CHAPTER XVIII. WORKING HOURS. LETTERS TO BUTTS. 1801-1803. [ÆT. 44—46.] IN the latter part of 1801 Hayley began spinning a series of Ballads on Anecdotes relating to Animals, of very different merit from Little Tom the Sailor of the previous year; empty productions, long-winded, bald, devoid of every poetic virtue save simplicity,-in the unhappy sense of utter insipidity. What must the author of the Songs of Innocence have thought of them? On these Ballads hung a project, as usual with Hayley. They were to be illustrated by Blake, printed by another protégé, Seagrave, a Chichester bookseller, and published for the artist's sole benefit; in realising which they were fated to have but ill success. Our hermit sincerely believed in contributing verse of his he was giving money's worth; in that serene faith meaning as generously as when handing over tangible coin. During the progress of the Life of Cowper, and of the Ballads, the letters of Hayley to the Rev. John Johnson supply glimpses, here and there, of Blake, at his engraving, or in familiar intercourse with his patron; and they supply more than glimpses of the writer himself, in his accustomed undress of easy, slip-shod vanity and amiability. This Johnson was Cowper's cousin, his right-hand man in latter years, and faithful guardian ultimately. The letters are entombed in Hayley's Memoirs of himself and his son, edited or, at all events, seen through the press, by the amiable clergyman in 1823. 'Our good Blake,' scribbles the artist's patron, one hot day in August, 1801, 'is actually in labour with a young lion. 'The new born cub will probably kiss your hands in a week or two. The Lion is his third Ballad,' (none are yet printed) and we hope his plate to it will surpass its predecessors. Apropos of this good, warm-hearted artist. He has a great wish that you should prevail on Cowper's dear Rose' (Mrs. Anne Bodham, a cousin of the poet on the mother's side, and the correspondent who sent him that picture of his mother which elicited the poem we all know so well) to send her portrait of the beloved bard, by Abbott, to Felpham, that Blake may engrave it for the Milton we meditate; which 'we devote (you know) to the sublime purpose of raising 'a monument suited to the dignity of the dear bard, in the 'metropolis; if the public show proper spirit (as I am per'suaded it will) on that occasion-a point that we shall put 'to the test, in publishing the Life.' The portrait of Cowper, by Abbot, the Academician,—a very prosaic one, was not, I presume, sent to Felpham; for it was never engraved by Blake. A print of it, by one W. C. Edwards, forms the frontispiece to Vol. I. of The Private Correspondence of Cowper, edited by Johnson in 1824. The scheme here referred to was that of an edition of Cowper's unfinished Commentary on Paradise Lost, and MS. translations of Milton's Latin and Italian poetry, together with Hayley's previously published, lengthy Life of Milton. The whole was to be in three quarto volumes, 'decorated with engravings,' by Blake, after designs by Flaxman: the proceeds to go towards a London monument to Cowper, from Flaxman's chisel. The project, like so many from the same brain, had to be abandoned for one of later birth :—a single quarto, illustrated by Flaxman, of Cowper's Translations and Notes on Milton, for the proposed benefit,' as usual, of somebody,-this time of an orphan godson of the poet,' which in 1808 actually did take shape; followed in 1810, by a 'neat pocket edition,' for the emolument of Cowper's kinsman, Johnson. September 3, 1801: (Hayley to Johnson again) * * 'The 'good Blake is finishing, very happily, the plate of the 'poet's mother. He salutes you affectionately.' October 1, 1801 October, you see, is arrived, and you, my dear 'Johnny, will arrive, I trust, before half this pleasant month 'shall pass away; for we want you as a faithful coadjutor in the turret, more than I can express. I say we, for the 'warm-hearted indefatigable Blake works daily by my side, on the intended decorations of our biography. Engraving, 'of all human works, appears to require the largest portion 'of patience; and he happily possesses more of that inestim'able virtue than I ever saw united before to an imagination so lively and so prolific. Come, and criticise what we have 'done! Come, and assist us to do more! I want you in a 'double capacity,—as an excellent scribe, and as an infallible 'fountain of intelligence for all the latter days of our dear 'bard.' Hayley, whose sight was often weak, availed himself of Blake's help, too, as amanuensis, and in other ways during the progress of the Life. Blake had thus opportunity to form a judgment of Hayley's mode of dealing with his material; he was not greatly impressed by its candour and fidelity. September 11th, 1801, Blake writes two letters to Mr. Butts : DEAR SIR, I hope you will continue to excuse my want of steady perseverance, by which want I am still your debtor, and you so much my creditor; but such as I can be, I will. I can be grateful, and I can soon send some of your designs which I have nearly completed. In the meantime, by my sister's hands, I transmit to Mrs. Butts an attempt at your likeness, which I hope she, who is the best judge, will think like. Time flies faster (as seems to me here) than in London. I labour incessantly, I accomplish not one-half of what I intend, because my abstract folly hurries me often away while I am at work, carrying me over mountains and valleys, which are not real, soon. into a land of abstraction where spectres of the dead wander. This I endeavour to prevent; I, with my whole might, chain my feet to the world of duty and reality. But in vain! the faster I bind, the better is the ballast; for I, so far from being bound down, take the world with me in my flights, and often it seems lighter than a ball of wool rolled by the wind. Bacon and Newton would prescribe ways of making the world heavier to me, and Pitt would prescribe distress for a medicinal potion. But as none on earth can give me mental distress, and I know that all distress inflicted by Heaven is a mercy, a fig for all corporeal! Such distress is my mock and scorn. wretched, happy, ineffectual labourer of Time's moments that I am! who shall deliver me from this spirit of abstraction and improvidence? Such, my dear Sir, is the truth of my state, and I tell it you in palliation of my seeming neglect of your most pleasant orders. But I have not neglected them; and yet a year is rolled over, and only now I approach the prospect of sending you some, which you may expect I should have sent them by my sister; but, as the coach goes three times a week to London, and they will arrive as safe as with her, I shall have an opportunity of enclosing several together which are not yet completed. I thank you again and again for your generous forbearance, of which I have need; and now I must express my wishes to see you at Felpham, and to show you Mr. Hayley's library, which is still unfinished, but is in a finishing way and looks well. I ought also to mention my extreme disappointment at Mr. Johnson's forgetfulness, who appointed to call on you but did not. He is also a happy abstract, known by all his friends as the most innocent forgetter of his own interests. He is nephew to the late Mr. Cowper, the poet. You would like him much. I continue painting miniatures, and I improve more and more, as all my friends tell me. But my principal labour at this time, is engraving plates for Cowper's Life, a work of magnitude, which Mr. Hayley is now labouring at with all his matchless industry, and which will be a most valuable acquisition to literature, not only on account of Mr. Hayley's composition, but also as it will contain letters of Cowper to his friends-perhaps, or rather certainly, the very best letters that ever were published. My wife joins with me in love to you and Mrs. Butts, hoping that her joy is now increased, and yours also, in an increase of family and of health and happiness. I remain, dear Sir, Ever yours sincerely, WILLIAM BLAKE. Felpham Cottage, of cottages the prettiest, Next time I have the happiness to see you, I am determined to paint another portrait of you from life in my best manner, for memory will not do in such minute operations; for I have now discovered that without nature before the painter's eye, he can never produce anything in the walks of natural painting. Historical designing is one thing, and portrait-painting another, and they are as distinct as any two arts can be. Happy would that man be who could unite them! P.S.-Please to remember our best respects to Mr. Birch, and tell him that Felpham men are the mildest of the human race. If it is the will of Providence, they shall be the wisest. We hope that he will, next summer, joke us face to face. God bless you all! November 8th, 1801: (Hayley to Johnson again) * * * 'And now let me congratulate you on having travelled so well through the Odyssey!' (an edition of Cowper's Homer, with the translator's final touches, which the clergyman was bringing out). 'Blake and I read every evening that copy of the Iliad which your namesake' (the bookseller) of St. Paul's was so good as to send me; comparing 'it with the first edition, and with the Greek, as we proceed. 'We shall be glad to see the Odyssey also, as soon as it is 'visible.' This and other passages in the correspondence show the familiar intimacy which had been established between the literary gentleman and the artist. The latter evidently spent much of his time, and most of his working hours, in Hayley's library, in free companionship with its owner; which in the case of so proud and sensitive a man as Blake can only have been due to much delicacy and genial courtesy on the part of his host; whose manners, indeed, were those of a polished gentleman of the old school. We can, for a moment, see the oddly assorted pair; both visionaries, but in how different a sense! the urbane amateur seeing nothing as it really was; the painter seeing only, so to speak, the unseen the first with |