also, his manifold suggestiveness. Looking at life, as it were, à priori, his rendering of human character is feeble: 'his faces are almost all natural types, instead of giving infinitely blended shades of expression.' But these natural types are treated with such power and insight, that he claims no remote kinship, in this respect, with the mighty Buonarroti. It is useful to look at so singular and gifted a man as this, in the light of all the suggestions that appear to bear on him. But, meanwhile, the painter of this century, with all his industry, was in no remote prospect of ruin and starvation.

Cromek, an engraver and publisher, by commissioning Blake in 1805 to illustrate 'The Grave,' a poem by a Scottish minister named Blair, at once did something to rescue Blake from utter poverty, and gave occasion to the production of one of his best and sanest works. For this service we are so grateful to Cromek, that we would wish that the little disputes which arose, during and after the transaction, between the unworldly and irritable artist, and the keen but not unkindly or ungenerous speculator, had been passed over by Mr. Gilchrist, who enters into the controversy at some length. We are content with remarking that, in his zeal for Blake, the biographer puts a construction which the evidence does not require on Cromek's conduct, and which, from what we know of the honourableness of Mr. Gilchrist's nature, had he been spared to publish the book, he would probably have been willing to modify.* Cromek, at any rate, was not deficient in zeal for the success of the work, and, by one step which annoyed Blake, he really did much to promote his popularity. The designs were engraved by the skilful hand of Schiavonetti. By this, no doubt, something of the first-hand quality which Blake would have thrown into his own work was sacrificed. But everyone who looks at Blake's Illustrations to Young, before noticed, will admit that the translation of his startling visions into the common language of engraving was a vast advantage in securing the attention of ordinary judges. It is probable that

*We cannct, however, pass over without a word of protest the violent language in which Mr. D. G. Rossetti (note on p. 118, Vol. II.) has endorsed Blake's charges against his brother-artists. Even were these accusations of plagiarism 'constant in the pages which follow (which we do not find to be the case), Mr. Rossetti should have remembered that something beyond the assertion of Blake is required when Stothard and Flaxman are the subjects of such an attack. His remark that 'justice perceives these words to be true' is unsupported by any evidence here adduced. It is not proved that even the idea of painting the 'Canterbury Pilgrims' was borrowed by Stothard; and the two pictures, as every one knows, and as Blake himself distinctly asserts, are totally dissimilar. The truth is, that Blake (to any except the distorted vision of partisanship) stands as little in need of certificates of inventiveness and originality as his two great contemporaries.

Schiavonetti

Schiavonetti corrected in some degree the Fuseli-like mannerism of Blake's drawing; at least, he mediated between the transcendental world of the artist and that decidedly more terrestrial region in which the British public has its being. This was no unworthy function. The end of all art is to please. It is well to meet halfway, as it were, the highest or most imaginative natures. But it is well, also, to raise less-gifted but still accessible minds by the medium of lofty pleasure. Blake's weak side, a noble weakness indeed, was that he worked too exclusively for the initiated. The Grave' rendered the 'Job' intelligible to learners.

6

Many years after, one of Blake's young friends, who has himself risen since to no common distinction in his art, Mr. Linnell, the landscape-painter, gave him the commission to execute the series of designs last named. In selecting for his subject the Book of Job, Mr. Linnell showed a discrimination worthy of his insight as an artist. He chose at once a poem, which, by its infinite spiritual suggestiveness, exactly suited Blake's best genius, and by its definite images, perhaps in part by the very sacredness of its text, confined that genius within rational limits. That these illustrations stand supreme amongst the artist's efforts seems generally admitted. The Songs of Innocence,' with their idyllic grace of design and charm of colour, might perhaps be placed nearest. But the Songs are amongst the rarest of rare books, whilst the 'Job' is less uncommon.* Photolithographic copies of all the plates have been wisely given in Mr. Gilchrist's second volume. These, it is true, cannot reproduce the peculiar combined sharpness and delicacy of Blake's own engraving, which, in this series, but only in this, shows more of the essential quality of the great old masters,

DEATH'S DOOR.

If, as we believe, the original plates, which cannot be seriously worn, are still in Mr. Linnell's possession, we would venture to urge on him a re-issue of the work. It could not be done under better auspices than those of Blake's most distinguished pupil. That it is a re-impression should be distinctly expressed on each plate, in any such case, to prevent subsequent fraud or uncertainty.

c 2

Marc

Marcantonio and Dürer, than any modern copperplates we know of. The study of Bonasoni, Marcantonio's ablest successor, is stated by Mr. Gilchrist to have been the reason of this change in style. The copies, however, are sufficient to give readers a fair idea of the original; and will, we think, be a source of deep interest to all, who, not discouraged by certain limitations rather than defects of style, are willing to make the effort needful to appreciate an originality of idea unsurpassed by any other artist, ancient or modern. Within Blake's own circle, we know no such spiritual veracity as his-no such intensity. On his frequent ascription of his designs to direct vision,-the one fact with which he is identified in the popular mind,-we shall have presently a few words to say. It is noteworthy that he nowhere lays claim to such an origin for the Job.' Yet, if any man, the author of these marvellous inventions might have been justified in ascribing them to some visionary inspiration,—in doubting whether they were the work of his own hands. Here, if anywhere, in the sublime language of Plato, is that possession and ecstasy with which the Muses seize on a plastic and pure soul, awakening it and hurrying it forth like a Bacchanal in the way of song and poetry in all her kinds, to set forth a thousand deeds of old for the instruction of those who come after.' Not without a full measure of this divine Mania did Blake 'approach the gates of poetry.' To quote a recent criticismt:

'As we turn these singular pages we find the spell which they have held over us from childhood powerful as ever. In the earlier scenes of the history, although perhaps less intimately suited than the later to Blake's visionary genius, yet from the very first he has mastered the most difficult point in such a task; he has transported us into a primæval atmosphere. The landscape has that vague, far off quality, neither indeed Syrian nor Egyptian, but infinitely old, poetical, and mysterious, which seems, as it were, natural to the "Land of Uz" and its primitive inhabitants. The architecture, half Druidic, half Cyclopean, belongs to no known style, but is of that elementary fashion which might have been practised in the world newly rising from the Deluge. The figures of the patriarch and his pastoral family exhibit the same imaginative propriety. The admirably touched vignette-borders which surround each print repeat or allude to the subject of it with a symbolism not inferior to the Greek in perfect poetical adaptation. They are the chorus to the drama enacted within. There have been artists who might have caught the dramatic character of the scene with equal force, and with more mastery in design and expression than Blake; but, since Christian art began, we doubt whether any one could have thrown himself into the spirit

*Phædrus,' c. xxii.

+ London Review.'

of

of the pastoral age with such penetrating identification. Then the strain changes; we hear Job recount the visions of the night, and the voice from the whirlwind paints the wonders of Almighty power in language of unapproachable sublimity. These are scenes where even the greatest of artists might have been inclined to stay their hands, and withdraw from the hopeless effort of representation; but such scenes were the natural sphere of Blake; and if by their character they transcend all strict representation, it may at least be said that no one has equalled him in the veracity with which his intense imagination saw first, and then set forth for our instruction, the things in the heavens above, or the waters below the earth.'

We have classed the 'Job' with the Grave,' not only on account of their common excellence, but of their common origin. Remark that these are Blake's finest productions, after his first youthful 'Songs,' and that both are illustrations of given subjects, not of his own inventions. Similar as they are in quality of art, no contrast can be greater than between the wonderfully illustrative character of the 'Job' and the vague, helpless dreams which fill the 'Jerusalem.' This is a real clue to a right comprehension of Blake. When he drew 'Jerusalem' and its companions, he spoke of transcribing his visions. The result is a magnificent and unintelligible chimera. When he illustrated 'Job' and 'The Grave,' and ultimately Dante's Inferno' (also for Mr. Linnell), he was working, on commission, from prescribed materials. He now drew like a Christian, or any ordinary man.' All the fine qualities of his art appeared, and with them a beauty and a sanity, a depth of insight and a power of coherent expression, which are wanting in the visionary series. And this great superiority cannot have been altogether due to the nature of the subjects provided. In real elevation and beauty nothing can be more opposed than the poems of Young and of Blair, and the poems of Job and of Dante. But they each supplied a nucleus of intelligibility, and this was enough. Whether transcending in every line the narrow and prosaic utterances of 'The Grave' and the Night Thoughts,' or almost rivalling the old Hebrew poet in the sublimity of his conceptions, Blake could cling fast in every case to the centre of solid thought provided, and save his genius, in his own despite, from wasting itself in wild gyrations through the dim and monster-haunted infinite.

6

Blake, in truth, may be said to have been least himself when most left to his own free devices. We have already alluded to the visions which, in his latter days, formed a pregnant subject of his conversation, and have ever since formed a favourite text for anecdotic gossip to lovers of the marvellous. Even were not

the

the art of an artist the proper subject for study (a suggestion which some recent biographies provoke), the importance of this matter has been, we think, much exaggerated. It is curious that the series of drawings directly taken from what Blake termed visions, and engraved, in part, in Mr. Gilchrist's book, are precisely the least valuable of the innumerable designs by Blake which we have examined. The heads of Edward I., Wallace, and the rest, are equally wanting in force of drawing and in character. Even the famous Ghost of a Flea,' at least as here engraved, we must venture to think a feeble production. Had Blake always worked thus, he would have ranked no higher than the American spiritartists. But the truth seems to be that his language on visions hardly exceeded what a more completely educated man would have simply confessed to be a figure of speech. When annoyed by questions, or when invoked by a credulous friend (as by the astrologer Varley, whom he gratified by the series just noticed), he would, it is true, indulge his bent to the utmost. The curious conversations printed in the 'Life,' from Mr. C. Robinson's notes, give also an idea that, as Blake's bodily strength failed, some half-believing, half-ironical delight in such hallucinations may have grown upon him.

Blake's own words, in some curious writings on art, which have been included in Mr. Gilchrist's second volume, may be taken as the best authority on this subject. They seem (to us at least) entirely to clear up the vision' hypothesis. No such aid appears to have been claimed by Blake for his Illustrations to Job, Dante, and the rest. None such is claimed in the Catalogue of his Exhibition for its most important item, the 'Pilgrimage.' On the contrary, he here analysed Chaucer's intention in his characters, with a sane and penetrating insight which few commentators have approached. 'As Newton numbered the stars, and as Linnæus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men. Chaucer's characters live age after age. Every age is a Canterbury Pilgrimage; we all pass on, each sustaining one or other of these characters.' Under the next heading occur also a few words to which we request attention. Blake is speaking of the visions described by the ancient Prophets. He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light, than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all. painter of this work asserts that all his imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more minutely organised than anything seen by his mortal eye.' Soon after, in some curious notes on a design of the 'Last Judgment,' Blake remarks:

The

'I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation,

and