BOOKS.
BLAKE AND GRAY.*
THIS is a strange, topsy-turvy book in which the poet of supreme accomplishment is illustrated by one of the Bolsheviks of the figurative arts—a mystical, wayward Cockney genius who, though he had moments of inspiration, was one of those unfortunate people of whom the critics can too easily and too truly say that " he cracked a. weak voice to too lofty a tune "— or perhaps, to put it more fairly, cracked a fine voice, out of which a great deal of noble service might have been got, by his • Maim* Biaaes Design* for Groff.8 Pesos. Reproduced full-Sirs In Mono- chrome or Colour from the Unique Copy Belonging to Ills Grace the Duke of liamgailton,i4with ia o an bedIntrod i uctien H. J. 0. Orierson. louden ; Humphrey itut
Uncouth and crazy screamings in his figurative orgies. I speak, of course, of Blake the painter and the prophet, not of Blake the lyrist. There he was, of course, an inspired artist, always full of noble invention and often perfect in expression.
The last thing any sane person would have done would have been to ask Blake to interpret Gray's fastidious muse. I use the word interpretation advisedly, for that is the illustrator's only excuse. All the same, I am by no means prepared to say that a mistake was made in reproducing these weird drawings, or that they are not without considerable value and interest. Nothing would be easier for the superfine and humorous critic than to turn these magnificent pages of elephant folio with a smile or a sneer ; to point out how atrociously this or that figure is drawn, and to note how idiotic is the pseudo-mysticism and how childish the symbolism, and generally to " guy " the whole series as pieces of inflated nonsense, the scrawlings and howlings of a demented infant from whom paper and ink should have been locked up.
Yet in truth to write in this way would not only be useless and conventional ; it would show that the critic had no true insight. With all Blake's palpable faults and follies— afflictions and • fanatieisms as the eighteenth century people would have said—he was a man of genius, even as a draughtsman. The intentions behind his drawings arrest us even when they are at their maddest and worst. As one looks and wonders, one thinks of Pope's lines to Calypso :- "Strange graces still and stranger flights she had, Was just not ugly and was just not nevi. Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create As when she touched the verge of all we hate."
Who will deny that Blake had strange flights and strange graces, or that he was just not ugly and just not mad Y All the same, one -cannot help admiring him, and often admiring him at the moment when his art seems most impossible and most absurd. Whether he was writing poetry or whether he was drawing, one is obliged to acknowledge that hete was no common man. He had, like Carlyle's Indian god, " the fire in his belly." One could devote a page to making fun of the amazing illustrations to the "Ode to Eton." One sees Eton boys of eight feet high and thin in proportion trundling the hoop or dashing about after balls or butterflies. Yet all the time one feels that there is something wonderful in these preposterous shapes.
So, too, in the " Ode to a Favourite Cat." The cat is vilely drawn, and the designs are ludicrous without being funny. And then every now and again there is somewhere and somehow a touch of the beautiful or even the magnificent. For example, take the fish. " The genii of the stream," when they appear as fish, and not as amorphous young ladies, are fascinating—as, indeed, is also part of the female figure in the last illustration, which apparently represents an address to the fair, warned.by the poet " to be with caution bold." Again, the utterly impossible illustrations to " A Long Story " are redeemed by the two female figures with their feathers and their fans. We see them engaged in their abortive search for the poet and when they
" Rummage his mother, pinch his aunt, And upstairs in a whirlwind rattle. Each hole and cupboard they explore, Each creek and cranny of his chamber, Run hurry-skurry round the floor, And o'er the bed and tester clamber."
The picture of the poet, arraigned before the jury of matrons with the lady of the manor as judge, has also got a distinct touch of fancy and humour.
It 'would be useless to say much more about the illustra- tions in the volume. I could only repeat my criticism. To judge them as a whole, they are pictorial nightmares. Though useless as pictures and illustrations, they have not got the weird illusiveness of Blake's later mystic art. In fact, they have all his faults and none of his virtues. Yet, as I have said, every now and then a wonderful flower peeps through the dust and ashes of this figurative midden. Perhaps the most weird things in the book are the illustrations appended to the "Ode to Music, performed in the Senate House at Cambridge, July 1st, 1769, at the Installation of His Grave the Duke of Grafton, Chancellor of the University." What a wild conglomeration of strange events and strange people is here presented : Gray, the Duke of Grafton, Blake, and hovering over them the sinister and mys- terious figure of Junius. Remember that Junius's greatest achievement in the literature of invective and deadly political irony was occasioned by this very same ode to the Duke of Grafton. It was of this ode he was thinking when he wrote, so unfairly if you will, but none -the less so splendidly. He told Grafton that some day all his glories and successes would be forgotten :- " The learned dullness of declamation will be silent ' • and even the venal Muse, though happiest in fiction, will forget your virtues."
It is a poor, frigid ode. Gray wrote it, not, of course, for hire, but because he was sincerely in favour of Grafton. As illustrated by Blake it becomes comic beyond words. And yet one cannot exactly laugh because of the sense of the Terribilith which haunts even Blake's worst work. You can no more laugh at it than you can honestly laugh at the grimaces of the inmates of an asylum. Madmen are only really funny to their fellows.
I must not leave this amazing book without noting two things. The first is to make it clear to my readers that. I refuse utterly to condemn the publication of the book because of Blake's faults and absurdities. Blake was .a great man and we, the public, have a right to know his whole record. But that record could not be made complete unless these drawings had been reproduced. Only one copy existed in the world before these plates were made, and that was not enough. My other point is to commend most heartily the able and attractive introduction by Professor Grierson. It is full of suggestive things in regard to Blake's position both as a man of letters and as a painter. It dies not, however, easily lend itself to quotation, and therefore all I shall do is to put up a signpost and advise those who can to study the Introduction for themselves. It is interesting to know that " John Murray ". would have published the illustrations if they had gone to press at the period in which
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