I have sought for the name of Blake through many books professing to give an account of the early history of such institutions, I have not yet met with the slightest allusion to him, his school, or his Silver Drops.
The superficial inquirer into the history of English charity-schools will be told that the honour of the first erecting such, and caring for destitute children, is popularly considered due to the parishes of St. Botulph, Aldgate, and St. Margaret's, Westminster: and if he would farther satisfy himself upon that point, he will see it claimed by the first named; a slab in front of their schools, adjoining the Royal Mint, bearing an inscription to the purport that it was the first Protestant charity-school, erected by voluntary contributions in 1693.
If it comes to the earliest London school for poor children, perhaps the Catholics take the lead; for we find that it was part of the tactics of the Jesuits, in the reign of James II., to promote their design of subverting the Protestant religion by infusing their Romish tenets into the minds of the children of the poor by providing schools for them in the Savoy and Westminster.
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.
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