BOOKS.

WILLIAM BLAKE.* Ix is seldom, indeed, that a book appears from which we derive so vivid an impression of a completely unique character and unique life as this biography of William Blake. This is not merely due to the authorship and editing of the book, though that is done with singular thoroughness, and does not appear to have suffered materially even by the death of the biographer, Mr. Gilchrist, so earnestly have his friends, Mr. D. G. Rossetti and Mr. W. M. Rossetti, thrown themselves into the task of collecting the materials of the second volume, and completing the almost completed first. It is also partly due to the lavish illustrations of Blake's genius by the engravings and vignettes which are scattered richly though its pages, and partly to the fact that Blake's singular mind was projected, as we may call it, on two quite distinct planes of art,—that of poetry as well as that of painting,—though it was essentially the same in both.

William Blake was much more than an unknown painter of great though mystical genius. His is an unknown character of a perfectly unique oast, which contrived to affect every- thing he touched with something of its own singular power. Many persons who will not know even his name at all may re- member the quaint but forcible plates in a didactic little chil- dren's novel in three small volumes, called "Elements of Morality," which was translated from the German somewhere about 1790 for the benefit of our fathers' and mothers' childhood, and which has amused the nurseries of the next two generations • Life of William Blake, Picker Isola., with Selections from his Poems and other Writings. By the late Alexander Gilchrist. Illustrated from Blake's own Works In lac simile by W. J. Linton, and in photolithography, with a few of Blake's original plates. 2 vols. London : Macmilhui.

with the formal stiff-jointed morality which that curious tale (less adapted for children than for stunted adults in knee-breeches) inculcated on its young readers. Thirty years ago it was a book rare but precious to discerning children who could enjoy the spectacle of a rapidly disappearing world of didactic thought, and one of its greatest attractions was the singular force of those • grotesque plates, not designed, but engraved by William Blake. There was one little engraving of a wicked brother saying, "I hate you I" to the good brother. His hair almost stands on end with fury, and the tremendous impression of fraternal hatred in that stiff old engraving comes back on us now with full force through a vista of thirty years. Another, too, we can recall, where a form, crouching with misery, is seated in some dank room, and confessing to a didactic visitor that "Prodigality has made me poor ; " and in a third the stars of a brilliant night are looking down with wonderful vividness on the German pastor's improving harangues. Few children who read that old-fashioned' novellette could fail to attach peculiar sensations to those prim little engravings. The book shows, at least, how curiously Blake managed to lend some of his power even to the merest trifles not of his own design. Even those who know thoroughly his grand "inventions" to the Book of Job would recognize some of the influence of hie strange genius, even in those didactic little childish plates.

Blake was often thought insane, and not without reasons quite strong enough to have shut up many a man less poor and more enviable in worldly position. But, probably, the truth was simply this, that he was a visionary in the eighteenth century,— an age when there was "no open vision,"—so that both the age was less able to understand him, and he was fretted into greater eccentricity by his age. Being from the first a dreamer of dreams and a man of very obstinate intellect, be was induced to talk as if his dreams were the only truth and the world around him com- paratively a fiction. He was born in London in 1757, the son of a hosier of small means, and never found in either the ideas of his day or his own fortunes anything but a strong stimulus to kick against the pricks. Bis thoughts were soon driven inward into reverie, and he early contracted a profound diffidence in personal intercourse with his fellow-men. In some doggerel verses in a letter to a friend, be once expressed the painful sense he enter- tained of the inadequacy of his own manner to do justice to his character. His manner, he says, was "too passive" and incon- sistent with "my active physiognomy." In other words, we suppose, he had the manner of a suppressed man, together with the actively working features of an excitable man :—

"Oh why was I born with a different face ?

Why was I not born like the rest of my race ? When I look each one starts, when I speak I offend, Then I'm silent, and passive, and lose every friend."

We can see even in the portrait prefixed to this book how instinct was his face with nervous energy, but he was alive, fortunately for his own reason, to the indifference of the world, and so the eighteenth century succeeded in depositing round his eager visionary mind a crust of reserve which made him brood more than ever over his visions and believe in them more passionately. Bis art, his philosophy, if it can be so called, his poetry, his faith, his manners, all express the chained visionary, who would have fretted passionately against the bonds of social humdrum if he had not found a safety-valve for all his visions in Art. "Damn braces, bless relaxes," was one of his farotnite apophthegms, which indicates clearly enough the sense of that painfully tight bracing inflicted by the uncongenial world upon his visionary intellect. If we had to describe Blake's intellect in a single sentence we should say that a mind moulded in the primeval intellectual world which gave rise to the Book of Job, or more nearly, perhaps, of Ezekiel, had been put to sleep for near three thousand years, and then launched into the midst of the meaner London life in Golden Square, Battersea, Oxford Street, and the Strand, of the reign of George III. When Blake wanted to paint Nelson and Pitt, the conception, to him literally the most natural, was to design "the spiritual form of Nelson guiding Leviathan, in whose wreathings are infolded the nations of the earth,"—and "the spiritual form of Pitt guiding Behemoth ; he is that Angel who, pleased to perform the Almighty's orders, rides on the whirlwind directing the storms of war." And in both cases, as we might be sure, Blake's conceptions of the great sea beast Leviathan and the great land beast Behemoth are far more striking than his conception of the "spiritual forms" of those eighteenth-century angels Nelson and Pitt; indeed, be regretted bitterly that the nation was not likely to order from him a monument of each in what he called "fresco," a hundred feet or more in height, like

the great Assyrian monuments that he "had seen in his vision." And Blake's intellectual visions were all of the primeval kind, of grand and free outline, with vistas of great complexity but simple elements, such as opened out everywhere to the seer in the morning of creation. Everywhere there is infinitude in them ; but an intellect unaccustomed to sound its own depths assembles a confusion of symbols from all quarters of creation to spell out its meaning in a sort of half-articulate hierogly- phic. Terror and pity, horror and innocence and primeval joy, strong desire and anguish unsubdued, all speak in differ- ent and mysterious symbols through shrouds of tempestuous darkness or an overwhelming blaze of light. The most strik- ing characteristic of the early and sublime imageryof the East,— such imagery as Ezekiel used in order to shadow forth his divine inspiration,--is, that it does so much more than express meaning,—that it expresses meaning in the vague sense in which music expresses meaning,—so that a very wide fringe Of imagery remains over, which is, as it were, merely an accompani- ment of the meaning, not a part of its essence. So many symbols are heaped together, each of them a sort of separate hiero- glyphic, that one is always in danger of over-interpreting the drift of the aggregate, and as you may miss the melody by attempting to cross-examine the notes, so you may miss the burden by attempting to separate the symbols. This is as true of Blake as if he had lived in the age of hieroglyphic. His brother artists called his house "the house of the Interpreter ;" but it was rather the house of the man who most needed an Interpreter, yet who, perhaps, after all, was better interpreted by feeling than by thought.

The explanation of such hieroglyphic visions we take to be that minds of a special constitution,—one which becomes much less common as the world studies and masters its own thoughts,—are almost unable to separate thoughts from things at all, but incarnate their thoughts in things, almost arbitrarily and capriciously, rather than not at all. This is especially the gift of a great visionary painter like Blake. He has a profound conflict going on in his own mind, as lie takes a country walk ; in- stead of separating his thoughts from the scenery, they pass out of him into the soenery ; the sun throws out a forbidding glare,— the trees stretch their arms to hold him back from his path,— the clouds scowl or smile upon his wishes, even the thistle under his foot looks its malice,—and if he paints the scene as a picture, it is a picture instinct with force of expression and feeling. But if, instead, he blunders into mystical poetry, his awkward use of things to express what words would, in poetry, express better, only looks like childish "make-belief." Imaginative children have been known (secretly) to persuade themselves that nettles were enemies, and thistles powerful enchanters, whose spell was to be broken by the prince of schoolboys. But Blake, grown- up, indulged himself in such notions chiefly because his thoughts, like the old Oriental thoughts, would not flow into words, but entered like spirits into external nature, so that the world seemed to him " possessed"by his own feelings. For instance, when Blake was living uncomfortably near Hayley, at Felpham, in Sussex, he was once going to meet his sister at the coach, and had urgent doubts in his mind whether to remain at Felpbam or return to London. The conflict was taken up in his usual way by the clouds, and trees, and plants of the country through which he passed ; by the sun in heaven, and by the spirits of his deceased father and brothers, and particularly by a vicious-looking thistle, which appears to have suggested to him that it was instinct with malignant purpose :—

" A frowning thistle implores my stay, What, to others a trifle appears

Fills me full of smiles or tears ;

For double the vision my eyes do see, And a double vision is always with me— With my inward eye 'tis an old man gray, With the outward a thistle across my way."

The thistle argues viciously, and has its head beaten off by Blake's foot,—Blake evidently feeling, rather more seriously, what a schoolboy feels in a sort of make-believe way, that in destroy- ing the thistle he is defeating a spiritual enemy. Then he con- fronts the sun in the same way, explains that to the outward eye it is the sun, to the inward eye the evil angel Los.

"In my double sight 'Twas outward a sun—inward, Los in his might."

And he defies the sun or Los, as he had defied the Thistle or" old man grey," and walks home triumphant against the spirits of evil in earth and air. It makes a very rubbishy piece of doggerel ; but the hot thoughts which thus used earth, and air, and sky to paint a mere personal conflict would have made, and often did make, marvellous pictures. His double, and treble, and quad- ruple visions, of which be was so proud, spoiled his poetry, and often confused his pictures ; but, when not too multiplex, gave a singular depth and glow to the latter. It is the painter's greatest art to think through things instead of words, and Bloke did so. In that wonderful description of his picture of the "Last Judgment," Blake gives us a glimpse of the power this " double vision" gave him as an artist :—" I assert for myself," he says, 'that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. ' What !' it will be questioned, when the sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?' Oh! no, no ! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying, 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty.' I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight—I look through it, and not with it." And he painted the sun as he describes it, not ignoring, indeed, the disc of fire, but making light always instinct with spiritual awe. For example, in that wonderful plate of Blake's "Crucifixion," taken from his "Jerusalem," given in this book, Christ is hanging in death and otherwise in the profoundest darkness, except that a nimbus of rays streaming from behind his head, as though "the light of the world" still lingered there, casts a few reflected rays on the closed eyes, and touches here and there the relaxed body, otherwise completely shrouded by the darkness, so that every ray rests like a living thing on the body of the Lord, and the circlet of glory rescues from the night all that lies within the circle of His presence. Never was light more liviug in its language.

Now and then, when the object of Blake's visions was not plural but singular, be succeeded in expressing his vision in singularly striking poetry, but usually his poetry assembled too many realistic symbols to be in any way intelligible. There are touches, however, of verse here and there, which mingle the mys- terious depth of Wordsworth with the grand symbolism of the primeval world. Take, for example, the following :—

THE TIGER.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand on high* Framed thy glorious symmetry ?

In what distant deeps or skies Burned that fire within thine eyes ? On what wings dared he aspire ? What the hand dared seize the fire ?

And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? When thy heart began to beat What dread hand formed thy dread feet ?

What the hammer, what the chain, Knit thy strength and forged thy brain? What the anvil ? What dread grasp Dared thy deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see ?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?"

There are more beautiful things than this in Blake's poems, but few that show so strongly the elemental sort of energy that breathes in the author of the "Inventions to Job," as well as the glimpses of pure beauty, through the parting shadows of divine strength.

But while Blake is singularly great in imparting a kind of tem- porary soul to things,—(for example, one of his most marvellous conceptionsin a small way is his vision of the ghost of a flea, that is, the human countenance of a man so bloodthirsty that he bad been, said Blake, transformed into a flea in order to limit the amount of mischief he could effect by his thirst for blood,—and certainly be seems to need it, his cruel head and retreating forehead look- ing something like a man in unclosed visor, while his opened mouth reveals a double round saw adapted to the most horrible rending),—while Blake, we say, is singularly great in thus im- parting a temporary soul to things, it is very rarely, indeed, that his pictures and poems are instinct with what we call experience. One set of his poems are called "Songs of Experience,"—but they are rather songs of a man revolted by the attempt to ,gain experience and determined not to gain it. So, too, his pictures are full of elemental symbols, and thoughts, and natural emotions,

—but never have the complexity of experience. "Blake is damned good to steal from," said Fuseli ; and so he was. For his pictures were all ZE priori, suggesting new ideas, new lights, new • Mr. Rossetti prints this—" what immortal band or eye." Certainly this is not the version to which we are accustomed, and seems to us unmeaning. Tbe eye migbt discern, but could uotframe the tiger's symmetry. C I

combinations of things, in .infinite-variety of movement aud ex- pression, but only giving the form, the base, the h priori idea on which others could engraft a deeper complexityo f human experience. His human faces are almost all natural types, instead of giving

infinitely blended shades of espression. His idea of a good man was a very simple idea,—an innocent Adam, such as ho paints Job in all his phases of anguish, terror, hope, and trust. His idea of a good woman w as of " an emanation of the man," who, like Mrs. Blake, would give herself up to reflecting the masculine will.

"In eternity," he said, in his usual peremptory way, " woman is the emanation of the man ; she has no will of her own; there is no such thing in eternity as a female will." Blake was always sanguine.

The book is by many degrees the greatest monument of unique though creative genius we have read for many a day, and it is with difficulty we can lay it down. Let those who would understand

Blake, after studying his own letters, poems, and pictures, read the wonderfully graphic and delightful extracts from Mr. Henry Crabl, Robinson's journals of interviews with him. There you see the real picture of the visionary, mounted on the clear field of a shrewd, lucid, and yet genuinely literary intellect, deeply im- pressed with the genius of the artist. One of Mr. Robinson's anecdotes is too characteristic to be lost. When Blake, in his

usual visionary way, had been telling of a spiritual interview with Voltaire, Mr. Robinson asked suddenly what language Voltaire spoke. "To my sensations," said Blake, "it was English. It was like the touch of a musical key : he touched it, probably, French, but to my oar it became English." The visionary, it will be seen, is as acute in dodging a snare as fraud itself.

It is not easy to praise too highly the finish given to the un- finished work of Mr. Gilchrist by Mr. Rossetti's artistic and poetic band. He sums up the peculiar genius of Blake in two or three lines of such truth and beauty that we will close our notice with therm The man, he says, who eau understand and enjoy Blake's pictures will gain from them "some things as he first knew them, not encumbered behind the days of his life ; things too delicate for memory or years since forgotten ; the momentary sense of spring in winter sunshine, the long sunsets long ago, and falling fires on distant hills." That is Blake's essential function, —to recall by painting,—now and -then by poetry,—that lost sense described by Wordsworth which moved Blake, says Mr. Robinson, to "hysterical rapture,"—and well it might, for it was a poetical greeting from his own highest genius as an artist

" But there's a tree, of many, one,

A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone ; The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat ; Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream ?"