I always take my judgments from a fool,
Because his judgment is so very cool;

Not prejudiced by feelings great and small.
Amiable state! he cannot feel at all.

And yet, is not a needy publisher to make that profit out of a needy painter he cannot for himself? May not the purchaser of twelve drawings at twenty pounds do what he likes with his own? That Cromek had no answer to the charge of 'imposition,' and of having tricked Blake, is obvious from his preferring to open up irrelevant questions: he defends by attacking. The artist's discouragement of Cromek's herculean labours in behalf of Blake's fame, refers to his infatuated preference for being his own engraver, according to agreement. Through Cromek's reluctance to part with four guineas, the Blair lost a crowning grace in the vignette or setting, as in Blake's hands it would have been, of the Dedication to the Queen.

Poor Blake, in asking four guineas instead of one, for a single sketch, had evidently felt entitled to some insignificant atonement for previous under-pay. Perhaps, on the hint at the close of Cromek's letter

'He has nothing to do but to send you a better,'

the indignant painter acted in executing, hereafter, his projected 'fresco' from the Canterbury Pilgrimage, and exhibiting and engraving it.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GLEAMS OF PATRONAGE, 1806-1808. [ET. 49-51.]

ANOTHER discoverer' of Blake's singular and ignored genius was Dr. Malkin, Head-Master of Bury Grammar School, to whose account of the artist's early years we were indebted at the outset. It was, probably, after the return from Felpham, and through Cromek, they were made known to one another. Dr. Malkin was the author of various now all but forgotten works,-Essays on Subjects connected with Civilization, 1795: Scenery, Antiquities, and Biography of South Wales, 1804, which was his most popular effort, reaching, in 1807, to a second edition: also, Almahide and Hamet a Tragedy, 1804. His name may likewise be found to a current revision of Smollett's Translation of Gil Blas, the earlier editions of which contain illustrations by Smirke.

Blake designed, and originally engraved, the ornamental device' to the frontispiece for Malkin's Father's Memoirs of his Child, but it was erased before the appearance of the work, and the same design re-engraved by Cromek. The book was published February, 1806; in which month, by the way, died Barry, whom Blake knew and admired. The frontispiece consists of a portrait of the precocious infant, when two years old, from a miniature by Page, surrounded by an emblematic design of great beauty. An Angel is conducting the child heavenward; he takes leave, with consoling gesture, of his kneeling mother, who, in a half-resigned,

half-deprecating attitude, stretches towards him her wistful, unavailing arms, from the edge of a cliff-typifying Earth's verge. It is in a rambling Introductory Letter to Johnes of Hafod, translator of Froissart, the account in question of the designer of the frontispiece is given, with extracts from his Poems: a well-meant, if not very successful, attempt of the kindly pedagogue to serve the 'untutored proficient,' as he terms Blake. The poor little defunct prodigy who is the subject of the Memoir, and who died in 1802, after little more than a six years' lease of life, was not only an expert linguist, a general reader, something of a poet, the historian and topographer of an imaginary kingdom, of which he drew an accurate map;' but was also a designer, producing 'copies from some of Raphael's heads so much in unison 'with the style and sentiment of the originals, as induced 'our late excellent and ingenions friend, Mr. Banks, the 'sculptor, to predict, "that if he were to pursue the arts as 'a profession, he would one day rank among the more distinguished of their votaries.""

He was also an original inventor of 'little landscapes; ac'customed to cut every piece of waste paper within his reach 'into squares' an inch or two in size, and to fill them with 'temples, bridges, trees, broken ground, or any other fanciful ' and picturesque materials which suggested themselves to his 'imagination.' The father gives tracings from six of these as 'specimens of his talent in composition;' himself descrying a 'decisive idea attached to each,' and that 'the buildings are placed firm on the ground;' not to mention a taste and variety, the 'result of a mind gifted with just feeling and fertile resources.'

The testimony of Mr. Blake' is added, who, being a man of imagination, can decipher more in these pre-Claudite jottings of pillar and post, arch and scrub, than his humble biographer can. What he says is, in its general tenor, interesting and true enough. But surely Mr. Blake saw double on the occasion,-for his sincerity never admits of doubt.

VOL. I.

S

'They are all,' writes he, 'firm determinate outline, or iden'tical form. Had the hand which executed these little ideas

'been that of a plagiary, who works only from the memory,

we should have seen blots, called masses,' (Blake is girding at his own opposites in Art) 'blots without form, and there'fore without meaning. These blots of light and dark, as 'being the result of labour, are always clumsy and indefinite; 'the effect of rubbing out and putting in; like the progress of a blind man, or one in the dark, who feels his way but 'does not see it. These are not so. Even the copy from Raphael's cartoon of St. Paul Preaching' (from Dorigny's 'plate of the same) 'is a firm, determinate outline, struck at once, as Protogenes struck his line, when he went to make 'himself known to Apelles. The map of Allestone has the same character of the firm and determinate. All his efforts ' prove this little boy to have had that greatest of blessings, 'a strong imagination, a clear idea, and a determinate vision ' of things in his own mind.'

To this date belongs a vigorous letter, discovered by Mr. Swinburne in the Monthly Review for July, 1st, 1806, our old friend Phillips being then editor, in which Blake returns some of Fuseli's good offices by defending his picture of Count Ugolino against an adverse critic :

SIR,

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

My indignation was exceedingly moved at reading a criticism in Bell's Weekly Messenger (25th May), on the picture of Count Ugolino, by Mr. Fuseli, in the Royal Academy Exhibition; and your magazine being as extensive in its circulation as that paper, and as it also must, from its nature, be more permanent, I take the advantageous opportunity to counteract the widely diffused malice which has for many years, under the pretence of admiration of the arts, been assiduously sown and planted among the English public against true art, such as it existed in the days of Michael Angelo and Raphael. Under the pretence of fair criticism and candour the most wretched taste ever produced has been upheld for many, Such an very many years; but now, I say, now, its end has come.

artist as Fuseli is invulnerable; he needs not my defence: but I should be ashamed not to set my hand and shoulder, and whole strength, against those wretches who, under pretence of criticism, use the dagger and the poison.

My criticism on this picture is as follows:-Mr. Fuseli's Count Ugolino is the father of sons of feeling and dignity, who would not sit looking in their parent's face in the moments of his agony, but would rather retire and die in secret, while they suffer him to indulge his passionate and innocent grief, his innocent and venerable madness and insanity and fury and whatever paltry, cold-hearted critics cannot, because they dare not, look upon. Fuseli's Count Ugolino is a man of wonder and admiration, of resentment against man and devil, and of humiliation before God; prayer and parental affection fill the figure from head to foot. The child in his arms, whether boy or girl signifies not (but the critic must be a fool who has not read Dante, and who does not know a boy from a girl), I say, the child is as beautifully drawn as it is coloured-in both, inimitable; and the effect of the whole is truly sublime, on account of that very colouring which our critic calls black and heavy. The German-flute colour, which was used by the Flemings (they call it burnt bone) has [so?] possessed the eye of certain connoisseurs, that they cannot see appropriate colouring, and are blind to the gloom of a real terror.

The taste of English amateurs has been too much formed upon pictures imported from Flanders and Holland; consequently our countrymen are easily brow-beat on the subject of painting; and hence it is so common to hear a man say, 'I am no judge of pictures;' but, oh Englishmen! know that every man ought to be a judge of pictures, and every man is so who has not been connoisseured out of his senses.

A gentleman who visited me the other day said, 'I am very much surprised at the dislike which some connoisseurs show on viewing the pictures of Mr. Fuseli; but the truth is, he is a hundred years beyond the present generation.' Though I am startled at such an assertion, I hope the contemporary taste will shorten the hundred years into as many hours; for I am sure that any person consulting his own reputation, or the reputation of his country, will refrain from disgracing either by such ill-judged criticisms in future.

Yours,

WM. BLAKE.