This second volume of the 1863 edition of Gilchrist's
LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE.
CHAUCERS CANTERBURY PILGRIMS
Painted in Fresco by William
Blake & by him Engraved & published October 8 1810 at No
28 Corner 1 Broad Street Golden Square
LONDON:
R CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.
Section a.
Dated Works. .. .. 201
Section b.
Undated Works,
Biblical and Sacred. . 223
Ditto Ditto Poetical and Miscellaneous. .
. .. 232
Section a.
Dated Works.
. .. .. 240
Section b.
Undated Works,
Biblical and Sacred. . 223
Ditto ditto Poetical and Miscellaneous. .
. .. .. . 248
Biblical and Sacred .. .. .. 255
Poetic and Miscellaneous .. .. .. 255
Works designed as well as engraved by
Blake.. .. .. 257
Works engraved, but not designed by Blake.. .. .. 259
Works designed, but not engraved by Blake.. .. .. 261
The Book of Job.
Songs of Innocence and Experience.
There is no need for many futher critical remarks on
these selections from the Poetical Sketches, which have already been spoken
on in Chap. VI. of the Life. Among the lyrical pieces here chosen, it would
be difficult to award a distinct preference. These Songs are certainly among
the small class of modern times which recall the best period of English song
writing, whose rarest treasures lie scattered among the plays of our
Elizabethan dramatists. They deserve no less than very high admiration in a
quite positive sense, which cannot be even qualified by the slight hasty or
juvenile imperfections of execution to be met with in some of
them, though by no means in all. On the other hand, if we view them
comparatively; in relation to Blake’s youth when he wrote them, or the
poetic epoch in which they were produced; it would be hardly possible to
overrate their astonishing merit. The same return to the diction and high
feeling of greater age is to be found in the unfinished play of
‘
[He here knights the Prince and other young
Nobles.
[Exeunt.
[Exit
Dagworth.
[Exeunt.
[Exeunt.
[Here again but little need be added to what has been already said in
the Life respecting the Songs of Innocence and Experience
Chimney Sweeper
Songs of Experience
Christian Forbearance
The Human Abstract
Cradle Song
[The Thel has been spoken of in the Life
(Chapter X. page 76). It is equal in
delightfulness to Blake’s
lyrical poetry; and being the most tender and simple of the
class of
his works to which it belongs, may prove the most generally acceptable as
a specimen of these.]
[The contents of the precious section which now follows have been
derived partly from the MS. Note-book to which frequent reference has been
made in the Life
One piece in this series (The Two Songs
The Human Abstract
Songs of Experience
Broken Love
Mary
Auguries of Innocence
Never perhaps have the agony and perversity of sundered affection been
more powerfully (however singularly) expressed than in the piece called Broken Love
I have dwelt on the meaning of this poem, because it is one which,
from the figurative form given to it, might be accounted specially obscure.
But in reality, it perhaps the only instance in which Blake has dealt with
any of the deeper phases of human passion; and though the way of dealing with it is
all his own, the result is as startlingly true as
The Crystal Cabinet
Mental Traveller
babe; perhaps meant to express the greater
natural maturity of the love-element in women.
The Mental Traveller
The poem of Mary
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
Quaintness reaches its climax in William Bond
Long John Brown and Little Mary Bell
The shorter poems, and even the fragments, afford many instances of
that exquisite metrical gift and rightness in point of form which constitute
Blake’s special glory 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 verse,
as 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 them then,
and possessed them in clear completeness. 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 Epigrams on Art
to instead of by our 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.]
The ‘
Argument of the stanzas: 2. The Idea, conceived with
pain, is born amid enthusiasm. 3 If of masculine, enduring nature, it
falls under the control and ban of the already existing state of society
(the woman old). 5. As the Idea developes, the old society becomes
moulded into a new society (the old woman grows young). 6. The Idea, now
free and dominant, is united to society, as it were in wedlock. 8. It
gradually grows old and effete, living now only upon the spiritual
treasures laid up in the days of its early energy. 10. These still
subserve many purposes of practical good, and outwardly the Idea is in
its most flourishing estate, even when sapped at its roots. 11. The halo
of authority and tradition, or prestige, gathering round the Idea, is
symbolized in the resplendent babe born on his hearth. 13. This prestige
deserts the Idea itself, and attaches to some individual, who usurps the
honour due only to the Idea (as we may see in the case of papacy,
royalty, &c.); and the Idea is eclipsed by its own very
prestige, and assumed living representative. 14. The Idea wanders
homeless till it can find a new community to mould (‘until he
can a maiden win’). 15 to 17. Finding whom, the Idea finds
itself also living under strangely different conditions. 18. The Idea is
now “beguiled to infancy”—becomes a new Idea, in working upon a fresh community, and under
altered conditions. 20. Nor are they yet thoroughly at one; she flees
away while he pursues. 22. Here we return to the first state of the
case. The Idea starts upon a new course—is a babe; the
society it works upon has become an old society—no longer a
fair virgin, but an aged woman. 24. The Idea seems so new and unwonted
that, the nearer it is seen, the more consternation it excites. 26. None
can deal with the Idea so as to develope it to the full, except the old
society with which it comes into contact; and this can deal with it only
by misusing it at first, whereby (as in the previous stage, at the
opening of the poem) it is to be again disciplined into ultimate
triumph.
[Of the prose writings which now follow, the only ones already in print
are the Descriptive Catalogue and the Sybilline Leaves
Public Address
which here succeeds it forms a fitting and most interesting pendant. It
has been compiled from a very confused mass of MS. notes; but its
purpose is unmistakeable as having been intended for an accompaniment to
the engraving of Chaucer’s Pilgrims. Both
the Catalogue and Address abound in
critical passages on 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, his
practice of art included all great aims,
whether they were such as his antagonistic moods railed against or no.
The Vision
Catalogue or Address. But its work
is in a wider field, and one which, where it stretches beyond our own
clear view, may not necessarily 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 writing, to the plagiarisms of his contemporaries, 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 occasional judiciousness of execution, in the men whom Blake compares with himself, still perceives those 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 derivative 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, consciously 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.]
CONDITIONS OF SALE.
I. One-third of the Price to be paid at the time of
Purchase, and the remainder
on Delivery.
II. The Pictures and Drawings to remain in the
Exhibition till its close, which will
be the 29th of
September, 1809; and the Picture of The Canterbury Pilgrims,
which is to be engraved, will be sold only on condition
of its remaining in the
Artist’s hands twelve
months, when it will be delivered to the Buyer.
Clearness and precision have been the chief
objects in painting these Pictures.
Clear colours unmudded by
oil, and firm and determinate
lineaments unbroken by shadows,
which ought to display and not to
hide form, as is the practice
of the latter Schools of Italy and Flanders.
The Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding Behemoth; he is
that Angel who, pleased to perform the
Almighty’s orders, rides on the whirlwind,
directing thethe storms of war: He is ordering the
Reaper to reap the Vine of the Earth,and the Ploughman
to plough up the Cities and Towers.
This Picture also is a proof of the power of
colours unsullied with oil or with any cloggy vehicle. Oil has
falsely been supposed to give strength to colours: but a little
consideration must show the fallacy of this opinion. Oil will not
drink or absorb colour enough to stand the test of very little time
and of the air. It deadens every colour it is mixed with, at its
first mixture, and in a little time becomes a yellow mask over all
that it touches. Let the works of modern Artists since Rubens’ time
witness the villany of some one at that time, who first brought Oil
Painting into general opinion and practice: since which we have
never had a Picture painted, that could show itself by the side of
an earlier production. Whether Rubens or Vandyke, or both, were
guilty of this villany, is to be inquired in another work on
Painting, and who first forged the silly story and known falsehood
about John of Bruges inventing oil-colours: in the meantime let it
be observed, that before Vandyke’s time and in his time
all the genuine Pictures are on Plaster or Whiting grounds, and none
since.
The two Pictures of Nelson and Pitt are compositions of a
mythological cast, similar to those Apotheoses of Persian, Hindoo,
and Egyptian Antiquity, which are still preserved on rude monuments,
being copies from some stupendous originals now lost, or perhaps
buried till some happier age. The Artist having been taken in vision
into the ancient republics, monarchies, and patriarchates of Asia,
has seen those wonderful originals, called in the Sacred Scriptures
the Cherubim, which were sculptured and painted on walls of Temples,
Towers, Cities, Palaces, and erected in the highly cultivated States
of Egypt, Moab, Edom, Aram, among the Rivers of
Paradise—being originals from which the Greeks and
Hetrurians copied Hercules Farnese, Venus of Medicis, Apollo
Belvedere, and all the grand works of ancient art. They were
executed in a very superior style to those justly admired copies,
being with their accompaniments terrific and grand in the highest
degree. The Artist has endeavoured to emulate the
No man can believe that either Homer’s Mythology, or Ovid’s, was the production of Greece, or of Latium; neither will any one believe that the Greek statues, as they are called, were the invention of Greek Artists; perhaps the Torso is the only original work remaining; all the rest are evidently copies, though fine ones, from greater works of the Asiatic Patriarchs. The Greek Muses are daughters of Mnemosyne or Memory, and not of Inspiration or Imagination, therefore not authors of such sublime conceptions. Those wonderful originals seen in my visions were some of them one hundred feet in height; some were painted as picture; and some carved as basso-rilievos, and some as groups of statues, as precious stones though the figures were one hundred feet in height.
All Frescoes are as high-finished as miniatures or enamels, and they are known to be unchangeable; but oil, being a body itself, will drink or absorb very little colour, and, changing yellow, and at length brown, destroys every colour it is mixed with, especially every delicate colour. It turns every permanent white to a yellow and brown putty, and has compelled the use of that destroyer of colour, white-lead, which, when its protecting oil is evaporated, will become lead again. This is an awful thing to say to Oil Painters; they may call it madness, but it is true. All the genuine old little Pictures, called Cabinet Pictures, are in fresco and not in oil. Oil was not used, except by blundering ignorance, till after Vandyke’s time; but the art of fresco-painting being lost, oil became a fetter to genius and a dungeon to art. But one convincing proof among many others that these assertions are true is, that real gold and silver cannot be used with oil, as they are in all the old pictures and in Mr. B.’s frescoes.
The time chosen is early morning, before
sunrise, when the jolly company are just quitting the Tabarde Inn. The
Knight and Squire with the Squire’s Yeoman lead the
Procession; next follow the youthful Abbess, her nun, and three
priests; her greyhounds attend her:
Next follow the Friar and Monk; then the Tapiser, the
Pardoner, and the Sompnour and Manciple. After these
‘Our Host,’ who occupies the centre of the
cavalcade, directs them to the Knight as the person who would be
likely to commence their task of each telling a tale in their order.
After the Host follow the Shipman, the Haberdasher, the Dyer, the
Franklin, the Physician, the Ploughman, the Lawyer, the Poor Parson,
the Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Miller, the Cook, the Oxford
Scholar, Chaucer himself; and the Reeve comes as Chaucer has
described,—
These last are issuing from the gateway of the Inn; the
Cook and the Wife of Bath are both taking their morning’s
draught of comfort. Spectators stand at the gateway of the Inn, and
are composed of an old Man, a Woman, and Children.
The landscape is an eastward view of the country, from the Tabarde Inn in Southwark, as it may be supposed to have appeared in Chaucer’s time; interspersed with cottages and villages. The first beams of the Sun are seen above the horizon; some buildings and spires indicate the situation of the Great City. The Inn is a gothic building, which Thynne in his Glossary says was the lodging of the Abbot of Hyde, by Winchester. On the Inn is inscribed its title, and a proper advantage is taken of this circumstance to describe the subject of the Picture. The words written over the gateway of the Inn are as follow: ‘The Tabarde Inn, by Henry Baillie, the lodgynge-house for Pilgrims who journey to Saint Thomas’s Shrine at Canterbury.’
The characters of Chaucer’s Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations. As one age falls, another rises, different to mortal sight, but to immortals only the same; for we see the same characters repeated again and again, in animals, vegetables, minerals, and in men. Nothing new occurs in identical existence; Accident ever varies, Substance can never suffer change nor decay.
Of Chaucer’s characters, as described in his Canterbury Tales, some of the names or titles are altered by time, but the characters themselves for ever remain unaltered; and consequently they are the physiognomies or lineaments of universal human life, beyond which Nature never steps. Names alter, things never alter. I have known multitudes of those who would have been monks in the age of monkery, who in this deistical age are deists. As Newton numbered the stars, and as Linnæus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men.
The Painter has consequntly varied the heads and forms of his personages into all Nature’s varieties; the Horses he has also varied to accord to their Riders: the Costume is correct according to authentic monuments.
The Knight and Squire with the Squire’s Yeoman lead
the procession, as Chaucer has also placed them first in his
prologue. The Knight is a true Hero, a good, great, and wise man;
his whole-length portrait on horseback, as written by Chaucer,
cannot be surpassed. He has spent his life in the field, has ever
been a conqueror, and is that species of character which in every
age stands as the guardian of man against the oppressor. His son is
like him, with the germ of perhaps greater perfection still, as he
blends literature and the arts with his warlike studies. Their dress
and their horses are of the first rate, without ostentation, and
with all the true grandeur that unaffected simplicity when in high
rank always displays. The Squire’s Yeoman is also a great
character, a man perfectly knowing in his profession:
Chaucer describes here a mighty man, one who in war is the
worthy attendant on noble heroes.
The Prioress follws there with her female chaplain:
This Lady is described also as of the first rank, rich and
honoured. She has certain peculiarities and little delicate
affectations, not unbecoming
Her companion and her three priests were no doubt all perfectly delineated in those parts of Chaucer’s work which are now lost; we ought to suppose them suitable attendants on rank and fashion.
The Monk follows these with the Friar. The Painter has also grouped with these the Pardoner and the Sompnour and the Manciple, and has here also introduced one of the rich citizens of London;—characters likely to ride in company, all being above the common rank in life, or attendants on those who were so.
For the Monk is described by Chaucer, as a man of the first rank in society, noble, rich, and expensively attended: he is a leader of the age, with certain humorous accompaniments in his character, that do not degrade, but render him an object of dignified mirth, but also with other accompaniments not so respectable.
The Friar is a character also of a mixed kind:
but in his office he is said to be a ‘solemn
man:’ eloquent, amorous, witty, and satirical; young,
handsome, and rich; he is a complete rogue; with constitutional
gaiety enough to make him a master of all the pleasures of the world:
It is necessary here to speak of Chaucer’s own character, that I may set certain mistaken critics right in their conception of the humour and fun that occur on the journey. Chaucer is himself the great poetical observer of men, who in every age is born to record and eternize its acts. This he does as a master, as a father and superior, who looks down on their little follies from the Emperor to the Miller: sometimes with severity, oftener with joke and sport.
Accordingly Chaucer has made his Monk a great tragedian, one
who studied poetical art. So much so that the generous Knight is, in
the compassionate dictates of his soul, compelled to cry out:
The Monk’s definition of tragedy in the proem to
his tale is worth repeating:
Though a man of luxury, pride, and pleasure, he is a master
of art and learning, though affecting to despise it. Those who can
think that the proud Huntsman and noble Housekeeper,
Chaucer’s Monk, is intended for a buffoon or burlesque
character, know little of Chaucer.
For the Host who follows this group, and holds the centre of the cavalcade, is a first-rate character, and his jokes are no trifles; they are always, though uttered with audacity, equally free with the Lord and the Peasant; they are always substantially and weightily expressive of knowledge and experience; Henry Baillie, the keeper of the greatest Inn of the greatest City; for such was the Tabarde Inn in Southwark, near London: our Host was also a leader of the age.
By way of illustration, I instance Shakspeare’s
Witches in Macbeth. Those who dress them for the stage, consider
them as wretched old women, and not, as Shakspeare intended, the
Goddesses of Destiny; this shows how Chaucer has been misunderstood
in his sublime work. Shakspeare’s
Fairies also are the rulers of the vegetable world, and so are
Chaucer’s; let them be so considered, and then the poet
will be understood, and not else.
But I have omitted to speak of a very prominent, character, the Pardoner, the Age’s Knave, who always commands and domineers over the high and low vulgar. This man is sent in every age for a rod and scourge and for a blight, for a trial of men, to divide the classes of men; he is in the most holy sanctuary, and he is suffered by Providence for wise ends, and has also his great use, and his grand leading destiny.
His companion the Sompnour is also a Devil of the first
magnitude, grand, terrific, rich, and honoured in the rank of which
he holds the
The principal figure in the next group is the Good Parson:
all Apostle, a real Messenger of Heaven, sent in every age for its
light and its warmth. This man is beloved and venerated by all, and
neglected by all: he serves all, and is served by none. He is,
according to Christ’s definition, the greatest of his age: yet he is a Poor Parson of a town. Read Chaucer’s
description of the Good Parson, and bow the head and the knee to
Him, Who, in every age, sends us such a burning and a shining
light. Search, O ye rich and powerful, for these men and obey their
counsel; then shall the golden age return. But alas! you will not
easily distinguish him from the Friar or the Pardoner; they also
are ‘full solemn men,’ and their counsel you will continue to follow.
I have placed by his side the Sergeant-at-Lawe, who appears delighted to ride in his company, and between him and his brother the Ploughman; as I wish men of Law would always ride with them, and take their counsel, especially in all difficult points. Chancel’s Lawyer is a character of great venerableness, a Judge, and a real master of the jurisprudence of his age.
The Doctor of Physic is in this group, and the Franklin, the voluptuous country gentleman; contrasted with the Physician, and, on his other hand, with two Citizens of London. Chaucer’s characters live age after age. Every age is a Canterbury Pilgrimage; we all pass on, each sustaining one or other of these characters; nor can a child be born who is not one of these characters of Chaucer. The Doctor of Physic is described as the first of his profession: perfect, learned, completely Master and Doctor in his art. Thus the reader will observe that Chaucer makes every one of his characters perfect in his kind; every one is an Antique Statue, the image of a class, and not of an imperfect individual.
This group also would furnish substantial matter, on which
volumes might be written. The Franklin is one who keeps open table,
who is the genius of eating and drinking, the Bacchus; as the
Doctor of Physic is the Æsculapius, the host is the Silenus, the
Squire is the Apollo, the Miller is the Hercules, &c.
Chaucer’s characters are a description of the eternal
Principles that exist in all ages. The Franklin is voluptuousness
itself most nobly portrayed
The Ploughman is simplicity itself, with wisdom and strength
for its stamina. Chaucer has divided the ancient character of
Hercules between his Miller and his Ploughman. Benevolence is the
Ploughman’s great characteristic; he is thin with
excessive labour, and not with old age, as some have supposed:
Visions of these eternal principles or characters of human life appear to poets in all ages; the Grecian gods were the ancient Cherubim of Phœnicia; but the Greeks, and since them the Moderns, have neglected to subdue the gods of Priam. These Gods are visions of the eternal attributes, or divine names, which, when erected into gods, become destructive to humanity. They ought to be the servants, and not the masters, of man or of society. They ought to be made to sacrifice to Man, and not man compelled to sacrifice to them; for, when separated from man or humanity, who is Jesus the Saviour, the vine of eternity? They are thieves and rebels, they are destroyers.
The Ploughman of Chaucer is Hercules in his supreme eternal state, divested of his spectrous shadow; which is the Miller, a terrible fellow, such as exists in all times and places, for the trial of men, to astonish every neighbourhood with brutal strength and courage, to get rich and powerful, to curb the pride of Man.
The Reeve and the Manciple are two characters of the most consummate worldly wisdom. The Shipman, or Sailor, is a similar genius of Ulyssean art, but with the highest courage superadded.
The Citizens and their Cook are each leaders of a class.
Chaucer has been somehow made to number four citizens, which would
make his whole company, himself included, thirty-one. But he says
there were but nine-and-twenty in his company:
The Webbe, or Weaver, and the Tapiser, or Tapestry Weaver,
appear to me to be the same person; but this is only an opinion,
for full nine-and-twenty may signify one more or less. But I daresay
that Chaucer wrote ‘A Webbe Dyer,’ that is a
Cloth Dyer:
The Merchant cannot be one of the Three Citizen; as his dress
is different, and his character is more marked, whereas Chaucer says
of his rich citizens:
The characters of Women Chaucer has divided into two classes, the Lady Prioress and the Wife of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of men? The Lady Prioress in some ages predominates, and in some the Wife of Bath, in whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact; because she is also a scourge and a blight. I shall say no more of her, nor expose what Chaucer has left hidden; let the young reader study what he has said of her: it is useful as a scarecrow. There are of such characters born too many for the peace of the world.
I come at length to the Clerk of Oxenford. This character varies from that of Chaucer, as the contemplative philosopher varies from the poetical genius. There are always these two classes of learned sages, the poetical and the philosophical. The Painter has put them side by side, as if the youthful clerk had put himself under the tuition of the mature poet. Let the Philosopher always be the servant and scholar of Inspiration, and all will be happy.
Such are the characters that compose this Picture, which was painted in self-defence against the insolent and envious imputation of unfitness for finished and scientific art, and this imputation most artfully and industriously endeavoured to be propagated among the public by ignorant hirelings. The Painter courts comparison with his competitors, who, having received fourteen hundred guineas and more from the profits of his designs in that well-known work, Designs for Blair’s Grave, have left him to shift for himself; while others, more obedient to an employer’s opinions and directions, are employed, at a great expense, to produce works in succession to his by which they acquired public patronage. This has hitherto been his lot—to get patronage for others and then to be left and neglected, and his work, which gained that patronage, eccentricity and madness—as unfinished and neglected by the artist’s violent temper: he is sure the works now exhibited will give the lie to such aspersions.
Those who say that men are led by interest are knaves. A
knavish character will often say, Of what interest is it to me to do
so and so? I answer, of none at all, but the contrary, as you well
know. It is of malice and envy that you have done this; hence I am
aware of you, because I know that you act not from interest but from
malice, even to your VOL. II. K
The character and expression in this Picture could never have been produced with Rubens’ light and shadow, or with Rembrandt’s, or anything Venetian or Flemish. The Venetian and Flemish practice is broken lines, broken masses, and broken colours: Mr. B.’s practice is unbroken lines, unbroken masses, and unbroken colours. Their art is to lose form; his art is to find form, and to keep it. His arts are opposite to theirs in all things.
As there is a class of men whose whole delight is in the destruction of men, so there is a class of artists whose whole art and sciencce is fabricated for the purpose of destroying Art. Who these are is soon known: ‘by their works ye shall know them.’ All who endeavour to raise up a style against Raphael, Michael Angelo, and the Antique; those who separate Painting from Drawing; who look if a picture is well Drawn, and if it is, immediately cry out that it cannot be well Coloured—those are the men.
But to show the stupidity of this class of men, nothing need be done but to examine my rival’s prospectus.
The two first characters in Chaucer, the Knight and the
Squire, he has put among has rabble; and indeed his prospectus calls
the Squire ‘the fop of Chaucer’s
age.’ Now hear Chaucer:
Was this a fop?
Was this a fop?
Was this a fop?
It is the same with all his characters; he has done all by
chance, or perhaps his fortune, money, money. According to his
prospectus he has Three Monks; these he cannot find in Chaucer, who
has only One Monk, and that no vulgar character, as he has
endeavoured to make him. When men cannot read, they should not
pretend to paint. To be sure Chaucer is a little difficult to him
who has only blundered over novels and catchpenny trifles of
booksellers; yet a little pains ought to be taken, even by the
ignorant and weak. He has put the Reeve, a vulgar fellow, between
his Knight and Squire, as if he was resolved to go contrary in
everything to Chaucer, who says of the Reeve—
In this manner he has jumbled his dumb dollies together, and
is praised by his equals for it; for both himself and his friend are
equally masters of Chaucer’s language. They both think
that the Wife of Bath is a young beautiful blooming damsel; and
H— says, that she is the ‘Fair Wife of
Bath,’ and that ‘the Spring appears in her
cheeks.’ Now hear what Chaucer has made her say of
herself, who is no modest one:
She has had four husbands, a fit subject for this painter; yet the painter ought to be very much offended with his friend H—, who has called his ‘a common scene,’ ‘and very ordinary forms;’ which is the tritest part of all, for it is so, and very wretchedly so indeed. What merit can there be in a picture of which such words are spoken with truth?
But the prospectus says that the Painter has represented
Chaucer himself as a knave who thrusts himself among honest people
to make game of and laugh at them; though I must do justice to the
Painter,
The scene of Mr. S—’s Picture is by Dulwich Hills, which was not the way to Canterbury; but perhaps the Painter thought he would give them a ride round about, because they were a burlesque set of scarecrows, not worth any man’s respect or care.
But the Painter’s thoughts being always upon gold,
he has introduced a character that Chaucer has
not—namely, a Goldsmith, for so the prospectus tells us.
Why he has introduced a Goldsmith, and what is the wit of it, the
prospectus does not explain. But it takes care to mention the
reserve and modesty of the Painter; this makes a good epigram
enough:
But the prospectus tells us that the Painter has introduced a ‘Sea Captain;’ Chaucer has a Shipman, a Sailor, a Trading Master of a Vessel, called by courtesy Captain, as every master of a boat is; but this does not make him a Sea Captain. Chaucer has purposely omitted such a personage, as it only exists in certain periods: it is the soldier by sea. He who would be a soldier in inland nations is a sea-captain in commercial nations.
All is misconceived, and its mis-execution is equal to its
misconception. I have no objection to Rubens and Rembrandt being
employed, or even to their living in a palace; but it shall not be
at the expense of Raphael and Michael Angelo living in a cottage,
and in contempt and derision,
Weaving the winding-sheet of
Edward’s race by means of sounds of spiritual music, and
its accompanying expressions of articulate speech, is a bold, and
daring, and most masterly conception, that the public have embraced
and approved with avidity. Poetry consists in these conceptions; and
shall Painting be confined to the sordid drudgery of facsimile
representations of merely mortal and perishing substances, and not
be, as poetry and music are, elevated into its own proper sphere of
invention and visionary conception? No, it shall not be so!
Painting, as well as poetry and music, exists and exults in immortal
thoughts. If Mr. B’s Canterbury Pilgrims had been done
by any other power than that of the poetic visionary, it would have
been as dull as his adversary’s.
The Spirits of the murdered bards assist in weaving the deadly
woof:
The connoisseurs and artists who have made objections to Mr.
B’s mode of representing spirits with real bodies would
do well to consider that the Venus, the Minerva, the Jupiter, the
Apollo, which they admire in Greek statues, are all of them
representations of spiritual existences, of Gods immortal, to the
mortal perishing organ of sight; and yet they
King Edward and his Queen Eleanor are prostrated, with their
hoses, at the foot of a rock on which the Bard stands; prostrated
by the terrors of his harp, on the margin of the River Conway, whose
waves bear up a corse of a slaughtered bard at the foot of the rock.
The armies of Edward are seen winding among the mountains:
Mortimer and Gloucester lie spell-bound behind their king.
The execution of this Picture is also in Water-colours, or Fresco.
In the last Battle of King Arthur only Three
Britons escaped; these were the Strongest Man, the
Beautifullest Man, and the Ugliest Man; these three marched
through the field unsubdued, as Gods, and the Sun of Britain
set, but shall arise again with tenfold splendour when Arthur
shall awake from sleep, and resume his dominion over earth
and ocean.
The three general classes of men who are
represented by the most Beautiful, the most Strong, and the most
Ugly, could not be represented by any historical facts but those of
our own country, the Ancient Britons, without violating costume. The
Britons (say historians) were naked
The British Antiquities are now in the Artist’s hands; all his visionary contemplations relating to his own country and its ancient glory, when it was, as it again shall be, the source of learning and inspiration—(Arthur was a name for the Constellation Arcturus, or Boötes, the Keeper of the North Pole); and all the fables of Arthur and his Round Table; of the warlike naked Britons; of Merlin; of Arthur’s conquest of the whole world; of his death, or sleep, and promise to return again; of the Druid monuments, or temples; of the pavement of Watling-street; of London stone; of the caverns in Cornwall, Wales, Derbyshire, and Scotland; of the Giants of Ireland and Britain; of the elemental beings, called by us by the general name of Fairies; and of these three who escaped, namely, Beauty, Strength, and Ugliness. Mr. B. has in his hands poems of the highest antiquity. Adam was a Druid, and Noah; also Abraham was called to succeed the Druidical age, which began to turn allegoric and mental signification into corporeal command, whereby human sacrifice would have depopulated the earth. All these things are written in Eden. The Artist is an inhabitant of that happy country; and if everything goes on as it has begun, the world of vegetation and generation may expect to be opened again to Heaven, through Eden, as it was in the beginning.
The Strong Man represents the human sublime; the Beautiful Man represents the human pathetic, which was in the wars of Eden divided into male and female; the Ugly Man represents the human reason. They were originally one man, who was fourfold; he was self-divided, and his real humanity slain on the stems of generation, and the form of the fourth was like the Son of God. How he became divided is a subject of great sublimity and pathos. The Artist has written it under inspiration, and will, if God please, publish it; it is voluminous, and contains the ancient history of Britain, and the world of Satan and of Adam.
In the meantime he has painted this Picture, which supposes
that in the reign of that British Prince, who lived in the fifth
century, there were remains of those naked Heroes in the Welch
Mountains; they are there now—Gray saw them in the person
of his Bard on Snowdon; there they
The antiquities of every Nation under Heaven are no less sacred than those of the Jews. They are the same thing; as Jacob Bryant and all antiquaries have proved. How other antiquities came to be neglected and disbelieved, while those of the Jews are collected and arranged, is an inquiry worthy of both the Antiquarian and the Divine. All had originally one language, and one religion; this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus. The reasoning historian, turner and twister of causes and consequences—such as Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire—cannot, with all his artifice, turn or twist one fact or disarrange self-evident action and reality. Reasons and opinions concerning acts are not history; acts themselves alone are history, and these are not the exclusive property of either Hume, Gibbon, or Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, or Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish! All that is not action is not worth reading. Tell me the What; I do not want you to tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable or impossible. His opinion who does not see spiritual agency is not worth any man’s reading; he who rejects a fact because it is improbable must reject all History, and retain doubts only.
It has been said to the Artist, Take the Apollo for the model
of your Beautiful Man, and the Hercules for your Strong Man, and the
Dancing Faun for your Ugly Man. Now he comes to his trial. He knows
that
It will be necessary for the Painter to say something concerning his ideas of Beauty, Strength, and Ugliness.
The Beauty that is annexed and appended to folly, is a lamentable accident and error of the mortal and perishing life; it does but seldom happen; but with this unnatural mixture the sublime Artist can have nothing to do; it is fit for the burlesque. The Beauty proper for sublime art is lineaments, or forms and features, that are capable of being the receptacles of intellect; accordingly the Painter has given, in his Beautiful Man, his own idea of intellectual Beauty. The face and limbs that deviate or alter least, from infancy to old age, are the face and limbs of greatest Beauty and perfection.
The Ugly likewise, when accompanied and annexed to imbecility and disease, is a subject for burlesque and not for historical grandeur; the Artist has imagined his Ugly Man;—one approaching to the beast in features and form, his forehead small without frontals, his jaws large, his nose high on the ridge, and narrow, his chest and the stamina of his make comparatively little, and his joints and his extremities large; his eyes with scarce any whites, narrow and cunning, and everything tending toward what is truly Ugly—the incapability of intellect.
The Artist has considered his Strong Man as a receptacle of
Wisdom, a sublime energizer; his features and limbs do not spindle
out into length without strength, nor are they too large and
unwieldy for his brain and
The Strong Man acts from conscious superiority, and marches on in fearless dependence on the divine decrees, raging with the inspirations of a prophetic mind. The Beautiful Man acts from duty, and anxious solicitude for the fates of those for whom he combats. The Ugly Man acts from love of carnage, and delight in the savage barbarities of war, rushing with sportive precipitation into the very teeth of the affrighted enemy.
The Roman Soldiers, rolled together in a heap before them, ‘like the rolling thing before the whirlwind,’ show each a different character, and a different expression of fear, or revenge, or envy, or blank horror or amazement, or devout wonder and unresisting awe.
The dead and the dying, Britons naked, mingled with armed Romans, strew the field beneath. Among these, the last of the Bards who was capable of attending warlike deeds is seen falling, outstretched among the dead and the dying, singing to his harp in the pains of death.
Distant among the mountains are Druid Temples, similar to Stonehenge. The Sun sets behind the mountains, bloody with the day of battle.
The flush of health in flesh, exposed to the open air, nourished by the spirits of forests and floods, in that ancient happy period which history has recorded, cannot be like the sickly daubs of Titian or Rubens. Where will the copier of nature, as it now is, find a civilized man who has been accustomed to go naked? Imagination only can furnish us with colouring appropriate, such as is found in the Frescoes of Raphael and Michael Angelo: the disposition of forms always directs colouring in works of true art. As to a modern Man stripped from his load of clothing, he is like a dead corpse. Hence Rubens, Titian, Correggio, and all of that class, are like leather and chalk; their men are like leather and their women like chalk, for the disposition of their forms will not admit of grand colouring; in Mr. B.’s Britons, the blood is seen to circulate in their limbs; he defies competition in colouring.
‘A Spirit vaulting from a Cloud to turn and
wind a fiery Pegasus’—Shakspeare. The
Horse of Intellect is leaping from the Cliffs of Memory and
Reasoning; it is a barren Rock: it is also called the Barren
Waste of Locke and Newton.
This Picture was done many years ago,
and was one of the first Mr. B. ever did in Fresco; fortunately, or
rather providentially, he left it unblotted and unblurred, although
molested continually by blotting and blurring demons; but he was
also compelled to leave it unfinished for reasons that will be shown
in the following.
The subject is taken from the Missionary
Voyage, and varied from the literal fact for the sake of
picturesque scenery. The savage girls had dressed themselves with
vine-leaves, and some goats on board the missionary ship stripped
them off presently. This Picture was painted at intervals, for
experiment with the colours, and is laboured to a superabundant
blackness; it has however that about it which may be worthy the
attention of the Artist and Connoisseur for reasons that follow.
This subject is taken from the Visions of
Emanuel Swedenborg (Universal Theology, No. 623). The Learned, who
strive to ascend into Heaven by means of learning, appear to
Children like dead horses, when repelled by the celestial spheres.
The works of this visionary are well worthy the attention of
Painters and Poets; they are foundations for grand things; the
reason they have not been more attended to is, because corporeal
demons have gained a predominance; who the leaders of these are,
will be shown below. Unworthy Men, who gain fame among Men, continue
to govern mankind after death, and, in their spiritual bodies,
oppose the
Satan calling up his Legions, from Milton’s
Paradise Lost; a composition for a more perfect Picture,
afterward executed for a Lady of high rank. An experiment
Picture.
This Picture was likewise painted at
intervals, for experiment on colours, without any oily vehicle; it
may be worthy of attention, not only on account of its composition,
but of the great Labour which has been bestowed on it, that is,
three or four times as much as would have finished a more perfect
Picture. The labour has destroyed the lineaments: it was with
difficulty brought back again to a certain effect, which it had at
first, when all the lineaments were perfect.
These Pictures, among numerous others painted for experiment,
were the result of temptations and perturbations, labouring to
destroy Imaginative power, by means of that infernal machine, called
Chiaro Oscuro, in the hands of Venetian and Flemish Demons; whose
enmity to the Painter himself, and to all Artists who study in the
Florentine and Roman Schools, may be removed by an exhibition and
exposure of their vile tricks. They cause that everything in art
shall become a Machine. They cause that the execution shall be all
blocked up with brown shadows. They put the original Artist in fear
and doubt of his own original conception. The spirit of Titian was
particularly active in raising doubts concerning the possibility of
executing without a model; and, when once he had raised the doubt,
it became easy for him to snatch away the vision time after time;
for when the Artist took his pencil, to execute his ideas, his power
of imagination weakened so much, and darkened, that memory of nature
and of Pictures of the various Schools possessed his mind, instead
of appropriate execution, resulting from the inventions; like
walking in another man’s style, or speaking or looking in
another man’s style and manner, unappropriate and
repugnant to your own individual character; tormenting the true
Artist, till he leaves the Florentine, and adopts the
Rubens is a most outrageous demon, and by infusing the remembrances of his Pictures, and style of execution, hinders all power of individual thought: so that the man who is possessed by this demon loses all admiration of any other Artist but Rub52ens, and those who were his imitators and journeymen. He causes to the Florentine and Roman Artist fear to execute; and, though the original conception was all fire and animation, he loads it with hellish brownness, and blocks up all its gates of light, except one, and that one he closes with iron bars, till the victim is obliged to give up the Florentine and Roman practice, and adopt the Venetian and Flemish.
Correggio is a soft and effeminate and consequently a most cruel demon, whose whole delight is to cause endless labour to whoever suffers him to enter his mind. The story that is told in all Lives of the Painters, about Correggio being poor and but badly paid for his Pictures, is altogether false; he was a petty Prince, in Italy, and employed numerous Journeymen in manufacturing (as Rubens and Titian did) the Pictures that go under his name. The manual labour in these Pictures of Correggio is immense, and was paid for originally at the immense prices that those who keep manufactories of art always charge to their employers, while they themselves pay their journeymen little enough. But, though Correggio was not poor, he will make any true artist so, who permits him to enter his mind, and take possession of his affections; he infuses a love of soft and even tints without boundaries, and of endless reflected lights, that confuse one another, and hinder all correct drawing from appearing to be correct; for if one of Raphael’s or Michael Angelo’s figures was to be traced, and Correggio’s reflections and refractions to be added to it, there would soon be an end of proportion and strength, and it would be weak, and peppy, and lumbering, and thick-headed, like his own works; but then it would have softness and evenness, by a twelvemonth’s labour, where a month would with judgment have finished it better and higher; and the poor wretch who executed it would be the Correggio that the life-writers have written of—a drudge and a miserable man, compelled to softness by poverty. I say again, O Artist! you may disbelieve all this, but it shall be at your own peril.
Note. — These experiment Picture
have been bruised and knocked about, without mercy, to try all
experimentents.
The subject is, Mr. Wilkin translating the
Geeta; an ideal design, suggested by the first publication of that
part of the Hindoo Scriptures, translated by Mr. Wilkin. I
understand that my Costume is incorrect; but in this I plead the
authority of the ancients, who often deviated from the Habits, to
preserve the Manners, as in the instance of Laocoön, who, though a
priest, is represented naked.
The Body of Abel found by Adam and Eve; Cain, who
was about to bury it, fleeing from the face of his
Parents.—A Drawing.
The above four drawings the Artist wishes
were in Fresco, on an enlarged scale, to ornament the altars of
churches, and to make England, like Italy, respected by respectable
men of other countries on account of Art. It is not the want of
genius that can hereafter be laid to our charge; the Artist who has
done these Pictures and Drawings will take care of that; let those
who govern the Nation take care of the other. The times require that
every one should speak out boldly; England expects that every man
should do his duty, in Arts, as well as in Arms or in the Senate.
This Design is taken from that most
pathetic passage in the Book of Ruth, where, Naomi having taken
leave of her daughters-in-law, with intent to return to her own
country, Ruth cannot leave her, but says, ‘Whither thou
goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people
shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I
die, and there will I be buried: God do so to me, and more also, if
aught but death part thee and me.’
The distinction that is made in modern times between a Painting and a Drawing proceeds from ignorance of art. The merit of a Picture is the same as the merit of a Drawing. The dauber daubs his Drawings; he who draws his Drawings draws his Pictures. There is no difference between Raphael’s Cartoons and his Frescoes, or Pictures, except that the Frescoes, or Pictures, are more finished. When Mr. B. formerly painted in oil colours, his Pictures were shown to certain painters and connoisseurs, who said that they were very admirable Drawings on canvas, but not Pictures; but they said the same of Raphael’s Pictures. Mr. B. thought this the greatest of compliments, though it was meant otherwise. If losing and obliterating the outline constitutes a Picture, Mr. B. will never be so foolish as to do one. Such art of losing the outlines is the art of Venice and Flanders; it loses all character, and leaves what some people call expression: but this is a false notion of expression; expression cannot exist without character as its stamina; and neither character nor expression can exist without firm and determinate outline. Fresco Painting is susceptible of higher finishing than Drawing on Paper, or than any other method of Painting. But he must have a strange organization of sight who does not prefer a Drawing on Paper to a Daubing in Oil by the same master, supposing both to be done with equal care.
The great and golden rule of art, as well as of life, is this:
That the more distinct, sharp, and wiry the bounding line, the more
perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater
is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling. Great
inventors, in all ages, knew this: Protogenes and Apelles knew each
other by this line. Raphael and Michael Angelo, and Albert Dürer,
are known by this and this alone. The want of this determinate and
bounding form evidences the idea of want in the artist’s
mind, and the pretence of the plagiary in all its branches.
This Drawing was done above Thirty Years
ago, and proves to the Author, and he thinks will prove to any
discerning eye, that the productions of our youth and of our maturer
age are equal in all essential points. If a man is master of his
profession, he cannot be ignorant that he is so; and, if he is not
employed by those who pretend to encourage art, he will employ
himself, and laugh in secret at the pretences of the ignorant,
while he has every night dropped into his shoe—as soon as
he puts it off, and puts out the candle, and gets into
bed—a reward for the labours of the day, such as the
world cannot give; and patience and time await to give him all
that the world can give.
The originality of this production make it
necessary to say a few words.
In this plate Mr. Blake has resumed the style with which he set out in life, of which Heath and Stothard were the awkward imitators at that time. It is the style of Albert Dürer and the old engravers, which cannot be imitated by any one who does not understand drawing, and which, according to Heath, and Stothard, Flaxman, and even Romney, spoils an engraver; for each of these men has repeatedly asserted this absurdity to me, in condemnation of my work, and approbation of Heath’s lame imitation; Stothard being such a fool as to suppose that his blundering blurs can be made out and delineated by any engraver who knows how to cut dots and lozenges, equally well with those little prints which I engraved after him four-and-twenty years ago, and by which he got his reputation as a draughtsman.
If men of weak capacities have alone the power of execution in
art, Mr. Blake has now put to the test. If to invent and to draw
well hinders the executive power in art, and his strokes are still
to be condemned because they are unlike those of artists who are
unacquainted with drawing, is now to he decided by the public. Mr.
Blake’s inventive powers, and his scientific knowledge of
drawing, are on all hands acknowledged; it only remains to be
certified whether physiognomic strength and power are to give place
to imbecility. In a work of art it is not fine tints that are
required, VOL. II. L
I account it a public duty respectfully to address myself to the Chalcographic Society, and to express to them my opinion, (the result of the expert practice and experience of many years) that engraving as an art is lost to England, owing to an artfully propagated opinion that drawing spoils an engraver. I request the Society to inspect my print, of which drawing is the foundation, and indeed the superstructure: it is drawing on copper, as painting ought to be drawing on canvas or any other surface, and nothing else. I request likewise that the Society will compare the prints of Bartolozzi, Woolett, Strange, &c, with the old English portraits, that is, compare the modern art with the art as it existed previous to the entrance of Vandyck and Rubens into the country, since which event engraving is lost; and I am sure the result of the comparison will be that the Society must be of my opinion, that engraving, by losing drawing, has lost all character and all expression, without which the art is lost.
There is not, because there cannot be, any difference of effect
in the pictures of Rubens and Rembrandt: when you have seen one of
their pictures, you have seen all. It is not so with Raphael, Giulio
Romano, Albert Dürer, Michael Angelo; every picture of theirs has
a different and appropriate effect. What man of sense will lay out
his money upon the life’s labours of imbecility and
imbecility’s journeymen, or think to educate a fool how to
build a universe with farthing balls? The contemptible idiots who
have been called great men of late years ought to rouse the public
indignation of men of sense in all professions. Yet I do not shrink
from the comparison in either relief or strength of colour with
either Rembrandt or Rubens; on the contrary, I court the comparison,
and fear not the result,—but not in a dark corner. Their
effects are in every picture the same; mine are in every picture
different.
I hope my countrymen will excuse me if I tell them a wholesome truth. Most Englishmen, when they look at pictures, immediately set about searching for points of light, and clap the picture into a dark corner. This, when done by grand works, is like looking for epigrams in Homer. A point of light is a witticism: many are destructive of all art; one is an epigram only, and no good work can have them. Raphael, Michael Angelo, Albert Dürer, Giulio Romano, are accounted ignorant of that epigrammatic wit in art, because they avoid it as a destructive machine, as it is.
Mr. Blake repeats that there is not one character or expression in this print which could be produced with the execution of Titian, Rubens, Correggio, Rembrandt, or any of that class. Character and expression can only be expressed by those who feel them. Even Hogarth’s execution cannot be copied or improved. Gentlemen of fortune, who give great prices for pictures, should consider the following: When you view a collection of pictures, painted since Venetian art was the fashion, or go into a modern exhibition, with a very few exceptions every picture has the same effect—a piece of machinery of points of light to be put into a dark hole.
Ruben’s ‘Luxembourg Gallery’
is confessed on all hands to be the work of a blockhead; it bears
this evidence in its face. How can its execution be any other than
the work of a blockhead? Bloated gods, Mercury, Juno, Venus, and
the rattletraps of mythology, and the lumber of an awkward French
palace, are thrown together around clumsy and rickety princes and
princesses, higgledy-piggledy. On the contrary, Giulio
Romano’s ‘Palace of T. at Mantua’
is allowed on all hands to be the production of a man of the most
profound sense and genius; and yet his execution is pro- L 2
The wretched state of the arts in this country and in Europe, originating in the wretched state of political science (which is the science of sciences), demands a firm and determinate conduct on the part of artists, to resist the contemptible counter-arts, established by such contemptible politicians as Louis XIV., and originally set on foot by Venetian picture-traders, music-traders, and rhyme-traders, to the destruction of all true art, as it is this day. To recover art has been the business of my life to the Florentine original, and if possible, to go beyond that original: this I thought the only pursuit worthy of a man. To imitate I abhor: I obstinately adhere to the true style of art, such as Michael Angelo, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Albert Dürer, left it. I demand therefore of the amateurs of art the encouragement which is my due; if they continue to refuse, theirs is the loss, not mine, and theirs is the contempt of posterity. I have enough in the approbation of fellow-labourers: this is my glory and exceeding great reward. I go on and nothing can hinder my course.
While the works of Pope and Dryden are looked upon as the same art with those of Shakespeare and Milton, while the works of Strange and Woolett are looked upon as the same art with those of Raphael and Albert Dürer, there can be no art in a nation but such as is subservient to the interest of the monopolising trader. Englishmen! rouse yourselves from the fatal slumber into which booksellers and trading dealers have thrown you, under the artfully propagated pretence that a translation or a copy of any kind can be as honourable to a nation as an original, belieing the English character in that well-known saying, Englishmen improve what others invent. This even Hogarth’s works prove a detestable falsehood. No man can improve an original invention, nor can an original invention exist without execution organised, delineated, and articulated either by God or man: I do not mean smoothed up and niggled and poco-pen’d, and all the beauties paled out, blurred, and blotted; but drawn with a firm and decided hand at once, like Michael Angelo, Shakespeare and Milton. I have heard many people say: ‘Give me the ideas—it is no matter what words you put them into;’ and others say: ‘Give me the design, it is no matter for the execution.’ These people knew enough of artifice, but nothing of art. Ideas cannot be given but in their minutely appropriate words, nor can a design be made without its minutely appropriate execution. The unorganized blots and blurs of Rubens and Titian are not art, nor can their method ever express ideas or imaginations, any more than Pope’s metaphysical jargon of rhyming. Unappropriate execution is the most nauseous of all affectation and foppery. He who copies does not execute—he only imitates what is already executed. Execution is only the result of invention.
I do not condemn Rubens, Rembrandt, or Titian, because they
did not understand drawing, but because they did not understand
colouring; how long shall I be forced to beat this into
men’s ears? I do not condemn Strange or Woolett because
they did not understand
They say, there is no straight line in nature. This is a lie, like all that they say, for there is every line in nature. But I will tell them what there is not in nature. An even tint is not in nature—it produces heaviness. Nature’s shadows are ever varying, and a ruled sky that is quite even never can produce a natural sky. The same with every object in a picture—its spots are its beauties. Now, gentlemen critics, how do you like this? You may rage; but what I say I will prove by such practice (and have already done so) that you will rage to your own destruction. Woolett I knew very intimately by his intimacy with Basire, and I knew him to be one of the most ignorant fellows that I ever knew. A machine is not a man nor a work of art; it is destructive of humanity and of art. Woolett, I know, did not know how to grind his graver; I know this. He has often proved his ignorance before me at Basire’s, by laughing at Basire’s knife-tools, and ridiculing the forms of Basire’s other gravers, till Basire was quite dashed and out of conceit with what he himself knew. But his impudence had a contrary effect on me.
A certain portrait-painter said to me in a boasting way:
‘Since I have practised painting, I have lost all idea of drawing.’
Such a man must know that I looked upon him with contempt. He did
not care for this any more than West did, who hesitated and
equivocated with me upon the same subject, at which time he
What is called the English style of engraving, such as it
proceeded from the toilets of Woolett and Strange (for
their’s were Fribble’s toilets) can never
produce character and expression. I knew the men intimately from
their intimacy with Basire, my master, and knew them both to be
heavy lumps of cunning and ignorance, as their works show to all the
Continent, who laugh at the contemptible pretences of Englishmen to
improve art before they even know the first beginnings of art. I
hope this print will redeem my country from this coxcomb situation,
and show that it is only some Englishmen, and not
all, who are thus ridiculous in their pretences. Advertisements in
newspapers are no proofs of popular approbation, but often the
contrary. A man who pretends to improve fine art does not know what
fine art is. Ye English engravers must come down from your high
flights; ye must condescend to study Marc Antonio and Albert
Dürer; ye must begin before you attempt to finish or
improve: and when you have begun, you will know better than to
think of improving what cannot be improved. It is very
Woolett’s best works were etched by Jack Browne; Woolett etched very ill himself. ‘The Cottagers,’ and ‘Jocund Peasants,’ the ‘Views in Kew Garden,’ ‘Foot’s-Cray,’ and ‘Diana and Actæon,’ and, in short, all that are called Woolett’s, were etched by Jack Browne; and in Woolett’s works the etching is all, though even in these a single leaf of a tree is never correct. Strange’s prints were, when I knew him, all done by Aliamet and his French journeymen, whose names I forget. I also knew something of John Cooke, who engraved after Hogarth. Cooke wished to give Hogarth what he could take from Raphael, that is, outline, and mass, and colour; but he could not. Such prints as Woolett and Strange produce will do for those who choose to purchase the life’s labour of ignorance and imbecility in preference to the inspired monuments of genius and inspiration.
In this manner the English public have been imposed upon for
many years, under the impression that engraving and painting are
somewhat else besides drawing. Painting is drawing on canvas, and
engraving is drawing on copper, and nothing else; and he who
pretends to be either painter or engraver without being a master of
Whoever looks at any of the great and expensive works of engraving that have been published by English traders must feel a loathing and disgust; and accordingly most Englishmen have a contempt for art, which is the greatest curse that can fall upon a nation.
The modern chalcographic connoisseurs and amateurs admire only the work of the journeyman picking out of whites and blacks in what are called tints. They despise drawing, which despises them in return. They see only whether everything is toned down but one spot of light. Mr. Blake submits to a more severe tribunal: he invites the admirers of old English portraits to look at his print.
An example of these contrary arts is given us in the characters of Milton and Dryden, as they are written in a poem signed with the name of Nat Lee, which perhaps he never wrote and perhaps he wrote in a paroxysm of insanity; in which it is said that Milton’s poem is a rough unfinished piece, and that Dryden has finished it. Now let Dryden’s Fall and Milton’s Paradise be read, and I will assert that everybody of understanding must cry out shame on such niggling and poco-pen as Dryden has degraded Milton with. But at the same time I will allow that stupidity will prefer Dryden, because it is in rhyme and monotonous sing-song sing-song from beginning to end. Such are Bartolozzi, Woolett, and Strange.
Men think that they can copy nature as correctly as I copy
imagination. This they will find impossible: and all the copies, or
pretended copies, of nature, from Rembrandt to Reynolds, prove that
nature becomes to its victim nothing but blots and blurs. Why are
copies of nature incorrect, while copies of imagination
A man sets himself down with colours, and with all the articles of painting; he puts a model before him, and he copies that so neat as to make it a deception. Now, let any man of sense ask himself one question: Is this art? Can it be worthy of admiration to anybody of understanding? Who could not do this? What man, who has eyes and an ordinary share of patience, cannot do this neatly? Is this art, or is it glorious to a nation to produce such contemptible copies? Countrymen, countrymen, do not suffer yourselves to be disgraced!
No man of sense ever supposes that copying from nature is the art of painting; if the art is no more than this, it is no better than any other manual labour: anybody may do it, and the fool often will do it best, as it is a work of no mind. A jockey, that is anything of a jockey, will never buy a horse by the colour; and a man who has got any brains will never buy a picture by the colour.
When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.
It is nonsense for noblemen and gentlemen to offer premiums for
I do not pretend to paint better than Raphael or Michael Angelo, or Giulio Romano, or Albert Dürer; but I do pretend to paint finer than Rubens, or Rembrandt, or Correggio, or Titian. I do not pretend to engrave finer than Albert Dürer; but I do pretend to engrave finer than Strange, Woolett, Hall, or Bartolozzi; and all because I understand drawing, which they understood not. Englishmen have been so used to journeymen’s undecided bungling, that they cannot bear the firmness of a master’s touch. Every line is the line of beauty; it is only fumble and bungle which cannot draw a line. This only is ugliness. That is not a line which doubts and hesitates in the midst of its course.
I know my execution is not like anybody else’s. I do not intend it should be so. None but blockheads copy one another. My conception and invention are on all hands allowed to be superior; my execution will be found so too. To what is it that gentlemen of the first rank both in genius and fortune have subscribed their names? To my inventions. The executive part they never disputed.
The painters of England are unemployed in public works, while
the sculptors have continual and superabundant employment. Our
churches and our abbeys are treasures of their producing for ages
back, while painting is excluded. Painting, the principal art, has
no place among our almost only public works. Yet it is more
It has been said of late years, the English public have no taste for painting. This is a falsehood. The English are as good judges of painting as of poetry, and they prove it in their contempt for great collections of all the rubbish of the Continent, brought here by ignorant picture-dealers. An Englishman may well say ‘I am no judge of painting,’ when he is shown these smears and daubs, at an immense price, and told that such is the art of painting. I say the English public are true encouragers of real art, while they discourage and look with contempt on false art.
Resentment for personal injuries has had some share in this public address, but love for my art, and zeal for my country, a much greater.
I do not know whether Homer is a liar and that there is no
such thing as generous contention. I know that all those with whom I
have contended in art have striven, not to excel, but to starve me
out by calumny and the arts of trading competition. The manner in
which my character has been blasted these thirty years both as an
artist and a man may be seen particularly in a Sunday paper called
The Examiner
In a commercial nation, impostors are abroad in all professions; these are the greatest enemies of genius. In the art of painting these impostors sedulously propagate an opinion that great inventors cannot execute. This opinion is as destructive of the true artist as it is false by all experience. Even Hogarth cannot be either copied or improved. Can Angelus never discern perfection but in a journeyman labourer?
P.S.—I do not believe that this absurd opinion
ever was set on foot till, in my outset into life, it was artfully
published, both in whispers and in print, by certain persons whose
robberies from me made it necessary to them that I should be hid in
a corner. It never was supposed that a copy could be better than an
original, or near so good, till, a few years ago, it became the
interest of certain knaves. The lavish praise I have received from
all quarters for invention and drawing has generally been
accompanied by this: ‘He can conceive, but he cannot execute.’ This
absurd assertion has done me, and may still do me, the greatest
mischief. I call for public protection against these villains. I am,
like others, just equal in invention and in execution, as my works
show. I, in my
[In an early part of the same book from which has been gathered
the foregoring Public Address, occur three
memoranda having reference to the methods by which Blake engraved
some of his designs.
These receipts are written immediately under the two very curious
entries—‘Tuesday, Jan. 20, 1807, Between two and seven in the evening.
Despair’ And—I say I shan’t live five years; and if I live one, it
will be a wonder. June 1793.’ The last-quoted entry is in pencil, and pretty
evidently made before the subjoined.]
To engrave on pewter: Let there be first a drawing made correctly with black-lead pencil; let nothing be to seek. Then rub it off on the plate, covered with white wax; or perhaps pass it through press. This will produce certain and determined forms on the plate, and time will not be wasted in seeking them afterwards.
To wood-cut on pewter: Lay a ground on the plate, and smoke it as for etching. Then trace your outlines, and, beginning with the spots of light on each object, with an oval-pointed needle scrape off the ground, as a direction for your graver. Then proceed to graving, with the ground on the plate; being as careful as possible not to hurt the ground, because it, being black, will show perfectly what is wanted.
To wood-cut on copper: Lay a ground as for etching; trace, &c., and, instead of etching the blacks, etch the whites, and bit it in.’
Every poem must necessarily be a perfect
Unity, but why Homer’s is peculiarly so I cannot tell: he
has told the story of Bellerophon, and omitted the Judgment of
Paris, which is not only a part, but a principal part, of
Homer’s subject. But when a work has unity, it is as much
so in a part as in the whole. The torso is as much a unity as the
Laocöon. As unity is the cloak of folly, so goodness is
the cloak of knavery. Those who will have unity exclusively in Homer
come out with a moral like a sting in the tail. Aristotle says
characters are either good or bad: now, goodness or badness has
nothing to do with character. An apple-tree, a pear-tree, a horse, a
lion, are characters; but a good apple-tree or a bad is an
apple-tree still. A horse is not more a lion for being a bad
horse—that is its character: its goodness or badness is
another consideration.
It is the same with the moral of a whole poem as with the moral goodness of its parts. Unity and morality are secondary considerations, and belong to Philosophy, and not to Poetry—to exception, and not to rule—to accident, and not to substance. The ancients called it eating of the Tree of Good and Evil.
The Classics it is, the Classics, and not Goths or monks, that desolate Europe with wars.
Sacred truth has pronounced that Greece and
Rome, as Babylon and Egypt, so far from being parents of Arts and
Sciences, as they pretend, were destroyers of all Art. Homer,
Virgil, and Ovid, confirm this, and make us reverence the Word of
God, the only light of Antiquity that remains unperverted by war. Eneid, Book VI.
Rome and Greece swept art into their maw, and destroyed it. A warlike State never can produce art. It will rob and plunder, and accumulate into one place, and translate, and copy, and buy and sell, and criticise, but not make. Grecian is mathematic form. Mathematic form is eternal in the reasoning memory. Living form is eternal existence. Gothic is living form.
The Last Judgment is not fable, or allegory, but
vision. Fable, or allegory, is a totally distinct and inferior kind of
poetry. Vision, or imagination, is a representation of what actually
exists, really and unchangeably. Fable, or allegory, is formed by the
daughters of Memory. Imagination is surrounded by the daughters of
inspiration, who, in the aggregate, are called Jerusalem. Fable is
allegory, but what critics call the fable is vision
itself. The Hebrew Bible and the Gospel of Jesus are not allegory, but
eternal vision, or imagination, of all that exists. Note here that
fable, or allegory, is seldom without some vision.
Plato has made Socrates say that poets and prophets do not know or understand what they write or utter. This is a most pernicious falsehood. If they do not, pray, is an inferior kind to be called ‘knowing?’ Plato confutes himself.
The Last Judgment is one of these stupendous visions. I have represented it as I saw it. To different people it appears differently, as everything else does.
In eternity one thing never changes into another thing: each identity is eternal. Consequently, Apuleius’s Golden Ass, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and others of the like kind, are fable; yet they contain vision in a sublime degree, being derived from real vision in more ancient writings. Lot’s wife being changed into a pillar of salt alludes to the mortal body being rendered a permanent statue, but not changed or transformed into another identity, while it retains its own individuality. A man can never become ass nor horse; some are born with shapes of men who are both; but eternal identity is one thing, and corporeal vegetation is another thing. Changing water into wine by Jesus, and into blood by Moses, relates to vegetable nature also.
The nature of visionary fancy, or imagination, is very little
known, and the eternal nature and permanence of its ever-existent images
are considered as less permanent than the things of vegetable and
generative nature. Yet the oak dies as well as the lettuce; but its
eternal image or individuality never dies, but renews by its seed. Just
so the imaginative image returns by the seed of M 2
The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation, or vegetation, is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the permanent realities of every thing which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature.
All things are comprehended in these eternal forms in the divine body of the Saviour, the true vine of eternity . . . who appeared to me as coming to judgment among His saints, and throwing off the temporal, that the eternal might be established. Around Him were seen the images of existences according to a certain order, suited to my imaginative eye, as follows:—
Jesus seated between the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, with the word
divine of revelation on His knee, and on each side the four-and-twenty
elders sitting in judgment; the heavens opening around Him by unfolding
the clouds around His throne. The old heavens and the old earth are
passing away, and the new heavens and the new earth descending: a sea
of fire issues from before the throne. Adam and Eve appear first before
the judgment-seat, in humiliation; Abel surrounded by innocents; and
Cain, with the flint in his hand with which he slew his brother, falling
with the head downwards. From the cloud on which Eve stands Satan is
seen falling headlong, wound round by the tail of the serpent, whose
bulk, nailed to the cross round which he wreathes, is falling into the
abyss. Sin is also represented as a female bound in one of the
serpent’s folds, surrounded by her fiends. Death is chained
to the cross, and Time falls together with Death, dragged down by a
demon crowned with laurel. Another demon, with a key, has the charge of
Sin, and is dragging her down by the hair
On the right, beneath the cloud on which Abel kneels, is Abraham, with Sarah and Isaac, also with Hagar and Ishmael on the left. Abel kneels on a bloody cloud, descriptive of those Churches before the Flood, that they were filled with blood and fire and vapour of smoke. Even till Abraham’s time the vapour and heat were not extinguished. These states exist now. Man passes on, but states remain for ever: he passes through them like a traveller, who may as well suppose that the places he has passed through exist no more, as a man may suppose that the states he has passed through exist no more: everything is eternal.
Beneath Ishmael is Mahomed: and beneath the falling figure of Cain is Moses, casting his tables of stone into the deeps. It ought to be understood that the persons, Moses and Abraham, are not here meant, but the states signified by those names; the individuals being representatives, or visions, of those states, as they were revealed to mortal man in the series of divine revelations, as they are written in the Bible. These various states I have seen in my imagination. When distant, they appear as one man; but, as you approach, they appear multitudes of nations. Abraham hovers above his posterity, which appear as multitudes of children ascending from the earth, surrounded by stars, as it was said: ‘As the stars of heaven for multitude.’ Jacob and his twelve sons hover beneath the feet of Abraham, and receive their children from the earth. I have seen, when at a distance, multitudes of men in harmony appear like a single infant, sometimes in the arms of a female. This represented the Church.
But to proceed with the description of those on the left hand.
Beneath the cloud on which Moses kneels are two figures, a male and a
female, chained together by the feet. They represent those
The earth beneath these falling groups of figures is rocky and
burning, and seems as if convusled by earthquakes. A great city, on fire,
is seen in the distance. The armies (?) are fleeing upon the mountains.
On the foreground Hell is opened, and many figures are descending into
it down stone steps, and beside a gate beneath a rock, where Sin and
Death are to be closed eternally by that fiend who carries the key in one
hand, and drags them down with the other. On the rock, and above the gate,
a fiend with wings urges the wicked onward with fiery darts. He is
Hazael, the Syrian, who drives abroad all those who rebel against the
Saviour. Beneath the steps is Babylon, represented by a king crowned,
grasping his
Two persons, one in purple, the other in scarlet, are descending down the steps into the pit. These are Caiaphas and Pilate; two states where all those reside who calumniate and murder under pretence of holiness and justice. Caiaphas has a blue flame, like a mitre, on his head: Pilate has bloody hands, that can never be cleansed. The females behind them represent the females belonging to such states, who are under perpetual terrors and vain dreams plots, and secret deceit. Those figures that descend into the flames before Caiaphas and Pilate are Judas and those of his class. Achitophel is also here, with the cord in his hand.
Between the figures of Adam and Eve appeals a fiery gulph
descending from the sea of fire before the throne. In this cataract four
angels descend headlong with four trumpets to awake the dead. Beneath
these is the seat of the harlot, named Mystery in the Revelations. She
is seized by two beings, each with three heads: they represent
vegetative existence. As it is written in Revelations, they strip her
naked, and burn her with fire. It represents the eternal consumption of
vegetable life and death, with its lusts. The wreathed torches in their
hands represent eternal fire, which is the fire of generation or
vegetation: it is an eternal consummation. Those who are blessed with
imaginative vision see this eternal female, and tremble at what others
fear not; while they despise and laugh at what others fear. Beneath her
feet is a flaming cavern, in which are seen her kings, and councillors,
and warriors, descending in flames, lamenting, and looking upon her in
astonishment
The persons who ascend to meet the Lord, coming in the clouds with
power and great glory, are representations of those states described in
the Bible under the names of the Fathers before and after the Flood.
Noah is seen in the midst of these, canopied by a rainbow. On his right
hand Shem, and on his left Japhet. These three persons represent Poetry,
Painting, and Music, the three powers in man of conversing with
Paradise, which the Flood did not sweep away. Above Noah is the Church
Universal, represented by a woman surrounded by infants. There is such a
state in eternity: it is composed of the innocent civilized heathen and
the uncivilized savage, who, having not the law, do by nature the
things contained in the law. This state appears like a female crowned
with stars, driven into the wilderness: she has the moon under her
feet. The aged
Around Noah, and beneath him, are various figures risen into the air. Among these are three females, representing those who are not of the dead, but of those found alive at the Last Judgment. They appear to be innocently gay and thoughtless, not being among the condemned, because ignorant of crime in the midst of a corrupted age. The Virgin Mary was of this class. A mother meets her numerous family in the arms of their father: these are representations of the Greek learned and wise, as also of those of other nations, such as Egypt and Babylon, in which were multitudes who shall meet the Lord coming in the clouds.
The children of Abraham, or Hebrew Church, are represented as a
stream of figures, on which are seen stars, somewhat like the Milky Way.
They ascend from the earth, where figures kneel, embracing above the
graves, and represent religion, or civilized life, such as it is in the
Christian Church, which is the offspring of the Hebrew. Just above the
graves, and above the spot where the infants creep out of the ground
(?) stand two—a man and woman: these are the primitive
Christians. The two figures in purifying flames, by the side of the
Dragon’s cavern, represent the latter state of the Church,
when on the verge of perdition, yet protected by a flaming sword.
Multitudes are seen ascending from the green fields of the blessed, in
which a Gothic church is representative of true art (called Gothic in
all ages, by those who follow the fashion, as that is called which is
without shape or fashion). By the right hand of Noah, a woman with
children represents the state called Laban the Syrian: it is the
remains of civilization in the state from whence Adam was taken. Also,
on the right hand of Noah, a female descends to meet her lover or
husband, representative of that love called friendship, which looks for
no
On the right hand of these rise the diffident and humble, and on their left a solitary woman with her infant. These are caught up by three aged men, who appear as suddenly emerging from the blue sky for their help. These three aged men represent divine providence, as opposed to and distinct from divine vengeance, represented by three aged men, on the side of the picture among the wicked, with scourges of fire.
If the spectator could enter into these images in his imagination, approaching them on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought; if he could enter into Noah’s rainbow, could make a friend and companion of one of these images of wonder, which always entreat him to leave mortal things (as he must know), then would he arise from the grave, then would he meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be happy. General knowledge is remote knowledge: it is in particulars that wisdom consists, and happiness too. Both in art and in life general masses are as much art as a pasteboard man is human. Every man has eyes, nose, and mouth; this every idiot knows; but he who enters into and discriminates most minutely the manners and intentions, the characters in all their branches, is the alone wise or sensible man; and on this discrimination all art is founded. I entreat, then, that the spectator will attend to the hands and feet; to the lineaments of the countenance: they are all descriptive of character, and not a line is drawn without intention, and that most discriminate and particular. As poetry admits not a letter that is insignificant, so painting admits not a grain of sand, or a blade of grass insignificant—Much less an insignificant blur or mark.
Above the head of Noah is Seth. This state, called Seth, is male
and female, in a higher state of happiness than Noah, being nearer the
state of innocence. Beneath the feet of Seth two figures represent
By the side of Seth is Elijah: he comprehends all the prophetic characters. He is seen on his fiery chariot, bowing before the throne of the Saviour. In like manner the figures of Seth and his wife comprehend the Fathers before the Flood, and their generations: when seen remote, they appear as one man. A little below Seth, on his right, are two figures, a male and a female, with numerous children.These represent those who were not in the line of the Church, and yet were saved from among the antediluvians who perished. Between Seth and these, a female figure represents the solitary state of those who, previous to the Flood, walked with God.
All these rise towards the opening cloud before the throne, led onward by triumphant groups of infants. Between Seth and Elijah three female figures, crowned with garlands, represent Learning and Science, which accompanied Adam out of Eden.
The cloud that opens, rolling apart from before the throne, and before the new heaven and the new earth, is composed of various groups of figures, particularly the four living creatures mentioned in Revelations as surrounding the throne. These I suppose to have the chief agency in removing the old heavens and the old earth, to make way for the new heaven and the new earth, to descend from the throne of God and of the Lamb. That living creature on the left of the throne gives to the seven Angels the seven vials of the wrath of God, with which they, hovering over the deeps beneath, pour out upon the wicked their plagues. The other living creatures are descending with a shout, and with the sound of the trumpet, and directing the combats in the upper elements. In the two corners of the picture: on the left hand, Apollyon is foiled before the sword of Michael; and, on the right, the two witnesses are subduing their enemies.
On the cloud are opened the books of remembrance of life and death: before that of life, on the right, some figures bow in
A Last Judgement is necessary because fools flourish. Nations flourish under wise rulers, and are depressed under foolish rulers; it is the same with individuals as with nations. Works of art can only be produced in perfection where the man is either in affluence or is above the care of it. Poverty is the fools’ rod, which at last is turned on his own back. That is a Last Judgement, when men of real art govern, and pretenders fall. Some people, and not a few artists, have asserted that the painter of this picture would not have done so well if he had been properly encouraged. Let those who think so reflect on the state of nations under povery, and their incapability of art. Though art is above either, the argument is better for affluence than poverty; and, though he would not have been a greater artist, yet he would have produced greater works of art, in proportion to his means. A Last Judgement is not for the purpose of making bad men better, but for the purpose of hindering them from oppressing the good.
Around the throne heaven is opened, and the nature of eternal things displayed, all springing from the Divine Humanity. All beams from Him: He is the bread and the wine; he is the water of life. Accordingly, on each side of the opening heaven appears an Apostle: that on the right represent Baptism; that on the left represents the Lord’s Supper.
All the life consists of these two: throwing off error and knaves
from our company continually, and receiving truth or wise men into our
company continually. He who is out of the Church and opposes it is no
less an agent of religion than he who is in it: to be an error, and to
be cast out, is a part of God’s design. No man can embrace
true art till he has explored and cast out false art (such is the nature
of mortal things); or he will be himself cast out by those who have
Over the head of the Saviour and Redeemer, the Holy Spirit, like a dove, is surrounded by a blue heaven, in which are the two cherubim that bowed over the ark; for here the temple is open in heaven, and the ark of the covenant is a dove of peace. The curtains are drawn apart, Christ having rent the veil: the candlestick and the table of show-bread appear on each side: a glorification of angels with harps surrounds the dove.
The Temple stands on the mount of God. From it flows on each side a river of life, on whose banks grows the Tree of Life, among whose branches temples and pinnacles, tents and pavilions, gardens and groves, display Paradise, with its inhabitants, walking up and down, in conversations concerning mental delights. Here they are no longer talking of what is good and evil, or of what is right or wrong, and puzzling themselves in Satan’s labyrinth; but are conversing with eternal realities, as they exist in the human imagination.
We are in a world of generation and death, and this world we must cast off if we would be artists (?) such as Raphael, Michael Angelo, and the ancient sculptors. If we do not cast off this world, we shall be only Venetian painters, who will be cast off and lost from art.
Jesus is surrounded by beams of glory, in which are seen all around him infants emanating from Him: these represent the eternal births of intellect from the divine humanity. A rainbow surrounds the throne and the glory, in which youthful nuptials receive the infants in their hands. In eternity woman is the emanation of man; she has no will of her own; there is no such thing in eternity as a female will.
On the side next Baptism are seen those called in the Bible Nursing Fathers and Nursing Mothers: they represent Education. On the side next the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Family, consisting of Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, Zacharias, and Elizabeth, receiving the bread and wine, among other spirits of the Just made perfect. Beneath these, a cloud of women and children are taken up, fleeing from the rolling cloud which separates the wicked from the seats of bliss. These represent those who, though willing, were too weak to reject error without the assistance and countenance of those already in the truth: for a man can only reject error by the advice of a friend, or by the immediate inspiration of God. It is for this reason, among many others, that I have put the Lord’s Supper on the left hand of the throne, for it appears so at the Last Judgment for a protection.
The painter hopes that his friends, Anytus, Melitus, and Lycon, will perceive that they are not now in ancient Greece; and, though they can use the poison of calumny, the English public will be convinced that such a picture as this could never be painted by a madman, or by one in a state of outrageous manners; as these bad men both print and publish by all the means in their power. The painter begs public protection, and all will be well.
Men are admitted into heaven, not because they have curbed and
governed their passions, or have no passions, but because they have
cultivated their understandings. The treasures of heaven are not
negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the
passions emanate, uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not
enter into heaven, let him be ever so holy: holiness is not the price
of entrance into heaven. Those who are cast out are all those who,
having no passions of their own, because no intellect, have spent their
lives in curbing and governing other people’s by the various
arts of poverty, and cruelty of all kinds. The modern Church crucifies
Christ with the head downwards. Woe, woe, woe to
Many suppose that before the Creation all was solitude and chaos. This is the most pernicious idea that can enter the mind, as it takes away all sublimity from the Bible, and limits all existence to creation and chaos—to the time and space fixed by the corporeal vegetative eye, and leaves the man who entertains such an idea the habitation of unbelieving demons. Eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy. I have represented those who are in eternity by some in a cloud, within the rainbow that surrounds the throne. They merely appear as in a cloud when anything of creation, redemption, or judgment, is the subject of contemplation, though their whole contemplation is concerning these things. The reason they so appear is the humiliation of the reason and doubting selfhood, and the giving all up to inspiration. By this it will be seen that I do not consider either the just, or the wicked, to be in a supreme state, but to be, every one of them, states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil, when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent.
Many persons, such as Paine and Voltaire, with some of the
ancient Greeks, say: ‘We will not converse concerning good and evil; we
will live in Paradise and Liberty.’ You may do so in spirit, but not in
the mortal body, as you pretend, till after a Last Judgment. For in
Paradise they have no corporeal and mortal body: that originated with
the Fall and was called Death, and cannot be removed but by a Last
Judgment. While we are in the world of mortality, we must
suffer—the whole Creation groans to be delivered.
There will
always be as many hypocrites born as honest men, and they will always
have superior power in mortal things. You cannot have liberty in this
world without what you call moral virtue,
The nature of hatred and envy, and of all the mischiefs in the world, is here depicted. No one envies or hates one of his own party; even the devils love one another in their own way. They torment one another for other reasons than hate or envy: these are only employed against the just. Neither can Seth envy Noah, or Elijah envy Abraham; but they may both of them envy the success of Satan, or of Og, or Moloch. The horse never envies the peacock, nor the sheep the goat; but they envy a rival in life and existence, whose ways and means exceed their own. Let him be of what class of animals he will, a dog will envy a cat who is pampered at the expense of his own comfort, as I have often seen. The Bible never tells us that devils torment one another through envy; it is through this that they torment the just. But for what do they torment one another? I answer: For the coercive laws of hell, moral hypocrisy. They torment a hypocrite when he is discovered—they punish a failure in the tormentor who has suffered the subject of his torture to escape. In Hell, all is self-righteousness; there is no such thing there as forgiveness of sin. He who does forgive sin is crucified as an abetter of criminals, and he who performs works of mercy, in any shape whatever, is punished and, if possible, destroyed—not through envy, or hatred, or malice, but through self-righteousness, that thinks it does God service, which god is Satan. They do not envy one another: they contemn or despise one another. Forgiveness of sin is only at the judgment-seat of Jesus the Saviour, where the accuser is cast out, not because he sins, but because he torments the just, and makes them do what he condemns as sin, and what he knows is opposite to their own identity.
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only.
The player is a liar when he says: ‘Angels are happier than men, because they are better.’ Angels are happier than men and devils, because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another, and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan’s gratification.
The Last Judgment is an overwhelming of bad art and science. Mental things are alone real: what is called corporeal nobody knows of; its dwelling-place is a fallacy, and its existence an imposture. Where is the existence out of mind, or thought?—where is it but in the mind of a fool. Some people flatter themselves that there will be no Last Judgment, and that bad art will be adopted and mixed with good art—that error or experiment will make a part of truth; and they boast that it is its foundation. These people flatter themselves; I will not flatter them. Error is created, truth is eternal. Error or creation will be burned up, and then, and not till then, truth or eternity will appear. It is burned up the moment men cease to behold it. I assert, for myself, that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. ‘What!’ it will be questioned; ‘when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire, somewhat like a guinea?’ Oh! no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!’ I question not my corporeal eye, any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it.
The Last Judgment [will be] when all those are cast away who trouble religion with questioning concerning good and evil, or eating of the tree of those knowledges or reasonings which hinder the vision of God, turning all into a consuming fire. When imagination, art, and science, and all intellectual gifts, all the gifts of the Holy Ghost, are looked upon as of no use, and only contention remains to man; then the Last Judgment begins, and its vision is seen by the eye of every one according to the situation he holds.
Quite as valuable, though still in another way not quite perfect, are the
original plates of the Songs
originals as those appearing
in the copies printed by Blake; and the reason why they must still be
pronounced imperfect is that they were intended as a mere preparation for
colouring by handout has been explained in the Life
On comparing these Plates with the fac-similes of designs belonging to the same class of Blake’s works which are contained in the first volume, it will be at once apparent that the latter are generally extremely successful as reproductions of his style. His work of other kinds, more dependent on engraving in lines, was far more difficult to deal with by the process adopted; but everywhere the aim has been towards the utmost fidelity whether the fac-simile was on the exact scale of the original or not.
In concluding the last of the brief prefatory notes to the various sections
of this second volume, the writer of them believes he may trust not only to have
expressed his own views on the matters to which they relate, but that these are
also in harmony with the intentsions and fully-matured plans of his friend the
author of the Life.
he would unwillingly have endorsed. it may be said on this last page of
the book, that at least neither love of Blake in its author, nor love of its
author in those on whom the issuing of his work devolved, has been wanting to
make it a true memorial of both.