later, still a popular English classic. Blake's designs form a strangely spiritual commentary on the somewhat matter-offact homily of the dry, old Scottish divine: they belong to a more heavenly latitude. Running parallel to the poem rather than springing out of it, they have, in some cases, little foundation in the text, in others absolutely none; as, for instance, the emblematic Soul exploring the recesses of the Tomb. The Series in itself forms a poem, simple, beautiful, and exalted: what tender eloquence in 'The Soul hovering over the Body;' in the passionate ecstasy of 'The Re-union of Soul and Body;' the rapt felicity of mutual recognition in The meeting of a Family in Heaven. There meet husband and wife, little brothers and sisters; two angels spread a canopy of loving wings over the group, one remarkable for surpassing, sculturesque beauty. Such designs are, in motive, spirit, manner of embodiment, without parallel, and enlarge the boundaries of art. Equally high meaning has the oft-mentioned allegory, Death's Door, into which 'Age on crutches is hurried by a tempest,' while above sits a youthful figure, 'the renovated man in light and glory,' looking upwards in joyful adoration and awe. And again the Death of the Strong Wicked man: the still-fond wife hanging over the convulsed body, in wild, horror-struck sympathy, the terrified daughter standing beside, with one hand shutting out the scene from her eyes; while the wicked soul is hurried, amid flames, through the casement. What unearthly surprise and awe expressed in that terrible face, in those uplifted deprecating hands! The Last Judgment, unlike the other designs, is a subject on which great artists had already lavished imagination and executive skill. But Blake's conception of it is an original and homogeneous one, worthy of the best times of art. What other painter, since Michael Angelo, could have really designed anew that tremendous scene? These are not mere exercises of art, to be coldly measured by the foot-rule of criticism, but truly inventions to be read and entered into with something of the spirit which conceived them. The oftener I have looked into them, the more meaning and eloquence I have discovered, and the more freshness. Never, surely, were the difficulties of human speech (whether with word or outline) more fearlessly encountered. A poor designer moves in shackles, when handling such topics; has, for instance, but the same tangible flesh and blood wherewith to express material body and immaterial soul. And that anomaly alone leads many a practical person to dismiss the designs at once, as absurd and puerile. But if we stay to consider how this allegorical mode is a necessary convention to symbolize a meaning beyond the reach of art, we are soon reconciled to the discrepancy, and begin to value aright the daring and the suggestive beauty with which these meanings are indicated. That shuddering awe of the strong wicked man's naked soul (even though a material form express it), as he enters the unknown world; the living grace of the draped feminine figure, emblem of a purer human soul, which lingers a moment yearningly over the stiffening mortal frame it has forsaken, its mute eloquence so strangely enhanced by that utterly lonely, mountain landscape into which it is about to vanish, seen through the open casement: I say such art ranks with that of the greatest eras; is of the same sublime reach and pure quality. What signifies it that these drawings cover but a few inches, and are executed in watercolours instead of oils or fresco ? Now, in maturity, as when in youth producing the Songs of Innocence, or in age the Inventions to Fob, we see Blake striking always the same mystic chord. The bridge thrown across from the visible to the invisible world was ever firm and sure to him. The unwavering hold (of which his 'Visions' were a result) upon an unseen world, such as in other ways poetry and even science assure us of, and whose revelation is the meaning underlying all religions,—this habitual hold is surely an authentic attainment, not an hallucination; whether the particular form in which the faith clothes itself, the language of Blake's mind,-souls entering |