Alexander Gilchrist

“ To those who look on the flaming inner soul of invention as being of far more importance than the grosser integuments which harbour and defend it, giving it visibility and motion to the eye, Blake will stand on one of the highest summits of excellence and fame. To those who, having less imagination and feeling, are only able to comprehend thought when it is fully and perfectly elaborated in outward expression, he must ever seem obscure, and comparatively unlovely. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the true ideal is that which unites in equal strength the forming and all-energising imagination, and the solid body of external truth by which it is to manifest itself to the eye and mind. There are moments when the sincere devotee of Blake is disposed to claim for him a place as great as that occupied by Michael Angelo; when, carried away by the ravishment of his fiery wheels, the thought is lost beyond the confines of sense, and he seems "in the spirit to speak mysteries." ”

“ Add the daring tints—the sombre greens, the purples, clouded with fluent ultramarine, the red bands of fire seen between dark tree stems, the amber seas of air, or 'that green light which lingers in the West'—and you are so far imposed upon that you do not dream of questioning the legality of the magic which, by its very intensification of mutual and interchangeable errors, produces on the mind the same sensation wrought on it when beholding the splendid shows of the landscape itself. ”

“ He not only imagined, but said that he actually saw angels nestling in a tree, and walking among the haymakers in a field.
In these country rambles, we have one of the germs of his peculiar character and genius. Human powers and opportunities act and re-act on each other. The fledgling bird has, enfolded in its bosom, the passion for flight and for song, and realises by foretaste, one might think, as the winds rock its nest, the music of the woods and the rapture of the illimitable air. ”

“ He had imagination, that inner sense which receives impressions of beauty as simply and surely as we smell the sweetness of the rose and woodbine. When a boy he chanced to light on the poetry of Keats, and a plaster-figure maker, seeing him hang with longing eye over a cast of the poet's head which lay in his shop, made him a present of it, and he bore it home in triumph. At this time Keats was known to the public only by the ridicule of a critique.
Those who were intimate with Mr. Finch will find it difficult to name a man more evenly and usefully accomplished. ”

“ The power which the statuary of one of our old cathedrals may acquire over the mind is inconceivable, unless we do as Blake did during this advantageous sojourn in the Abbey, so replenished with the most august memories and images. The verger's voice must cease to echo among the soaring shafts of the nave, the last vibration of the organ must die among the groinings of the roof. An absolute solitude must settle along the marble tombs and into the shadowy recesses. ”

“ The men to whom the painter addresses himself with hope are the wealthy merchant, the successful tradesman, the tasteful lawyer, the physician in good practice. While he pushes himself up to the higher levels, most young men of any invention and skill can keep poverty at arm's length by designing on wood for Punch, or Judy, or the Illustrated News, or the Cornhill Magazine, or the Good Words, or one of that legion of periodicals, weekly and monthly, which bristle with clever woodcuts, and in which, as in an open tilting-yard, young squires of the pencil may win their spurs. ”

“ An eminent friend, a sagacious observer of men, said that he never thought a friendly dinner-party complete unless Finch were at the table: 'It was like forgetting the bread.'
He had read much, and was familiar with the great poets and satirists; knew the philosophy of the mind, and had observed men and manners. Of those departments of knowledge which lay apart, his good sense enabled him to take, at least, the relative dimensions. Knowledge apprehends things in themselves; wisdom sees them in their relations. ”

“ Yet we would venture to ask any competent judge whether an effect in a high degree poetic is not produced by the total sentiment of the design. To our eye they seem to contain a germ of that grandeur and sense of awe and power of landscape which, in some of his works, John Linnell has carried out so finely, where dawn-lights dream over tranquil folds, or evening slowly leaves the valley flock to the peace of night. ”

“ The eye is irresistibly drawn below to the bottom of the page; and what a rich and rare sense of visual joy comes as we see that serpent 'dragon of the prime,' coming carelessly from nowhere, and going, by shining cloud and crescent and sparkling star, into the emptiness of night, his tail curled, against all nature, into a writing-master's flourish, his sole apparent object being to oblige three merry fairies with a morning ride! ”

“ It is enough to fire the imagination of the greatest historical painter. And yet the manner is so dry, so common, even so uninteresting, and so unlikely to find its way to 'every drawing room-table,' that a man of accomplishments and appreciative powers, but without the 'vision and the faculty divine,' would be sorely tempted to 'convey' the thinking to his own canvas, and array it in forms more attractive to the taste, without being haunted by the fear of his theft being speedily recognised. ”

“ The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among:
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor.
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
NIGHT.
SPRING.
⁠Sound the flute! ”

“ It is to the thoughtful, self-denying kindness of the venerable John Linnell that we owe the production of the Illustration of the Book of Job. Will it be believed that Blake was nearly seventy years old when this marvellous series of designs was commenced? Before being permitted to handle its solemn pages, every spectator ought to be forewarned and instructed that these designs are the latest products of a hand growing stiff with age, and verging on immortality; and should approach them with something of the reverence with which the young ought to 'rise up before the grey hairs. ”

“ And so we have these three grand, but uncouth, blocks printed before us—in one of which the shepherd is eloquent among the ewes and sucking lambs—another where a traveller walks solemnly on among the hills, alone—while in a third 'the young moon with the old moon in her arms,' rises over fallen ranks of wheat. Thought cannot fathom the secret of their power, and yet the power is there. ”

“ Each design has a border, which is a sort of outlined commentary, in harmony with the subject, and often allusive to it. It opens with a family picture of the patriarch, his wife, and children, gathered under a vast tree—the parents sitting, the sons and daughters kneeling in worship; the 'homestead' is seen beyond close-packed flocks of sheep. Some rams of the flock and lambs of the fold lie in the foreground, while the great sun sets and the crescent moon rises over heights stormy and barren. ”

“ Rode o'er the deep of heaven. Beside our springs
Sit down, and in our mossy valleys; on
Some bank beside a river clear, throw all
Thy draperies off, and rush into the stream!
Our valleys love the Summer in his pride.
Qur bards are famed who strike the silver wire;
Our youths are bolder than the southern swains;
Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance;
We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy,
Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven.
Nor laurel-wreaths against the sultry heat.
BLIND-MAN'S BUFF. ”

“ You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.'
And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight;
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black.
And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind ”

“ There are times when men not particularly imaginative, looking on the bloom of girlhood, and softened by the music of youthful voices, come very near to the illusion by which the imagination raises "a mortal to the skies," or draws "an angel down." Blake, under the enchantment of boyhood and beauty, only took the short remaining stride, and fancy became sufficiently veracious fact. ”

“ The question as to whether the highest qualities of colour are compatible with the highest qualities of form, seems to us to be not so much a matter of abstract possibility as of actual and personal practice. Tintoretto proposed to unite the 'terrible manner' and grand drawing of Michael Angelo to the colour of Titian. There seems no reason in the nature of these two elements why they should not be united in the highest perfection; whether any genius will arise who will succeed in doing this remains to be seen. Colour is to drawing what music is to rhythmic words. ”

“ So there are premonitory stirrings, as sweet and inexpressible, in the breast of the heaven-made child of genius. They are its surest sign. Talent grows insensibly, steadily and discreetly. Genius usually has, in early years, a joyous restlessness, a keen, insatiable relish of life ”

“ Form, colour, light and shade, and composition, are the dictionary, the syntax, and the prosody of painting. The thought, the central idea of the picture, corresponds to its realisation, as thinking in words does to grammar. If dictionaries are of no use, and grammar has no relation to thought, then the details of the human or any other form have no relation to painting. Indeed, to deny this is to create a ridiculous paradox, which one may readily illustrate from the works of Blake himself. ”

“ There must be no sounds but those faint, ceaseless, unearthly whispers of which every large cathedral is full—sighs, as it were, of the weary centuries, more stilly and enchaining than utter silence. Some definite object must be before us to hold the mind above the airy fancies of such a loneliness ”

“ And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.
And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work;
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
THE LITTLE BOY LOST.
Father, father, where are you going? ”

“ It is usually adapted to its own position and lighting—a most important fact in monumental sculpture. There is a fine passage in Rogers's Italy describing the monument by Michael Angelo, where a warrior sits musing in gigantic repose under the shadow of his helmet, which casts so deep a gloom over the upper part of his face that, to the imagination of the beholder, the soul looks out of the frowning shade, and 'like a basilisk, it fascinates and is intolerable.' A cast of the same statue may be seen at the Crystal Palace, but not with the same circumstantial advantages. ”

“ No two red bricks are alike. Some deepen into rich and mottled purples, others kindle into ruddy orange, or subside into greys of the loveliest gradation. These accidental combinations of time-stain and emerald moss-growth with the cloudy hues of the irregular, brick wall, are sufficient of themselves to satisfy an eye open to perceive and understand them. ”

“ In painting we may observe all manner of pleasant sophistries, which it is a fine holiday amusement to disentangle—arising from these subtle and indefinable relations of the pleasures of colour to the pleasures of form. How often we receive—especially among the smaller and more sketchy examples of landscape art, the most bewitching impressions from this sophistical play of the elements into each other. ”

“ For he hears the lambs' innocent call,
And he hears the ewes' tender reply;
He is watchful while they are in peace,
For they know that their shepherd is nigh.
THE ECHOING GREEN.
The sun does arise
And make happy the skies ”

“ Before we can come to a true initiation into, and an abiding enjoyment of, the domains of representative art, we must have a keen, clear, settled, and contented view of its limitations. Far less of the fruitlessness of discontent enters into poetry and literature than into the subject of painting and sculpture. ”

“ They forget that life is short; health, variable; opportunity, mutable; means, precarious; memory, feeble; days, dark; "models," impracticable; pigments, dull; and media, disappointing.
Let us implore the visitor of gallery and studio to reflect for a while on these inexorable limitations and distinctions, and to endeavour rather to extract pleasure out of what is absolutely there, than to repine over the lack of sufficiencies which, probably, if demanded, would be found as incompatible with the subject treated as to paint the creaking of a gibbet, or the shriek of a steam-whistle. ”

“ By a sheer breadth of black, sharply contrasted with the white page, there is, by some inexplicable magic, conveyed the impression of a space in the upper skies, where—coming we know and care not whence, and hasting we know not whither—is a wild swan, bridled and mounted by an elf, into whose history and significance we shall never trouble ourselves to inquire. ”

“ The Father of Heaven and His shrinking hosts watch how Lucifer, in his wrath, gathers in his hand the bottles of heaven into one pliant orifice, from which he sprinkles plagues and pains on the head of Job. ”

“ The faces, though not often realising much delicacy of modelling, have far more expression than in the Greek statues. There is a mingling of ascetic severity, with contemplative repose which transfuses itself into the beholder's mind, and gains upon him stealthily but surely, till he 'forgets himself to marble.' These monuments cannot be separated from the piles of wonderful architecture to which they belong. The niche in which a figure of bishop or king is placed is a portion of a great whole. ”

“ The poor parsons with wind like a blown bladder swell.
But if at the Church they would give us some Ale,
And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,
We'd sing and we'd pray all the livelong day,
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray.
Then the Parson might preach, and drink, and sing,
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring,
And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at Church,
Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch. ”

“ Folly is an endless maze;
Tangled roots perplex her ways;
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
And feel—they know not what save care;
And wish to lead others, when they should be led. ”

“ Those who wish to see what may be said for the scope and design of the series of Blake's illustrated mysteries may consult Mr. Swinburne's inquiries into, and eloquent comments on, them. For our own part, their chief value seems to us to consist in fragments of astonishing pictorial invention which they contain, hints and indications of which are given in facsimile in these profusely illustrated volumes. There can be no question that the first impression produced by them is, that they are the production of a madman of superb genius ”

“ Blake's reverence for 'a firm and determinate outline' misled him chiefly where his works are intended to be elaborately shaded. The importance of right outline to all noble drawing cannot be over-estimated. It must never be forgotten, however, that outline only represents the surface of objects in their extreme confines right and left, above and below, nor that the eye recognises the intermediate spaces with all their projection and depression as clearly as it sees the limit which is called outline. ”