Gilchrist on Blake: The Life of William Blake by Alexander Gilchrist. Richard Holmes
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at the date of composition – in the clear light of print, and to assume half the cost. Which, accordingly, was done, in 1783, the year in which happened the execution for forgery of the gifted fellow-engraver – in whose face the boy Blake, twelve years before had so strangely deciphered omens of his fate – Ryland. This unfortunate man’s prepossessing appearance and manners inspired on the other hand so much confidence in the governor of the prison in which he awaited trial, that on one occasion the former took him out for a walk, implicitly trusting to his good faith that he would not avail himself of the opportunity to run away. Ryland’s was the last execution at Tyburn, then still on the outside of London. This was the year, too, in which Barry published his Account of the Pictures in the Adelphi. On one copy I have seen a characteristic pencil recollection, from Blake’s hand, of the strange Irishman’s ill-favoured face: that of an idealized bulldog, with villainously low forehead, turn-up nose, and squalid tout-ensemble. It is strong evidence of the modest Flaxman’s generous enthusiasm for his friend that, himself a struggling artist, little patronized, he should have made the first offer of printing these poems, and at his own charge; and that he now bore a moiety of the cost. The book only runs to 74 pages, 8vo., and its unpretending title-page stands thus: Poetical Sketches; by W. B. London: Printed in the Year 1783. The clergyman ‘with his usual urbanity’ penned a preface stating the youthful authorship of the volume, apologizing for ‘irregularities and defects’ in the poems, and hoping their ‘poetic originality merits some respite from oblivion.’
The author’s absence of leisure is pleaded, ‘requisite to such a revisal of these sheets as might have rendered them less unfit to meet the public eye.’ Little revisal certainly they had, not even correction of the press, apparently. The pamphlet, which has no printer’s name to be discredited by it, is as carelessly printed as an old English play, evidently at an establishment which did not boast a ‘reader.’ Semicolons and fullstops where commas should be, misprints, such as ‘beds of dawn’ for ‘birds,’ by no means help out the meaning. The whole impression was presented to Blake to sell to friends or publish, as he should think best. Unfortunately, it never got published, and for all purposes except that of preservation, might as well have continued MS. As in those days there still survived, singular to say, a bonâ fide market for even mediocre verse, publishers and editors actually handing over hard cash for it, just as if it were prose, Blake’s friends would have done better to have gone to the Trade with his poems. The thin octavo did not even get so far as the Monthly Review; at all events, it does not appear in the copious and explicit Index of’books noticed’ in that periodical, now quite a manual of extinct literature.
The poems J.T. Smith, in 1784, heard Blake sing, can hardly have been those known to his hearers by the printed volume of 1783, but fresh ones, to the composition of which the printing of that volume had stimulated him: some doubtless of the memorable and musical Songs of Innocence, as they were subsequentle auditory – ‘thay named.
Blake’s course of soirees in Rathbone Place was not long a smooth one. ‘It happened unfortunately,’ writes enigmatic Smith, whose forte is not grammar, ‘soon after this period’ – soon after 1784, that is, the year during which Smith heard him ‘read and sing his poems’ to an attentive auditory–‘that in consequence of his unbending deportment, or what his adherents are pleased to call his manly firmness of opinion, which certainly was not at all times considered pleasing by every one, his visits were not so frequent:’ – and after a time ceased altogether, ‘tis to be feared. One’s knowledge of Blake’s various originalities of thought on all subjects, his stiffness, when roused, in maintaining them, also his high, though at ordinary moments inobtrusive notions of his calling, of the dignity of it, and its superiority to all mere worldly distinctions, help to elucidate gossiping John Thomas. One readily understands that on more intimate acquaintance, when it was discovered by well-regulated minds that the erratic Bard perversely came to teach, not to be taught, nor to be gently schooled into imitative proprieties and condescendingly patted on the back, he became less acceptable to the polite world at No. 27, than when first started as a prodigy in that elegant arena.
SEVEN Struggle and Sorrow 1782-87 [ÆT. 25-30]
Returning to 1782-3, among the engravings executed by Blake in those years, I have noticed after Stothard, four illustrations – two vignettes and two oval plates – to Scott of Amwell’s Poems, published by Buckland (1782); two frontispieces to Dodsley’s Lady’s Pocket-Book – The morning amusements of H.R.H. the Princess Royal and her four sisters’ (1782), and ‘A Lady in full-dress’ with another ‘in the most fashionable undress now worn’ (1783); – and The Fall of Rosamond, a circular plate in a book published by Macklin (1783). To the latter year also, the first after Blake’s marriage, belong about eight or nine of the vignettes, after the purest and most lovely of the early and best designs of the same artist – full of sweetness, refinement, and graceful fancy – which illustrate Ritson’s Collection of English Songs (3 vols 8vo.); others being engraved by Grignon, Heath, &c. In the first volume occur the best designs, and – what is remarkable – designs very Blake-like in feeling and conception; having the air of graceful translation of his inventions. Most in this volume are engraved by Blake, and very finely, with delicacy, as well as force. I may instance in particular one at the head of the Love Songs, a Lady singing, Cupids fluttering before her, a singularly refined composition; another, a vignette to Jemmy Dawson, which is, in fact, Hero awaiting Leander; another to When Lovely Woman, a sitting figure of much dignity and beauty.
In after-years of estrangement from Stothard, Blake used to complain of this mechanical employment as engraver to a fellow-designer, who (he asserted) first borrowed from one that, in his servile capacity, had then to copy that comrade’s version of his own inventions – as to motive and composition his own, that is. The strict justice of this complaint I can hardly measure, because I know not how much of the Design he afterwards engraved was actually being produced at this period – doubtless much. We shall hereafter have to point out that a good deal in Flaxman and Stothard may be traced to Blake, is indeed only Blake in the Vernacular, classicized and (perhaps half-unconsciously) adapted. His own compositions bear the authentic first-hand impress; those unmistakable traces, which no hand can feign, of genuineness, freshness, and spontaneity, the look as of coming straight from another world – that in which Blake’s spirit lived. He, in his cherished visionary faculty, his native power and life-long habit of vivid Invention, was placed above all need or inclination to borrow from others. If, as happens to all, there occur occasional passages of unconscious reminiscence from the Old Masters, there is no cooking or disguise. His friend Fuseli, with characteristic candour, used to declare, ‘Blake is d–d good to steal from!’
Certainly, Stothard, though even he could by utmost diligence only earn a moderate income – for if in request with the pub-Ushers he was neglected by picture-buyers – was throughout life, compared with Blake, a prosperous, affluent man. He had throughout, the advantage of Blake with the public. Hence early, some feeling of soreness in his uncompliant companion’s bosom. Stothard had the advantage in the marketable quality of his genius, in his versatile talents, his superior technic attainments – or, rather, superior consistency of attainment; above all, in his inborn grace and elegance. He could make the refined Domestic groups he so readily conceived, whether all his own or in part borrowed, far more palatable to the many, the cultivated many – cultivated Rogers for example, his life-long patron – than Blake could ever make his Dantesque sublimity, wild Titanic play of fancy, and spiritually imaginative dreams. I think the latter, as we shall see when we come to the Songs of Innocence and Experience, was at this period of his life influenced to his advantage as a designer by contact with Stothard’s graceful mind; but that any capability of grander qualities occasionally shown by Stothard was derived, and perhaps as unconsciously, from Blake. And Stothard’s earlier style is far purer and more ‘matterful,’ to use an expression of Charles Lamb’s, than the sugarplum manner of his latter years. In Stothard as in Blake, however nominally various the subject, there is the tyrannous predominance of certain ruling ideas of the designer’s. Stothard’s tether was always shorter than Blake’s;