The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864

We have a sense of incongruity in seeing this defiant, but sincere pencil employed by publishers to illustrate the turgid sorrow of Young's "Night Thoughts." The work was to have been issued in parts, but got no farther than the first. (It would have been no great calamity, if the poem itself had come to the same premature end!) The sonorous mourner could hardly have recognized himself in the impersonations in which he was presented, nor his progeny in the concrete objects to which they were reduced. The well-known couplet,

"'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hoursAnd ask them what report they've borne to heaven,"

is represented by hours "drawn as aërial and shadowy beings," some of whom are bringing their scrolls to the inquirer, and others are carrying their records to heaven.

"Oft burst my song beyond the bounds of life"

has a lovely figure, holding a lyre, and springing into the air, but confined by a chain to the earth. Death puts off his skeleton, and appears as a solemn, draped figure; but in many cases the clerical poet is "taken at his word," with a literalness more startling than dignified.

Introduced by Flaxman to Hayley, friend and biographer of Cowper, favorably known to his contemporaries, though now wellnigh forgotten, Blake was invited to Felpham, and began there a new life. It is pleasant to look back upon this period. Hayley, the kindly, generous, vain, imprudent, impulsive country squire, not at all excepting himself in his love for mankind, pouring forth sonnets on the slightest provocation,—indeed, so given over to the vice of verse, that

"he scarce could opeHis mouth but out there flew a trope,"—

floating with the utmost self-complacence down the smooth current of his time; and Blake, sensitive, unique, protestant, impracticable, aggressive: it was a rare freak of Fate that brought about such companionship; yet so true courtesy was there that for four years they lived and wrought harmoniously together,—Hayley pouring out his harmless wish-wash, and Blake touching it with his fiery gleam. Their joint efforts were hardly more pecuniarily productive than Blake's single-handed struggles; but his life there had other and better fruits. In the little cottage overlooking the sea, fanned by the pure breeze, and smiled upon by sunshine of the hills, he tasted rare spiritual joy. Throwing off mortal incumbrance,—never, indeed, an overweight to him,—he revelled in his clairvoyance. The lights that shimmered across the sea shone from other worlds. The purple of the gathering darkness was the curtain of God's tabernacle. Gray shadows of the gloaming assumed mortal shapes, and he talked with Moses and the prophets, and the old heroes of song. The Ladder of Heaven was firmly fixed by his garden-gate, and the angels ascended and descended. A letter written to Flaxman, soon after his arrival at Felpham, is so characteristic that we cannot refrain from transcribing it:—

"DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,—We are safe arrived at our cottage, which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It is a perfect model for cottages, and, I think, for palaces of magnificence,—only enlarging, not altering, its proportions, and adding ornaments, and not principles. Nothing can be more grand than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple, without intricacy, it seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to the wants of man. No other formed house can ever please me so well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be improved, either in beauty or use.

"Mr. Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have begun to work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapors; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace.

"Our journey was very pleasant; and though we had a great deal of luggage, no grumbling. All was cheerfulness and good-humor on the road, and yet we could not arrive at our cottage before half-past eleven at night, owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage from one chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises, and as many different drivers. We set out between six and seven in the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy boxes and portfolios full of prints.

"And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of Eternity, before my mortal life, and those works are the delight and study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to Ins Divine will, for our good.

"You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel,—my friend and companion from Eternity. In the Divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days, before this earth appeared in its vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can never be separated, though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each other.

"Farewell, my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold. And believe me forever to remain your grateful and affectionate

"WILLIAM BLAKE."

Other associations than spiritual ones mingle with the Felpham sojourn. A drunken soldier one day broke into his garden, and, being great of stature, despised the fewer inches of the owner. But between spirits of earth and spirits of the skies there is but one issue to the conflict, and Blake "laid hold of the intrusive blackguard, and turned him out neck and crop, in a kind of inspired frenzy." The astonished ruffian made good his retreat, but in revenge reported sundry words that exasperation had struck from his conqueror. The result was a trial for high treason at the next Quarter Sessions. Friends gathered about him, testifying to his previous character; nor was Blake himself at all dismayed. When the soldiers trumped up their false charges in court, he did not scruple to cry out, "False!" with characteristic and convincing vehemence. Had this trial occurred at the present day, it would hardly be necessary to say that he was triumphantly acquitted. But fifty years ago such a matter wore a graver aspect. In his early life he had been an advocate of the French Revolution, an associate of Price, Priestley, Godwin, and Tom Paine, a wearer of white cockade and bonnet rouge. He had even been instrumental in saving Tom Paine's life, by hurrying him to France, when the Government was on his track; but all this was happily unknown to the Chichester lawyers, and Blake, more fortunate than some of his contemporaries, escaped the gallows.

The disturbance caused by this untoward incident, the repeated failures of literary attempts, the completion of Cowper's Life, which had been the main object of his coming, joined, doubtless, to a surfeit of Hayley, induced a return to London. He feared, too, that his imaginative faculty was failing. "The visions were angry with me at Felpham," he used afterwards to say. We regret to see, also, that he seems not always to have been in the kindest of moods towards his patron. Indeed, it was a weakness of his to fall out occasionally with his best friends; but when a man is waited upon by angels and ministers of grace, it is not surprising that he should sometimes be impatient with mere mortals. Nor is it difficult to imagine that the bland and trivial Hayley, perpetually kind, patronizing, and obvious, should, without any definite provocation, become presently insufferable to such a man as Blake.

Returned to London, he resumed the production of his oracular works,—"prophetic books," he called them. These he illustrated with his own peculiar and beautiful designs, "all sanded over with a sort of golden mist." Among much that is incoherent and incomprehensible may be found passages of great force, tenderness, and beauty. The concluding verses of the Preface to "Milton" we quote, as shadowing forth his great moral purpose, and as revealing also the luminous heart of the cloud that so often turns to us only its gray and obscure exterior:—

"And did those feet in ancient time    Walk upon England's mountain green?And was the holy Lamb of God    On England's pleasant pastures seen?"And did the countenance Divine    Shine forth upon our clouded hills?And was Jerusalem builded here    Among these dark, Satanic hills?"Bring me my bow of burning gold!    Bring me my arrows of desire!Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!    Bring me my chariot of fire!"I will not cease from mental fight,    Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,Till we have built Jerusalem    In England's green and pleasant land."

The same lofty aim is elsewhere expressed in the line,—

"I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord!"

Our rapidly diminishing space warns us to be brief, and we can only glance at a few of the remaining incidents of this outwardly calm, yet inwardly eventful life. In an evil hour—though to it we owe the "Illustrations to Blair's Grave"—he fell into the hands of Cromek, the shrewd Yorkshire publisher, and was tenderly entreated, as a dove in the talons of a kite. The famous letter of Cromek to Blake is one of the finest examples on record of long-headed worldliness bearing down upon wrong-headed genius. Though clutching the palm in this case, and in some others, it is satisfactory to know that Cromek's clever turns led to no other end than poverty; and nothing worse than poverty had Blake, with all his simplicity, to encounter. But Blake, in his poverty, had meat to eat which the wily publisher knew not of.

In the wake of this failure followed another. Blake had been engaged to make twenty drawings to illustrate Ambrose Philips's "Virgil's Pastorals" for schoolboys. The publishers saw them, and stood aghast, declaring he must do no more. The engravers received them with derision, and pronounced sentence, "This will never do." Encouraged, however, by the favorable opinion of a few artists who saw them, the publishers admitted, with an apology, the seventeen which had already been executed, and gave the remaining three into more docile hands. Of the two hundred and thirty cuts, the namby-pambyism, which was thought to be the only thing adapted to the capacity of children, has sunk to the level of its worthlessness, and the book now is valued only for Blake's small contribution.

Of an entirely different nature were the "Inventions from the Book of Job," which are pronounced the most remarkable series of etchings on a Scriptural theme that have been produced since the days of Rembrandt and Albrecht Dürer. Of these drawings we have copies in the second volume of the "Life," from which one can gather something of their grandeur, their bold originality, their inexhaustible and often terrible power. His representations of God the Father will hardly accord with modern taste, which generally eschews all attempt to embody the mind's conceptions of the Supreme Being; but Blake was far more closely allied to the ancient than to the modern world. His portraiture and poetry often remind us of the childlike familiarity—not rude in him, but utterly reverent—which was frequently, and sometimes offensively, displayed in the old miracle and moral plays.

These drawings, during the latter part of his life, secured him from actual want. A generous friend, Mr. Linnell, himself a struggling young artist, gave him a commission, and paid him a small weekly stipend: it was sufficient to keep the wolf from the door, and that was enough: so the wolf was kept away, his lintel was uncrossed 'gainst angels. It was little to this piper that the public had no ear for his piping,—to this painter, that there was no eye for his pictures.

"His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

He had but to withdraw to his inner chamber, and all honor and recognition awaited him. The pangs of poverty or coldness he never experienced, for his life was on a higher plane:—

"I am in God's presence night and day,He never turns his face away."

When a little girl of extraordinary beauty was brought to him, his kindest wish, as he stood stroking her long ringlets, was, "May God make this world to you, my child, as beautiful as it has been to me!" His own testimony declares,—

"The angel who presided at my birthSaid,—'Little creature, formed of joy and mirth,Go, love without the help of anything on earth!'"

But much help from above came to him. The living lines that sprung beneath his pencil were but reminiscences of his spiritual home. Immortal visitants, unseen by common eyes, hung enraptured over his sketches, lent a loving ear to his songs, and left with him their legacy to Earth. There was no looking back mournfully on the past, nor forward impatiently to the future, but a rapturous, radiant, eternal now. Every morning came heavy-freighted with its own delights; every evening brought its own exceeding great reward.

So, refusing to the last to work in traces,—flying out against Reynolds, the bland and popular President of the Royal Academy, yet acknowledging with enthusiasm what he deemed to be excellence,—loving Fuseli with a steadfast love through all neglect, and hurling his indignation at a public that refused to see his worth,—flouting at Bacon, the great philosopher, and fighting for Barry, the restorer of the antique, he resolutely pursued his appointed way unmoved. But the day was fast drawing on into darkness. The firm will never quailed, but the sturdy feet faltered. Yet, as the sun went down, soft lights overspread the heavens. Young men came to him with fresh hearts, and drew out all the freshness of his own. Little children learned to watch for his footsteps over the Hampstead hills, and sat on his knee, sunning him with their caresses. Men who towered above their time, reverencing the god within, and bowing not down to the dæmon à la mode, gathered around him, listened to his words, and did obeisance to his genius. They never teased him with unsympathetic questioning, or enraged him with blunt contradiction. They received his visions simply, and discussed them rationally, deeming them worthy of study rather than of ridicule or vulgar incredulity. To their requests the spirits were docile. Sitting by his side at midnight, they watched while he summoned from unknown realms long-vanished shades. William Wallace arose from his "gory bed," Edward I. turned back from the lilies of France, and, forgetting their ancient hate, stood before him with placid dignity. The man who built the Pyramids lifted his ungainly features from the ingulfing centuries; souls of blood—thirsty men, duly forced into the shape of fleas, lent their hideousness to his night; and the Evil One himself did not disdain to sit for his portrait to this undismayed magician. That these are actual portraits of concrete object? is not to be affirmed. That they are portraits of what Blake saw is as little to be denied. We are assured that his whole manner was that of a man copying, and not inventing, and the simplicity and sincerity of his life forbid any thought of intentional deceit. No criticism affected him. Nothing could shake his faith. "It must be right: I saw it so," was the beginning and end of his defence. The testimony of these friends of his is that he was of all artists most spiritual, devoted, and single-minded. One of them says, if asked to point out among the intellectual a happy man, he should at once think of Blake. One, a young artist, finding his invention flag for a whole fortnight, had recourse to Blake.

"It is just so with us," he exclaimed, turning to his wife, "is it not, for weeks together, when the visions forsake us? What do we do then, Kate?"

"We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake."

To these choice spirits, these enthusiastic and confiding friends, his house was the House of the Interpreter. The little back-room, kitchen, bedroom, studio, and parlor in one, plain and neat, had for them a kind of enchantment. That royal presence lighted up the "hole" into a palace. The very walls widened with the greatness of his soul. The windows that opened on the muddy Thames seemed to overlook the river of the water of life. Among the scant furnishings, his high thoughts, set in noble words, gleamed like apples of gold in pictures of silver. Over the gulf that yawns between two worlds he flung a glorious arch, and walked tranquilly back and forth. Heaven was as much a matter-of-fact to him as earth. Of sacred things he spoke with a familiarity which, to those who did not understand him, seemed either madness or blasphemy; but his friends never misunderstood. With one exception, none who knew him personally ever thought of calling his sanity in question. To them he was a sweet, gentle, lovable man. They felt the truth of his life. They saw that

"Only that fine madness still he did retainWhich rightly should possess a poet's brain."

Imagination was to him the great reality. The external, that which makes the chief consciousness of most men, was to him only staging, an incumbrance, and uncouth, but to be endured and made the most of. The world of the imagination was the true world. Imagination bodied forth the forms of things unknown in a deeper sense, perhaps, than the great dramatist meant. His poet's pen, his painter's pencil turned them to shapes, and gave to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. Nay, he denied that they were nothings. He rather asserted the actual existence of his visions,—an existence as real, though not of the same nature, as those of the bed or the table. Imagination was a kind of sixth sense, and its objects were as real as the objects of the other senses. This sense he believed to exist, though latent, in every one, and to be susceptible of development by cultivation. This is surely a very different thing from madness. Neither is it the low superstition of ghosts. He recounted no miracle, nothing supernatural. It was only that by strenuous effort and untiring devotion he had penetrated beyond the rank and file—but not beyond the possibilities of the rank and file—into the unseen world. Undoubtedly this power finally assumed undue proportions. In his isolation it led him on too unresistingly. His generation knew him not. It neglected where it should have trained, and stared where it should have studied. He was not wily enough to conceal or gloss over his views. Often silent with congenial companions, he would thrust in with boisterous assertion in the company of captious opponents. Set upon by the unfriendly and the conventional, he wilfully hurled out his wild utterances, exaggerating everything, scorning all explanation or modification, goading peculiarities into reckless extravagance, on purpose to puzzle and startle, and so avenging himself by playing off upon those who attempted to play off upon him. To the gentle, the reverent, the receptive, the simple, he, too, was gentle and reverent.

Nearest and dearest of all, the "beloved Kate" held him in highest honor. The ripples that disturbed the smooth flow of their early life had died away and left an unruffled current. To the childless wife, he was child, husband, and lover. No sphere so lofty, but he could come quickly down to perform the lowliest duties. The empty platter, silently placed on the dinner-table, was the signal for his descent from Parnassus to the money-earning graver. No angel-faces kept him from lighting the morning fire and setting on the breakfast-kettle before his Kitty awoke. Their life became one. Her very spirit passed into his. By day and by night her love surrounded him. In his moments of fierce inspiration, when he would arise from his bed to sketch or write the thoughts that tore his brain, she, too, arose and sat by his side, silent, motionless, soothing him only by the tenderness of her presence. Years and wintry fortunes made havoc of her beauty, but love renewed it day by day for the eyes of her lover, and their hands only met in firmer clasp as they neared the Dark River.

It was reached at last. No violent steep, but a gentle and gracious slope led to the cold waters that had no bitterness for him. Shining already in the glory of the celestial city, his eyes rested upon the dear form that had stood by his side through all these years, and with waning strength he cried, "Stay! Keep as you are! You have been ever an angel to me: I will draw you." And, summoning his forces, he sketched his last portrait of the fond and faithful wife. Then, comforting her with the shortness of their separation, assuring her that he should always be about her to take care of her, he set his face steadfastly towards the Beautiful Gate. So joyful was his passage, so triumphant his march, that the very sight was to them that could behold it as if heaven itself were come down to meet him. Even the sorrowing wife could but listen enraptured to the sweet songs he chanted to his Maker's praise; but, "They are not mine, my beloved!" he tenderly cried; "No! they are not mine!" The strain he heard was of a higher mood; and continually sounding as he went, with melodious noise, in notes on high, he entered in through the gates into the City.

THE FIRST VISIT TO WASHINGTON

One chill morning in the autumn of 1826, in the town of Keene, New Hampshire, lights might have been seen at an unusually early hour in the windows of a yellow one-story-and-a-half house, that stood—and still stands, perhaps—on the corner of the main street and the Swanzey road.

There was living in that house a blind widow, the mother of a large family of children, now mostly scattered; and the occasion of the unseasonable lights was the departure from home of a son yet left to her, upon a long and uncertain adventure.

He was a young man, eighteen years old, just out of college. Graduating at Dartmouth, he had brought away from that institution something better than book-learning,—a deep religious experience, which was to be his support through trials now quickly to come, and through a subsequent prosperity more dangerous to the soul than trials. He had been bred a farmer's boy. He was poor, and had his living to get. And he was now going out into the world, he scarcely knew whither, to see what prizes were to be won. In person he was tall, slender, slightly bent; shy and diffident in his manners; in his appearance a little green and awkward. He had an impediment in his speech also. His name—it is an odd one, but you may perhaps have heard it—was Salmon.

He had been up long before day, making preparations for the journey. His mother was up also, busily assisting him, though blind,—her intelligent hands placing together the linen that was to remind him affectingly of her, when unpacked in a distant city.

A singular hush was upon the little household, though all were so active. The sisters moved about noiselessly by candle-light, their pale cheeks and constrained lips betraying the repressed emotion. The early breakfast was eaten in silence,—anxious eyes looking up now and then at the clock. It was only when the hour for the starting of the stage struck that all seemed suddenly to remember that there were a thousand things to be said; and so the last moments were crowded with last words.

"Your blessing, mother!" said Salmon, (for we shall call the youth by the youth's name,) bending before her with his heart chokingly full.

She rose up from her chair. Her right hand held his; the other was laid lovingly over his neck. Her blind eyes were turned upward prayerfully, and tears streamed from them as she spoke and blessed him. Then a last embrace; and he hurried forth from the house, his checks still wet,—not with his own tears.

The stage took him up. He climbed to the driver's seat. Then again the dull clank of the lumbering coach-wheels was heard,—a heavy sound to the mother's ears. In the dim, still light of the frosty morning he turned and waved back his farewell to her who could not see, took his last look at the faces at the door, and so departed from that home forever. The past was left behind him, with all its dear associations; and before him rose the future, chill, uncertain, yet not without gleams of rosy brightness, like the dawn then breaking upon Monadnock's misty head.