there can be no hesitation in pronouncing it richest in the vein of symbolism. Most of his best works are conceived in an emblematic spirit, and some are characterized by a happy boldness in the direct translation of imagery. "Death's Door," "The Sons of God shouting for Joy," "Death on the Pale Horse," "The River of Life," "The Soul's hovering over the Body," are notable examples. The greatest possible disparity, however, is apparent in the significance and value of his symbols, and, as so often noticed, grotesqueness is called in to supply the want of beauty or force. This may be seen in certain emblems of "The Gates of Paradise," e.g., "What is Man ?" "Water," and "Air;" still more distinctly in the "Night Thoughts;" and unmistakably in "The Song of Los," "The Book of Urizen," "Jerusalem," and throughout the prophetic books with scarcely an exception. All feelings of solemnity or pity are dispelled by laughter at the representation of Death as a bloated, saucer-eyed ruffian in the character of a huntsman cheering on his monstrous dogs to their prey ("Night Thoughts," plate 70); at the squatting stride intended to depict an attitude of terrified surprise in plate 72; at the childish emblem chosen for "thunder" in plate 80, and the idiotic expression of the man it is supposed to alarm. The last plate of The Song of Los," plates 6, 10, and 22 of "The Book of Urizen," and the lower half of plate 33 of "Jerusalem," may be cited as special instances wherein Blake's efforts to be appalling or pathetic have a directly contrary tendency.

Occasionally, as in "Death on the Pale Horse" ("Jerusalem,” plate 35), he produces an impression of real and even terrible power by strictly legitimate means, but too commonly the strong effects that he succeeds in obtaining are only due to the incongruity of the parts which he welds together, and the appeal which inchoate suggestions are apt to make to the spectator's imagination. An artist who secures novelty by such devices as attaching a bird's head or a snake's neck to a man's body, depicting a monster with three heads or limbs without extremities, and acrobats engaged in clambering up or tumbling down space in the embrace of serpents, earns his reputation too cheaply to claim equal honours with one who limits his search for materials to the visible universe and respects the possibilities of human anatomy.

The ratio of fertility to productiveness in Blake will be found curiously small upon taking a general view of his works. It is astonishing what ingenuity he shows, when he has once lighted on a promising idea, in eking it out by minute modifications over a large number of plates. One or two favourites recur again and again. The athlete with wide-stretched legs and retorted arms, whom he borrowed from Michel Angelo, is introduced in "The

66

Marriage of Heaven and Hell," reappears with an additional touch of ungainliness in plate 6 of " America," is modified into the impressive emblem of Resurrection in "The Grave," and is repeated with a little variation in plate 95 of "Jerusalem." The figure of the old man entering the grave in "Death's Door" occurs also in "The Gates of Paradise" and in "America." The figure seated with his knees drawn up to his shoulders and his head buried will be found in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," twice in Urizen," and twice in "Jerusalem." The figure of Orc in plate 8 of "America" is repeated in plate 14 of "Job." The design of "Aged Ignorance" in the "Songs of Experience" recurs in plate 84 of "Jerusalem." The tumbling demons in plate 16 of "Job" are reproduced from plate 5 of "The Song of Los,” and plate 7 of "The Grave." These instances might be multiplied. To enumerate those in which the same details of writhing serpent, bursting flame, drooping tree, curling drapery, &c., are served up ad libitum would exhaust the reader's patience. The mannerisms of composition, type, and gesture already noted are to be met with in all his works.

In his first important work of design, the "Songs of Innocence," Blake's healthy genius seems to have attained its culmination, every succeeding work showing more or less trace of disease. Though its art is certainly not underived, and may even be called composite, the charm of natural truth and pastoral peace which pervades its figure-grouping and landscape framework, harmonizing with the tender feeling and gentle music of the verse. gives it an exceptional place among its author's productions and in the history of art-literature. O si sic omnia! "The Book of Thel," which followed it at a brief interval, exhibits the first symptoms of inequality, and the spasmodic character of his inspiration is thenceforth attested by the alternate strength and weakness, refinement and uncouthness, of successive and contemporary designs. Contrast, for example, the weak drawing and conventional drapery of Thel's figure in the frontispiece with the Peruginesque grace of her representation in plate 3. In the second plate of his next work, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," observe how the pleasing composition in the right-hand corner is spoilt by the atrocious drawing of the youth's left arm, which appears to grow out of his neck; and in plate 14 how the weird symbolism of the lower design is spoilt by the bad execution of the figure that darts from the flames. "The Visions of the Daughters of Albion," which contains at plate 2 perhaps the most exquisite of Blake's minor compositions, a girl plucking a fairy from the heart of a flower, contains on the frontispiece and the concluding plate other figures which rank among his worst in point of drawing and proportion.

In the frontispiece of "Europe" a figure of the Deity, with streaming hair, standing on a flaming disk amid clouds, is conspicuous for its noble conception and execution, although marred by the prosaic literalism with which Blake has rendered the Hebrew image of setting "a compass upon the face of the depth (Proverbs viii. 27). The succeeding design of an assassin lying in wait for a traveller is as conspicuously feeble and ill-drawn. Singular contrasts occur in the symbols selected for Fire and Famine (plates 15 and 16), of which the one depicts with dramatic vividness the rescuing of a family from a burning house by the strength of a powerful arm; the other, with ridiculous unreality, the preparations which a rosy and plump matron is making to roast her dead child for dinner. The Book of Urizen" and "Song of Los" present equally startling contradictions of fine and paltry conception, accurate and incorrect drawing. They will be found, indeed, more or less frequently throughout the prophetic books. The series of illustrations to "Blair's Grave" upon the whole sustains Blake's power as a religious artist at a higher level than any other work, but even here there is striking disparity. The exquisite designs of "The Soul Hovering over the Body (plate 6), of "Death's Door" (plate 11), and of "The Reunion of Soul and Body at the Resurrection" (plate 12), are truly "beyond all praise;" but how poor and smooth is the figure of the descending Christ in plate 2; how still more unworthy of its subject the figure of the Judge in plate 8; how theatrical the pose of "The Strong Wicked Man's Death," and how substantial the representation of his departing spirit! In the designs for the "Night Thoughts" the vigour and beauty of a few, as the frontispiece, plates 4, 24, 27, and 46, are belied by the trite symbolism and theatrical exaggeration of the majority. Witness especially plates 15, 16, 23, 31, 35, and 73, wherein a body bound with thorns and struggling in deep water suffices for an emblem of affliction; a philosopher spanning a baby with his hand serves to image the shortness of life; and a number of flying nymphs, bearing little scrolls to a complacent person seated, represent the hours bringing their report to the conscience.

The "Inventions to the Book of Job," pronounced by Mr. Gilchrist to be "the most remarkable series of etchings on a Scriptural theme which has appeared since the days of Albert Dürer and Rembrandt," and selected for reproduction by Mr. D. G. Rossetti as typical examples of the artist's capacity, exhibit the same contrast of impressive strength and inflated weakness as his other works. In the fifth plate, e.g., who cannot perceive the disparity between the upper and lower halves of the composition, the feebleness of the sentimental old man

* Vol. i. p. 285.

attention has been called, are not to be wondered at when we find that at the outset of his career as a student in Par's school he had no opportunity of drawing from "the life;" that, as a student in the Royal Academy, he disliked the practice. "The life in this condition-i.e., of the living model-appeared to him more like death, and smelling of mortality." (Malkin, p. 20.) As a man "he never painted his pictures from models," says Mr. Gilchrist, and his own words assign the reason. "Models are difficult, enslave one, efface from one's mind a conception or reminiscence which was better;" and again-"Natural objects always did and do weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me." Fuseli's dogma, that "Nature puts one out," was, as Mr. D. G. Rossetti regretfully admits,* adopted and "unreservedly followed" by Blake.

What we have called his theatrical manner of expressing emotional and passionate action is plainly referable to this misleading principle. Upon the basis of a very limited observation of real life, and copious reminiscences of ideal representations of it, he drew and coloured objects as he himself imagined, or remembered that others had imagined them. Many of his portraitures of ordinary humanity have as unlifelike a look as his visionary personages. Witness the gesticulating shepherd in the first of the designs to Phillips' Pastorals, who would pass for a caricature of the sentimental type he was seriously intended to portray. The monumental faces and expressions of the figures in the "Canterbury Pilgrimage," most of whom have closed lips, and many stare fixedly into space, as if consciously sitting for their portraits; the want of concerted movement in the cavalcade, some of the horses walking while others amble and trot; and the unnatural crowding of so large a procession, are sensible drawbacks to its merits in point of drawing and occasional power of characterization. Inferior to it in these respects, the design of Stothard possesses a freshness of every-day life and open-air truth, which justifies its superior popularity. For want of the same

recourse to living models, Blake often fails to convey any deep impression of terror or pity, as inspired by portent or pain. A striking instance occurs in plate 2 of the "Inferno" designs, which represents a devil torturing Ciampolo, by tearing out the sinews of his left arm. For the instinctive movement of the victim's right hand to the tortured spot, which a truthfully realistic painter would have been certain to depict, Blake substitutes an exaggerated propulsion of the fingers and lateral depression of the head, which are not less calculated to excite mirth in the human than in the diabolic spectators. Though he was sedulous as a copyist, and

Gilchrist, vol. i. p. 371.

of the kind." "The Book of Urizen" abounds in absurdities of colour, but they culminate in plate 22, in which, against a cloudy background of red and yellow, a man with bright blue hair is represented hovering above a sea tinted black and blue, from which peers a woman's head with green hair. The pink corona affixed to the head of Urizen in plate 4 of the same work, and the coat of many colours allotted to the leviathan sea-serpent in plate 20 of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," are instances scarcely less bizarre. The tendency, already noted, to blotchiness when the tints are laid on thickly, and to lividness when surfacewashed, prevails in all Blake's hand-coloured works that have come under our observation.

What has been said respecting the difference in point of coherence, and intelligibility between such of his unpublished designs as were made to order and labelled, and those which he put forth as spontaneous inventions, equally applies to his published and engraved works. As the exponent of other men's ideas he may be trusted to keep within. a moderate distance of their meaning. Left to himself he continually drifts away from the theme, until his illustrations seem to derive their title a non illustrando, and cease to have any visible connection with the text. This is admitted to be true in certain cases by Mr. Gilchrist (i. pp. 115, 134, 195), by Mr. Swinburne (p. 239), and by Mr. William Rossetti (p. 97), but whether admitted or not can scarcely be disputable.

*

A few words will conclude all that need be said touching Blake's chief shortcomings, and the place which he appears to occupy in the history of English art. That his invention sometimes soared may be frankly conceded to his worshippers, without ignoring that it often grovelled. The examples to which Mr. Scott points as typical manifestations of his power, we should be disposed to cite as exceptional flashes of it. That Blake always aimed high is undeniable, but his frequent failure to attain the mark is thereby rendered the more conspicuous. His treatment of certain subjects which have been consecrated by the touch of incomparable masters -pretentious and grandiose where theirs is reverent and grandproduces upon some minds at all events, for we can answer for others beside our own, an effect of sheer disgust. At other times he simply fails to impress, but the failure to do so, considering the usual dignity of his themes, sufficiently condemns his ill-judged ambition. He reaches his highest level, perhaps, in decorative art; his marginal illustrations especially showing a delicacy of fancy and grace of form which, owing to the conditions of scale, are less marred than his larger designs by incorrectness of execution. The blunders in the very grammar of his art, to which

* Introductory Remarks to Catalogue of Burlington Club Exhibition.