Pre–Raphaelitism
An Annotated Bibliography
THE COLLECTED WORKS
Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and
Aylesbury.
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
TO
The most adequate mode of prefacing the Collected
Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as of most
authors, would probably be
to offer a broad general
view of his writings, and to analyse with some
critical
precision his relation to other writers, contemporary or
otherwise, and the merits and defects of his performances.
In this
case, as in how few others, one would also have
to consider in what
degree his mind worked con-
sentaneously or diversely in two several
arts—the art of
poetry and the art of painting. But the hand
of a
brother is not the fittest to undertake any work of this
scope. My preface will not therefore deal with themes
such as these,
but will be confined to minor matters,
which may nevertheless be
relevant also within their
limits. And first may come a very brief
outline of the
few events of an outwardly uneventful life.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, who, at an early stage
of his
professional career, modified his name into Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, was
born on 12th May 1828, at No.
38 Charlotte Street, Portland Place,
London. In blood
he was three-fourths Italian, and only one-fourth
Eng-
lish; being on the father's side wholly Italian
(Abruzzese),
and on the mother's side half Italian (Tuscan) and
half
English. His father was Gabriele Rossetti, born in
1783 at
Vasto, in the Abruzzi, Adriatic coast, in the then
kingdom of Naples.
Gabriele Rossetti (died 1854) was
Museo Borbonico of Naples, and a
poet; he distinguished
himself by patriotic lays which fostered the
popular
movement resulting in the grant of a constitution by
Ferdinand I. of Naples in 1820. The King, after the
fashion of Bourbons
and tyrants, revoked the constitution
in 1821, and persecuted the
abettors of it, and Rossetti
had to escape for his freedom, or perhaps
even for his
life. He settled in London towards 1824, married,
and
became Professor of Italian in King's College,
London,
publishing also various works of bold speculation in the
way
of Dantesque commentary and exposition. His
wife was Frances Mary
Lavinia Polidori (died 1886),
daughter of Gaetano Polidori (died 1853),
a teacher of
Italian and literary man who had in early youth
been
secretary to the poet Alfieri, and who published various
books,
including a complete translation of Milton's
poems. Frances Polidori was
English on the side of
her mother, whose maiden name was Pierce.
The
family of Rossetti and his wife consisted of four
children, born
in four successive years—Maria Fran-
cesca (died 1876), Dante
Gabriel, William Michael, and
Christina Georgina, the two last-named
being now the only
survivors. Few more affectionate husbands and
fathers
have lived, and no better wife and mother, than Gabriele
and
Frances Rossetti. The means of the family were
always strictly moderate,
and became scanty towards
1843, when the father's health began to fail.
In or about
that year Dante Gabriel left King's College School,
where
he had learned Latin, French, and a beginning of Greek;
and he
entered upon the study of the art of painting, to
which he had from
earliest childhood exhibited a very
marked bent. After a while he was
admitted to the
yond its antique section. In 1848
Rossetti co-operated
with two of his fellow-students in painting, John
Everett
Millais and William Holman Hunt, and with the
sculptor
Thomas Woolner, in forming the so-called
Præraphaelite
Brotherhood. There were three other members of
the
Brotherhood—James Collinson (succeeded after two
or
three years by Walter Howell Deverell), Frederic
George Stephens,
and the present writer. Ford Madox
Brown, the historical painter, was
known to Rossetti
much about the same time when the
Præraphaelite
scheme was started, and bore an important part
both in
directing his studies and in upholding the movement,
but he
did not think fit to join the Brotherhood in any
direct or complete
sense. Through Deverell, Rossetti
came to know Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal,
daughter of a
Sheffield cutler, herself a milliner's assistant, gifted
with
some artistic and some poetic faculty; in the Spring of
1860,
after a long engagement, they married. Their
wedded life was of short
duration, as she died in
February 1862, having meanwhile given birth to
a still-
born child. For several years up to this date
Rossetti,
designing and painting many works, in oil-colour or as
yet
more frequently in water-colour, had resided at
No. 14 Chatham Place,
Blackfriars Bridge, a line of
street now demolished. In the autumn of
1862 he re-
moved to No. 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. At first
certain
apartments in the house were occupied by Mr.
George Meredith the
novelist, Mr. Swinburne the poet,
and myself. This arrangement did not
last long,
although I myself remained a partial inmate of the
house
up to 1873. My brother continued domiciled in Cheyne
Walk
until his death; but from about 1869 he wasb
frequently away at Kelmscot manorhouse, in Oxford-
shire, not far
from Lechlade, occupied jointly by himself,
and by the poet Mr. William
Morris with his family.
From the autumn of 1872 till the summer of 1874
he
was wholly settled at Kelmscot, scarcely visiting London
at all.
He then returned to London, and Kelmscot
passed out of his ken.
In the early months of 1850 the members of
the
Præraphaelite Brotherhood, with the co-operation
of
some friends, brought out a short-lived magazine named
(afterwards
Few brothers were more constantly together, or shared
one another's
feelings and thoughts more intimately, in
childhood, boyhood, and well
on into mature manhood,
than Dante Gabriel and myself. I have no idea
of
limning his character here at any length, but will de-
fine a few
of its leading traits. He was always and
essentially of a dominant turn,
in intellect and in
temperament a leader. He was impetuous and
vehe-
ment, and necessarily therefore impatient; easily
angered,
easily appeased, although the embittered
feelings of his later years
obscured this amiable quality
to some extent; constant and helpful as a
friend where
he perceived constancy to be reciprocated; free-handed
and heedless
of expenditure, whether for himself or for
others; in family affection
warm and equable, and (except
in relation to our mother, for whom he had
a fondling
love) not demonstrative. Never on stilts in matters
of
the intellect or of aspiration, but steeped in the sense
of
beauty, and loving, if not always practising, the good;
keenly alive
also (though many people seem to discredit
this now) to the laughable as
well as the grave or solemn
side of things; superstitious in grain, and
anti-scientific
to the marrow. Throughout his youth and early
man-
hood I considered him to be markedly free from vanity,
though
certainly well equipped in pride; the distinction
between these two
tendencies was less definite in his
closing years. Extremely natural and
therefore totally
unaffected in tone and manner, with the
naturalism
characteristic of Italian blood; good-natured and
hearty,
without being complaisant or accommodating; reserved
at
times, yet not haughty; desultory enough in youth,
diligent and
persistent in maturity; self-centred always,
and brushing aside whatever
traversed his purpose or
his bent. He was very generally and very
greatly liked
by persons of extremely diverse character; indeed,
I
think it can be no exaggeration to say that no one ever
disliked
him. Of course I do not here confound the
question of liking a man's
personality with that of
approving his conduct out-and-out.
Of his manner I can perhaps convey but a vague
impression. I have
said that it was natural; it was
likewise eminently easy, and even of
the free-and-easy
kind. There was a certain British bluffness,
streaking
the finely poised Italian suppleness and facility. As
he
was thoroughly unconventional, caring not at all to
fall in with the humours or prepossessions of any
particular class
of society, or to conciliate or approxi-
mate the socially
distinguished, there was little in him
of any veneer or varnish of
elegance; none the less he
was courteous and well-bred, meeting all
sorts of persons
upon equal terms—i.e.,
upon his own terms; and I am
satisfied that those who are most exacting
in such
matters found in Rossetti nothing to derogate from
the
standard of their requirements. In habit of body he was
indolent
and lounging, disinclined to any prescribed
or trying exertion of any
sort, and very difficult to stir
out of his ordinary groove, yet not
wanting in active
promptitude whenever it suited his liking. He
often
seemed totally unoccupied, especially of an evening;
no doubt
the brain was busy enough.
The appearance of my brother was to my eye rather
Italian than
English, though I have more than once
heard it said that there was
nothing observable to
bespeak foreign blood. He was of rather low
middle
stature, say five feet seven and a half, like our
father;
and, as the years advanced, he resembled our father
not a
little in a characteristic way, yet with highly
obvious divergences.
Meagre in youth, he was at
times decidedly fat in mature age. The
complexion,
clear and warm, was also dark, but not dusky or
sombre.
The hair was dark and somewhat silky; the brow
grandly
spacious and solid; the full-sized eyes blueish-grey;
the
nose shapely, decided, and rather projecting, with an
aquiline tendency
and large nostrils, and perhaps no
detail in the face was more
noticeable at a first glance
than the very strong indentation at the
spring of the
nose below the forehead; the mouth moderately
well-
shaped, but with a rather thick and unmoulded under-
lip; the chin unremarkable; the line of the jaw, after
youth was
passed, full, rounded, and sweeping; the ears
well-formed and rather
small than large. His hips were
wide, his hands and feet small; the
hands very much
those of the artist or author type, white,
delicate,
plump, and soft as a woman's. His gait was resolute
and
rapid, his general aspect compact and deter-
mined, the prevailing
expression of the face that
of a fiery and dictatorial mind concentrated
into re-
pose. Some people regarded Rossetti as eminently
handsome;
few, I think, would have refused him the
epithet of well-looking. It
rather surprises me to
find from Mr. Caine's book of
that that
My brother was very little of a traveller; he disliked
the
interruption of his ordinary habits of life, and the
flurry or
discomfort, involved in locomotion. In boy-
hood he knew Boulogne: he
was in Paris three or four
times, and twice visited some principal
cities of Belgium.
This was the whole extent of his foreign
travelling.
He crossed the Scottish border more than once, and
knew
various parts of England pretty well—Hastings,
Bath, Oxford,
Matlock, Stratford-on-Avon, Newcastle-
on-Tyne, Bognor, Herne Bay;
Kelmscot, Keswick, and
Birchington-on-Sea, have been already mentioned. From
1878 or thereabouts he became, until he went to the
neighbourhood
of Keswick, an absolute home-keeping
recluse, never even straying
outside the large garden of
his own house, except to visit from time to
time our
mother in the central part of London.
From an early period of life he had a large circle of
friends, and
could always have commanded any amount
of intercourse with any number of
ardent or kindly
well-wishers, had he but felt elasticity and
cheerfulness
of mind enough for the purpose. I should do
injustice
to my own feelings if I were not to mention here some
of
his leading friends. First and foremost I name Mr.
Madox Brown, his
chief intimate throughout life, on
the unexhausted resources of whose
affection and con-
verse he drew incessantly for long years; they were
at
last separated by the removal of Mr. Brown to Man-
chester, for
the purpose of painting the Town Hall
frescoes. The
Præraphaelites—Millais, Hunt, Woolner,
Stephens,
Collinson, Deverell—were on terms of un-
bounded familiarity
with him in youth; owing to death
or other causes, he lost sight
eventually of all of them
except Mr. Stephens. Mr. William Bell Scott
was, like
Mr. Brown, a close friend from a very early period
until
the last; Scott being both poet and painter, there was
a
strict bond of affinity between him and Rossetti.
Mr. Ruskin was
extremely intimate with my brother
from 1854 till about 1865, and was of
material help to
his professional career. As he rose towards
celebrity,
Rossetti knew Burne Jones, and through him Morris
and
Swinburne, all staunch and fervently sympathetic
friends. Mr. Shields
was a rather later acquaintance,
who soon became an intimate, equally
respected and
cherished. Then Mr. Hueffer the musical critic (now
a close family connection, editor of the Tauchnitz edition
of
Rossetti's works), and Dr. Hake the poet. Through
the latter my brother
came to know Mr. Theodore
Watts, whose intellectual companionship and
incessant
assiduity of friendship did more than anything
else
towards assuaging the discomforts and depression of his
closing
years. In the latest period the most intimate
among new acquaintances
were Mr. William Sharp and
Mr. Hall Caine, both of them known to
Rossettian readers
as his biographers. Nor should I omit to speak of
the
extremely friendly relation in which my brother stood to
some of
the principal purchasers of his pictures—Mr.
Leathart, Mr.
Rae, Mr. Leyland, Mr. Graham, Mr. Valpy,
Mr. Turner, and his early
associate Mr. Boyce. Other
names crowd upon me—James Hannay,
John Tupper,
Patmore, Thomas and John Seddon, Mrs.
Bodichon,
Browning, John Marshall, Tebbs, Mrs. Gilchrist, Miss
Boyd,
Sandys, Whistler, Joseph Knight, Fairfax Murray,
Mr. and Mrs. Stillman,
Treffry Dunn, Lord and Lady
Mount-Temple, Oliver Madox Brown, the
Marstons,
father and son—but I forbear.
Before proceeding to some brief account of the
sequence, etc., of
my brother's writings, it may be worth
while to speak of the poets who
were particularly
influential in nurturing his mind and educing its
own
poetic endowment. The first poet with whom he
became partially
familiar was Shakespeare. Then fol-
lowed the usual boyish fancies for
Walter Scott and
Byron. The Bible was deeply impressive to
him,
perhaps above all Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Apocalypse.
Byron
gave place to Shelley when my brother was about
sixteen years of age;
and Mrs. Browning and the old
English or Scottish ballads rapidly
ensued. It may have
been towards this date, say 1845, that he first seriously
applied
himself to Dante, and drank deep of that in-
exhaustible well-head of
poesy and thought; for the
Florentine, though familiar to him as a name,
and in
some sense as a pervading penetrative influence,
from
earliest childhood, was not really assimilated until boy-
hood
was practically past. Bailey's
was enor-
The reader may perhaps be surprised to find some
names unmentioned
in this list: I have stated the facts
as I remember and know them.
Chaucer, Spenser,
the Elizabethan dramatists (other than
Shakespeare),
Milton, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, are unnamed.
It
should not be supposed that he read them not at all, or
cared not
for any of them; but, if we except Chaucer in
a rather loose way and (at
a late period of life) Marlowe
in some of his non-dramatic poems, they
were compara-
tively neglected. Thomas Hood he valued highly;
also
very highly Burns in mature years, but he was not
a constant
reader of the Scottish lyrist. Of Italian poets
he earnestly loved none
save Dante: Cavalcanti in his
degree, and also Poliziano and
Michelangelo — not
Petrarca, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, or Leopardi, though
in boyhood
he delighted well enough in Ariosto. Of
French poets, none beyond Hugo
and De Musset;
except Villon, and partially Dumas, whose novels
ranked
among his favourite reading. In German poetry he
read nothing
currently in the original, although (as our
pages bear witness) he had
in earliest youth so far
mastered the language as to make some
translations.
Calderon, in Fitzgerald's version, he admired
deeply;
but this was only at a late date. He had no liking for
the
specialities of Scandinavian, nor indeed of Teutonic,
thought and work,
and little or no curiosity about
Oriental—such as Indian,
Persian, or Arabic—poetry.
Any writing about devils,
spectres, or the supernatural
generally, whether in poetry or in prose,
had always
a fascination for him; at one time, say 1844, his
supreme
delight was the blood-curdling romance of Maturin,
.
I now pass to a specification of my brother's own
writings. Of his
merely childish or boyish performances
I need have said nothing, were it
not that they have
been mentioned in other books regarding Rossetti.
First
then there was
, a “drama” which he
Other original verse, not in any large quantity,
succeeded, along
with the version of
,
* My brother said so, in a letter published by Mr. Caine. He
must
presumably have been correct; otherwise I should have
thought
that his twentieth year, or even his twenty-first, would
be
nearer the mark.
Dante Rossetti's published works were as follows:
three volumes,
chiefly of poetry. I shall transcribe the
title-pages verbatim.
(1a)
Dante Alighieri
(1100—1200—1300) in the Original
Metres. Together
with Dante's Vita Nuova. Translated
by D. G. Rossetti. Part I. Poets
chiefly before Dante.
Part II. Dante and his Circle. London: Smith,
Elder
and Co., 65, Cornhill. 1861. The rights of translation
and
reproduction, as regards all editorial parts of this
work, are
reserved.
(1b)
ceding him
(1100—1200—1300). A Collection of Lyrics,
edited,
and translated in the original metres, by Dante
Gabriel Rossetti.
Revised and rearranged edition.
Part I. Dante's Vita Nuova,
&c. Poets of Dante's
Circle. Part II. Poets chiefly before
Dante. London:
Ellis and White, 29 New Bond Street. 1874.
(2a)
F. S. Ellis, 33 King Street, Covent
Garden. 1870.
(2b)
London: Ellis and White, 29 New
Bond Street. 1881.
(3)
London: Ellis and White, 29, New Bond Street, W.
1881.
The reader will understand that 1b is essentially
the
same book as 1a, but altered in arrangement,
chiefly
by inverting the order in which the poems of Dante
and of
the Dantesque epoch, and those of an earlier
period, are printed. In the
present collection, I reprint
1b, taking no further
count of 1a. The volume 2b is
to
a great extent the same as 2a, yet by no means
identical
with it. 2a contained a section named
In 1881, when 2
It thus became impossible for me to reproduce 2a:
but the question had to be considered whether I
should
reprint 2b and 3 exactly as they stood in
1881, adding
after them a section of poems not hitherto printed
in
any one of my brother's volumes; or whether I should
recast, in
point of arrangement, the entire contents of
2b and
3, inserting here and there, in their most appro-
priate sequence, the
poems hitherto unprinted. I have
chosen the latter alternative, as being
in my own opinion
the only arrangement which is thoroughly befitting
for
an edition of Collected Works. I am aware that some
readers
would have preferred to see the old order—i.e.,
the order of 1881—retained, so that the two
volumes of
that year could be perused as they then stood.
Indeed,
one of my brother's friends, most worthy, whether as
friend
or as critic, to be consulted on such a subject,
decidedly advocated
that plan. On the other hand, I
found my own view confirmed by my sister
Christina,
who, both as a member of the family and as a
poetess,
deserved an attentive hearing. The reader who inspects
my
table of contents will be readily able to follow the
method of
arrangement which is here adopted. I have
divided the materials into
Principal Poems, Miscellaneous
Poems, Translations, and some minor
headings; and
have in each section arranged the poems—and
the
same has been done with the prose-writings—in
some
approximate order of date. This order of date is cer-
tainly
not very far from correct; but I could not make it
absolute, having
frequently no distinct information to go
by. The few translations which
were printed in 2b (asc
a) have been removed to follow on
after 1b. I
shall give in a tabular form some
particulars which will
enable the reader to follow out for himself, if
he takes
an interest in such minutiæ, the original
arrangement of
2a, 2b, and 3.
There are two poems by my brother, unpublished as
yet, which I am
unable to include among his Collected
Works. One of these is a grotesque
ballad about a
Dutchman, begun at a very early date, and finished
in
his last illness. The other is a brace of sonnets, in-
teresting
in subject, and as being the very last thing
that he wrote. These works
were presented as a gift
of love and gratitude to a friend, with whom it
remains
to publish them at his own discretion. I have also
advisedly
omitted three poems; two of them sonnets,
the third a ballad of no great
length. One of the
sonnets is that entitled
. It appeared in
Dante Rossetti was a very fastidious writer, and, I
might add, a
very fastidious painter. He did not indeed
“cudgel his
brains” for the idea of a poem or the
structure or diction of
a stanza. He wrote out of a
large fund or reserve of thought and
consideration,
which would culminate in a clear impulse or (as
we
say) an inspiration. In the execution he was always
heedful and
reflective from the first, and he spared no
after-pains in clarifying
and perfecting. He abhorred
anything straggling, slipshod, profuse, or
uncondensed.
He often recurred to his old poems, and was reluctant
to
leave them merely as they were. A natural concomitant
of this
state of mind was a great repugnance to the
notion of publishing, or of
having published after his
death, whatever he regarded as juvenile,
petty, or
inadequate. As editor of his Collected Works, I have
had
to regulate myself by these feelings of his, whether
my own entirely
correspond with them or not. The
was by no means large; out of
the moderate bulk I
have been careful to select only such examples as
I
suppose that he would himself have approved for the
purpose, or
would, at any rate, not gravely have objected
to. A list of the new
items is given at page xli, and a
few details regarding them will be
found among my
notes. Some projects or arguments of poems which
he
never executed are also printed among his prose-writings.
These
particular projects had, I think, been practically
abandoned by him in
all the later years of his life; but
there was one subject which he had
seriously at heart,
and for which he had collected some materials, and
he
would perhaps have put it into shape had he lived a
year or two
longer—a ballad on the subject of Joan Darc,
to match
and
I have not unfrequently heard my brother say that
he considered
himself more essentially a poet than a
painter. To vary the form of
expression, he thought that
he had mastered the means of embodying
poetical concep-
tions in the verbal and rhythmical vehicle more
thoroughly
than in form and design, perhaps more thoroughly than
in
colour.
I may take this opportunity of observing that I hope
to publish at
an early date a substantial selection from
the family-letters written by
my brother, to be pre-
ceded by a Memoir drawn up by Mr. Theodore
Watts,
who will be able to express more freely and more
im-
partially than myself some of the things most apposite
to be
said about Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
[This section contains the same
compositions as the section Poems
in the volume of 1870, but in a different
sequence, and also the
fol-
lowing]
[But the following are removed to a section headed]
[In other respects the section Lyrics consists of the Songs which used
to form part
of “The House of
Life.”]
[Contains the various compositions which
appeared in the volume
of 1870 under the heading
[Contains the six translations which in
the volume of 1870 appeared
under the heading
“Poems,” the title One Girl
being now superseded by
the title Beauty
(Sappho); also the
following]
I add here the dedications to Rossetti's volumes 1a,
2a, 2b, and 3. The dedication
to 1b appears in its
proper place.
In the Poems, 1881, appeared the ensuing “Adver- “‘Many poems in this volume were written
between 1847 “The above brief note was prefixed to these poems
when “The fifty sonnets of the
tisement”:
and 1853. Others are of recent date, and a few
belong to
the intervening period. It has been thought
unnecessary
to specify the earlier work, as nothing is included
which
the author believes to be immature.’
first published in 1870. They have now been for some
time
out of print.House of Life
here, are now embodied with the
full series in the volume
entitled Ballads and Sonnets
“The fragment of
On comparing the list which I have now given of
the “Poems
published by Rossetti during his Lifetime”
with the contents
of the present
*
the
* Uguccione della Faggiuola, Dante's former protector, was
now his fellow-guest at Verona.
* “Messere, voi non vedreste tant 'ossa se cane io
fossi
point of the reproach is difficult
to render, depending as it does on
the literal meaning of the
name Cane.
* Such was the last sentence passed by Florence against Dante,
as a recalcitrant exile.
† E quindi uscimmo a riveder le
.—stelle
Inferno
Puro e disposto a salire alle
.—stelle
Purgatorio
L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre
.—stelle
Paradiso
* Quomodo sedet sola civitas!
in the
* * * * * * *
-----------------------------------------
* * * * * *
End of Part I.
Vengeance of Jenny's case! Fie on her! Never
name
Of her two fights with the Beryl-stone:
The typeface of the “m” in “seem” at the end of line 169 is either damaged or improperly inked.
NOTE.
Tradition says that Catherine Douglas, in honour of her heroic
act when she barred the door with her arm against the murderers
of James the First of Scots, received popularly the name of
“Bar-
lass.” This name remains to her
descendants, the Barlas family,
in Scotland, who bear for their
crest a broken arm. She married
Alexander Lovell of Bolunnie.
A few stanzas from King James's lovely poem, known as
The , are quoted in the course of this ballad. The writer
(The present full series of
The House of Life
consists of sonnets
1 After the deaths of Leander and of
Hero, the signal-lamp was
dedicated to Anteros, with
the edict that no man should light it
unless his love
had proved fortunate.
* A Church legend of the Blessed Virgin's death.
I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for
the
word of God, and for the testimony which they held; and
they
cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy
and
true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them
that
dwell on the earth?—
* During the excavations, the Tiyari workmen held their
services
in the shadow of the great bulls.—(Layard's “
ch. ix.)
* Date of the Coup d' État:
* For a woman's fragmentary inscription.
* In this picture the Virgin Mother is seen withholding from the
Child Saviour the prophetic writings in which His sufferings
are
foretold. Angelic figures beside them examine a
scroll.
* The same lady, here surrounded by the masque of Spring, is
evidently the subject of a portrait by Botticelli formerly in the
Pourtalès collection in Paris. This portrait is
inscribed “Smeralda
Bandinelli.”
* The scene is in the house-porch, where Christ holds a bowl of
blood from which Zacharias is sprinkling the posts and lintel.
Joseph has brought the lamb and Elizabeth lights the pyre. The
shoes which John fastens and the bitter herbs which Mary is
gathering form part of the ritual.
* In the drawing Mary has left a procession of revellers, and is
ascending by a sudden impulse the steps of the house where she
sees Christ. Her lover has followed her, and is trying to turn her
back.
* The subject shows Cassandra prophesying among her kindred,
as
Hector leaves them for his last battle. They are on the
platform
of a fortress, from which the Trojan troops are
marching out.
Helen is arming Paris; Priam soothes Hecuba; and
Andromache
holds the child to her bosom.
hanging in a jar;
Sibyl?” she answered, “I would
die.” —
Petronius
.
Before any knowledge of painting was brought to
Florence, there were already painters in Lucca, and
Pisa, and
Arezzo, who feared God and loved the art.
The workmen from Greece,
whose trade it was to sell
their own works in Italy and teach
Italians to imitate
them, had already found in rivals of the soil
a skill that
could forestall their lessons and cheapen their
labours,
more years than is supposed before the art came at all
into Florence. The pre-eminence to which Cimabue was
raised
at once by his contemporaries, and which he still
retains to a
wide extent even in the modern mind, is
to be accounted for,
partly by the circumstances under
which he arose, and partly by
that extraordinary purpose of fortune born with
the lives of some few, and through
Nevertheless, of very late years and in very rare
become manifest. A case in
point is that of the triptych
and two cruciform pictures at
Dresden, by Chiaro di
Messer Bello dell' Erma, to which the
eloquent pamphlet
of Dr. Aemmster has at length succeeded in
attracting
the students. There is another still more solemn and
beautiful work, now proved to be by the same hand, in
the
Pitti gallery at Florence. It is the one to which my
narrative will
relate.
This Chiaro dell' Erma was a young man of very
honourable
family in Arezzo; where, conceiving art
almost for himself, and
loving it deeply, he endeavoured
from early boyhood towards the
imitation of any objects
offered in nature. The extreme longing
after a visible
embodiment of his thoughts strengthened as his
years
increased, more even than his sinews or the blood of his
life; until he would feel faint in sunsets and at the sight
of stately persons. When he had lived nineteen years,
he heard of
the famous Giunta Pisano; and, feeling
much of admiration, with
perhaps a little of that envy
which youth always feels until it has
learned to measure
success by time and opportunity, he determined
that he
would seek out Giunta, and, if possible, become his
pupil.
Having arrived in Pisa, he clothed himself in humble
apparel,
being unwilling that any other thing than the
desire he had for
knowledge should be his plea with the
great painter; and then,
leaving his baggage at a house
of entertainment, he took his way
along the street,
asking whom he met for the lodging of Giunta. It
soon
chanced that one of that city, conceiving him to be
a
stranger and poor, took him into his house and
refreshed him;
afterwards directing him on his way.
When he was brought to speech of Giunta, he said
merely that
he was a student, and that nothing in the
world was so much at his
heart as to become that which
He was received with
courtesy and consideration, and
soon stood among the works of the
famous artist. But
the forms he saw there were lifeless and
incomplete;
and a sudden exultation possessed him as he said
within
himself, “I am the master of this
man.” The blood
came at first into his face, but the
next moment he was
quite pale and fell to trembling. He was able,
however,
to conceal his emotion; speaking very little to Giunta,
but when he took his leave, thanking him respectfully.
After this, Chiaro's first resolve was, that he would
work
out thoroughly some one of his thoughts, and let
the world know
him. But the lesson which he had now
learned, of how small a
greatness might win fame, and
how little there was to strive
against, served to make
him torpid, and rendered his exertions
less continual.
Also Pisa was a larger and more luxurious city
than
Arezzo; and when, in his walks, he saw the great
gardens laid out for pleasure, and the beautiful women
who passed
to and fro, and heard the music that was in
the groves of the city
at evening, he was taken with
wonder that he had never claimed his
share of the
inheritance of those years in which his youth was
cast.
And women loved Chiaro; for, in despite of the burthen
of study, he was well-favoured and very manly in his
walking; and,
seeing his face in front, there was a glory
upon it, as upon the
face of one who feels a light round
his hair.
So he put thought from him, and partook of his life.
But, one
night, being in a certain company of ladies,
a gentleman that was
there with him began to speak of
the paintings of a youth named
Bonaventura, which he
had seen in Lucca; adding that Giunta Pisano
might
now look for a rival. When Chiaro heard this, the
lamps shook before him and the music beat in his ears.
He rose up,
alleging a sudden sickness, and went out of
that house with his
teeth set. And, being again within
his room, he wrote up over the
door the name of
out.
He now took to work diligently, not returning to
Arezzo, but
remaining in Pisa, that no day more might
be lost; only living
entirely to himself. Sometimes,
after nightfall, he would walk
abroad in the most solitary
places he could find; hardly feeling
the ground under
him, because of the thoughts of the day which
held him
in fever.
The lodging Chiaro had chosen was in a house that
looked upon
gardens fast by the Church of San Petronio.
It was here, and at
this time, that he painted the
Dresden pictures; as also, in all
likelihood, the one—
inferior in merit, but certainly
his—which is now at
Munich. For the most part he was
calm and regular in
his manner of study; though often he would
remain at
work through the whole of a day, not resting once so
long as the light lasted; flushed, and with the hair from
his face. Or, at times, when he could not paint, he
would sit for
hours in thought of all the greatness the
world had known from of
old; until he was weak with
yearning, like one who gazes upon a
path of stars.
He continued in this patient endeavour for about three
years, at the end of which his name was spoken through-
out all
Tuscany. As his fame waxed, he began to be
employed, besides
easel-pictures, upon wall-paintings;
but I believe that no traces
remain to us of any of these
latter. He is said to have painted in
the Duomo; and
D'Agincourt mentions having seen some portions of
a
picture by him which originally had its place above
the
high altar in the Church of the Certosa; but which,
at the time he
saw it, being very dilapidated, had been
hewn out of the wall, and
was preserved in the stores
of the convent. Before the period of
Dr. Aemmster's
researches, however, it had been entirely
destroyed.
Chiaro was now famous. It was for the race of fame
that he
had girded up his loins; and he had not paused
until fame was
reached; yet now, in taking breath, he
of his labour had fallen
from him, and his life was still
in its first painful desire.
With all that Chiaro had done during these three
years, and
even before with the studies of his early
youth, there had always
been a feeling of worship and
service. It was the peace-offering
that he made to God
and to his own soul for the eager selfishness
of his aim.
There was earth, indeed, upon the hem of his raiment;
but this was of the heaven, heavenly. He had
seasons
when he could endure to think of no other feature of
his
hope than this. Sometimes it had even seemed to him
to
behold that day when his mistress—his mystical lady
(now hardly in her ninth year, but whose smile at
meeting had
already lighted on his soul,)—even she, his
own
gracious Italian Art—should pass, through the sun
that
never sets, into the shadow of the tree of life, and
be seen of
God and found good: and then it had seemed
to him that he, with
many who, since his coming, had
joined the band of whom he was one
(for, in his dream,
the body he had worn on earth had been dead an
hundred years), were permitted to gather round the
blessed
maiden, and to worship with her through all
ages and ages of ages,
saying, Holy, holy, holy. This
thing he had seen with the eyes of
his spirit; and in
this thing had trusted, believing that it would
surely
come to pass.
But now, (being at length led to inquire closely into
himself,) even as, in the pursuit of fame, the unrest
abiding
after attainment had proved to him that he had
misinterpreted the
craving of his own spirit—so also,
now that he would
willingly have fallen back on devo-
tion, he became aware that much
of that reverence
which he had mistaken for faith had been no more
than
the worship of beauty. Therefore, after certain days
passed in perplexity, Chiaro said within himself, “My
life and my will are yet before me: I will take another
aim to my
life.”
From that moment Chiaro set a watch on his soul, and
put his
hand to no other works but only to such as had
for their end the
presentment of some moral greatness
that should influence the
beholder: and to this end,
he multiplied abstractions, and forgot
the beauty and
passion of the world. So the people ceased to
throng
about his pictures as heretofore; and, when they were
carried through town and town to their destination, they
were no
longer delayed by the crowds eager to gaze and
admire; and no
prayers or offerings were brought to
them on their path, as to his
Madonnas, and his Saints,
and his Holy Children, wrought for the
sake of the life
he saw in the faces that he loved. Only the
critical
audience remained to him; and these, in default of more
worthy matter, would have turned their scrutiny on a
puppet
or a mantle. Meanwhile, he had no more of
fever upon him; but was
calm and pale each day in all
that he did and in his goings in and
out. The works he
produced at this time have
perished—in all likelihood,
not unjustly. It is said
(and we may easily believe it),
that, though more laboured than
his former pictures,
they were cold and unemphatic; bearing marked
out
upon them the measure of that boundary to which they
were made to conform.
And the weight was still close at Chiaro's heart: but
he
held in his breath, never resting (for he was afraid),
and would
not know it.
Now it happened, within these days, that there fell
a great
feast in Pisa, for holy matters: and each man left
his occupation;
and all the guilds and companies of the
city were got together for
games and rejoicings. And
there were scarcely any that stayed in
the houses,
except ladies who lay or sat along their balconies
between open windows which let the breeze beat through
the
rooms and over the spread tables from end to end.
And the golden
cloths that their arms lay upon drew
all eyes upward to see their
beauty; and the day was
long; and every hour of the day was bright
with the sun.
So Chiaro's model, when he awoke that morning on
the hot
pavement of the Piazza Nunziata, and saw the
hurry of people that
passed him, got up and went along
with them; and Chiaro waited for
him in vain.
For the whole of that morning, the music was in
Chiaro's
room from the Church close at hand; and he
could hear the sounds
that the crowd made in the
streets; hushed only at long intervals
while the pro-
cessions for the feast-day chanted in going under
his
windows. Also, more than once, there was a high
clamour
from the meeting of factious persons: for the
ladies of both
leagues were looking down; and he who
encountered his enemy could
not choose but draw upon
him. Chiaro waited a long time idle; and
then knew
that his model was gone elsewhere. When at his work,
he was blind and deaf to all else; but he feared sloth:
for
then his stealthy thoughts would begin to beat round
and round
him, seeking a point for attack. He now
rose, therefore, and went
to the window. It was
within a short space of noon; and underneath
him a
throng of people was coming out through the porch
of
San Petronio.
The two greatest houses of the feud in Pisa had filled
the
church for that mass. The first to leave had been
the Gherghiotti;
who, stopping on the threshold, had
fallen back in ranks along
each side of the archway: so
that now, in passing outward, the
Marotoli had to walk
between two files of men whom they hated, and
whose
fathers had hated theirs. All the chiefs were there and
their whole adherents; and each knew the name of
each. Every man
of the Marotoli, as he came forth and
saw his foes, laid back his
hood and gazed about him, to
show the badge upon the close cap
that held his hair.
And of the Gherghiotti there were some who
tightened
their girdles; and some shrilled and threw up their
wrists scornfully, as who flies a falcon; for that was the
crest of their house.
On the walls within the entry were a number of tall
which Chiaro had
painted that year for the Church. The
Gherghiotti stood with their
backs to these frescoes; and
among them Golzo Ninuccio, the
youngest noble of the
faction, called by the people Golaghiotta,
for his debased
life. This youth had remained for some while
talking
listlessly to his fellows, though with his sleepy sunken
eyes fixed on them who passed: but now, seeing that
no man
jostled another, he drew the long silver shoe
off his foot and
struck the dust out of it on the cloak of
him who was going by,
asking him how far the tides
rose at Viderza. And he said so
because it was three
months since, at that place, the Gherghiotti
had beaten
the Marotoli to the sands, and held them there while
the
sea came in; whereby many had been drowned. And,
when he
had spoken, at once the whole archway was
dazzling with the light
of confused swords; and they
who had left turned back; and they
who were still
behind made haste to come forth; and there was so
much blood cast up the walls on a sudden, that it ran in
long streams down Chiaro's paintings.
Chiaro turned himself from the window; for the light
felt
dry between his lids, and he could not look. He sat
down, and
heard the noise of contention driven out of
the church-porch and a
great way through the streets;
and soon there was a deep murmur
that heaved and
waxed from the other side of the city, where those
of
both parties were gathering to join in the tumult.
Chiaro sat with his face in his open hands. Once
again he
had wished to set his foot on a place that
looked green and
fertile; and once again it seemed to
him that the thin rank mask
was about to spread away,
and that this time the chill of the
water must leave
leprosy in his flesh. The light still swam in his
head,
and bewildered him at first; but when he knew his
thoughts, they were these:—
“Fame failed me: faith failed me: and now this
also,
—the hope that I nourished in this my generation
of
hands
groping. Yet because of this are my feet become
slow and my hands
thin. I am as one who, through the
whole night, holding his way
diligently, hath smitten the
steel unto the flint, to lead some
whom he knew
darkling; who hath kept his eyes always on the sparks
that himself made, lest they should fail; and who,
towards
dawn, turning to bid them that he had guided
God speed, sees the
wet grass untrodden except of his
own feet. I am as the last hour
of the day, whose
chimes are a perfect number; whom the next
followeth
not, nor light ensueth from him; but in the same
dark-
ness is the old order begun afresh. Men say,‘This
is
not God nor man; he is not as we are, neither above
us:
let him sit beneath us, for we are many.’ Where I
write
Peace, in that spot is the drawing of swords, and
there men's
footprints are red. When I would sow,
another harvest is ripe.
Nay, it is much worse with me
than thus much. Am I not as a cloth
drawn before the
light, that the looker may not be blinded? but
which
sheweth thereby the grain of its own coarseness, so
that the light seems defiled, and men say, ‘We will not
walk by it.’ Wherefore through me they shall be
doubly
accursed, seeing that through me they reject the
light. May one be
a devil and not know it?”
As Chiaro was in these thoughts, the fever encroached
slowly
on his veins, till he could sit no longer and would
have risen;
but suddenly he found awe within him, and
held his head bowed,
without stirring. The warmth of
the air was not shaken; but there
seemed a pulse in the
light, and a living freshness, like rain.
The silence
was a painful music, that made the blood ache in his
temples; and he lifted his face and his deep eyes.
A woman was present in his room, clad to the hands
and feet
with a green and grey raiment, fashioned to
that time. It seemed
that the first thoughts he had ever
known were given him as at
first from her eyes, and he
knew her hair to be the golden veil
through which he
face was not lifted, but
set forward; and though the
gaze was austere, yet her mouth was
supreme in gentle-
ness. And as he looked, Chiaro's spirit appeared
abashed of its own intimate presence, and his lips
shook
with the thrill of tears; it seemed such a bitter
while till the
spirit might be indeed alone.
She did not move closer towards him, but he felt her
to be
as much with him as his breath. He was like one
who, scaling a
great steepness, hears his own voice
echoed in some place much
higher than he can see,
and the name of which is not known to him.
As the
woman stood, her speech was with Chiaro: not, as it
were, from her mouth or in his ears; but distinctly
between them.
“I am an image, Chiaro, of thine own soul within
thee. See me, and know me as I am. Thou sayest
that fame has
failed thee, and faith failed thee; but
because at least thou hast
not laid thy life unto riches,
therefore, though thus late, I am
suffered to come into
thy knowledge. Fame sufficed not, for that
thou didst
seek fame: seek thine own conscience (not thy mind's
conscience, but thine heart's), and all shall approve and
suffice. For Fame, in noble soils, is a fruit of the
Spring: but
not therefore should it be said: ‘Lo! my
garden that I
planted is barren: the crocus is here, but
the lily is dead in the
dry ground, and shall not lift the
earth that covers it: therefore
I will fling my garden
together, and give it unto the
builders.’ Take heed
rather that thou trouble not the
wise secret earth; for in
the mould that thou throwest up shall
the first tender
growth lie to waste; which else had been made
strong
in its season. Yea, and even if the year fall past in all
its months, and the soil be indeed, to thee, peevish and
incapable, and though thou indeed gather all thy harvest,
and it
suffice for others, and thou remain vexed with
emptiness; and
others drink of thy streams, and the
drouth rasp thy
throat;—let it be enough that these
remembering that, when the
winter is striven through,
there is another year, whose wind is
meek, and whose
sun fulfilleth all.”
While he heard, Chiaro went slowly on his knees. It
was not
to her that spoke, for the speech seemed within
him and his own.
The air brooded in sunshine, and
though the turmoil was great
outside, the air within was
at peace. But when he looked in her
eyes, he wept.
And she came to him, and cast her hair over him,
and
took her hands about his forehead, and spoke again:—
“Thou hast said,” she continued, gently,
“that faith
failed thee. This cannot be. Either thou
hadst it not,
or thou hast it. But who bade thee strike the
point
betwixt love and faith? Wouldst thou sift the warm
breeze from the sun that quickens it? Who bade thee
turn upon God
and say: ‘Behold, my offering is of
earth, and not
worthy: Thy fire comes not upon it:
therefore, though I slay not
my brother whom Thou
acceptest, I will depart before Thou smite
me.’ Why
shouldst thou rise up and tell God He is not
content?
Had He, of His warrant, certified so to thee? Be not
nice to seek out division; but possess thy love in
sufficiency: assuredly this is faith, for the heart must
believe
first. What He hath set in thine heart to do,
that do thou; and
even though thou do it without thought
of Him, it shall be well
done; it is this sacrifice that He
asketh of thee, and His flame
is upon it for a sign.
Think not of Him; but of His love and thy
love. For
God is no morbid exactor: He hath no hand to bow
beneath, nor a foot, that thou shouldst kiss it.”
And Chiaro held silence, and wept into her hair which
covered his face; and the salt tears that he shed ran
through her
hair upon his lips; and he tasted the bitter-
ness of shame.
Then the fair woman, that was his soul, spoke again
to him,
saying:
“And for this thy last purpose, and for those unprofit
put them away,
and it needs not that I lay my bidding
upon thee. How is it that
thou, a man, wouldst say
coldly to the mind what God hath said to
the heart
warmly? Thy will was honest and wholesome; but
look well lest this also be folly,—to say, ‘I, in
doing
this, do strengthen God among men.’ When at any
time hath He cried unto thee, saying, ‘My son, lend Me
thy shoulder, for I fall’ ? Deemest thou that the
men
who enter God's temple in malice, to the provoking of
blood, and neither for His love nor for His wrath will
abate their
purpose,—shall afterwards stand, with thee
in the porch
midway between Him and themselves, to
give ear unto thy thin
voice, which merely the fall of
their visors can drown, and to see
thy hands, stretched
feebly, tremble among their swords? Give thou
to God
no more than He asketh of thee; but to man also, that
which is man's. In all that thou doest, work from thine
own heart,
simply; for his heart is as thine, when thine
is wise and humble;
and he shall have understanding of
thee. One drop of rain is as
another, and the sun's
prism in all: and shalt thou not be as he,
whose lives
are the breath of One? Only by making thyself his
equal can he learn to hold communion with thee, and at
last own
thee above him. Not till thou lean over the
water shalt thou see
thine image therein: stand erect,
and it shall slope from thy feet
and be lost. Know that
there is but this means whereby thou mayst
serve God
with man:—Set thine hand and thy soul to
serve man
with God.”
And when she that spoke had said these words within
Chiaro's
spirit, she left his side quietly, and stood up as
he had first
seen her: with her fingers laid together,
and her eyes steadfast,
and with the breadth of her long
dress covering her feet on the
floor. And, speaking
again, she said:—
“Chiaro, servant of God, take now thine Art unto
thee, and paint me thus, as I am, to know me: weak, as
which seek out labour, and
with a faith, not learned, yet
jealous of prayer. Do this; so shall
thy soul stand
before thee always, and perplex thee no
more.”
And Chiaro did as she bade him. While he worked,
his face
grew solemn with knowledge: and before the
shadows had turned, his
work was done. Having
finished, he lay back where he sat, and was
asleep imme-
diately: for the growth of that strong sunset was
heavy
about him, and he felt weak and haggard; like one just
come out of a dusk, hollow country, bewildered with
echoes, where
he had lost himself, and who has not slept
for many days and
nights. And when she saw him lie
back, the beautiful woman came to
him, and sat at his
head, gazing, and quieted his sleep with her
voice.
The tumult of the factions had endured all that day
through
all Pisa, though Chiaro had not heard it: and
the last service of
that feast was a mass sung at mid-
night from the windows of all
the churches for the many
dead who lay about the city, and who had
to be buried
before morning, because of the extreme heats.
In the spring of 1847, I was at Florence. Such as
were there
at the same time with myself—those, at
least, to whom
Art is something,—will certainly recollect
how many
rooms of the Pitti Gallery were closed
through that season, in
order that some of the pictures
they contained might be examined
and repaired without
the necessity of removal. The hall, the
staircases,
and the vast central suite of apartments, were the
only
accessible portions; and in these such paintings as they
could admit from the sealed penetralia
huddled together, without respect of
dates, schools, or
persons.
I fear that, through this interdict, I may have missed
seeing many of the best pictures. I do not mean only
the most talked of: for these, as they were restored,
owing to the clamours
raised by the students; and I
remember how old Ercoli's, the
curator's, spectacles used
to be mirrored in the reclaimed
surface, as he leaned
mysteriously over these works with some of
the visitors,
to scrutinize and elucidate.
One picture that I saw that spring, I shall not easily
forget. It was among those, I believe, brought from the
other
rooms, and had been hung, obviously out of all
chronology,
immediately beneath that head by Raphael
so long known as the
The picture I speak of is a small one, and represents
merely
the figure of a woman, clad to the hands and feet
with a green and
grey raiment, chaste and early in its
fashion, but exceedingly
simple. She is standing: her
hands are held together lightly, and
her eyes set ear-
nestly open.
The face and hands in this picture, though wrought
with
great delicacy, have the appearance of being
painted at once, in a
single sitting: the drapery is
unfinished. As soon as I saw the
figure, it drew an
awe upon me, like water in shadow. I shall not
attempt
to describe it more than I have already done; for the
most absorbing wonder of it was its literality. You
knew
that figure, when painted, had been seen; yet it
was not a thing
to be seen of men. This language will
appear ridiculous to such as
have never looked on the
work; and it may be even to some among
those who
have. On examining it closely, I perceived in one
corner of the canvas the words Manus Animam pinxit,
and the date 1239.
I turned to my Catalogue, but that was useless, for the
pictures were all displaced. I then stepped up to the
Cavaliere
Ercoli, who was in the room at the moment,
and asked him regarding
the subject and authorship of
the painting. He treated the matter,
I thought, some-
what slightingly, and said that he could show me
when found, was
not of much value, as it merely said,
could willingly have prolonged my inquiry, in the hope
that it might somehow lead to some result; but I had
disturbed the
curator from certain yards of Guido, and
he was not communicative.
I went back, therefore, and
stood before the picture till it grew
dusk.
The next day I was there again; but this time a
circle of
students was round the spot, all copying the
I felt vexed, for, standing where he asked me, a glare
struck on the picture from the windows, and I could not
see it.
However, the request was reasonably made, and
from a countryman;
so I complied, and turning away,
stood by his easel. I knew it was
not worth while; yet
I referred in some way to the work underneath
the one
he was copying. He did not laugh, but he smiled as we
do in England. “Very odd, is it
not?” said he.
The other students near us were all continental; and
seeing
an Englishman select an Englishman to speak
with, conceived, I
suppose, that he could understand no
language but his own. They
had evidently been noticing
the interest which the little picture
appeared to excite
in me.
* I should here say, that in the latest catalogues (owing, as in
cases before mentioned, to the zeal and enthusiasm of Dr. Aemm-
ster), this, and several other pictures, have been more competently
entered. The work in question is now placed in the Sala Sessa- gona
One of them, an Italian, said something to another
who stood
next to him. He spoke with a Genoese
accent, and I lost the sense
in the villanous dialect.
towards the figure;
matti sul misticismo: somiglia alle nebbie di là.
Li
fa pensare alla patria,
There was a general laugh. My compatriot was
evidently a
novice in the language, and did not take
in what was said. I
remained silent, being amused.
turning to a student, whose
birthplace was unmistakable,
even had he been addressed in any
other language:
his easel, and looking at me and
at the figure, quite
politely, though with an evident reservation:
mon cher, que c'est
une spécialité dont je me fiche pas
mal.
Je tiens que quand on ne comprend pas une
chose, c'est qu'
elle ne signifie rien.”
My reader thinks possibly that the French student
was
right.
“In all my life,” said my uncle in his
customary voice, made up
of goodness and trusting simplicity,
and a spice of piety withal,
which, an't pleased your worship,
made it sound the sweeter,—
“In all my
life,” quoth my uncle Toby, “I have never
heard a
stranger story than one which was told me by a
sergeant in
Maclure's regiment, and which, with your
permission, Doctor, I
will relate.”
“No stranger, brother Toby,” said my
father testily, “than a
certain tale to be found in
Slawkenbergius (being the eighth of
his third Decad), and
called by him the History of an Icelandish
Nose.”
“Nor than the golden legend of Saint Anschankus of
Lithuania,”
added Dr. Slop, “who, being
troubled digestively while delivering
his discourse ‘de sanctis sanctorum,’
in imagine vasis in contumeliam
Now Excentrio, as one mocking, sayeth, etc.,
etc.—
Tristram
Among my earliest recollections, none is stronger
than
that of my father standing before the fire when he came
home in the London winter evenings, and singing to us
in his
sweet, generous tones: sometimes ancient English
ditties,—such songs as one might translate from the
birds, and the brooks might set to music; sometimes
those with
which foreign travel had familiarized his
youth,—among
them the great tunes which have rung
the world's changes since
'89. I used to sit on the
hearth-rug, listening to him, and look
between his knees
into the fire till it burned my face, while the
sights
swarming up in it seemed changed and changed with the
music: till the music and the fire and my heart burned
together,
and I would take paper and pencil, and try in
some childish way to
fix the shapes that rose within me.
For my hope, even then, was to
be a painter.
The first book I remember to have read, of my own
accord, was
an old-fashioned work on Art, which my
mother
had,—Hamilton's “English Conoscente.”
It was
a kind of continental tour,—sufficiently
Della-Cruscan,
from what I can recall of it,—and
contained notices of
pictures which the author had seen abroad,
with engrav-
ings after some of them. These were in the English
fashion of that day, executed in stipple and printed with
red ink; tasteless enough, no doubt, but I yearned to-
wards them
and would toil over them for days. One
especially possessed for me
a strong and indefinable
charm: it was a Saint Agnes in glory, by
Bucciolo d'Orlì
Angiolieri. This plate I could copy
from the first with
much more success than I could any of the
others;
indeed, it was mainly my love of the figure, and a
desire
to obtain some knowledge regarding it, which impelled
me, by one magnanimous effort upon the
“Conoscente,”
to master in a few days more
of the difficult art of reading
than my mother's laborious
inculcations had accomplished
till then. However, what I managed
to spell and puzzle
out related chiefly to the executive qualities
of the
picture, which could be little understood by a mere child;
of the artist himself, or the meaning of his work, the
author of the book appeared to know scarcely any-
thing.
As I became older, my boyish impulse towards art
grew into a
vital passion; till at last my father took me
from school and
permitted me my own bent of study.
There is no need that I should
dwell much upon the
next few years of my life. The beginnings of
Art,
entered on at all seriously, present an alternation of
extremes:—on the one hand, the most bewildering
phases
of mental endeavour, on the other, a toil rigidly
exact and
dealing often with trifles. What was then
the precise shape of the
cloud within my tabernacle, I
could scarcely say now; or whether
through so thick a
veil I could be sure of its presence there at
all. And
as to which statue at the Museum I drew most or learned
the model in the worst
taste,—these are things which no
one need care to know.
I may say, briefly, that I was
wayward enough in the pursuit, if
not in the purpose;
that I cared even too little for what could be
taught me
by others; and that my original designs greatly
out-
numbered my school-drawings.
In most cases where study (such study, at least, as
involves
any practical elements) has benumbed that
subtle transition which
brings youth out of boyhood,
there comes a point, after some time,
when the mind
loses its suppleness and is riveted merely by the
con-
tinuance of the mechanical effort. It is then that the
constrained senses gradually assume their utmost ten-
sion, and any
urgent impression from without will
suffice to scatter the charm.
The student looks up: the
film of their own fixedness drops at
once from before
his eyes, and for the first time he sees his life
in the
face.
In my nineteenth year, I might say that, between one
path of
Art and another, I worked hard. One afternoon
I was returning,
after an unprofitable morning, from a
class which I attended. The
day was one of those
oppressive lulls in autumn, when application,
unless
under sustained excitement, is all but
impossible,—
when the perceptions seem curdled and the
brain full
of sand. On ascending the stairs to my room, I
heard
voices there, and when I entered, found my sister
Catharine, with another young lady, busily turning over
my
sketches and papers, as if in search of something.
Catharine
laughed, and introduced her companion as
Miss Mary Arden. There
might have been a little
malice in the laugh, for I remembered to
have heard the
lady's name before, and to have then made in fun
some
teasing inquiries about her, as one will of one's sisters'
friends. I bowed for the introduction, and stood re-
buked.
She had her back to the window, and I could
not well see her
features at the moment; but I made sure
way that she held her
hands. Catharine told me they
had been looking together for a book
of hers which
I had had by me for some time, and which she had
promised to Miss Arden. I joined in the search, the
book was
found, and soon after they left my room. I
had come in utterly
spiritless; but now I fell to and
worked well for several hours.
In the evening, Miss
Arden remained with our family circle till
rather late:
till she left I did not return to my room, nor, when
there, was my work resumed that night. I had thought
her
more beautiful than at first.
After that, every time I saw her, her beauty seemed
to grow
on my sight by gazing, as the stars do in water.
It was some time
before I ceased to think of her beauty
alone; and even then it was
still of her that I thought.
For about a year my studies somewhat
lost their hold
upon me, and when that year was upon its close,
she
and I were promised in marriage.
Miss Arden's station in life, though not lofty, was one
of
more ease than my own, but the earnestness of her
attachment to me
had deterred her parents from placing
any obstacles in the way of
our union. All the more,
therefore, did I now long to obtain at
once such a posi-
tion as should secure me from reproaching myself
with
any sacrifice made by her for my sake: and I now set to
work with all the energy of which I was capable, upon
a picture of
some labour, involving various aspects of
study. The subject was a
modern one, and indeed it
has often seemed to me that all work, to
be truly
worthy, should be wrought out of the age itself, as
well
as out of the soul of its producer, which must needs be
a soul of the age. At this picture I laboured constantly
and
unweariedly, my days and my nights; and Mary sat
to me for the
principal female figure. The exhibition to
which I sent it opened
a few weeks before the comple-
tion of my twenty-first year.
Naturally enough, I was there on the opening day.
ignorant of a matter perhaps
still more important,—
its situation on the walls. On
that now depended its
success; on its success the fulfilment of my
most
cherished hopes might almost be said to depend. That
is
not the least curious feature of life as evolved in
society,—which, where the average strength and the
average mind are equal, as in this world, becomes to
each life
another name for destiny,—when a man, having
endured
labour, gives its fruit into the hands of other
men, that they may
do their work between him and
mankind: confiding it to them,
unknown, without seek-
ing knowledge of them; to them, who have
probably
done in like wise before him, without appeal to the
sympathy of kindred experience: submitting to them his
naked soul,
himself, blind and unseen: and with no
thought of retaliation,
when, it may be, by their judg-
ment, more than one year, from his
dubious threescore
and ten, drops alongside, unprofitable, leaving
its baffled
labour for its successors to recommence. There is
perhaps no proof more complete how sluggish and little
arrogant, in aggregate life, is the sense of individuality.
I dare say something like this may have been passing
in my
mind as I entered the lobby of the exhibition,
though the
principle, with me as with others, was sub-
servient to its
application; my thoughts, in fact, starting
from and tending
towards myself and my own picture.
The kind of uncertainty in
which I then was is rather
a nervous affair; and when, as I
shouldered my way
through the press, I heard my name spoken close
behind
me, I believe that I could have wished the speaker
further off without being particular as to distance. I
could not
well, however, do otherwise than look round,
and on doing so,
recognized in him who had addressed
me a gentleman to whom I had
been introduced over-
night at the house of a friend, and to whose
remarks on
the Corn question and the National Debt I had listened
with a wish for deliverance somewhat akin to that which
coupled with surprise; his
name having been for some
time familiar to me as that of a writer
of poetry.
As soon as we were rid of the crush, we spoke and
shook
hands; and I said, to conceal my chagrin, some
platitudes as to
Poetry being present to support her
sister Art in the hour of
trial.
“Oh just so, thank you,” said he;
“have you any-
thing here?”
While he spoke, it suddenly struck me that my friend,
the
night before, had informed me this gentleman was a
critic as well
as a poet. And indeed, for the hippopota-
mus-fronted man, with his
splay limbs and wading gait,
it seemed the more congenial vocation
of the two. In
a moment, the instinctive antagonism wedged itself
between the artist and the reviewer, and I avoided his
question.
He had taken my arm, and we were now in the gallery
together. My companion's scrutiny was limited almost
entirely to
the “line,” but my own glance wandered
furtively among the suburbs and outskirts of the ceiling,
as a
misgiving possessed me that I might have a per-
sonal interest in
those unenviable “high places” of art.
Works, which at another time would have absorbed my
whole
attention, could now obtain from me but a restless
and hurried
examination: still I dared not institute an open
search for my
own, lest thereby I should reveal to my
companion its presence in
some dismal condemned corner
which might otherwise escape his
notice. Had I procured
my catalogue, I might at least have known
in which room
to look, but I had omitted to do so, thinking
thereby to
know my fate the sooner, and never anticipating so
vexatious an obstacle to my search. Meanwhile I must
answer
his questions, listen to his criticism, observe and
discuss. After
nearly an hour of this work, we were
not through the first room.
My thoughts were already
bewildered, and my face burning with
excitement.
By the time we reached the second room, the crowd
oppressive. A glance round
the walls could reveal but
little of the consecrated
“line,” before all parts of which
the backs
were clustered more or less thickly; except,
perhaps, where at
intervals hung the work of some
venerable member, whose glory was
departed from him.
The seats in the middle of the room were, for
the most
part, empty as yet: here and there only an
unenthusi-
astic lady had been left by her party, and sat in
stately
unruffled toilet, her eye ranging apathetically over the
upper portion of the walls, where the gilt frames were
packed together in desolate parade. Over these my gaze
also passed
uneasily, but without encountering the object
of its solicitude.
In this room my friend the critic came upon a picture,
conspicuously hung, which interested him prodigiously,
and on
which he seemed determined to have my opinion.
It was one of those
tender and tearful works, those
“labours of
love,” since familiar to all print-shop flâneurs
—in which the wax doll is made to occupy a
position in
Art which it can never have contemplated in the days
of its humble origin. The silks heaved and swayed in
front
of this picture the whole day long.
All that we could do was to stand behind, and catch a
glimpse of it now and then, through the whispering
bonnets, whose
“curtains” brushed our faces continu-
ally. I
hardly knew what to say, but my companion
was lavish of his
admiration, and began to give symp-
toms of the gushing of the
poet-soul. It appeared that
he had already seen the picture in the
studio, and being
but little satisfied with my monosyllables, was
at great
pains to convince me. While he chattered, I trembled
with rage and impatience.
“You must be tired,” said he at last;
“so am I; let
us rest a little.” He led the
way to a seat. I was his
slave, bound hand and foot: I followed
him.
The crisis now proceeded rapidly. When seated, he
took from
his pocket some papers, one of which he
a poet fingering MS.? The
knowledge forms a portion
of those wondrous instincts implanted in
us for self-
preservation. I was past resistance, however, and took
the paper submissively.
“They are some verses,” he said,
“suggested by the
picture you have just seen. I mean to
print them in
our next number, as being the only species of
criticism
adequate to such a work.”
I read the poem twice over, for after the first reading
I
found I had not attended to a word of it, and was
ashamed to give
it him back. The repetition was not,
however, much more
successful, as regarded comprehen-
sion,—a fact which I
have since believed (having seen
it again) may have been dependent
upon other causes
besides my distracted thoughts. The poem, now
in-
cluded among the works of its author, runs as
follows:—
Having atoned for non-attention by a second perusal,
whose
only result was non-comprehension, I thought I
had done my duty
towards this performance, which I
accordingly folded up and
returned to its author. He
asked, in so many words, my opinion of
it.
“I think,” replied I coolly,
“that when a poet strikes
out for himself a new path in
style, he should first be
quite convinced that it possesses
sufficient advantages to
counterbalance the contempt which the
swarm of his
imitators will bring upon poetry.”
My ambiguity was successful. I could see him take
the
compliment to himself, and inhale it like a scent,
while a slow
broad smile covered his face. It was much
as if, at some meeting,
on a speech being made compli-
mentary to the chairman, one of the
waiters should
elbow that personage aside, plant his knuckles on
the
table, and proceed to return thanks.
And indeed, I believe my gentleman was about to do
so in due
form, but my thoughts, which had been unable
to resist some
enjoyment of his conceit, now suddenly
reverted to their one
dominant theme; and rising at
once, in an indignant spleen at
being thus harassed and
beset, I declared that I must leave him,
and hurry
through the rest of the gallery by myself, for that I
had
an impending appointment. He rose also. As we
were
shaking hands, a part of the “line” opposite to
where we stood was left bare by a lapse in the crowd.
“There seems to be an odd-looking picture,” said
my
companion. I looked in the same direction: the press
canvas, but that sufficed: it
was my own picture, on the line! For a moment my
head swam with me.
He walked towards the place, and I followed him. I
did not
at first hear well what he said of the picture;
but when I did, I
found he was abusing it. He called
it quaint, crude, even
grotesque; and certainly the
uncompromising adherence to nature as
then present
before me, which I had attempted throughout, gave
it,
in the exhibition, a more curious and unique appearance
than I could have anticipated. Of course only a very
few minutes
elapsed before my companion turned to the
catalogue for the
artist's name.
“They thought the thing good,” he drawled as
he ran
his eye down the pages, “or it wouldn't be on
the line.
605, 606, —— or else the fellow
has interest some-
where. 630, what the deuce am I thinking
of?——
613, 613, 613 ——
Here it is ——Why,” he exclaimed,
short of breath with astonishment, “the picture is
yours!”
“Well, it seems so,” said I, looking over
his shoulder;
“I suppose they're likely to
know.”
“And so you wanted to get away before we came to
it. And so the picture is yours!”
“Likely to remain so too,” I replied
laughing, “if
every one thinks as well of it as you
do.”
“Oh! mind you,” he exclaimed,
“you must not be
offended: one always finds fault
first: I am sure to
congratulate you.”
The surprise he was in made him speak rather loud,
so that
people were beginning to nudge each other, and
whisper that I was
the painter. I therefore repeated
hurriedly that I really must go,
or I should miss my
appointment.
“Stay a minute,” ejaculated my friend the
critic; “I
am trying to think what the style of your
picture is like.
It is like the works of a very early man that I
saw in
Italy. Angioloni, Angellini, Angiolieri,
that was the
in. The head of your woman
there” (and he pointed to
the figure painted from Mary)
“is exactly like a
St. Agnes of his at
Bologna.”
A flash seemed to strike before my eyes as he spoke.
The
name mentioned was a part of my first recollections;
and the
picture he spoke of.... Yes, indeed, there,
in the face of my
betrothed bride, I beheld the once
familiar features of the St.
Agnes, forgotten since child-
hood! I gazed fixedly on the work of
my own hands;
and thought turned in my brain like a wheel.
When I looked again toward my companion, I could
see that he
was wondering at my evident abstraction. I
did not explain, but
abruptly bidding him good-bye,
hastened out of the exhibition.
As I walked homewards, the cloud was still about me,
and the
street seemed to pass me like a shadow. My
life had been, as it
were, drawn by, and the child and
the man brought together. How
had I not at once
recognized, in her I loved, the dream of my
childhood?
Yet, doubtless, the sympathy of relation, though
uncon-
scious, must have had its influence. The fact of the
likeness was a mere casualty, however singular; but
that which had
cast the shadow of a man's love in the
path of the child, and left
the seed at his heart to work
its growth blindly in darkness, was
surely much more
than chance.
Immediately on reaching home, I made inquiries of
my mother
concerning my old friend the “English
Conoscente”; but learned, to my disappointment, that
she had long since missed the book, and had never
recovered it. I
felt vexed in the extreme.
The joy with which the news of my picture was
hailed at home
may readily be imagined. There was
one, however, to whom it may
have been more welcome
even than to my own household: to her, as
to myself, it
was hope seen nearer. I could scarcely have assigned
a reason why I refrained from mentioning to her, or to
been led to perceive; but
from some unaccountable
reluctance I kept it to myself at the
time. The matter
was detailed in the journal of the worthy
poet-critic who
had made the discovery; such scraps of research
being
much too scarce not to be worked to their utmost; it
may be too that my precipitate retreat had left him in
the belief
of my being a convicted plagiarist. I do not
think, however, that
either Mary's family or my own
saw the paper; and indeed it was
much too æsthetic to
permit itself many readers.
Meanwhile, my picture was obtaining that amount of
notice,
favourable with unfavourable, which constitutes
success, and was
not long in finding a purchaser. My
way seemed clearing before me.
Still, I could not
prevent my mind from dwelling on the curious
incident
connected with the painting, and which, by constant
brooding upon it, had begun to assume, in my idea,
almost the
character of a mystery. The coincidence was
the more singular that
my work, being in subject,
costume, and accessories, English, and
of the present
period, could scarcely have been expected to suggest
so
striking an affinity in style to the productions of one of
the earliest Italian painters.
The gentleman who purchased my picture had com-
missioned me
at the same time for another. I had
always entertained a great
wish to visit Italy, but now
a still stronger impulse than before
drew me thither.
All substantial record having been lost, I could
hardly
persuade myself that the idol of my childhood, and the
worship I had rendered it, was not all an unreal dream:
and every
day the longing possessed me more strongly
to look with my own
eyes upon the veritable St. Agnes.
Not holding myself free to
marry as yet, I therefore
determined (having it now within my
power) that I
would seek Italy at once, and remain there while I
painted my next picture. Nor could even the thought
of
leaving Mary deter me from this resolution.
On the day I quitted England, Mary's father again
placed her
hand in mine, and renewed his promise; but
our own hearts were a
covenant between us.
From this point, my narrative will proceed more
rapidly to
its issue. Some lives of men are as the sea
is, continually vexed
and trampled with winds. Others
are, as it were, left on the
beach. There the wave is
long in reaching its tide-mark, where it
abides but a
moment; afterwards, for the rest of that day, the
water
is shifted back more or less slowly; the sand it has
filled hardens; and hourly the wind drives lower till
nightfall.
To dwell here on my travels any further than in so
much as
they concern the thread of my story, would be
superfluous. The
first place where I established myself,
on arriving in the Papal
State, was Bologna, since it was
there, as I well remembered, that
the St. Agnes of
Bucciuolo Angiolieri was said to be. I soon
became
convinced, however, after ransacking the galleries and
private collections, that I had been misinformed. The
great
Clementine is for the most part a dismal wilderness
of Bolognese
Art, “where nothing is that hath
life,
”
being rendered only the more ghastly by
the “life-in-
death” of Guido and the
Caracci; and the private
collectors seem to emulate the
Clementine.
From Bologna I removed to Rome, where I stayed
only for a
month, and proceeded thence into Tuscany.
Here, in the painter's
native province, after all, I
thought the picture was most likely
to be found; as is
generally the case with artists who have
produced com-
paratively few works, and whose fame is not of the
highest order of all. Having visited Siena and Arezzo,
I
took up my abode in Florence. Here, however, seeing
the necessity
of getting to work at once, I commenced
my next picture, devoting
to it a certain number of hours
each day; the rest of my time
being chiefly spent among
the galleries, where I continued my
search. The St.
Agnes still eluded me; but in the Pitti and
elsewhere,
I thought, in fact,
that I could myself recognize, despite
the wide difference both of
subject and occasional treat-
ment, a certain mental approximation,
not easily defined,
to the style of my own productions. The
peculiarities
of feeling and manner which had attracted my boyish
admiration had evidently sunk deep, and maintained,
though
hitherto unperceived, their influence over me.
I had been at Florence for about three months, and
my
picture was progressing, though slowly enough;
moreover, the other
idea which engrossed me was losing
its energy, by the recurrence
of defeat, so that I now
determined on leaving the thing mainly to
chance, and
went here and there, during the hours when I was not
at work, seeing what was to see. One day, however,
being in
a bookseller's shop, I came upon some numbers
of a new Dictionary
of Works of Art, then in course of
publication, where it was
stated that a painting of St.
Agnes, by Bucciuolo Angiolieri, was
in the possession
of the Academy of Perugia. This then, doubtless,
was
the work I wished to see; and when in the Roman
States,
I must already have passed upon my search
through the town which
contained it. In how many
books had I rummaged for the information
which chance
had at length thrown in my way! I was almost inclined
to be provoked with so inglorious a success. All my
interest
in the pursuit, however, revived at once, and I
immediately
commenced taking measures for retracing
my steps to Perugia.
Before doing so I despatched a
long letter to Mary, with whom I
kept up a correspon-
dence, telling her where to direct her next
missive, but
without informing her as to the motive of my abrupt
removal, although in my letter I dwelt at some length,
among
other topics, on those works of Bucciuolo which
I had met with at
Florence.
I arrived at Perugia late in the evening, and to see the
gallery before the next morning was out of the question.
I passed
a most restless night. The same one thought
journey, and would not
leave me now until my wish was
satisfied. The next day proved to be
one on which the
pictures were not visible; so that on hastening
to the
Academy in the morning, I was again disappointed.
Upon the second day, had they refused me admittance,
I believe I
should have resorted to desperate measures.
The doors however were
at last wide open. Having
put the swarm of guides to rout, I set
my feet on the
threshold; and such is the power of one absorbing
idea,
long suffered to dwell on the mind, that as I entered
I felt my heart choke me as if with some vague
apprehension.
This portion of my story which the reader has already
gone
through is so unromantic and easy of belief, that I
fear the
startling circumstances which remain to be told
will jar upon him
all the more by contrast as a clumsy
fabrication. My course,
however, must be to speak on,
relating to the best of my memory
things in which the
memory is not likely to have failed; and
reserving at
least my own inward knowledge that all the events of
this narrative (however unequal the measure of credit
they
may obtain) have been equally, with myself,
matters of personal
experience.
The Academy of Perugia is, in its little sphere, one
of the
high places of privilege; and the first room, the
Council Chamber,
full of rickety arm chairs, is hung
with the presentation pictures
of the members, a collec-
tion of indigenous grandeurs of the
school of David. I
purchased a catalogue of an old woman who was
knitting
in one corner, and proceeded to turn the leaves with
nervous anxiety. Having found that the Florentine
pictures
were in the last room, I commenced hurrying
across the rest of the
gallery as fast as the polish of the
waxed boards would permit.
There was no visitor
besides myself in the rooms, which were full
of Roman,
Bolognese, and Perugian handiwork: one or two students
only, who had set up their easels before some master-
at
my irreverent haste. As I walked, I continued my
search in the
catalogue; so that, by the time I reached
the Florentine room, I
had found the number, and
walked, with a beating heart, straight
up to the picture.
The picture is about half the size of life: it represents
a
beautiful woman, seated, in the costume of the painter's
time,
richly adorned with jewels; she holds a palm
branch, and a lamb
nestles to her feet. The glory round
her head is a device pricked
without colour on the gold
background, which is full of the faces
of angels. The
countenance was the one known to me, by a
feeble
reflex, in childhood; it was also the exact portrait of
Mary, feature by feature. I had been absent from her
for
more than five months, and it was like seeing her
again.
As I looked, my whole life seemed to crowd about me,
and to
stun me like a pulse in my head. For some
time I stood lost in
astonishment, admiration, perplex-
ity, helpless of conjecture, and
an almost painful sense of
love.
I had seen that in the catalogue there was some
account of
the picture; and now, after a long while, I
removed my eyes, dizzy
with gazing and with thought,
from the face, and read in Italian
as follows:
“No. 212. St. Agnes, with a
glory of angels. By Bucciuolo Angiolieri.
“Bertuccio, Buccio, or Bucciuolo d'Orlì
Angiolieri, a
native of Cignana in the Florentine territory, was
born
in 1405 and died in 1460. He was the friend, and has
been described as the pupil, of Benozzo Gozzoli; which
latter
statement is not likely to be correct, since their
ages were
nearly the same, as are also the dates of their
earliest known
pictures.
“He is said by some to have been the first to
introduce
a perfectly nude figure in a devotional subject (the St.
Sebastian now at Florence); an opinion which Professor
Ehrenhaupt has called in question, by fixing the date of
Andrea d'Oltr 'arno,
which contain several nude figures,
at a period antecedent to that
in which he flourished.
His works are to be met with at Florence,
at Lucca, and
in one or two cities of Germany. The present
picture,
though ostensibly representing St. Agnes, is the
por-
trait of Blanzifiore dall 'Ambra, a lady to whom the
painter was deeply attached, and who died early. The
circumstances
connected by tradition with the painting
of this picture are of a
peculiarly melancholy nature.
“It appears that, in the vicissitudes of faction, the
lady's
family were exiled from Florence, and took refuge at
Lucca; where some of them were delivered by treachery
to their
enemies and put to death. These accumulated
misfortunes (not the
least among which was the separa-
tion from her lover, who, on
account of his own ties and
connections, could not quit Florence),
preyed fatally on
the mind and health of Blanzifiore; and before
many
months had passed, she was declared to be beyond
medicinal aid. No sooner did she learn this, than her
first
thought was of the misery which her death would
occasion her
lover; and she insisted on his being sum-
moned immediately from
Florence, that they might at
least see each other once again upon
earth. When, on his
arrival, she witnessed his anguish at thus
losing her for
ever, Blanzifiore declared that she would rise at
once
from her bed, and that Bucciuolo should paint her por-
trait before she died; for so, she said, there should still
remain
something to him whereby to have her in
memory. In this will she
persisted against all remon-
strance occasioned by the fears of her
friends; and for
two days, though in a dying state, she sat with
wonder-
ful energy to her lover: clad in her most sumptuous
attire, and arrayed with all her jewels: her two sisters
remaining
constantly at her side, to sustain her and
supply restoratives. On
the third day, while Bucciuolo
was still at work, she died without
moving.
“After her death, Bucciuolo finished the portrait, and
purity. He kept it
always near him during his lifetime;
and, in dying, bequeathed it
to the Church of Santa
Agnese dei Lavoranti, where he was buried at
her side.
During all the years of his life, after the death of
Blan-
zifiore, he remained at Lucca: where some of his works
are still to be found.
“The present picture has been copied many times,
but
never competently engraved; and was among those con-
veyed
to Paris by Bonaparte, in the days of his omnipo-
tence.”
The feeling of wonder which attained bewilderment,
as I
proceeded with this notice, was yet less strong than
an intense
penetrating sympathy excited in me by the
unhappy narrative, which
I could not easily have
accounted for, but which so overcame me
that, as I
finished, the tears stung my eyes. I remained for some
time leaning upon the bar which separated me from the
picture, till at last my mind settled to more definite
thought.
But thought here only served to confound. A
woman had then lived
four hundred years since, of
whom that picture was the portrait;
and my own eyes
bore me witness that it was also the surpassingly
per-
fect resemblance of a woman now living and
breathing,
—of my own affianced bride! While I stood,
these
things grew and grew upon my mind, till my thoughts
seemed to hustle about me like pent-up air.
The catalogue was still open in my hand; and now,
as my eyes
wandered, in aimless distraction, over the
page, they were
arrested by these words: “No. 231.
Portrait of Bucciuolo Angiolieri painted by
himself.” At
first my bewildered perceptions
scarcely attached a
meaning to the words; yet, owing no doubt to
the
direction of my thoughts, my eye dwelt upon them, and
continued to peruse them over and over, until at last
their
purport flashed upon me. At the same instant
that it did so, I
turned round and glanced rapidly over
the walls for the number: it
was at the other end of the
involuntary awe, was
upon me as I ran towards the
spot; the picture was hung low; I
stooped over the rail
to look closely at it, and was face to face
with myself!
I can recall my feeling at that
moment, only as one of
the most lively and exquisite fear.
It was myself, of nearly the same age as mine was
then, but
perhaps a little older. The hair and beard
were of my colour,
trimmed in an antique fashion; and
the dress belonged to the early
part of the fifteenth cen-
tury. In the background was a portion of
the city of
Florence. One of the upper corners contained this
inscription:—
ALBERTUS* ORLITIS ANGELERIUS
That it was my portrait,—that the St.
Agnes was the
portrait of Mary,—and that both had been
painted by
myself four hundred years ago,—this now rose
up dis-
tinctly before me as the one and only solution of so
startling a mystery, and as being, in fact, that result
round
which, or some portion of which, my soul had
been blindly
hovering, uncertain of itself. The tremen-
dous experience of that
moment, the like of which has
never, perhaps, been known to any
other man, must
remain undescribed; since the description, read
calmly
at common leisure, could seem but fantastic raving. I
was as one who, coming after a wilderness to some city
dead since
the first world, should find among the tombs
a human body in his
own exact image, embalmed;
having the blackened coin still within
its lips, and the
jars still at its side, in honour of gods whose
very names
are abolished.
After the first incapable pause, during which I stood *
rooted
to the spot, I could no longer endure to look on Alberto, Albertuccio, Bertuccio, Buccio, Bucciuolo.
rooms and into the street.
I reached it with the sweat
springing on my forehead, and my face
felt pale and
cold in the sun.
As I hurried homewards, amid all the chaos of my
ideas, I
had clearly resolved on one thing,—namely, that
I would
leave Perugia that night on my return to Eng-
land. I had passports
which would carry me as far as
the confines of Italy; and when
there I counted on some-
how getting them signed at once by the
requisite
authorities, so as to pursue my journey without delay.
On entering my room in the hotel where I had put up,
I found
a letter from Mary lying on the table. I was
too much agitated
with conflicting thoughts to open it at
once; and therefore
allowed it to remain till my pertur-
bation should in some measure
have subsided. I drew
the blinds before my windows, and covered my
face to
think; my forehead was still damp between my hands.
At least an hour must have elapsed in that tumult of the
spirit
which leaves no impression behind, before I opened
the letter.
It was an answer to the one which I had posted before
leaving Florence. After many questions and much news
of home,
there was a paragraph which ran thus:—
“The account you give me of the works of Bucciuolo
Angiolieri interested me greatly. I am surprised never
to have
heard you mention him before, as he appears to
find so much favour
with you. But perhaps he was un-
known to you till now. How I wish
I could stand by
your side before his pictures, to enjoy them with
you
and hear you interpret their beauties! I assure you that
what you say about them is so vivid, and shows so much
insight
into all the meanings of the painter, that, while
reading, I could
scarcely divest myself of the impression
that you were describing
some of your own works.”
As I finished the last sentence, the paper fell from my
hands. A solemn passage of scripture had been running
in my mind;
and as I again lay back and hid my now
unsearchable are Thy judgments, and Thy ways past
finding
out!”
As I have said, my intention was to set out from
Perugia
that same night; but on making enquiry, I
found that it would be
impossible to do so before the
morning, as there was no conveyance
till then. Post-
horses, indeed, I might have had, but of this my
re-
sources would not permit me to think. That was a
troubled
and gloomy evening for me. I wrote, as well
as my disturbed state
would allow me, a short letter to
my mother, and one to Mary, to
apprise them of my
return; after which, I went early to bed, and,
contrary
to my expectations, was soon asleep.
That night I had a dream, which has remained as
clear and
whole in my memory as the events of the day:
and so strange were
those events—so apart from the
rest of my life till
then,—that I could sometimes almost
persuade myself
that my dream of that night also was
not without a mystic reality.
I dreamt that I was in London, at the exhibition where
my
picture had been; but in the place of my picture,
which I could
not see, there hung the St. Agnes of
Perugia. A crowd was before
it; and I heard several
say that it was against the rules to hang
that picture, for
that the painter (naming me) was dead. At this,
a
woman who was there began to weep: I looked at her
and
perceived it to be Mary. She had her arm in that
of a man who
appeared to wear a masquerade dress;
his back was towards me, and
he was busily writing on
some tablets; but on peering over his
shoulder, I saw
that his pencil left no mark where it passed, which
he
did not seem to perceive, however, going on as before.
I
spoke to Mary, but she continued crying and did not
look up. I
then touched her companion on the shoulder;
but finding that he
paid no attention, I shook him and
told him to resign that lady's
arm to me, as she was my
bride. He then turned round suddenly, and
showed me
the portrait of
Bucciuolo. After looking mournfully at
me, he said,
“Not mine, friend, but neither thine:” and
while he spoke, his face fell in like a dead face. Mean-
time,
every one seemed pale and uneasy, and they began
to whisper in
knots; and all at once I found opposite
me the critic I met at the
gallery, who was saying some-
thing I could not understand, but so
fast that he panted
and kept wiping his forehead. Then my dream
changed.
I was going up stairs to my room at home, where I
thought Mary was waiting to sit for her portrait. The
staircase was
quite dark; and as I went up, the voices
of several persons I knew
passed by me, as if they were
descending; and sometimes my own
among them. I
had reached the top, and was feeling for the handle
of
the door, when it was opened suddenly by an angel;
and
looking in, I saw, not Mary, but a woman whose
face was hidden
with white light, and who had a lamb
beside her that was bleating
aloud. She knelt in the
middle of the room, and I heard her say
several times:
“O Lord, it is more than he can bear.
Spare him, O
Lord, for her sake whom he consecrated to
me.” After
this, music came out of heaven, and I
thought to have
heard speech; but instead, there was silence that
woke
me.
This dream must have occurred repeatedly in the
course of
the night, for I remember waking up in perfect
darkness,
overpowered with fear, and crying out in the
words which I had
heard spoken by the woman; and
when I woke in the morning, it was
from the same
dream, and the same words were on my lips.
During the two days passed at Perugia, I had not had
time to
think of the picture I was engaged upon, which
had therefore
remained in its packing-case, as had also
the rest of my baggage. I
was thus in readiness to start
without further preliminaries. My
mind was so con-
fused and disturbed that I have but a faint
recollection
of that morning; to the agitating events of the
previous
vague foreboding of calamity.
No obstacle occurred throughout the course of my
journey,
which was, even at that recent date, a longer
one than it is now.
The whole time, with me, was
occupied by one haunting and despotic
idea: it accom-
panied me all day on the road; and if we paused
at
night it either held me awake or drove all rest from my
sleep. It is owing to this, I suppose, that the wretched
mode of
conveyance, the evil roads, the evil weather,
the evil inns, the
harassings of petty authorities, and all
those annoyances which are
set as close as milestones
all over the Continent, remain in my
memory only with
a general sense of discomfort. Moreover, on the
day
when I left Perugia I had felt the seeds of fever already
in my veins; and during the journey this oppression
kept
constantly on the increase. I was obliged, however,
carefully to
conceal it, since the panic of the cholera was
again in Europe,
and any sign of illness would have
caused me to be left at once on
the road.
By the night of my arrival in London, I felt that I was
truly and seriously ill; and, indeed during the last
part of the
journey, physical suffering had for the first
time succeeded in
partially distracting my thought from
the thing which possessed
it. The first inquiries I made
of my family were regarding Mary. I
learned that she
at least was still in good health, and anxiously
looking
for my arrival; that she would have been there, indeed,
but that I had not been expected till a day later. This
was
a weight taken from my heart. After scarcely more
than an hour
passed among my family, I repaired to my
bed; both body and mind
had at length a perfect craving
for rest. My mother, immediately
on my arrival, had
noticed my flushed and haggard appearance; but
when
questioned by her I attributed this to the fatigues of
travelling.
In spite of my extreme need of sleep, and the wish I
felt
for it, I believe that I slept but little that night.
as soon as I lay
down my head began to whirl till I
seemed to be lifted out of my
bed; but whether this
were in waking or a part of some distempered
dream, I
cannot determine. This, however, is the last thing I can
recall. The next morning I was in a raging fever, which
lasted for five weeks.
Health and consciousness came back to me by degrees,
as
light and air towards the outlet of a long vault. At
length, one
day, I sat up in bed for the first time. My
head felt light in the
pillows; and the sunshine that
warmed the room made my blood creep
refreshingly.
My father and mother were both with me.
As sense had deserted my mind, so had it returned,
in the
form of one constant thought. But this was now
grown peremptory,
absolute, uncompromising, and
seemed to cry within me for speech,
till silence became
a torment. To-day, therefore, feeling for the
first time,
since my gradual recovery, enough of strength for the
effort, I resolved that I would at last tell the whole to
my
parents. Having first warned them of the extra-
ordinary nature of
the disclosure I was about to make,
I accordingly began. Before I
had gone far with my
story, however, my mother fell back in her
seat, sobbing
violently; then rose, and running up to me, kissed
me
many times, still sobbing and calling me her poor boy.
She then left the room. I looked towards my father,
and saw that
he had turned away his face. In a few
moments he rose also without
looking at me, and went
out as my mother had done.
I could not quite account for this, but was so weary of
doubt and conjecture, that I was content to attribute it to
the
feelings excited by my narration and the pity for all
those
troubles which the events I spoke of had brought
upon me. It may
appear strange, but I believe it to
have been the fact, that the
startling and portentous
reality which those events had for me,
while it left me
fully prepared for wonder and perturbation on the
part
to me that, as far as belief
went, there could be more
hesitation in another's than in my own.
It was not long before my father returned. On my
questioning
him as to the cause of my mother's excite-
ment, he made no
explicit answer, but begged to hear
the remainder of what I had to
disclose. I went on,
therefore, and told my tale to the end. When
I had
finished, my father again appeared deeply affected; but
soon recovering himself, endeavoured, by reasoning, to
persuade me
either that the circumstances I had described
had no foundation
save in my own diseased fancy, or
else that at the time of their
occurrence incipient illness
had caused me to magnify very
ordinary events into
marvels and omens.
Finding that I still persisted in my conviction of their
actuality, he then informed me that the matters I had
related were
already known to himself and to my mother
through the disjointed
ravings of my long delirium, in
which I had dwelt on the same
theme incessantly; and
that their grief, which I had remarked, was
occasioned
by hearing me discourse thus connectedly on the
same
wild and unreal subject, after they had hoped me to be
on the road to recovery. To convince me that this
could merely be
the effect of prolonged illness, he led
me to remark that I had
never till then alluded to the
topic, either by word or in any of
my letters, although,
by my account, the chain of coincidences had
already
begun before I left England. Lastly, he implored me
most earnestly at once to resist and dispel this fantastic
brain-sickness, lest the same idea, allowed to retain
possession
of my mind, might end,—as he dreaded to
think that it
indeed might,—by endangering my reason.
My father's last words struck me like a stone in the
mouth;
there was no longer any answer that I could
make. I was very weak
at the time, and I believe I
lay down in my bed and sobbed. I
remember it was
on that day that it seemed to me of no use to see
Mary
had, and that for the
first time I wished to die; and
then it was that there came
distinctly, such as it may
never have come to any other man, the
unutterable
suspicion of the vanity of death.
From that day until I was able to leave my bed, I
never in
any way alluded to the same terrible subject;
but I feared my
father's eye as though I had been
indeed a madman. It is a wonder
that I did not
really lose my senses. I lived in a continual panic
lest
I should again speak of that matter unconsciously, and
used to repeat inwardly, for hours together, words
enjoining
myself to silence. Several friends of the
family, who had made
constant inquiries during my
illness, now wished to see me; but
this I strictly
refused, being in fear that my incubus might get
the
better of me, and that I might suddenly implore them to
say if they had any recollection of a former existence.
Even a
voice or a whistle from the street would set me
wondering whether
that man also had lived before, and
if so, why I alone should be
cursed with this awful
knowledge. It was useless even to seek
relief in books;
for the name of any historical character
occurring at once
disturbed my fevered mind with conjectures as to
what
name its possessor now bore, who he was,
and in what
country his lot was cast.
For another week after that day I was confined to my
room,
and then at last I might go forth. Latterly, I had
scarcely spoken
to any one, but I do not think that either
my father or my mother
imagined I had forgotten. It
was on a Sunday that I left the house
for the first time.
Some person must have been buried at the
neighbouring
church very early that morning, for I recollect that
the
first thing I heard upon waking was the funeral bell.
I
had had, during the night, but a restless throbbing
kind of sleep;
and I suppose it was my excited nerves
which made me wait with a
feeling of ominous dread
through the long pauses of the tolling,
unbroken as they
except the twitter of birds
about the housetops. The
last knell had long ceased, and I had
been lying for some
time in bitter reverie, when the bells began
to ring for
church. I cannot express the sudden refreshing joy
which filled me at that moment. I rose from my bed,
and
kneeling down, prayed while the sound lasted.
On joining my parents at breakfast, I made my mother
repeat
to me once more how many times Mary had
called during my illness,
and all that she had said and
done. They told me that she would
probably be there
that morning; but my impatience would not permit
me
to wait; I must go and seek her myself at once. Often
already, said my parents, she had wished and begged
to see me, but
they had feared for my strength. This
was in my thoughts as I left
the house; and when,
shutting the door behind me, I stood once
again in the
living suunshine, it seemed as if her love burst
around
me like music.
I set out hastily in the well-known direction of Mary's
house. While I walked through the crowded streets,
the sense of
reality grew upon me at every step, and for
the first time during
some months I felt a man among
men. Any artist or thoughtful man
whatsoever, whose
life has passed in a large city, can scarcely
fail, in course
of time, to have some association connecting each
spot
continually passed and repassed with the labours of his
own mind. In the woods and fields every place has its
proper spell
and mystery, and needs no consecration
from thought; but wherever
in the daily walk through
the thronged and jarring city, the soul
has read some
knowledge from life, or laboured towards some
birth
within its own silence, there abides the glory of that
hour, and the cloud rests there before an unseen taber-
nacle. And
thus now, with myself, old trains of thought
and the conceptions
of former years came back as I
passed from one swarming resort to
another, and seemed,
by contrast, to wake my spirit from its wild
and fantastic
existence; as the mere
reflections of objects, sunk in the
vague pathless water, appear
almost to strengthen it into
substance.
Men tell me that sleep has many dreams; but all
my
life I have dreamt one dream alone.
I see a glen whose sides slope upward from the deep
bed of a
dried-up stream, and either slope is covered
with wild
apple-trees. In the largest tree, within the
fork whence the limbs
divide, a fair, golden-haired
woman stands and sings, with one
white arm stretched
along a branch of the tree, and with the other
holding
forth a bright red apple, as if to some one coming down
the slope. Below her feet the trees grow more and
more
tangled, and stretch from both sides across the deep
pit below:
and the pit is full of the bodies of men.
They lie in heaps beneath the screen of boughs, with
her
apples bitten in their hands; and some are no
more than ancient
bones now, and some seem dead but
yesterday. She stands over them
in the glen, and sings
for ever, and offers her apple still.
This dream shows me no strange place. I know the
glen, and
have known it from childhood, and heard many
tales of those who
have died there by the Siren's spell.
I pass there often now, and look at it as one might
look at a
place chosen for one's grave. I see nothing,
but I know that it
means death for me. The apple-trees
are like others, and have
childish memories connected
with them, though I was taught to shun
the place.
No man sees the woman but once, and then no other
is near;
and no man sees that man again.
One day, in hunting, my dogs tracked the deer to that
dell,
and he fled and crouched under that tree, but the
dogs would not
go near him. And when I approached,
he looked in my eyes as if to
say, “Here you shall die,
the eyes of my
soul, and I called off the dogs, who were
glad to follow me, and
we left the deer to fly.
I know that I must go there and hear the song and
take the
apple. I join with the young knights in their
games; and have led
our vassals and fought well. But
all seems to me a dream, except
what only I among
them all shall see. Yet who knows? Is there one
among them doomed like myself, and who is silent, like
me?
We shall not meet in the dell, for each man goes
there alone: but
in the pit we shall meet each other,
and perhaps know.
Each man who is the Siren's choice dreams the same
dream, and
always of some familiar spot wherever he
lives in the world, and
it is there that he finds her when
his time comes. But when he
sinks in the pit, it is the
whole pomp of her dead gathered
through the world that
awaits him there; for all attend her to
grace her triumph.
Have they any souls out of those bodies? Or are
the
bodies still the house of the soul, the Siren's prey till the
day of judgment?
We were ten brothers. One is gone there already.
One day we
looked for his return from a border foray,
and his men came home
without him, saying that he had
told them he went to seek his love
who would come to
meet him by another road. But anon his love met
them, asking for him; and they sought him vainly all
that
day. But in the night his love rose from a dream;
and she went to
the edge of the Siren's dell, and there
lay his helmet and his
sword. And her they sought in
the morning, and there she lay dead.
None has ever
told this thing to my love, my sweet love who is
affianced
to me.
One day at table my love offered me an apple. And
as I took
it she laughed, and said, “Do not eat, it is the
fruit
of the Siren's dell.” And I laughed and ate: and
at the
heart of the apple was a red stain like a woman's
mouth; and as I
bit it I could feel a kiss upon my lips.
The same evening I walked with my love by that
place, and
she would needs have me sit with her under
the apple-tree in which
the Siren is said to stand. Then
she stood in the hollow fork of
the tree, and plucked an
apple, and stretched it to me and would
have sung: but
at that moment she cried out, and leaped from the
tree
into my arms, and said that the leaves were whispering
other words to her, and my name among them. She
threw the apple to
the bottom of the dell, and fol-
lowed it with her eyes, to see how
far it would fall, till
it was hidden by the tangled boughs. And
as we still
looked, a little snake crept up through them.
She would needs go with me afterwards to pray in the
church,
where my ancestors and hers are buried; and
she looked round on
the effigies, and said, “How long
will it be before we
lie here carved together?” And I
thought I heard the
wind in the apple trees that seemed
to whisper, “How
long?”
And late that night, when all were asleep, I went back
to
the dell, and said in my turn, “How long?” And
for a moment I seemed to see a hand and apple stretched
from
the middle of the tree where my love had stood.
And then it was
gone: and I plucked the apples and bit
them, and cast them in the
pit, and said, “Come.”
I speak of my love, and she loves me well; but I love
her
only as the stone whirling down the rapids loves
the dead leaf
that travels with it and clings to it, and
that the same eddy will
swallow up.
Last night, at last, I dreamed how the end will come.
and now
I know it is near. I not only saw, in sleep, the
lifelong pageant
of the glen, but I took my part in it at
last, and learned for
certain why that dream was mine.
I seemed to be walking with my love among the hills
that
lead downward to the glen: and still she said, “It
is
late;” but the wind was glenwards, and said,
“Hither.”
And still she said,
“Home grows far;” but the rooks
flew
glenwards, and said, “Hither.” And still she
said,
“Come back;” but the sun had set, and
the moon
my
heart said in me, “Aye, thither at last.” Then we
stood on the margin of the slope, with the apple-trees
beneath us; and the moon bade the clouds fall from her,
and sat in
her throne like the sun at noon-day: and
none of the apple-trees
were bare now, though autumn
was far worn, but fruit and blossom
covered them
together. And they were too thick to see through
clearly; but looking far down I saw a white hand holding
forth an apple, and heard the first notes of the Siren's
song.
Then my love clung to me and wept; but I
began to struggle down the
slope through the thick wall
of bough and fruit and blossom,
scattering them as the
storm scatters the dead leaves; for that
one apple only
would my heart have. And my love snatched at me as
I went; but the branches I thrust away sprang back on
my
path, and tore her hands and face: and the last
I knew of her was
the lifting of her hands to heaven as
she cried aloud above me,
while I still forced my way
downwards. And now the Siren's song
rose clearer as
I went. At first she sang, “Come to
Love;” and of the
sweetness of Love she said many
things. And next she
sang, “Come to Life;”
and Life was sweet in her song.
But long before I reached her, she
knew that all her will
was mine: and then her voice rose softer
than ever,
and her words were, “Come to
Death;” and Death's
name in her mouth was the very
swoon of all sweetest
things that be. And then my path cleared;
and she
stood over against me in the fork of the tree I knew so
well, blazing now like a lamp beneath the moon. And
one kiss
I had of her mouth, as I took the apple from
her hand. But while I
bit it, my brain whirled and my
foot stumbled; and I felt my
crashing fall through the
tangled boughs beneath her feet, and saw
the dead white
faces that welcomed me in the pit. And so I woke
cold
in my bed: but it still seemed that I lay indeed at last
among those who shall be my mates for ever, and could
feel
the apple still in my hand.
Act I.—Scene 1.
Scene 2.
The ship arrives at the Sirens' Rock, amid the songs
of the
three Sirens, Thelxiope, Thelxione, and Ligeia.
The first offers
wealth, the second greatness and triumph
over his enemies, the
third (Ligeia) offers her love.
Here a chorus in which the three
contend and the wife
his efforts, succumbs to
Ligeia and climbs the rock, his
wife following him. Here the choral
contention is con-
tinued, the Prince clinging to Ligeia, rapt by
her spells
into the belief that it is the time of his first love
and that
he is surrounded by the scenes of that time. At last he
dies in her arms, as she sings, under her poisonous breath,
calling her as he dies by his wife's name, and shrinking
from his
wife without recognition. The Queen makes a
prayer begging God to
make him know her. During
this he dies, and Ligeia then says,
The Queen pronounces a despairing curse against Ligeia,
praying that she may yet love and be hated and so
destroy herself
and her sisters. The Queen then flings
herself in madness from the
rock into the sea.
Scene 3.
The Hermit puts out in a boat to where the Prince's
ship is
still lying, and takes the infant to his hermitage.
He soliloquizes
over him, saying how, if the faith prevails
in his father's
kingdom, he will take him in due time to
occupy the throne, but
how otherwise the youth shall
stay with himself to serve him as an
acolyte, and so
escape the storms of human passion more baneful
than
those of the sea.
Twenty-one years elapse between Acts I. and II.
Act II.—Scene 1.
At the court of the Byzantine Prince. The courtiers
are
conversing about the approaching marriage of the
young Prince, now
come to the throne. One of them
relates particulars respecting his
being brought there as
a boy by the Hermit, who revealed the
secret of his
father's and mother's death only to a trusted
counsellor,
the father of the girl he is now about to marry. They
also refer to the troubles of the time when the former
faith, and recall to each
other the progress of events
since, and the establishment of
Christianity in the
country, after which the young Prince was
brought back
by the Hermit, and seated on his father's throne.
Allu-
sions are made to various omens and portents appearing
to bear on the mysterious death of the Prince's father
and mother,
and on the vengeance still to be taken
for it.
Scene 2.
A grove, formerly sacred to an Oracle. The Prince
and his
betrothed meet here and speak of their love and
approaching
nuptials, which are to take place the next
day. They are both,
however, troubled by dreams they
have had and which they relate to
each other at length.
These bear fantastically on the death of the
Prince's
parents, but without clearly revealing anything,
though
seeming to prognosticate misfortunes still unaccomplished,
and a fatal issue to their love. The Prince connects
these
things with the events of his early boyhood, which
he dimly
remembers in the hermitage by the Sirens'
Rock, before the Hermit
brought him to his kingdom;
and he confesses to his betrothed the
gloomy uncertainty
with which his mind is clouded. However, they
try to
forget all forebodings and dwell on the happiness in store
for them. They sing to each other and together, but
their
songs seem to find an ominous burden in the echoes
of the sacred
grove, and they part at last, saddened in
spite of themselves. The
Prince goes, leaving the lady,
who says that she will stay there
till her maidens join
her. Being left alone, she suddenly hears a
voice calling
her, and finds that it comes from the Oracle of the
grove,
whose shrine is forgotten and almost overgrown. She
forces the tangled growth aside and enters the precincts.
Scene 3.
The Shrine of the Oracle. Here the Oracle speaks to
her; at
first in dark sentences, but at length more
accomplishing which he
must not hope for love or peace.
It speaks of the evil powers
which caused his parents'
death, and are doomed themselves to
annihilation by the
just vengeance transmitted to him. It then
tells her
clearly how it is the heavenly will that the Prince
shall
only wed if he survives the vengeance due for his parents'
death, but that he had been chosen now to fulfil the doom
of
the Sirens, and must at once accomplish his mission.
Finally the
Oracle announces that its function has been
so far renewed for the
last time that it may be compelled
to denounce its fellow powers
of Paganism; but that
now its voice is silent for ever. At the end
of this
scene the Bride's maidens come to meet her, and find her
bewildered and in tears, but cannot learn the cause from
her.
Scene 4.
The Bridal Chamber on the morning after the nuptials.
The
scene opens with a réveillee
Prince and Princess are together, and
he is speaking
to her of his love and their future happiness, but
after
a time, in the midst of their endearments, he begins to
perceive that she is disturbed and anxious, and presses
her to
tell him the cause. She at last informs him with
tears of her
conference with the Oracle on their last
meeting in the grove. This
(as she tells him) she had
not the courage to reveal to him before
their wedding,
as, if obeyed, it must tear him from her arms,
perhaps
never to return; and she had then resolved to suppress
the terrible secret at any risk to herself; but on the
bridal
night, while she lay in his arms, the Hermit, now
a saint in
heaven, had appeared to her in a dream, with
a wrathful aspect. He
had told her how by his means
the Prince had been preserved in
infancy; had reproached
her with her silence as to the charge she
had received;
and had told her that if she did not now make known
to
her husband the will of Heaven, some fatal mischance
tells him with many tears
and with bitter upbraidings of
the cruel fate which compelled her
to avoid the certain
wrath threatened to him by sending him on a
mission
of such terrible uncertainty. Before telling all this
she
had consented to speak only on his promising to grant
the
first favour she should afterwards ask for herself;
and she now
tells him that this favour is the permission
to accompany him on
his voyage. He endeavours in
vain to dissuade her from this, and
at last consents to it.
Act III.—Scene 1.
The hermitage near the Sirens' Rock, as in Act I.
Arrival of
the Prince, accompanied by his Bride, who is
prevailed on by him
to remain in prayer at the hermitage
while he pursues his journey
to the rock. Before they
part, a paper is found written, by which
they learn that
the Hermit had died there a year and a day before,
and
that he named the day of their present arrival as the
one
on which his hermitage would again be tenanted,
and yet on which
its appointed use would cease.
Scene 2.
The Sirens' Rock. The Sirens have been warned by
the evil
powers to whom they are tributary that this
day is a signal one
for them. They are uncertain
whether for good or ill, but are
possessed by a spirit
of baneful exaltation, and in their songs
alternate from
one to the other wild tales of their triumphs in
past
times and the renowned victims who have succumbed to
them. As they reach the name of the Christian Prince
and his wife
who died by their means, a vessel comes in
view, but almost before
their songs have been directed
towards it, they are surprised to
see it make straight for
the rock, and the occupant resolutely
disembark and
commence the ascent. As he nears them, they exchange
scornful prophecies of his ruin between the pauses of
their
song; but gradually Ligeia, who has at first begged
him of her
sisters as her special prey, finds herself
stand, and by the time
he reaches the summit of the
rock and stands before them, she is
alternately beseech-
ing him for his love and her sisters for his
life. A long
chorus here occurs: Ligeia yielding to the agony of
her
passion, while the Prince repulses and reviles her, and
the other Sirens wail and curse, warning her of the im-
pending
doom. The Prince tells Ligeia of his parentage
and mission, but
she still madly craves for his love and
holds forth to him such
promises of infernal sovereignty
as her gods afford, if he will
yield to her passion. He
meanwhile, though proof against her lures
and loathing
her in his heart, is physically absorbed into the
death-
agony of the expiring spell; and when, at his last word
of reprobation, the curse seizes her and her sisters, and
they dash themselves headlong from the rock, he also
succumbs to
the doom, calling with his last breath on his
Bride to come to
him. Throughout the scene the prayers
of the Bride are fitfully
wafted from the hermitage
between the pauses of the Sirens' songs
and the deadly
chorus of love and hate.
Scene 3.
Within the hermitage, the Bride still praying. The
scene to
commence with a few lines of prayer, after
which the Spirit of the
Prince appears, calling the Bride
to come to him, in the same
words with which the last
scene ended. She then discourses to him,
saying many
things in gradually increasing ecstasy of love, he all
the
time speaking to her at intervals, only the same words
as
before. She ends by answering him in his own
words, calling him to
come to her, and so dies.
In case of representation—supposing the hermitage
and rock to be visible on the stage at the same time—
the conclusion might be that at the moment of the Prince's
death,
when he calls to his bride, she breaks off her
prayers; answering
him in the same words, and dies.
Scene 3 would thus be dispensed
with.
The young King of a country is hunting on a day with
a
young Knight, his friend; when, feeling thirsty, he stops
at a Forester's cottage, and the Forester's daughter brings
him a
cup of water to drink. Both of them are equally
enamoured at once
of her unequalled beauty. The
King, however, has been affianced
from boyhood to a
Princess worthy of all love, and whom he has
always
believed he loved until undeceived by his new absorbing
passion; but the Knight, resolved to sacrifice all other
considerations to his love, goes again to the Forester's
cottage
and asks his daughter's hand. He finds that the
girl has fixed her
thoughts on the King, whose rank she
does not know. On hearing it
she tells her suitor
humbly that she must die if such be her fate,
but cannot
love another. The Knight goes to the King to tell him
all and beg his help; and the two friends then come
to an
explanation. Ultimately the King goes to the girl
and pleads his
friend's cause, not disguising his own
passion, but saying that as
he sacrifices himself to honour,
so should she, at his prayer,
accept a noble man whom
he loves better than all men and whom she
will love too.
This she does at last; and the King makes his friend
an
Earl and gives him a grant of the forest and surround-
ing
country as a marriage gift, with the annexed condition,
that the
Earl's wife shall bring the King a cup of water
at the same spot
on every anniversary of their first
meeting when he rides a-hunting
with her husband. At
no other time will he see her, loving her too
much. He
weds the Princess, and thus two years pass, the condition
being always fulfilled. But before the third anniversary
King's life wears on, and
still he and his friend pursue
their practice of hunting on that
day, for sixteen years.
When the anniversary comes round for the
sixteenth
time since the lady's death, the Earl tells his
daughter,
who has grown to her mother's perfect likeness (but
whom the King has never seen), to meet them on the
old spot
with the cup of water, as her mother first did
when of the same
age. The King, on seeing her, is
deeply moved; but on her being
presented to him by
the Earl, he is about to take the cup from her
hand, when
he is aware of a second figure in her exact likeness
but
dressed in peasant's clothes, who steps to her side as he
bends from his horse to take the cup, looks in his face
with
solemn words of love and welcome, and kisses him
on the mouth. He
falls forward on his horse's neck, and
is lifted up dead.
Michael Scott and a friend, both young and
dissolute,
are returning from a carouse, by moonlight, along a wild
sea-coast during a groundswell. As they come within
view of
a small house on the rocky shore, his companion
taunts Michael
Scott as to his known passion for the
maiden Janet who dwells
there with her father, and as
to the failure of the snares he has
laid for her. Scott is
goaded to great irritation, and as they
near the point of
the sands overlooked by the cottage, he turns
round on
his friend and declares that the maiden shall come out
to
him then and there at his summons.The friend still
taunts
and banters him, saying that wine has heated his
brain; but Scott
stands quite still, muttering, and regard-
ing the cottage with a
gesture of command. After he
has done so for some time, the door
opens softly, and Janet
comes running down the rock. As she
approaches, she
nearly rushes into Michael Scott's arms, but
instead
swerves aside, runs swiftly by him, and plunges into
the
surging waves. With a shriek Michael plunges after
her,
and strikes out this side and that, and lashes his
way among the
billows, between the rising and sinking
breakers; but all in vain,
no sign appears of her. After
some time spent in this way he
returns almost exhausted
to the sands, and passing without answer
by his appalled
and questioning friend, he climbs the rock to the
door
of the cottage, which is now closed. Janet's father
answers his loud knocking, and to him he says, “Slay
me, for your daughter has drowned herself this hour in
yonder sea,
and by my means.” The father at first
suspects some
stratagem, but finally deems him mad,
and says, “You
rave,—my daughter is at rest in her
The father goes up to his daughter's chamber, and
re-
turning very pale, signs to Michael to follow him.
Together they climb the stair, and find Janet half lying
and half
kneeling, turned violently round, as if, in the
act of rising from
her bed, she had again thrown herself
backward and clasped the
feet of a crucifix at her bed-
head; so she lies dead. Michael
Scott rushes from the
house, and returning maddened to the
seashore, is with
difficulty restrained from suicide by his
friend. At last
he stands like stone for a while, and then, as if
repeating
an inner whisper, he describes the maiden's last struggle
with her heart. He says how she loved him but would
not sin;
how, hearing in her sleep his appeal from the
shore she almost
yielded, and the embodied image of
her longing came rushing out to
him; but how in the
last instant she turned back for refuge to
Christ, and her
soul was wrung from her by the struggle of her
heart.
“And as I speak,” he says,
“the fiend who whispers
this concerning her says also
in my ear how surely I
am lost.”
The jealousies of two rival Scholars, a classical and
a
theological one, respecting a palimpsest. The classical
one takes years to decipher his Pagan author, while the
Theologian
considers the only value of the scroll to con-
sist in the Early
Father on the surface, whom he is to
edit in due course. The
Theologian is in bad health, and
expects to die before the Classic
has finished. This drives
him to desperation, and impels him at
last to murder his
rival; who in dying shows him in triumph the
scroll,
from which the Early Father has been completely erased
by acids, leaving a fair MS. of the Pagan poet.
A woman, intensely enamoured of a man who does
not
love her, makes use of a philtre to secure his love. In
this she succeeds; but it also acts gradually upon his
life. She
attempts to avert this by destroying the whole
effect of the
philtre, but finds this is not permitted her;
and he dies in her
arms, deeply loving her and deeply
loved by her, while she is
conscious of being the cause
of his death. As he yields his last
breath in a kiss, she
knows that his spirit now hates her.
Blakefelt his way in drawing, notwithstanding his
love of a “bold determinate outline,” and did not get
this at once. Copyists and plagiarists do that, but not
original artists, as it is common to suppose: they find
a difficulty in developing the first idea. Blake drew
a rough, dotted line with pencil, then with ink; then
colour, filling in cautiously, carefully. At the same time
he attached very great importance to “first lines,” and
was wont to affirm—“First thoughts are best in art,”
second thoughts in other matters.He held that nature should be learned by heart, and
remembered by the painter, as the poet remembers
language.“To learn the language of art, Copy for ever” said he. But he never painted his pictures
is my rule,
from models.“Models are difficult—enslave one—” This last axiom is open to much
efface from one's mind a conception or reminiscence
which was better.
more discussion than can be given it here. From
Fuseli, that often-reported declaration of his, “Nature” seems but another expression of the
puts me out,
same wilful arrogance and want of delicate shades,
whether of character or style, which we find in that
painter's works. Nevertheless a sentence should here
be spared to say that England would do well to preserve
some remnant of Fuseli's work before it is irremediably
obliterated. His oil pictures are, for the most part,monstrously overloaded in bulk as in style, and not less
overloaded in mere slimy pigment. But his sketches in
water-wash and pencil or pen-and-ink should yet be
formed, ere too late, into a precious national collection,
including as they do many specimens than which not
the greatest Italian masters could show greater proofs of
mastery.Blake's natural tendencies were, in many respects, far
different from Fuseli's; and it is deeply to be regretted
that an antagonism, which became more and more
personal as well as artistic, to the petty practice of the
art of his day,—joined no doubt to inevitable sympathy
with this very Fuseli, fighting in great measure the same
battle with himself for the high against the low,—should
have led to Blake's adopting and unreservedly following
the dogma above given as regards the living model.
Poverty, and consequent difficulty of models at com-
mand, must have had something to do with it too. The
truth on this point is, that no imaginative artist can fully
express his own tone of mind without sometimes in his
life working untrammelled by present reference to
nature; and, indeed, that the first conception of every
serious work must be wrought into something like
complete form, as a preparatory design, without such
aid, before having recourse to it in the carrying-out of
the work. But it is equally or still more imperative
that immediate study of nature should pervade the whole
completed work. Tenderness, the constant unison of
wonder and familiarity so mysteriously allied in nature,
the sense of fulness and abundance such as we feel in
a field, not because we pry into it all, but because it is
all there: these are the inestimable prizes to be secured
only by such study in the painter's every picture. And
all this Blake, as thoroughly as any painter, was gifted
to have attained, as we may see especially in his works
of that smallest size where memory and genius may
really almost stand in lieu of immediate consultation of
nature. But the larger his works are, the further hedeparts from this lovely impression of natural truth; and
when we read the above maxim, we know why. How-
ever, the principle was not one about which he had no
misgiving, for very fluctuating if not quite conflicting
opinions on this point might be quoted from his writings.No special consideration has yet been entered on here
of Blake's claim as a colourist, but it is desirable that
this should be done now in winding up the subject, both
because his place in this respect among painters is very
peculiar, and also on account of the many misleading
things he wrote regarding colour, carried away at the
moment, after his fiery fashion, by the predominance he
wished to give to other qualities in some argument in
hand. Another reason why his characteristics in this
respect need to be dwelt upon is that certainly his most
original and prismatic system of colour,—in which tints
laid on side by side, each in its utmost force, are made
by masterly treatment to produce a startling and novel
effect of truth,—must be viewed as being, more deci-
dedly than the system of any other painter, the fore-
runner of a style of execution now characterizing a whole
new section of the English School, and making itself
admitted as actually involving some positive additions to
the resources of the art. Some of the out-door pictures
of this class, studied as they are with a closeness of
imitation perhaps unprecedented, have nevertheless no
slight essential affinity to Blake's way of representing
natural scenes, though the smallness of scale in these
latter, and the spiritual quality which always mingles
with their truth to nature, may render the parallel less
apparent than it otherwise would be. In Blake's colour-
ing of landscape, a subtle and exquisite reality forms
quite as strong an element as does ideal grandeur;
whether we find him dealing with the pastoral sweetness
of drinking cattle at a stream, their hides and fleeces all
glorified by sunset with magic rainbow hues; or reveal-
ing to us, in a flash of creative genius, some parted sky
and beaten sea full of portentous expectation. Oneunfailing sign of his true brotherhood with all the great
colourists is the lovingly wrought and realistic flesh-
painting which is constantly to be met with in the midst
of his most extraordinary effects. For pure realism, too,
though secured in a few touches as only greatness can,
let us turn to the dingy London street, all snow-clad and
smoke-spotted, through which the little black Chimney-
sweeper wends his way in the.Songs of Experience
Certainly an unaccountable perversity of colour may
now and then be apparent, as where, in the same series,
the tiger is painted in fantastic streaks of red, green,
blue, and yellow, while a tree stem at his side tanta-
lizingly supplies the tint which one might venture to
think his due, and is perfect tiger-colour! I am sure,
however, that such vagaries, curious enough no doubt,
are not common with Blake, as the above is the only
striking instance I can recall in his published work.
But, perhaps, a few occasional bewilderments may be
allowed to a system of colour which is often suddenly
called upon to help in embodying such conceptions as
painter never before dreamed of: some old skeleton
folded together in the dark bowels of earth or rock, dis-
coloured with metallic stain and vegetable mould; some
symbolic human birth of crowned flowers at dawn, amid
rosy light and the joyful opening of all things. Even
a presentment of the most abstract truths of natural
science is not only attempted by this new painter, but
actually effected by legitimate pictorial ways; and we
are somehow shown, in figurative yet not wholly unreal
shapes and hues, the mingling of organic substances,
the gradual development and perpetual transfusion of
life.The reader who wishes to study Blake as a colourist
has a means of doing so, thorough in kind though limited
in extent, by going to the Print Room at the British
Museum (which is accessible to any one who takes the
proper course to gain admission), and there examining
certain of Blake's hand-coloured prints, bound involumes. All those in the collection are not equally
valuable, since the various copies of Blake's own colour-
ing differ extremely in finish and richness. The Museum
copy of theis rather aSongs of Innocence and Experience
poor one, though it will serve to judge of the book; and
some others of his works are there represented by copies
which, I feel convinced, are not coloured by Blake's hand
at all, but got up more or less in his manner, and brought
into the market after his death. But two volumes here—
the, and especially the smaller of the twoSong of Los
collections of odd plates from his different works, which
is labelled, and numbered insideDesigns by W. Blake
the fly-leaf 5240—afford specimens of his colouring,
perhaps equal to any that could be seen.The tinting in the
is not, throughout, ofSong of Los
one order of value; but no finer example of Blake's
power in rendering poetic effects of landscape could be
found than that almost miraculous expression of the
glow and freedom of air in closing sunset, in a plate
where a youth and maiden, lightly embraced, are racing
along a saddened low-lit hill, against an open sky of
blazing and changing wonder. But in the volume of
collected designs I have specified, almost every plate (or
more properly water-colour drawing, as the printed
groundwork in such specimens is completely overlaid)
shows Blake's colour to advantage, and some in its very
fullest force. See, for instance, in plate 8, the deep,
unfathomable, green sea churning a broken foam as
white as milk against that sky which is all blue and gold
and blood-veined heart of fire; while from sea to sky
one locked and motionless face gazes, as it might seem,
for ever. Or, in plate 9, the fair tongues and threads of
liquid flame deepening to the redness of blood, lapping
round the flesh-tints of a human figure which bathes and
swims in the furnace. Or plate 12, which, like the
other two, really embodies some of the wild ideas in
, but might seem to be Aurora guiding the new-Urizen
born day, as a child, through a soft-complexioned sky offleeting rose and tingling grey, such as only dawn and
dreams can show us. Or, for pure delightfulness, intri-
cate colour, and a kind of Shakespearean sympathy with
all forms of life and growth, as in the, let the gazer, having this precious book once inMidsummer Night's
Dream
his hands, linger long over plates 10, 16, 22, and 23. If
they be for him, he will be joyful more and more the
longer he looks, and will gain back in that time 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 many distant hills.The inequality in value, to which I have alluded,
between various copies of the same design as coloured
by Blake, may be tested by comparing the book con-
taining the plates alluded to above, with the copies of
and theUrizen , also in the Print Room,Book of Thel
some of whose contents are the same as in this collected
volume. The immense difference dependent on greater
finish in the book I have described, and indeed some-
times involving the introduction of entirely new features
into the design, will thus be at once apparent. In these
highly-wrought specimens, the colour has a half floating
and half granulated character which is most curious and
puzzling, seeming dependent on the use of some peculiar
means, either in vehicle, or by some kind of pressure or
stamping which had the result of blending the trans-
parent and body tints in a manner not easily described.
The actual printing from the plate bearing the design
was, as I have said and feel convinced, confined to the
first impression in monochrome. But this perplexing
quality of execution reaches its climax in some of
Blake's “oil-colour printed” and hand-finished designs,
such as several large ones now in the possession of
Captain Butts, the grandson of Blake's friend and patron.
One of these, the, consists in a great part ofNewton
rock covered with fossil substance or lichen of somekind, the treatment of which is as endlessly varied and
intricate as a photograph from a piece of seaweed would
be. It cannot possibly be all handwork, and yet I can
conceive no mechanical process, short of photography,
which is really capable of explaining it. It is no less
than a complete mystery, well worthy of any amount of
inquiry, if a clue could only be found from which to
commence. In nearly all Blake's works of this solidly
painted kind, it is greatly to be lamented that the
harmony of tints is continually impaired by the blacken-
ing of the bad white pigment, and perhaps red lead also,
which has been used,—an injury which must probably
go still further in course of time.Of the process by which the designs last alluded to
were produced, the following explanation has been fur-
nished by Mr. Tatham. It is interesting, and I have no
doubt correct as regards the groundwork, but certainly
it quite falls short of accounting for the perplexing
intricacy of such portions as the rock-background of the
. “Newton Blake, when he wanted to make his prints” (writes my informant), “
in oiltook a common thick” Objections might be raised to this account
millboard, and drew, in some strong ink or colour, his
design upon it strong and thick. He then painted upon
that in such oil colours and in such a state of fusion that
they would blur well. He painted roughly and quickly,
so that no colour would have time to dry. He then
took a print of that on paper, and this impression he
coloured up in water-colours, repainting his outline on
the millboard when he wanted to take another print.
This plan he had recourse to, because he could vary
slightly each impression; and each having a sort of
accidental look, he could branch out so as to make each
one different. The accidental look they had was very
enticing.
as to the apparent impracticability of painting in water
colours over oil; but I do not believe it would be found
so, if the oil colour were merely stamped as described,
and left to dry thoroughly into the paper.29 In concluding a biography which has for its subject
a life so prone to new paths as was that of William
Blake, it may be well to allude, however briefly, to those
succeeding British artists who have shown unmistakably
something of his influence in their works. Foremost
among these comes a very great though as yet imper-
fectly acknowledged name,—that of David Scott of Edin-
burgh, a man whom Blake himself would have delighted
to honour, and to whose high appreciation of Blake the
motto on the title-page of the present book bears witness.
Another proof of this is to be found in a MS. note in a
copy ofwhich belonged to Scott; which noteThe Grave
I shall here transcribe. I may premise that the apparent
preference given toover Blake's other worksThe Grave
seems to me almost to argue in the writer an imperfect
acquaintance with the.Job “
These, of any series of designs which art has pro-” (writes the Scottish painter), “
ducedare the most
purely elevated in their relation and sentiment. It
would be long to discriminate the position they hold in
this respect, and at the same time the disregard in
which they may be held by some who judge of them in
a material relation; while the great beauty which they
possess will at once be apparent to others who can
appreciate their style in its immaterial connection. But
the sum of the whole in my mind is this: that these
designs reach the intellectual or infinite, in an abstract
significance, more entirely unmixed with inferior ele-
ments and local conventions than any others; that they
are the result of high intelligence, of thought, and of
a progress of art through many styles and stages of
different times, produced through a bright generalizing
and transcendental mind.“
The errors or defects of Blake's mere science in”
form, and his proneness to overdo some of its best fea-
tures into weakness, are less perceptible in these than
in others of his works. What was a disappointment to
him was a benefit to the work,—that it was etched byanother, who was able to render it in a style thoroughly
consistent, (but which Blake has the originality of having
pointed out, in his series from Young, though he did not
properly effect it,) and to pass over those solecisms
which would have interrupted its impression, in a way
that, to the apprehender of these, need scarcely give
offence, and hides them from the discovery of others.
They are etched with most appropriate and consummate
ability., David Scott1844. In the list of subscribers appended to Blake's
,Grave
we find the name of “Mr. Robert Scott, Edinburgh.”
This was the engraver, father of David Scott, to whom,
therefore, this book (published in 1808, one year after
his birth) must have come as an early association and
influence. That such was the case is often traceable in
his works, varied as they are in their grand range of
subject, and even treatment. And it is singular that the
clear perception of Blake's weak side, evident in the
second paragraph of the note, did not save its writer
from falling into defects exactly similar in that peculiar
class of his works in which he most resembles Blake.
It must be noticed, however, that these are chiefly among
his earlier productions (such as the, the picture ofMonograms of
Man, etc.), or else among theDiscord
sketches left imperfect; while the note dates only five
years before his untimely death at the age of forty-
two. This is not a place where any attempt can be
made at estimating the true position of David Scott.
Such a task will need, and some day doubtless find,
ample limit and opportunity. It is fortunate that an
unusually full and excellent biographical record of him
already exists in thefrom the hand of a brother Memoir
no less allied to him by mental and artistic powers than
by ties of blood; but what is needed is that his works
should be collected and competently placed before the
world. An opportunity in this direction was afforded
by the International Exhibition of 1862; but the two
noble works of his which were there were so unpardon-ably ill-placed (and that where so much was well seen
which was not worth the seeing) that the chance was
completely missed. David Scott will one day be ac-
knowledged as the painter most nearly fulfilling the
highest requirements for historic art, both as a thinker
and a colourist (in spite of the great claims in many
respects of Etty and Maclise), who had come among us
from the time of Hogarth to his own. In saying this it
is necessary to add distinctly (for the sake of objectors
who have raised, or may raise, their voices), that it is
not only or even chiefly on his intellectual eminence
that the statement is based, but also on the great qualities
of colour and powers of solid execution displayed in his
finest works, which are to be found among those deriving
their subjects from history.Another painter, ranking far below David Scott, but
still not to be forgotten where British poetic art is the
theme, was Theodore von Holst, an Englishman, though
of German extraction; in many of whose most charac-
teristic works the influence of Blake, as well as of
Fuseli, has probably been felt. But Holst was far from
possessing anything like the depth of thought or high
aims which distinguished Blake. At the same time, his
native sense of beauty and colour in the more ideal
walks of art was originally beyond that of any among
his contemporaries, except Etty and Scott. He may be
best described, perhaps, to the many who do not know
his works, as being, in some sort, the Edgar Poe of
painting; but lacking, probably, even the continuity of
closely studied work in the midst of irregularities which
distinguished the weird American poet, and has enabled
him to leave behind some things which cannot be soon
forgotten. Holst, on the contrary, it is to be feared, has
hardly transmitted such complete record of his naturally
great gifts as can secure their rescue from oblivion. It
would be very desirable that an account of him and his
works should be written by some one best able to do so
among those still living who must have known him.It is a tribute due to an artist who, however imperfect
his self-expression during a short and fitful career, forms
certainly one of the few connecting links between the
early and sound period of English colour and method in
painting, and that revival of which so many signs have,
in late years, been apparent. At present, much of what
he did is doubtless in danger of being lost altogether.
Specimens from his hand existed in the late Northwick
collection, now dispersed; and some years since I saw
a most beautiful work by him—a female head or half
figure—among the pictures at Stafford House. But
Holst's sketches and designs on paper (a legion past
numbering) were, for the most part, more expressive of
his full powers than his pictures, which were too often
merely sketches enlarged without reference to nature.
Of these, a very extensive collection was possessed by
the late Serjeant Ralph Thomas. What has become of
them? Amongst Holst's pictures, the best are nearly
always those partaking of the fantastic or supernatural,
which, however dubious a ground to take in art, was the
true bent of his genius. A notable instance of his com-
parative weakness in subjects of pure dignity may be
found in what has been pronounced his best work, and
was probably about the most “successful” at the
time of its production; that is, the, which was once in the gallery at the PantheonRaising of Jairus's
Daughter
in Oxford Street. Probably the fullest account of Holst
is to be found in the sufficiently brief notice of him
which appeared in the(orArt Journal , as Art Union
then called).Of any affinity in spirit to Blake which might be found
existing in the works of some living artists, it is not
necessary to speak here; yet allusion should be made to
one still alive and honoured in other ways, who early in
life produced a series of Biblical designs seldom equalled
for imaginative impression, and perhaps more decidedly
like Blake's works, though quite free from plagiarism,
than anything else that could be cited. I allude toOneHundred Copper-plate Engravings from original drawings
by Isaac Taylor, junior, calculated to ornament all quarto
and octavo editions of the Bible.London: Allan Bell
& Co., Warwick Square.1834. Strange as it may
appear, I believe I am right in stating that these were
produced in youth by the late venerable author of the
, and many other works.Natural History of Enthusiasm
How he came to do them, or why he did no more, I have
no means of recording. They are very small and very
unattractively engraved, sometimes by the artist and
sometimes by others. In simplicity, dignity, and
original thought, probably in general neglect at the time,
and certainly in complete disregard ever since, they bear
a close affinity to the mass of Blake's works, and may
fairly be supposed to have been, in some measure,
inspired by the study of them.,The Witch of Endor
,The Plague Stayed , and manyThe Death of Samson
others, are, in spirit, even well worthy of his hand, and
from him, at least, would not have missed the admiration
they deserve.Having spoken so far of Blake's influence as a painter,
I should be glad if I could point out that the simplicity
and purity of his style as a lyrical poet had also exercised
some sway. But, indeed, he is so far removed from
ordinary apprehensions in most of his poems, or more or
less in all, and they have been so little spread abroad,
that it will be impossible to attribute to them any decided
place among the impulses which have directed the extra-
ordinary mass of poetry, displaying power of one or
another kind, which has been brought before us, from
his day to our own. Perhaps some infusion of his
modest and genuine beauties might add a charm even to
the most gifted works of our present rather redundant
time. One grand poem which was, till lately, on the
same footing as his own (or even a still more obscure
one) as regards popular recognition, and which shares,
though on a more perfect scale than he ever realized in
poetry, the exalted and primeval, if not the subtlyetherealized, qualities of his poetic art, may be found in
Charles Wells's scriptural drama of,Joseph and his Brethren
published in 1824 under the assumed name of Howard.
This work affords, perhaps, the solitary instance, within
our period, of poetry of the very first class falling quite
unrecognized and remaining so for a long space of
years. In the first edition of thisit wasLife of Blake
prophesied that Wells's time would “assuredly still” In 1876
come.was repub-Joseph and his Brethren
lished under the auspices of Mr. Swinburne, and with
an introduction from his pen. Charles Wells lived to
see this new phœnix form of the genius of his youth,
but died in 1878. The work is attainable now, and need
not here be dwelt on at any length. In what may
be called the Anglo-Hebraic order of aphoristic truth,
Shakspeare, Blake, and Wells, are nearly akin; nor
could any fourth poet be named so absolutely in the
same connection, though from the Shakspearean point of
view alone the “marvellous,” nay miraculous, Chatter-
ton must also be included. It may be noted that Wells's
admirable prose(1822) have not yetStories after Nature
been republished.A very singular example of the closest and most abso-
lute resemblance to Blake's poetry may be met with (if
only onecouldmeet with it) in a phantasmal sort of little
book, published, or perhaps not published but only
printed, some years since, and entitled. It bears no author's name, but wasImprovisations
of the Spirit
written by Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, the highly-gifted
editor of Swedenborg's writings, and author of aLife
of him: to whom we owe a reprint of the poems in
Blake's. These im-Songs of Innocence and Experience
provisations profess to be written under precisely the
same kind of spiritual guidance, amounting to abnegation
of personal effort in the writer, which Blake supposed to
have presided over the production of his, etc.Jerusalem
The little book has passed into the general (and in all
other cases richly-deserved) limbo of the modern “spiri-tualist” muse. It is a very thick little book, however
unsubstantial its origin; and contains, amid much that is
disjointed or hopelessly obscure (but then why be the
polisher of poems for which a ghost, and not even your
own ghost, is alone responsible?) many passages and
indeed whole compositions of a remote and charming
beauty, or sometimes of a grotesque figurative relation
to things of another sphere, which are startlingly akin
to Blake's writings,—could pass, in fact, for no one's
but his. Professing as they do the same new kind of
authorship, they might afford plenty of material for
comparison and bewildered speculation, if such were in
any request.Considering the interval of seventeen years which has
now elapsed since the first publication of this, itLife
may be well to refer briefly to such studies connected
with Blake as have since appeared. This is not the
place where any attempt could be made to appraise the
thanks due for such a work as Mr. Swinburne'son Blake. The task chiefly undertaken in it—Critical
Essay
that of exploring and expounding the system of thought
and personal mythology which pervades Blake'sPro-—has been fulfilled, not by piecework or
phetic Books
analysis, but by creative intuition. The fiat of Form
and Light has gone forth, and as far as such a chaos
could respond it has responded. To the volume itself,
and to that only, can any reader be referred for its store
of intellectual wealth and reach of eloquent dominion.
Next among Blake labours of love let me here refer to
Mr. James Smetham's deeply sympathetic and assimila-
tive study (in the form of a review article on the present
) published in theLife forLondon Quarterly Review
January 1869. As this article is reprinted in our
present Vol. II., no further tribute to its delicacy and
force needs to be made here: it speaks for itself. But
some personal mention, however slight, should here
exist as due to its author, a painter and designer of our
own day who is, in many signal respects, very closelyakin to Blake; more so, probably, that any other living
artist could be said to be. James Smetham's work—
generally of small or moderate size—ranges from Gospel
subjects, of the subtlest imaginative and mental insight,
and sometimes of the grandest colouring, through Old
Testament compositions and through poetic and pastoral
themes of every kind, to a special imaginative form of
landscape. In all these he partakes greatly of Blake's
immediate spirit, being also often nearly allied by land-
scape intensity to Samuel Palmer,—in youth, the noble
disciple of Blake. Mr. Smetham's works are very
numerous, and, as other exclusive things have come to
be, will some day be known in a wide circle. Space is
altogether wanting to make more than this passing men-
tion here of them and of their producer, who shares, in
a remarkable manner, Blake's mental beauties and his
formative shortcomings, and possesses besides an indi-
vidual invention which often claims equality with the
great exceptional master himself.Mr. W. B. Scott's two valuable contributions to Blake
records—his, as held at the Burlington Fine ArtsCatalogue Raisonné of the Exhibition of
Blake's Works
Club in 1876, and his,—are both duly specified in theEtchings from Blake's Works,
with Descriptive Text
General Catalogues, existing in our Vol. II. We will
say briefly here that no man living has a better right to
write of Blake or to engrave his work than Mr. Scott,
whose work of both kinds is now too well known to call
for recognition. Last but not least, the richly condensed
and representative essay prefixed by Mr. W. M. Rossetti
to his edition (in the Aldine series) of Blake'sdemands from all sides—as its writer has, fromPoetical
Works
all sides, discerned and declared Blake—the highest
commendation we can here briefly offer.The reader has now reached the threshold of the
Second Volume of this work, in which he will be for-
tunate enough to be communicating directly with Blake's
own mind, in a series of writings in prose and verse,many of them here first published. Now perhaps
no poet ever courted a public with more apparent
need for some smoothing of the way, or mild fore-
warning, from within, from without, or indeed from
any region whence a helping heaven and four bountiful
winds might be pleased to waft it, than does Blake
in many of the “emanations” contained in this our
Second Volume. Yet, on the other hand, there is
the plain truth that such aid will be not at all
needed by those whom these writingswillimpress, and
almost certainly lost upon those whom theywill not. On
the whole, I have thought it best to preface each class of
these Selections with a few short remarks, but neither to
encumber with many words their sure effect in the
right circles, nor to do battle with their destiny in the
wrong. Only it may be specified here, that whenever
any pieces occurring in Blake's written note-books
appeared of a nature on the privacy of which he might
have relied in writing them, these have been passed by,
in the task of selection. At the same time, all has been
included which seemed capable in any way of extending
our knowledge of Blake as a poet and writer, in the
manner he himself might have wished. Mere obscurity
or remoteness from usual ways of thought was, as we
know, no bar to publication with him; therefore, in all
cases where such qualities, even seeming to myself
excessive, are found in conjunction with the lyrical
power and beauty of expression so peculiar to Blake's
style as a poet (and this, let us not forget, startlingly in
advance of the time at which he wrote), I have thought
it better to include the compositions so qualified. On
the other hand, my MS. researches have often furnished
me with poems which I treasure most highly, and which
I cannot doubt will dwell in many memories as they do
in mine. But, as regards the varying claims of these
selections, it should be borne in mind that an attempt is
made in the present volume to produce, after a long
period of neglect, as complete a record as might be ofBlake and his works; and that, while any who can here
find anything to love will be the poet-painter's welcome
guests, still such a feast is spread first of all for those
who can know at a glance that it is theirs and was meant
for them; who can meet their host's eye with sympathy
and recognition, even when he offers them the new strange
fruits grown for himself in far-off gardens where he has
dwelt alone, or pours for them the wines which he has
learned to love in lands where they never travelled.
From the Poetical Sketches.
[Printed in 1783. Written 1768-77. æt. 11—20.]
There is no need for many further critical
remarks on
these selections from the Poetical Sketches,
which have
already been spoken of in Chap. VI. of the
. Among
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.
[Engraved 1789.]
Here again but little need be added to what
has
already been said in the
respecting the
Ideas of Good and Evil.
Inthe MS. Note-book, to which frequent reference has
been made in the, a page stands inscribed with theLife
heading given above. It seems uncertain how much of
the book's contents such title may have been meant to
include; but it is now adopted here as a not inappro-
priate summarizing endorsement for the precious section
which here follows. In doing so, Mr. Swinburne's
example (in his) has been followed, asEssay on Blake
regards pieces drawn from the Note-book.The contents of the present section are derived partly
from the Note-book in question, and partly from another
small autograph collection of different matter, somewhat
more fairly copied. The poems have been reclaimed, as
regards the first-mentioned source, from as chaotic a mass
as could well be imagined; amid which it has sometimes
been necessary either to omit, transpose, or combine,
so as to render available what was very seldom found
in a final state. And even in the pieces drawn from the
second source specified above, means of the same kind
have occasionally been resorted to, where they seemed
to lessen obscurity or avoid redundance. But with all
this, there is nothing throughout that is not faithfully
Blake's own.One piece in this series (
) may beThe Two Songs
regarded as a different version of,The Human Abstract
occurring in the. This new form is Songs of Experience
certainly the finer one, I think, by reason of its personified
character, which adds greatly to the force of the impres-
sion produced. It is, indeed, one of the finest thingsBlake ever did, really belonging, by its vivid complete-
ness, to the order of perfect short poems,—never a very
large band, even when the best poets are ransacked to
recruit it. Others among the longer poems of this
section, which are, each in its own way, truly admirable,
are,Broken Love , andMary .Auguries of Innocence It is but too probable that the piece called
Broken Love
has a recondite bearing on the bewilderments of Blake's
special mythology. But besides a soul suffering in such
limbo, this poem has a recognizable body penetrated
with human passion. From this point of view, never,
perhaps, have the agony and perversity of sundered
affection been more powerfully (however singularly)
expressed than here.The speaker is one whose soul has been intensified by
pain to be his only world, among the scenes, figures,
and events of which he moves as in a new state of being.
The emotions have been quickened and isolated by con-
flicting torment, till each is a separate companion. There
is his “spectre,” the jealous pride which scents in the
snow the footsteps of the beloved rejected woman, but
is a wild beast to guard his way from reaching her; his
“emanation” which silently weeps within him, for has
not he also sinned? So they wander together in “a” the morn full of tempests
fathomless and boundless deep,
and the night of tears. Let her weep, he says, not for
his sins only, but for her own; nay, he will cast his sins
upon her shoulders too; they shall be more and more
till she come to him again. Also this woe of his can
array itself in stately imagery. He can count separately
how many of his soul's affections the knife she stabbed
it with has slain, how many yet mourn over the tombs
which he has built for these: he can tell too of some
that still watch around his bed, bright sometimes with
ecstatic passion of melancholy and crowning his mournful
head with vine. All these living forgive her transgres-
sions: when will she look upon them, that the dead may
live again? Has she not pity to give for pardon? nay,does he not need her pardon too? He cannot seek her,
but oh! if she would return! Surely her place is ready
for her, and bread and wine of forgiveness of sins.The
and theCrystal Cabinet belongMental Traveller
to a truly mystical order of poetry. The former is a
lovely piece of lyrical writing, but certainly has not the
clearness of crystal. Yet the meaning of such among
Blake's compositions as this is may sometimes be
missed chiefly through seeking for a sense more re-
condite than was really meant. A rather intricate
interpretation was attempted here in the first edition
of these Selections. Mr. W. M. Rossetti has probably
since found the true one in his simple sentence: “This” (see the Aldine
poem seems to me to represent, under a very ideal form,
the phenomena of gestation and birth
edition of Blake's, page 174). The singular stanzaPoems
commencing “Another England there I saw,” etc.,
may thus be taken to indicate quaintly that the un-
developed creature, half sentient and half conscious, has
a world of its own akin in some wise to the country of its
birth.The
seemed at first a hopeless riddle;Mental Traveller
and the editor of these Selections must confess to having
been on the point of omitting it, in spite of its high poetic
beauty, as incomprehensible. He is again indebted to
his brother for the clear-sighted, and no doubt correct,
exposition which is now printed with it, and brings its
full value to light.The poem of
appears to be, on one side, anMary
allegory of the poetic or spiritual mind moving unre-
cognized and reviled among its fellows; and this view
of it is corroborated when we find Blake applying to
himself two lines almost identically taken from it, in the
last of the Letters to Mr. Butts printed in the. ButLife
the literal meaning may be accepted, too, as a hardly
extreme expression of the rancour and envy so constantly
attending pre-eminent beauty in women.A most noble, though surpassingly quaint example of
Blake's loving sympathy with all forms of created life,
as well as of the kind of oracular power which he
possessed of giving vigorous expression to abstract or
social truths, will be found in the.Auguries of Innocence
It is a somewhat tangled skein of thought, but stored
throughout with the riches of simple wisdom.Quaintness reaches its climax in
, whichWilliam Bond
may be regarded as a kind of glorified street-ballad.
One point that requires to be noted is that the term
“fairies” is evidently used to indicate passionate emo-
tions, while “angels” are spirits of cold coercion. The
close of the ballad is very beautiful. It is not long since
there seemed to dawn on the present writer a mean-
ing in this ballad not discovered before. Should we
not connect it with the linestheIn a Myrtle Shade
meaning of which is obvious to all knowers of Blake
as bearing on marriage? And may not “William” thus be William Blake, the bondman of the
Bond
“lovely myrtle tree”? It is known that the shadow
of jealousy, far from unfounded, fell on poor Catherine
Blake's married life at one moment, and it has been
stated that this jealousy culminated in a terrible and
difficult crisis. We ourselves can well imagine that this
ballad is but a literal relation, with such emotional
actors, of some transfiguring trance and passion of
mutual tears from which Blake arose no longer “bond”
to his myrtle-tree, but with that love, purged of all
drossier element, whose last death-bed accent was,
“Kate, you have ever been an angel to me!”The ballad of
has great spiritualWilliam Bond
beauties, whatever its meaning; and it is one of only
two examples, in this form, occurring among Blake's
lyrics. The other is called, and perhaps the reader may be sufficientlyLong John Brown and Little
Mary Bell
surprised without it.The shorter poems, and even the fragments, afford
many instances of that exquisite metrical gift and right-
ness in point of form which constitute Blake's specialglory among his contemporaries, even more eminently
perhaps than the grander command of mental resources
which is also his. Such qualities of pure perfection in
writing verseas he perpetually without effort displayed
are to be met with among those elder poets whom he
loved, and such again are now looked upon as the
peculiar trophies of a school which has arisen since his
time; but he alone (let it be repeated and remembered)
possessed themthen, and possessed them in clear com-
pleteness. Colour and metre, these are the true patents
of nobility in painting and poetry, taking precedence of
all intellectual claims; and it is by virtue of these, first
of all, that Blake holds, in both arts, a rank which cannot
be taken from him.Of the
, which conclude this section,Epigrams on Art
a few are really pointed, others amusingly irascible,—
all more or less a sort of nonsense verses, and not even
pretending to be much else. To enter into their reckless
spirit of doggerel, it is almost necessary to see the original
note-book in which they occur, which continually testifies,
by sudden exclamatory entries, to the curious degree of
boyish impulse which was one of Blake's characteristics.
It is not improbable that such names as Rembrandt,
Rubens, Correggio, Reynolds, may have met the reader's
eye before in a very different sort of context from that
which surrounds them in the surprising poetry of this
their brother artist; and certainly they are made to do
service here as scarecrows to the crops of a rather jealous
husbandman. And for all that, I have my strong suspi-
cions that the same amount of disparagement of them
utteredtoinstead ofbyour good Blake, would have
elicited, on his side, a somewhat different estimate.
These phials of his wrath, however, have no poison but
merely some laughing gas in them; so now that we are
setting the laboratory a little in order, let these, too,
come down from their dusty upper shelf.
Prose Writings.
Of the prose writings which now follow, the only ones
already in print are theand theDescriptive Catalogue
. To the former of these, theSibylline Leaves , which here succeeds it, forms a fitting and mostPublic
Address
interesting pendant. It has been compiled from a very
confused mass of MS. notes; but its purpose is unmis-
takable as having been intended as an accompaniment
to the engraving of Chaucer's Pilgrims. Both the
andCatalogue abound in critical passages onAddress
painting and poetry, which must be ranked without
reserve among the very best things ever said on either
subject. Such inestimable qualities afford quite sufficient
ground whereon to claim indulgence for eccentricities
which are here and there laughably excessive, but which
never fail to have a personal, even where they have no
critical, value. As evidence of the writer's many moods,
these pieces of prose are much best left unmutilated:
let us, therefore, risk misconstruction in some quarters.
There are others where even the whimsical onslaughts
on names no less great than those which the writer
most highly honoured, and assertions as to this or that
component quality of art being everything or nothing
as it served the fiery plea in hand, will be discerned as
the impatient extremes of a man who had his own work
to do, which was of one kind, as he thought, against
another; and who mainly did it too, in spite of that
injustice without which no extremes might ever have
been chargeable against him. And let us remember
that, after all, having greatness in him, hispracticeof art
includedallgreat aims, whether they were such as his
antagonistic moods railed against or no.The
is almost as much aVision of the Last Judgment
manifesto of opinion as either theorCatalogue .Address
But its work is in a wider field, and one which, where
it stretches beyond our own clear view, may not neces-sarily therefore have been a lost road to Blake himself.
Certainly its grandeur and the sudden great things greatly
said in it, as in all Blake's prose, constitute it an addition
to our opportunities of communing with him, and one
which we may prize highly.The constant decisive words in which Blake alludes,
throughout these writings, to the plagiarisms of his con-
temporaries, are painful to read, and will be wished
away; but, still, it will be worth thinking whether their
being said, or the need of their being said, is the greater
cause for complaint. Justice, looking through surface
accomplishments, greater nicety and even greater occa-
sional judiciousness of execution, in the men whom Blake
compares with himself, still perceives these words of
his to be true. In each style of the art of a period, and
more especially in the poetic style, there is often some
one central initiatory man, to whom personally, if not to
the care of the world, it is important that his creative
power should be held to be his own, and that his ideas
and slowly perfected materials should not be caught up
before he has them ready for his own use. Yet, con-
sciously or unconsciously, such an one's treasures and
possessions are, time after time, while he still lives and
needs them, sent forth to the world by others in forms
from which he cannot perhaps again clearly claim what
is his own, but which render the material useless to him
henceforward. Hardly wonderful, after all, if for once
an impetuous man of this kind is found raising the hue
and cry, careless whether people heed him or no. It is
no small provocation, be sure, when the gazers hoot you
as outstripped in your race, and you know all the time
that the man ahead, whom they shout for, is only a
flying thief.
----------
The Inventions to the Book of Job.
These, which may beInventions to the Book of Job
regarded as the works of Blake's own hand in which hemost unreservedly competes with others—belonging as
they do in style to the accepted category of engraved
designs—consist of twenty-one subjects on a considerably
smaller scale than those in, each highlyThe Grave
wrought in light and shade, and each surrounded by a
border of allusive design and inscription, executed in a
slighter style than the subject itself. Perhaps this may
fairly be pronounced, on the whole, the most remark-
able series of prints on a scriptural theme which has
appeared since the days of Albert Dürer and Rembrandt,
widely differing too from either.Except
, these designs must be known to aThe Grave
larger circle than any other series by Blake; and yet
they are by no means so familiar as to render unneces-
sary such imperfect reproduction of their intricate beau-
ties as the scheme of this work made possible, or even
the still more shadowy presentment of verbal description.The first among them shows us the patriarch Job
worshiping among his family under a mighty oak,
surrounded by feeding flocks, range behind range, as far
as the distant homestead, in a landscape glorified by
setting sun and rising moon. “Thus did Job continually,”
the leading motto tells us. In the second plate we see
the same persons grouped, still full of happiness and
thanksgiving. But this is that day when the sons of
God came to present themselves before the Lord, and
Satan came also among them; and above the happy group
we see what they do not see, and know that power is
given to Satan over all that Job has. Then in the two
next subjects come the workings of that power; the
house falling on the slain feasters, and the messengers
hurrying one after another to the lonely parents, still
with fresh tidings of ruin. The fifth is a wonderful
design. Job and his wife still sit side by side, the closer
for their misery, and still, out of the little left to them,
give alms to those poorer than themselves. The angels
of their love and resignation are ever with them on
either side; but above, again, the unseen Heaven liesopen. There sits throned that Almighty figure, filled
now with inexpressible pity, almost with compunction.
Around Him His angels shrink away in horror; for now
the fires which clothe them —the very fires of God—are
compressed in the hand of Satan into a phial for the
devoted head of Job himself. Job is to be tried to the
utmost; only his life is withheld from the tormentor.
How this is wrought, and how Job's friends come
to visit him in his desolation, are the subjects which
follow; and then, in the eighth design, Job at last
lifts up his voice, with arms uplifted too, among his
crouching, shuddering friends, and curses the day when
he was born. The next, again, is among the grandest
of the series. Eliphaz the Temanite is telling Job of the
thing which was secretly brought to him in the visions
of the night; and above we are shown the matter of
his words, the spirit which passed before his face; all
blended in a wondrous partition of light, cloud, and mist
of light. After this, Job kneels up and prays his re-
proachful friends to have pity on him, for the hand of
God has touched him. And next—most terrible of all
—we see embodied the accusations of torment which Job
brings against his Maker: a theme hard to dwell upon,
and which needs to be viewed in the awful spirit in
which Blake conceived it. But in the following subject
there comes at last some sign of soothing change. The
sky, till now full of sunset and surging cloud, in which
the stones of the ruined home looked as if they were
still burning, has here given birth to the large peaceful
stars, and under them the young Elihu begins to speak:
“Lo! all these things worketh God oftentimes with man,” The expression of
to bring forth his soul from the pit.
Job, as he sits with folded arms, beginning to be recon-
ciled, is full of delicate familiar nature; while the look
of the three unmerciful friends, in their turn reproved,
has something in it almost humorous. And then the
Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind, dreadful in its
resistless force, but full also of awakening life, and richwith lovely clinging spray. Under its influence, Job and
his wife kneel and listen, with faces to which the blessing
of thankfulness has almost returned. In the next sub-
ject it shines forth fully present again, for now God
Himself is speaking of His own omnipotence and right
of judgment—of that day of creation “when the morning” All that He says is brought before us, surround-
stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for
joy.
ing His own glorified Image; while below, the hearers
kneel rapt and ecstatic. This is a design which never
has been surpassed in the whole range of Christian art.
Very grand too is the next, where we see Behemoth,
chief of the ways of God, and Leviathan, king over the
children of pride. The sixteenth plate, to which we
now come, is a proof of the clear dramatic sense with
which Blake conceived the series as a whole. It is
introduced in order to show us the defeat of Satan in his
contest against Job's uprightness. Here, again, is the
throned Creator among His angels, and beneath Him the
Evil One falls with tremendous plummet-force; Hell
naked before His face, and Destruction without a cover-
ing. Job with his friends are present as awe-struck
witnesses. In the design which follows, He who has
chastened and consoled Job and his wife is seen to be-
stow His blessing on them; while the three friends,
against whom “His wrath is kindled,” cover their faces
with fear and trembling. And now comes the acceptance
of Job, who prays for his friends before an altar, from
which a heart-shaped body of flame shoots upward into
the sun itself; the background showing a distant evening
light through broad tree-stems—the most peaceful sight
in the world. Then Job's kindred return to him: “every” Next he is seen relating his trials and
one also gave him a piece of money and every one an
earring of gold.
mercies to the new daughters who were born to him—
no women so fair in the land. And, lastly, the series
culminates in a scene of music and rapturous joy, which,
contrasted with the calm thanksgiving of the openingdesign, gloriously embodies the words of its text, “ So”
the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the
beginning.In these three last designs, I would specially direct
attention to the exquisite beauty of the female figures.
Nothing proves more thoroughly how free was the
spiritualism of Blake's art from any ascetic tinge. These
women are given to us no less noble in body than in
soul; large-eyed, and large-armed also; such as a man
may love with all his life.The angels (and especially those in plate 14, “
When”) may be equally cited
the morning stars sang together,
as proofs of the same great distinctive quality. These
are no flimsy, filmy creatures, drowsing on feather-bed
wings, or smothered in draperies. Here the utmost
amount of vital power is the heavenly glory they dis-
play; faces, bodies, and wings, all living and springing
fire. And that the ascetic tendency, here happily absent,
is not the inseparable penalty to be paid for a love of the
Gothic forms of beauty, is evident enough, when we seen
those forms everywhere rightly mingling with the artist's
conceptions, as the natural breath of sacred art. With
the true daring of genius, he has even introduced a Gothic
cathedral in the background of the worshipping group in
plate 1, as the shape in which the very soul of worship
is now for ever embodied for us. It is probably with
the fine intention of symbolizing the unshaken piety of
Job under heavy affliction that a similar building is still
seen pointing its spires heavenward in the fourth plate,
where the messengers of ruin follow close at one ano-
ther's heels. We may, perhaps, even conjecture that
the shapeless buildings, like rude pagan cairns, which
are scattered over those scenes of the drama which refer
to the gradual darkening of Job's soul, have been intro-
duced as forms suggestive of error and the shutting out
of hope. Everywhere throughout the series we meet
with evidences of Gothic feeling. Such are the recessed
settle and screen of trees in plate 2, much in the spiritof Orcagna; the decorative character of the stars in
plate 12; the Leviathan and Behemoth in plate 15,
grouped so as to recall a mediæval medallion or wood-
carving; the trees, drawn always as they might be carved
in the woodwork of an old church. Further instances
of the same kind may be found in the curious sort of
painted chamber, showing the themes of his discourse,
in which Job addresses his daughters in plate 20; and
in the soaring trumpets of plate 21, which might well be
one of the rich conceptions of Luca della Robbia.Nothing has yet been said of the borders of illustrative
design and inscription which surround each subject in
the. These are slight in manner, but always thought-Job
ful and appropriate, and often very beautiful. Where
Satan obtains power over Job, we see a terrible serpent
twined round tree-stems among winding fires, while
angels weep, but may not quench them. Fungi spring
under baleful dews, while Job prays that the night may
be solitary, and the day perish wherein he was born.
Trees stand and bow like ghosts, with bristling hair of
branches, round the spirit which passes before the face
of Eliphaz. Fine examples also are the prostrate rain-
beaten tree in plate 13; and, in the next plate, the map
of the days of creation. In plate 18 (the sacrifice and
acceptance of Job), Blake's palette and brushes are ex-
pressively introduced in the border, lying, as it were,
on an altar-step beside the signature of his name. That
which possesses the greatest charm is perhaps the border
to plate 2. Here, at the base, are sheepfolds watched
by shepherds: up the sides is a trellis, on whose lower
rings birds sit upon their nests, while angels, on the
higher ones, worship round flame and cloud, till it arches
at the summit into a sky full of the written words of
God.Such defects as exist in these designs are of the kind
usual with Blake, but far less frequent than in his more
wilful works; indeed, many among them are entirely
free from any damaging peculiarities. Intensely mus-cular figures, who surprise us by a sort of line round
the throat, wrists, and ankles, but show no other sign
of being draped, are certainly to be sometimes found
here as elsewhere, but not many of them. The lifted
arms and pointing arms in plates 7 and 10 are pieces of
mannerism to be regretted, the latter even seeming a
reminiscence of Macbeth's Witches by Fuseli: and a
few other slight instances might, perhaps, be cited.
But, on the whole, these are designs no less well and
clearly considered, however highly imaginative, than the
others in the small highest class of original engraved
inventions, which comprises the works of Albert Dürer,
of Rembrandt, of Hogarth, of Turner, of Cruikshank in
his best time, and some few others. Like all these they
are incisive and richly toned to a degree which can only
be attained in engraving by the original inventor, and
have equally a style of execution all their own. In spirit
and character they are no less independent, having more
real affinity, perhaps, with Orcagna than with any other
of the greatest men. In their unison of natural study
with imagination, they remind one decidedly of him;
and also of Giotto, himself the author of a now almost
destroyed series of frescoes from Job, in the Campo Santo
at Pisa, which it would be interesting to compare, as far
as possible, with these inventions of Blake.
----------
Jerusalem.
Of the pictorial part of themuch might beJerusalem
said which would merely be applicable to all Blake's
works alike. One point perhaps somewhat distinctive
about it is an extreme largeness and decorative character
in the style of the drawings, which are mostly made up
of a few massive forms, thrown together on a grand,
equal scale. The beauty of the drawings varies much,
according to the colour in which they are printed. One
copy, possessed by Lord Houghton, is so incomparablysuperior, from this cause, to any other I have seen, that
no one could know the work properly without having
examined this copy. It is printed in a warm reddish
brown, the exact colour of a very fine photograph; and
the broken blending of the deeper tones with the more
tender shadows,—all sanded over with a sort of golden
mist peculiar to Blake's mode of execution,—makes still
more striking the resemblance to the then undiscovered
“handling” of Nature herself. The extreme breadth of
the forms throughout, when seen through the medium
of this colour, shows sometimes, united with its grandeur,
a suavity of line which is almost Venetian.The subjects are vague and mystic as the poem itself.
Female figures lie among waves full of reflected stars:
a strange human image, with a swan's head and wings,
floats on water in a kneeling attitude, and drinks: lovers
embrace in an open water-lily: an eagle-headed creature
sits and contemplates the sun: serpent-women are coiled
with serpents: Assyrian-looking, human-visaged lions are
seen yoked to the plough or the chariot: rocks swallow
or vomit forth human forms, or appear to amalgamate
with them: angels cross each other over wheels of flame:
and flames and hurrying figures wreathe and wind among
the lines. Even such slight things as these rough inter-
secting circles, each containing some hint of an angel,
even these are made the unmistakable exponents of
genius. Here and there some more familiar theme meets
us,—the creation of Eve, or the Crucifixion; and then
the thread is lost again. The whole spirit of the designs
might seem well symbolized in one of the finest among
them, where we see a triple-headed and triple-crowned
figure embedded in rocks, from whose breast is bursting
a string of youths, each in turn born from the other's
breast in one sinuous throe of mingled life, while the
life of suns and planets dies and is born and rushes
together around them.There is an ominous sentence in one of the letters of
Blake to Mr. Butts, where, speaking of the, heJerusalem says, “ the persons and machinery entirely new to the” The
inhabitants of earth (some of the persons excepted).
italics are mine, and alas! to what wisp-led flounderings
of research might they not lure a reckless adventurer.
The mixture of the unaccountable with the familiar in
nomenclature which occurs towards the close of a pre-
ceding extract from theis puzzling enoughJerusalem
in itself; but conjecture attains bewilderment when we
realize that one of the names, “Scofield” (spelt, perhaps
more properly Scholfield, but pronounced no doubt as
above), was that of the soldier who had brought a charge
of sedition against Blake at Felpham. Whether the
other English names given were in some way connected
with the trial would be worth any practicable inquiries.
When we consider the mystical connection in which
this name of Scofield is used, a way seems opened into
a more perplexed region of morbid analogy existing in
Blake's brain than perhaps any other key could unlock.
It is a minute point, yet a significant and amazing one.
Further research discovers further references to “Sco-” for instance,
field,“Go thou to Skofield: Ask him if he is Bath or if he is Canterbury: Tell him to be no more dubious: demand explicit words: Tell him I will dash him into shivers where and at what time I please. Tell him, Hand and Skofield, they are ministers of evil To those I hate: for I can hate also as well as they.” Again (not without
to help):—Jack the Giant Killer “Hark! hear the giants of Albion cry at night,— We smell the blood of the English, we delight in their blood on our altars; The living and the dead shall be ground in our crumbling mill, For bread of the sons of Albion, of the giants Hand and Skofield: Skofield and Cox are let loose upon the Saxons; they accumu- late A world in which man is, by his nature, the enemy of man.” Again (and woe is the present editor!):—
“These are the names of Albion's twelve sons and of his twelve daughters:—”
(Then follows a long enumeration,—to each name
certain counties attached):—“Skofield had Ely, Rutland, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertford, Essex, and his emanation is Guini- vere.”(!!!) The first of the three above quotations seems meant
really as a warning to Scholfield to be exact in evidence
as to his place of birth or other belongings, and as to
the “explicit words” used by Blake. Cox and Court-
hope are Sussex names: can these be the “Kox” and
“Kotope” of the poem, and names in some way con-
nected, like Scholfield's, with the trial?Is the wild, wild tale of Scofield exhausted here?
Alas no! At leaf 51 of theoccurs a certainJerusalem
design. In some, perhaps in all, copies of the, as a whole, the names inscribed above the figuresJeru-
salem
are not given, but at least three examples of water-
colour drawings or highly-coloured reproductions of
the plate exist, in which the names appear. Who
“Vala” and “Hyle” may personify I do not pretend
to conjecture, though dim surmises hurtle in the
mind, which, like De Quincey in the catastrophe of
the, I shall keep to myself. These twoSpanish Nun
seem, pretty clearly, to be prostrate at the discomfiture
of Scofield, who is finally retiring fettered into his
native element. As a historical picture, then, Blake felt
it his duty to monumentalize this design with due in-
scription. Two of the three hand-coloured versions,
referred to above, are registered as Nos. 50 and 51 of
the Catalogue in Vol. II., and the third version appears
as No. 108 in the Burlington Catalogue.I may note another point bearing on the personal
grudges shadowed in the. In Blake'sJerusalem he says:—“Public
AddressThe manner in which my character” Thus we are evidently to look (or sigh in
has been blasted these thirty years, both as an artist and
a man, may be seen, particularly in a Sunday paper called
the, published in Beaufort's Buildings (we allExaminer know that editors of newspapers trouble their heads
very little about art and science, and that they are
always paid for what they put in upon these ungracious
subjects); and the manner in which I have rooted out
the nest of villains will be seen in a poem concerning
my three years' Herculean labours at Felpham, which I
shall soon publish. Secret calumny and open profes-
sions of friendship are common enough all the world
over, but have never been so good an occasion of poetic
imagery.
vain) for some indication of Blake's wrath against the
in the vastExaminer It is true that the Jerusalem.
persecuted him, his publications and exhibi-Examiner
tion, and that Leigh Hunt was prone to tell “good” of him; and in some MS. doggrel of Blake's
stories
we meet with the line,The whose very name is Hunt.”“Examiner
But what form can the irate allegory be supposed to
take in theIs it conceivable that thatJerusalem?
mysterious entity or non-entity, “Hand,” whose name
occurs sometimes in the poem, and of whom an inscribed
spectrum is there given at full length, can be a hiero-
glyph for Leigh Hunt? Alas! what is possible or
impossible in such a connection?
I hope Mr. Gledstanes-Waugh may receive from
other
sources a more complete account than I can give of this
remarkable poet, who affords nearly the most striking
instance of
neglected genius in our modern school of
poetry. This is a more
important fact about him than
his being a Chartist, which however
he was, at any rate
for a time. I met him only once in my life, I
believe
in 1848, at which time he was about thirty, and
would hardly talk on any subject but Chartism. His
poems (the
Studies of Sensation and Event
) had been
Some years after meeting Jones, I was much pleased
to hear
the great poet Robert Browning speak in warm
terms of the merit of
his work; and I have understood
that Monckton Milnes (Lord
Houghton) admired the
Studies
, and interested himself on their author's
It may not be out of place to mention here a much
earlier and
still more striking instance of poetic genius
which has hitherto
failed of due recognition. I allude
to Charles J. Wells, the
author of the blank verse
scriptural drama of
Joseph and his Brethren
, published
Your paragraph, a fortnight ago, relating to the
pseu-
donymous authorship of an article, violently assailing
myself and other writers of poetry, in the
for October last, reveals a species of critical
answer”
The primary accusation, on which this writer grounds extol
”
fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of poetic
and
pictorial art; aver that poetic expression is greater
than
poetic thought; and, by inference, that the body
is greater
than the soul, and sound superior to sense.
As my own writings are alone formally dealt with in
the
article, I shall confine my answer to myself; and
this must first
take unavoidably the form of a challenge
to prove so broad a
statement. It is true, some frag-
mentary pretence at proof is put
in here and there
throughout the attack, and thus far an
opportunity is
given of contesting the assertion.
A Sonnet entitled
is quoted and
whole poem,” describing “
merely animal” It is no more a whole poem, in reality,
sensations.
LOVE-SWEETNESS.“Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head In gracious fostering union garlanded; Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial; Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led Back to her mouth which answers there for all:— 31 “What sweeter than these things, except the thing In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:— The confident heart's still fervour; the swift beat And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring, The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?”
Any reader may bring any artistic charge he pleases
against the above sonnet; but one charge it would be
impossible to
maintain against the writer of the series
in which it occurs, and
that is, the wish on his part to
assert that the body is greater
than the soul. For here
all the passionate and just delights of
the body are
declared—somewhat figuratively, it is true,
but unmis-
takably—to be as naught if not ennobled by
the concur-
rence of the soul at all times. Moreover, nearly one
half of this series of sonnets has nothing to do with love,
but treats of quite other life-influences. I would defy
any one to
couple with fair quotation of Sonnets
author was not impressed, like all other
thinking men,
with the responsibilities and higher mysteries of
life;
while Sonnets
,
At page 342, an attempt is made to stigmatize four
short quotations as being specially “my own
property,
”
that is, (for the context shows the
meaning,) as being
grossly sensual; though all guiding reference
to any
precise page or poem in my book is avoided here. The
first of these unspecified quotations is from the
; and is the description referring to the
A second quotation gives the last two lines only of the
following sonnet, which is the first of four
sonnets in
jointly entitled
“I sat with Love upon a woodside well, Leaning across the water, I and he; Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me, But touched his lute wherein was audible The certain secret thing he had to tell: Only our mirrored eyes met silently In the low wave; and that sound seemed to be The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell. “And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers; And with his foot and with his wing-feathers He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth. Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair, And as I stooped, her own lips rising there Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.”
Bubbled with brimming kisses” etc., bears
A third quotation is from
, and says,
“What more prize than love to impel thee? Grip and lip my limbs as I tell thee!”
whole poem.”
The last of the four quotations grouped by the critic
as conclusive examples consists of two lines from
. Neither some thirteen years ago, when I wrote
It would be humiliating, need one come to serious
detail, to have to refute such an accusation as that of
“binding oneself by solemn league and covenant to
”; and one cannot but
feel that
extol fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of
poetic and pictorial art
here every one will think it allowable merely to
pass-by
with a smile the foolish fellow who has brought a charge
thus framed against any reasonable man. Indeed, what
I have
said already is substantially enough to refute it,
even did I not
feel sure that a fair balance of my poetry
must, of itself, do so
in the eyes of every candid reader.
I say nothing of my pictures;
but those who know
them will laugh at the idea. That I may,
nevertheless,
take a wider view than some poets or critics, of how
much, in the material conditions absolutely given to
man to
deal with as distinct from his spiritual aspira-
tions, is
admissible within the limits of Art,—this, I say,
is
possible enough; nor do I wish to shrink from such
responsibility.
But to state that I do so to the ignoring
or overshadowing of
spiritual beauty, is an absolute
indulgence of prejudice
or rancour.
I have selected, amid much railing on my critic's
part,
what seemed the most representative indictment against
me, and have, so far, answered it. Its remaining clauses
set forth
how others and myself “aver that poetic ex-
”—an accusation
elsewhere, I observe,
pression is greater than poetic thought . . . and sound
superior to sense
expressed by saying that we
“wish to create form for its
” If writers of verse are to be listened to in
own
sake.
such arraignment of each other, it might be quite com-
petent
to me to prove, from the works of my friends in
question, that no
such thing is the case with them; but
my present function is to
confine myself to my own
defence. This, again, it is difficult to
do quite seriously.
It is no part of my undertaking to dispute the
verdict
of any “contemporary,” however
contemptuous or con-
temptible, on my own measure of executive
success;
but the accusation cited above is not against the poetic
value of certain work, but against its primary and (by
assumption) its admitted aim. And to this I must reply
that so
far, assuredly, not even Shakespeare himself
could desire more
arduous human tragedy for develop-
ment in Art than belongs to the
themes I venture to
embody, however incalculably higher might be
his power
of dealing with them. What more inspiring for poetic
effort than the terrible Love turned to Hate,—perhaps
the deadliest of all passion-woven complexities,—which
is the theme of
, and, in a more fantastic
creating form for its own sake,” is, in
It would not be worth while to lose time and patience
in noticing minutely how the system of misrepresenta-
tion is
carried into points of artistic detail,—giving us,
for
example, such statements as that the burthen em-
ployed in the
ballad of
“
is repeated”
with little or no alteration through thirty-four verses,
one”; or, indeed, what not besides?
art getting hold of another, and imposing on it its con-
ditions and limitations
Thus far, then, let me thank you for the opportunity
afforded me to join issue with the Stealthy School of
Criticism.
As for any literary justice to be done on
this particular Mr.
Robert-Thomas, I will merely ask
the reader whether, once
identified, he does not become
manifestly his own best
“sworn tormentor”? For
who will then fail to
discern all the palpitations which
preceded his final resolve in
the great question whether
to be or not to be his acknowledged
self when he became
an assailant? And yet this is he who, from
behind his
mask, ventures to charge another with
“bad blood,
”
with
“insincerity,
” and the rest of
it (and that where
poetic fancies are alone in question); while
every word
on his own tongue is covert rancour, and every stroke
from his pen perversion of truth. Yet, after all, there
is
nothing wonderful in the lengths to which a fretful
poet-critic
will carry such grudges as he may bear, while
publisher and editor
can both be found who are willing
to consider such means
admissible, even to the clear
subversion of first professed tenets
in the
which
In many phases of outward nature, the principle of
chaff and grain holds good,—the base enveloping the
precious continually; but an untruth was never yet the
husk of a
truth. Thresh and riddle and winnow it as
you may,—let
it fly in shreds to the four winds,—false-
hood only
will be that which flies and that which stays.
And thus the sheath
of deceit which this pseudonymous
undertaking presents at the
outset insures in fact what
will be found to be its real character
to the core.
Above all ideal personalities with which the poet
must
learn to identify himself, there is one supremely real
which is the most imperative of all; namely, that of his
reader.
And the practical watchfulness needed for such
assimilation is as
much a gift and instinct as is the
creative grasp of alien
character. It is a spiritual con-
tact, hardly conscious yet ever
renewed, and which
must be a part of the very act of production.
Among
the greatest English singers of the past, perhaps four
only have possessed this assimilative power in pure
perfection.
These are Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron,
and Burns; and to their
names the world may probably
add in the future that of William
Morris.
We have no thought of saying that not to belong to
this
circle, widest in range and narrowest in numbers, is
to be but
half a poet. It is with the poetic glory as
with the planetary
ones; this too has satellites called
into being by the law of its
own creation. Not every
soul specially attuned to song is itself a
singer; but
the productive and the receptive poetic mind are
mem-
bers of one constellation; and it may be safely asserted
that to take rank in the exceptional order of those
born with
perfect though passive song-perception is to
be even further
removed from the “general reader”
on the one
hand than from the producer of poetry on
the other.
But some degree, entire or restricted, of relation to
the
outer audience, must be the test of every poet's voca-
tion, and
has to be considered first of all in criticizing his
work. The
book under notice has perhaps as limited a
faculty of rapport seems on the whole imperfect; yet
there are
qualities in what he has written which no true
poetic reader can
regard with indifference.
The best and most sympathetic part of Dr. Hake's
volume is
decidedly its central division—the one
headed
Parables
. Had one poem of this section,
Two others among the four
Parables
,—
This is not for thee.” In the first
This simple story of parable has great beauties, especi-“The wood is what it was of old, A timber-farm where wild flowers grow: There woodman's axe is never cold, And lays the oaks and beeches low: But though the hand of man deface, The lily ever grows in grace. “Of their sweet loving natures proud, The stock-doves sojourn in the tree: With breasts of feathered sky and cloud, And notes of soft though tuneless glee, Hid in the leaves they take a spring, And crush the stillness with their wing. “The wood to her was the old wood, The same as in her father's time; Nor with their sooths and sayings good The dead told of its youth or prime. The hollow trunks were hollow then, And honoured like the bones of men.”
“Then did he long for once to taste The reeking viands, as their smell From cellar-gratings ran to waste In gusts that sicken and repel. Like Beauty with a rose regaled, The grateful vapours he inhaled. “So oft a-hungered has he stood And yarn of fasting fancy spun, As wistfully he watched the food With one foot out away to run, Lest questioned be his only right To revel in the goodly sight. “Lest justice should detect within A blot no human eye could see, He dragged his rags about his skin To hide from view his pedigree: He deemed himself a thief by law, Who stole ere yet the light he saw. “His theft, the infancy of crime, Was but a sombre glance to steal, While outside shops he spent his time In vain imaginings to deal, With looks of awe to speculate On all things good, while others ate. “No better school his eyes to guide, He lingers by some savoury mass, And watches mouths that open wide And sees them eating through the glass: Oft his own lips he opes and shuts,— With sympathy his fancy gluts. “Yet he begs not, but in a trance Admires the scene where numbers throng; And if on him descends a glance, He is abashed and slinks along; Nor cares he more, the spell once broke, Scenes of false plenty to invoke.”
The fourth
Parable
, called
We may turn next to the last section of the volume—
the series of sixty-five short poems entitled in the
aggregate
. Many of these
epode”
“Free as the soul, the spire ascends; Heaven lets it in her presence sit; Yet ever back to earth it tends,— The tranquil waters echo it. So falls the future to the past; So the high soul to earth is cast. “But though the soul thus nobly fails, Not long it borders on despair; It still the fallen glory hails, Though lost its conquests in the air. While truth is yet above, its good Is measured in the spirit's flood. “Though not at first its holy light Is figured in that mirror's face, It scarce returns a form less bright Than fills above a higher place. The one was loved though little known, The other is the spirits' own.”
The same difficulty meets us in excess when we come
to the
poem which stands first on Dr. Hake's title-page—
. With this our remaining space is far from
This conception, singular enough, but neither devoid
of
sublimity nor of real relation to human passion and
pity, is
carried out with great structural labour, and
forms no doubt the
portion of the volume on which
Dr. Hake has bestowed his most
conscientious care.
But our rough argument can give no idea of the
baffling
involutions of its treatment and diction, rendering it, we
fear, quite inaccessible to most readers. The scheme
of this
strange poem is as literal and deliberate in a
certain sense as
though the story were the simplest in
the world; and so far it
might be supposed to fulfil
one of the truest laws of the
supernatural in art—that
of homely externals developing
by silent contrast the
inner soul of the subject. But here, in
fact, the outer
world does not once affect us in tangible form. The
effect produced is operatic or even ballet-like as regards
mechanical environment and course of action. This is
still capable
of defence on very peculiar ideal grounds;
but we fear the reader
will find the sequence of the whole
work much more difficult to
pursue than our summary
may promise.
The structure of the verse is even exceptionally grand
and
well combined; but the use of language, though
often extremely
happy, is also too frequently vague to
excess; and the employment
of one elaborate lyrical
metre throughout a long dramatic action,
only varied by
occasional passages in the heroic couplet, conveys
a
certain sense of oppression, in spite of the often felicitous
—without the
variation of assonance so valuable or even
invaluable in
poetry—is apt here to be preserved at the
expense of
meaning and spontaneity. Nevertheless,
when all is said, there can
be no doubt that the same
reader who at one moment lays down a
poem like this
in hopeless bewilderment might at another, when his
mind is lighter and clearer, and he is at a happier junc-
ture of rapport with its author, take it up to much
more
luminous and pleasurable results, and find it really im-
pressive. One point which should not be overlooked
in reading it
is, that there is an evident intention on
Dr. Hake's part to make
hysterical and even mesmeric
phenomena in some degree the
groundwork of his concep-
tion. The fitness of these for poetry,
particularly when
thus minutely dealt with, may indeed afford
matter for
argument, but the intention must not be lost sight of.
Lastly, to deny to
a decided element of
We have left ourselves no room to extract from
in any representative way; but the following
“The robe that round her flows Is stirred like drifted snows; Its restless waves her marble figure drape And all its charms express, In ever-changing shape, To zephyrs that caress 32 Her limbs, and lay them bare, And all their grace and loveliness declare. Nor modesty itself could chide The soft enchanters as they past her breathe And beauty wreathe In rippling forms that ever onward glide. “Breezes from yonder tower, Loosed by the avenging power, Her senses hurry and a dread impart. In terror she beholds Her fluttering raiment start In ribbed and bristled folds. Its texture close and fine With broidery sweeps the bosom's heaving line, Then trickles down as from a wound, Curdling across the heart as past it steals, Where it congeals In horrid clots her quivering waist around.”
We have purposely avoided hitherto any detailed
allusion to
what appear to us grave verbal defects of
style in these poems;
nor shall we cite such instances
at all, as things of this kind,
detached from their context,
produce often an exaggeratedly
objectionable impression.
Suffice it to say that, for a writer who
displays an
undoubted command over true dignity of language,
Dr. Hake permits himself at times the most extra-
ordinarily
conventional (or once conventional) use of
Della-Cruscan phrases,
that could be found in any poet
since the wonderful days when
Hayley wrote the
Triumphs of Temper
. And this leads us to a few
It appears to us then that Dr. Hake is, in relation to
his
own time, as original a poet as one can well conceive
possible. He
is uninfluenced by any styles or manner-
isms of the day to so
absolute a degree as to tempt one
to believe that the latest
English singer he may have
even heard of is Wordsworth; while in
some respects his
ideas and points of view are newer than the
newest in
vogue; and the external affinity frequently traceable to
elder poets only throws this essential independence into
style, at its most
characteristic pitch, is a combination of
extreme homeliness, as of
Quarles or Bunyan, with a
formality and even occasional
courtliness of diction
which recall Pope himself in his most
artificial flights;
while one is frequently reminded of Gray by
sustained
vigour of declamation. This is leaving out of the
ques-
tion the direct reference to classical models which is
perhaps in reality the chief source of what this poet has
in common
with the eighteenth century writers. The
resemblance sometimes
apparent to Wordsworth may be
more on the surface than the
influences named above;
while one might often suppose that the
spiritual tender-
ness of Blake had found in our author a worthy
disciple,
did not one think it most probable that Blake lay out
of
his path of study. With all his pecularities, and all the
obstacles which really stand between him and the read-
ing public,
he will not fail to be welcomed by certain
readers for his manly
human heart, and genuine if not
fully subjugated powers of
hand.
The quality of finish in poetic execution is of two
kinds.
The first and highest is that where the work has been
all mentally “cartooned,” as it were, beforehand,
by a
process intensely conscious, but patient and
silent,—an
occult evolution of life: then follows the
glory of wield-
ing words, and we see the hand of Dante, as that
of
Michelangelo,—or almost as that quickening Hand
which Michelangelo has dared to embody,—sweep
from left
to right, fiery and final. Of this order of
poetic
action,—the omnipotent freewill of the artist's
mind,—our curbed and slackening world may seem to
have
seen the last. It has been succeeded by another
kind of
“finish,” devoted and ardent, but less building
on ensured foundations than self-questioning in the very
moment of action or even later: yet by such creative
labour also
the evening and the morning may be blent
to a true day, though it
be often but a fitful or an un-
glowing one. Not only with this
second class, but even
with those highest among consummate
workers, produc-
tiveness must be found, at the close of life, to
have been
comparatively limited; though never failing, where a
true master is in question, of such mass as is necessary
to
robust vitality.
That Dr. Hake is to be ranked with those poets who,
in
striving to perfect what they do as best they may,
resolve to have
a tussle for their own with Oblivion, is
evident on comparison of
his present little volume with
its predecessor of a year or two
ago. A portion of its
contents is reproduced from that former
book, but so
remoulded by a searching self-criticism as to give the
reader the best possible guarantee of its being worth his
believe, on the whole, that
Dr. Hake will do well in
cultivating chiefly, as he does here, the
less intricate of
his poetic tendencies. His former poem of
,
The finest new poem here is
, which
“Clouds, folded round the topmost peaks, Shut out the gorges from the sun Till midday, when the early streaks Of sunshine down the valley run; But where the opening cliffs expand, The early sea-light breaks on land. “Before the sun, like golden shields, The clouds a lustre shed around; Wild shadows gambolling o'er the fields; Tame shadows stretching o'er the ground. Towards noon the great rock-shadow moves, And takes slow leave of all it loves.”
The descriptions become yet more beautiful, and
assume an
under-current of relative significance, when
the sister and
brother are the speakers:—
The second stanza here has much of that colossal
infancy of
expression which we find in William Blake.
times striving with what
yet remains but half said, are
characteristic of this poet.
The blind boy—blind early but not from his
birth—
speaks again:—
The stanzas which follow are perhaps the most subtle
and
suggestive in the poem:—
Less elevated in tone than
, but
“As a wrecked vessel on the sand, The cripple to his mother clung: Close to the tub he took his stand While she the linen washed and wrung; And when she hung it out to dry The cripple still was standing by. “When she went out to char, he took His fife, to play some simple snatch Before the inn hard by the brook, While for the traveller keeping watch, Against the horse's head to stand, Or hold its bridle in his hand. “Sometimes the squire his penny dropped Upon the road for him to clutch, Which, as it rolled, the cripple stopped, Striking it nimbly with his crutch. The groom, with leathern belt and pad, E'en found a copper for the lad. “The farmer's wife her hand would dip Down her deep pocket with a sigh; Some halfpence in his hand would slip, When there was no observer nigh; Or give him apples for his lunch, That he loved leisurely to munch. “But for the farmer, what he made, At market table he would spend, And boys who used not plough or spade Had got the parish for their friend; He paid his poor-rates to the day, So let the boy ask parish-pay. “Yet would the teamster feel his fob, The little cripple's heart to cheer, Himself of penny pieces rob, That he begrudged to spend in beer. His boy, too, might be sick or sore, So gave he of his thrifty store.”
All this is a good deal lost without the aid of the
passage is
succeeded by a charming brookside description
of the cripple's
favourite haunt. What follows we must
pursue to the close, though
the extract be rather a long
one:—
is a poem differing much from the
We have not yet noticed the poem entitled
which stands first in the volume, and which
The present writer has on a former occasion spoken
elsewhere
of several poems here reproduced from the
earlier
volume,—notably of
and the subtly
Though much has been said concerning the matter-of-
fact
tendencies of the reading public which poets desire
to enlist, it
must we think be admitted that the simpler
and more domestic order
of themes has not been
generally, of late years, the most widely
popular. In-
deed these have probably had less than their due in
the
balance of immediate acceptance. It would be easy to
point to examples,—for instance, to the work which
Mr.
Allingham has done so well in this field,—above all,
to
his very memorable book,
,—a solid and undeniable achievement, no less
Dr. Hake has been fortunate in the beautiful drawings
which
Mr. Arthur Hughes has contributed to his little
volume. No poet
could have a more congenial yoke-
fellow than this gifted and
imaginative artist. The lovely
must
in her prime” as described
1866.—Thinking in what order I love colours, found
the
following:—
1. Pure light warm green.
2. Deep
gold-colour.
3. Certain tints of grey.
4. Shadowy or steel
blue.
5. Brown, with crimson tinge.
6. Scarlet.
Other colours (comparatively) only loveable according
to the relations
in which they are placed.
The true artist will first perceive in another's work
the beauties, and
in his own the defects.
There are few indeed whom the facile enthusiasm
for contemporary models
does not deaden to the truly-
balanced claims of successive effort in
art.
The critic of the new school sits down before a picture,
and saturates
it with silence.
If one painted Boors drinking, and even were refined
oneself, they would pardon and in some degree revere
one. Or, if one
were a drinking boor oneself, and painted
refinements, they would
condone the latter. But the
refined, painted by the refined, is
unpardonable.
Picture and poem bear the same relation to each other
as beauty does in
man and woman: the point of meeting
where the two are most identical is
the supreme perfec-
tion.
Poetry should seem to the hearer to have been always
present to his
thought, but never before heard.
Poetry is the apparent image of unapparent realities.
The Elizabethans created a style in poetry, and by mis-
applying some of
its qualities formed their prose. The
Annians created a style in prose,
and wrenched its
characteristics to form their poetry.
Chatterton can only be under-rated if we expect that
he should have done
by intuition all that was accom-
plished by gradual inheritance from
him half a century
later.
Invention absolute is slow of acceptance, and must be
so. This Coleridge
and others have found. Why make
a place for what is neither adaptation
nor reproduction?
Let it hew its way if it can.
Moderation is the highest law of poetry. Experimen-
tal as Coleridge
sometimes becomes, his best work is
tuned but never
twanged; and this is his great distinc-
tion from almost all other who
venture as far.
The sense of the momentous is strongest in Coleridge:
not the weird and ominous only, but the value of monu-
mental moments.
The deepest trait of nature in fiction will appear as if
nothing but
fact could have given it birth, and will yet
show that consummate art
is its true source.
Conceit is not so much the over-value of a man's own
work as the fatal
capacity for abstracting, from his in-
evitable knowledge of the value
of his achievements, an
ideal of his intrinsic power.
It is bad enough when there is a gifted and powerful
opposition to the
teachings of the best minds in any
period: but when the best minds
themselves are on a
false tack, who shall stem the tide?
As the waifs cast up by the sea change with the
changing season, so the
tides of the soul throw up their
changing drift on the sand, but the
sea beyond is one for
ever.
A woman may have some little mercy for the man she
has ceased to love,
but she has none for the memory of
what he has been to her.
Seek thine ideal anywhere except in thyself. Once
fix it there, and the
ways of thy real self will matter
nothing to thee, whose eyes can rest
on the ideal already
perfected.
No skunk can get rid of his own name by giving it to
another.
In receiving an unjust insult, remember that you can
afford to despise
it; while he who has been guilty of it
can only
despise himself for his act. Thus the advantage
is
yours.
He belonged to that extraordinary class of persons
whom no amount of
intellect can prevent from being
fools.
Could I have seen the thing I am to-day!
The same (how strange), the same as I was then!
Yet the time may come
when to my soul it may be diffi-
cult, in such old things, to tell
which came first of all the
days which now seem so wide apart.
I was one of those whose little is their own.
The Bride's Prelude
.—A good deal of this uncompleted
Sister Helen
.—This poem was first published in 1853
The Staff and Scrip
.—My brother found the story of
Rose Mary.
—This poem was written in the early autumn
The House of Life
:
The House of Life
.—The dates of the various sonnets
which make up this
series are extremely various. The
earliest of them may date in 1848,
or even a year or so pre-
ceding. The latest come close before, or even
in, 1881, in
the autumn of which year the series was published in
the
same form which it now bears. One positive line of demarca-
tion between the various sonnets separates those which
appeared in the
volume
Poems,
published in the Spring of
Soul's Beauty
and
At the Sun-rise in 1848
.—My brother never published
Autumn Song
.—This lyric was set to music by Mr. Edward Dann-
The Portrait
.—In printed notices of my brother's poems
On Refusal of Aid between Nations
.—This sonnet
A Trip to Paris and Belgium
.—In the autumn of 1849
.—This sonnet, hitherto un-
How long, O Lord,” etc.). That title was
The Church-porch.
—This sonnet was published by my
The Mirror.
—Written in 1850. My brother never pub-
A Young Fir-Wood.
—A MS. of these verses is marked
Between Ightham and Sevenoaks, Novem-”
ber 1850.
During Music.
—Written in 1851. Hitherto unpublished.
Wellington's Funeral.
—In one of my brother's jotting-
When printing in 1870, I”
omitted the piece on Wellington's Funeral as referring to so
recent a date; but year by year such themes become more
dateless, and rank only with immortal things.
On the Site of a Mulberry Tree, etc.
—My brother
Starveling's” for “
tailor's”;
On certain Elizabethan
Revivals.
—This sonnet had
English May.
—This sonnet had not hitherto been pub-
Dawn on the Night Journey
.—Also hitherto unpublished.
To Philip Bourke
Marston.
—This sonnet was printed
sight.”
light” instead;
Raleigh's Cell in the
Tower.—This sonnet was pub-
lished in Mr. Caine's
Sonnets of Three Centuries.
For an Annunciation, Early German
.—This is an early
Mary's Girlhood
.—The picture to which these sonnets
She woke in” etc., have a more direct connection, however,
her white bed
Michael Scott's Wooing.
—My brother made two or three
Mnemosyne.
—This couplet was inscribed on the frame
—This so-called
Italian Street-song
Proserpina.—This
sonnet, and the following one,
Robe d'or, etc.
—This French couplet with its English
equivalent—and also the preceding Italian triplet with the like
—may, I think, have been written to serve as motto for some
picture; I could not say which.
Barcarola.—The two
little songs thus entitled had not
hitherto been published; nor yet
the
Thomæ
Fides.—It is only on looking through my brother's
MSS. that I have become aware of his having ventured thus
into
the realm of Latin verse. I find the little composition
written out
more than once, and with alterations of diction
which convince me that
it must be his own composition. It
was intended to appear in a
“lyrical tragedy,”
Versicles and Fragments.—I have taken these
from
among various jottings in my brother's notebooks. The first
item, named The Orchard-Pit, is all that I can find
written of
a poem which was long and seriously projected: the argument
of the poem appears printed now among the Prose works.
Of the
other items I need perhaps say nothing, unless it be
of
preservation, on one ground or another. I do not think
that any of the
Versicles and Fragments belong to my brother's
earlier period.
Hand and Soul.
—This story—which, brief though it is,
In the spring of 1847 I was at” is also fictitious, though it has sometimes been
Florence,
St. Agnes of
Intercession.
—This fragmentary tale forms,
does not re-appearSt. Agnes of Intercession,
Angio-”; but (in order to avoid tampering with an untranscribed
lieri
Angiolieri.” Something in the nature
The first draft of
Poland,” or afterwards “
France.” “
”My
father had settled in England only a few years before I was
born to him. He was one of that vast multitude of exiles
who, almost from lustrum to lustrum for a season of nearly a
century, have been scattered from Italy over all Europe—over
the world indeed. Few among these can have less of riches
than he had, wherein to seek happiness; but I believe that
there are still fewer who could be so happy as he was, with-
out riches, in exile and labour.
It may have been rather later than the
The Orchard Pit.
—This is the prose narrative written
The Doom of the Sirens.
—My brother, I am sure,
lyrical tragedy” with a feeling that it
Michael Scott's Wooing.
—See the note (p. 522) to
William Blake.
—These observations are taken from the
supple-” to the
mentary chapter
supplementary chapter” a few of the opening phrases
Ebenezer Jones.
—From
The Stealthy School of
Criticism.
—This article, a
Thomas Maitland.” Subse-
Hake's Madeline, and other
Poems.
—This critique
Sentences and Notes.
— Picked out