Thomas Blake

“ The public would find something infinitely piquant in the thought that its most sentimental ditties were given to it by the horny-handed steerer of a canal barge. He would be greeted as the modern Burns. People would ask him how he thought of his poems, and he would say, "Oo-er!" and they would hail him as delightfully original. In the case of Thomas Blake I saw my earnings going up with a bound. His personality would be a noble advertisement.
He was aboard the Ashlade or Lechton on the Cut, so I was informed by Kit. ”

“ Never once he despaired of his mission, never he doubted of the heavenly origin of his visions, or of his writings. "I may praise them, since I dare not pretend to be other than the secretary, the authors are in Eternity", Blake writes in a letter to Thomas Butts 1802 about the Prophetic books. And though poverty and want are at his door, he never makes concessions in order to see his books printed and earn a little money. With infinite patience and care he continues writing down his weird fancies and illuminating them with his fantastic drawings. ”

“ Flaxman recommended more than one friend to take copies, a Mr. Thomas among them, who, wishing to give the artist a present, made the price ten guineas. For such a sum Blake could hardly do enough, finishing the plates like miniatures. In the last years of his life, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Francis Chantrey, and others, paid as much as twelve and twenty guineas; Blake conscientiously working up the colour and finish, and perhaps over-labouring them, in return; printing off only on one side of the leaf, and expanding the book by help of margin into a handsome quarto. ”

“ Blake said of the flea, that were that lively little fellow the size of an elephant, he was quite sure, from the calculations he had made of his wonderful strength, that he could bound from Dover to Calais in one leap. [7] Whatever may be the public opinion hereafter of Blake's talents, when his enemies are dead, I will not presume to predict; [8] but this I am certain of, that on the score of industry at least, many artists must strike to him. ”

“ Thomas Willys White was not a literary man; but an excellent printer, who had served part of his time in Boston, and no doubt his experience and observation there stimulated his enterprise and were of good service to him in undertaking the Messenger, in which he had higher aims than procuring a monthly job of printing. ”

“ The picture is, notwithstanding appearances, a modern one. But if you can divest yourself of the general prejudice that exists against contemporary talents, you will see a work that would have done honour to any school, at any period." [5]
In 1810, Stothard, to his great surprise, found that Blake had engraved and published a plate of the same size, in some respects bearing a similarity to his own. ”

“ Whenever a new scholar came to our school, I used to confront him at recess with the following words: “My name's Tom Bailey; what's your name?” If the name struck me favorably, I shook hands with the new pupil cordially; but if it didn't, I would turn on my heel, for I was particular on this point. Such names as Higgins, Wiggins, and Spriggins were deadly affronts to my ear; while Langdon, Wallace, Blake, and the like, were passwords to my confidence and esteem. ”

“ He has no other servant, nor nurse, and wants no other. As his eyes rested on the once graceful form, thought of all she had been to him in these years filled the poet-artist's mind. 'Stay!' he cried, 'keep as you are! you have been ever an angel to me: I will draw you!' And a portrait was struck off by a hand which approaching death—few days distant now—had not weakened nor benumbed. This drawing has been described to me by Mr. Tatham, who once possessed it, as 'a phrenzied sketch of some power; highly interesting, but not like.'
Blake still went on designing as of old. ”

“ I too have a picture of my father and the copy of his first love-verses; but they have been mine long. Blake is a real name, I assure you, and a most extraordinary man, if he is still living. He is the Robert [William] Blake whose wild designs accompany a splendid folio edition of the "Night Thoughts," which you may have seen, in one of which he pictures the parting of soul and body by a solid mass of human form floating off, God knows how, from a lumpish mass (fac-simile to itself) left behind on the dying bed. ”

“ On the other hand, it is equally clear that no madness imputed to Blake could equal that which would be involved in the rejection of his work on this ground. The greatness of Blake’s mind is even better established than its frailty, and in considering the work that he has left we must remember that it is by the sublimity of his genius, and not by any mental defect, that he is most clearly distinguished from his fellows. With the publication of the Songs of Experience Blake’s poetic career, so far at least as ordinary readers are concerned, may be said to close. ”

“ He is not taught this; it comes to him as blossoms come to the spring, and is the first mark of his vocation. It was this inward thirst and longing that sent out the boy Blake into the fields and lanes, and among the surburban hills. The force of boyish imagination must have been stronger in him than in most, even of the children of genius, for, as early as the age of thirteen or fourteen, the conceptions of his mind began to assume an external form. He saw a tree sparkling in the sun, and discovered that it was filled with angels. ”

“ His father, James Blake, kept a hosier’s shop in Broad Street, Golden Square; and from the scanty education which the young artist received, it may be judged that the circumstances of the family were not very prosperous. For the facts of William Blake’s early life the world is indebted to a little book, called A Father’s Memoirs on a Child, written by Dr Malkin in 1806. Here we learn that young Blake quickly developed a taste for design, which his father appears to have had sufficient intelligence to recognize and assist by every means in his power. ”

“ He projects himself into shapeless dreams, instead of into fair definite forms, as already in the Songs of Innocence he had shown that he could do; and hereafter will again in the tasks so happily prescribed by others:—the illustrations to Young, to Blair's Grave, to Job, to Dante. In these amorphous Prophecies are profusely scattered the unhewn materials of poetry and design: sublime hints are sown broad-cast. But alas! whether Blake were definite or indefinite in his conceptions, he was alike ignored. ”

“ In such cases, the traces of past beauty do but heighten the melancholy of its utter ruin. Amid so much that was beautiful in her affectionate, wifely spirit, these externals were little noticed. To friends who remember Blake in Fountain Court, those calm, patriarchal figures of Job and his Wife in the artist's own designs, still recall the two, as they used to sit together in that humble room.
All I have met, who at any period of the poet-artist's life knew much of Blake, speak with affection of him. A sweet, gentle, lovable creature, say all; courageous too, yet not bitter. ”

“ If I were asked to name a writer whose work conveys to one's mind, free of any admixture of rhetoric or of any alloy of cleverness, the very impact and shock of pure inspired genius, I would unhesitatingly name William Blake. One is strangely conscious in reading him of the presence of some great unuttered power—some vast demiurgic secret—struggling like a buried Titan just below the surface of his mind, and never quite finding vocal expression. ”

“ He must go out of himself for a moment, if he would take such eccentricities for what they are worth, and not draw false conclusions. If he or I—close-tethered as we are to the matter-of-fact world—were on a sudden to wander in so bizarre a fashion from the prescriptive proprieties of life, it would be time for our friends to call in a doctor, or apply for a commission de lunatico. But Blake lived in a world of Ideas; Ideas to him were more real than the actual external world. ”

“ In his youth Blake racked his mind over the riddle of human existence. In the Book of Thel, which forms a transition between his lyrical poems and his prophetic books, he laments the limitations of the flesh. All other animate and inanimate things seem happy in the conscious discharge of their earthly duties; why does man alone suffer from a perversion of the senses by some tyrannical law? ”

“ The mingling of sound sagacity with the utmost licence of imagination showed itself at every hour of Blake's life. He would, at any moment, speak as he here writes, and was not a mere sensible mortal in the morning, and a wild visionary in the evening. Visionary glories floated before his eyes even while he stooped over the toilsome copper-plate. There was no pause or hiatus in the life-long wedding of spiritual and earthly things in his daily course; no giving the reins to imagination at one time more than other. ”

“ The dampness of a house placed upon the earth without cellarage, on a low shore too, between the Downs and the sea, seriously affected Blake's health for a time, and caused his Kate severe ague and rheumatism, which lasted even after her return to the dryness of London.
And no less baneful to the inner life was constant intercourse with the well-meaning literary squire. It was not possible for the ardent and exalted nature of Blake, to whom poetry and design were the highest expression of religion, to breathe freely in an atmosphere of elegant trivialities and shallow sentiment. ”

“ Let us now go back a hundred years, to the time when William Blake was a fair-haired, smooth-browed boy, wandering aimlessly, after the manner of boys, about the streets of London. It might seem at first a matter of regret that a soul full of all glowing and glorious fancies should have been consigned to the damp and dismal dulness of that crowded city; but, in truth, nothing could be more fit. To this affluent, creative mind dinginess and dimness were not. ”

“ More apart from humanity even than the America, it is hard to trace out any distinct subject, any plan or purpose in the Europe, or to determine whether it mainly relate to the past, present, or to come. And yet its incoherence has a grandeur about it as of the utterance of a man whose eyes are fixed on strange and awful sights, invisible to bystanders. To use an expression of Blake's own, on a subsequent occasion, it is as if the 'Visions were angry,' and hurried in stormy disorder before his rapt gaze, no longer to bless and teach, but to bewilder and confound. ”

“ Luke’s, 2 adults; Jack, Danl. Big Gates, 1 large & 1 small, took them to Bartholw., Came home & went to St. Thomas’s, afterwards went to the other end of the town for orders. At home all night.
Wednesday 15th. Went to St. Thomas’s, Came back, pack’d up 2 large & 1 small for Edinburgh. At home all night.
[Pg 149] Thursday 16th. The party met at the Hartichoak. Settled the above, Each man’s share £8 4s. 71⁄2d. At home all night.
Friday 17th. Went & look out: came home met at 11, party except Danl., Went to the Hospital Crib & got 4, was stopt by the patrols, Butler, Horse & Cart were taken. ”

“ Blake's artistic faculties seemed to strengthen with advancing life, but his literary powers waned. He produced few more satisfying illustrations than those to the Book of Job, executed late in life. His artistic work also was left comparatively untainted by the morbid strain of mysticism that runs through his so-called "prophetic Blake's mysticism writings." ”

“ Still more bitter is his speech about holiness: "The fool shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven, let him be ever so pious." Blake glorified passion, which for him was the highest form of human energy. His tragic scrolls, emotional arabesques, are testimony to his high and subtle temperament. The intellect he worshipped. Of pride we cannot have too much! As a lyric poet it is too late in the day to reiterate that he is a peer in the "holy church of English literature." ”

“ Blake know anything about it?”
The faintest shadow of a change came into her manner. “Yes,” said she, “I told him at breakfast time; but Mr. Blake doesn’t take much interest in his servants; he leaves all such matters to me.”
“Then he does not know you have come for the police?”
“No, sir, and O, if you would be so good as to keep it from him. It is not necessary he should know. I shall let you in the back way. Mr. Blake is a man who never meddles with anything, and—”
“What did Mr. Blake say this morning when you told him that this girl—By the way, what is her name?”
“Emily.” ”

“ Blake was a man who if he paid but little attention to domestic affairs was yet rarely seen out of his own house, except upon occasions of great political importance, when he was always to be found on the platform at meetings of his constituents. Though to the ordinary observer a man eminently calculated, from his good looks, fine position, and solid wealth to enjoy society, he not only manifested a distaste for it, but even went so far as to refuse to participate in the social dinners of his most intimate friends ”

“ September 3, 1801: (Hayley to Johnson again) * * * 'The good Blake is finishing, very happily, the plate of the poet's mother. He salutes you affectionately.' October 1, 1801: 'October, you see, is arrived, and you, my dear Johnny, will arrive, I trust, before half this pleasant month shall pass away; for we want you as a faithful coadjutor in the turret, more than I can express. I say we, for the warm-hearted indefatigable Blake works daily by my side, on the intended decorations of our biography. Engraving, of all human works, appears to require the largest portion of patience ”