and departing from material forms, angels hovering near poor human creatures, and the like emblems,-be adequate or not. In such intensity as Blake's, it was truly a blissful possession; it proved enchanted armour against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and all their sordid influences. I have still a word to say apropos of one of these twelve designs, and a water-colour drawing formerly in Mr. Butts' collection, illustrative of the verse 'But Hope rekindled only to illume The shades of death, and light her to the tomb.' It is a duplicate, probably, of one of the unengraved designs from Young. The main feature, a descending precipice broken into dark recesses, is the same as in that grand and eloquent tableau in the Blair, of the Descent of Man into the Vale of Death. The figures are different, but the same motive pervades both designs. Of the composition in the Blair, an intelligible summary occurs in Cromek's Descriptive List at the end of the volume. 'The pious daughter, weeping and conducting her sire 'onward; age, creeping carefully on hands and knees; an 'elder, without friend or kindred; a miser; a bachelor, blindly 'proceeding, no one knows whither, ready to drop into the 'dark abyss; frantic youth, rashly devoted to vice and passion, 'rushing past the diseased and old who totter on crutches; 'the wan, declining virgin; the miserable and distracted 'widow; the hale country youth; and the mother and her 'numerous progeny, already arrived in this valley, are among 'the groups which, &c.-are, in fact, all the groups.' The fate of the original copper-plates has been somewhat singular. After being used by Ackermann to illustrate a Spanish Poem, Meditaciones Poeticas por Jose Fanquin de Mora: Londres: asimismo en Colombia, Buenos Ayres, Chili, Pero y Guatemala, 1826, they, at a more recent period, I have been told, found their way across the Alantic, serving for an American edition-not of Blair's poem, but of Martin Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy. In the unengraved drawing I have referred to, we have the Soul departing from the dying Narcissa, over whose lifeless form her lover, with lamenting, outstretched arms, is bending; the bright figure of Hope, with lighted lamp, beckons to the shades below, down the rocky stairs leading to which old and young are wending, as in the Blair design; the timid, hesitating girl, the strong man hurrying, age creeping, the tender mother (a very beautiful figure) leading her infant children. In the recesses of the tomb below, we again encounter emblematic, sorrowful deathbeds. On the hills, in the background above, are faintly seen the dim populations of the earth, all journeying to the same bourne. The principal figures are of exceeding grace and loveliness; as, in particular, the heavenly one of Hope, and that of the little girl who accompanies her youthful brothers, with reluctant step, with drooping head, and face hidden in her hand, shuddering and sad to exchange the fair daylight for the gloomy tomb-a figure which, for its expressive beauty, Raphael himself might have sketched. About this date (1806) were also produced some designs to Shakespeare which were neither commissioned nor engraved. An account of them will be found in the Annotated Catalogue, Vol. II. Nos. 83-85. They are now, with a few from other hands, bound up in a quarto edition of Shakespeare, which was executed for the Rev. Ker Porter, who himself contributed one or two well-conceived designs; notably, that of Falstaff between the Merry Wives. There is also an early sample of Mulready's art, evidently showing the influence of Fuseli. But by far the most remarkable of the collection is the Ghost from Hamlet, by Blake, of which a print is here given. The Ghost has led Hamlet to the verge of the sea, far from the Castle; and, on the solitary moonlit sands, he has fallen on his knees in the act of swearing to obey his father's behest of vengeance on the perpetrators of his 'most foul, strange, and unnatural murder.' The volume is now in the possession of Mr. Alexander Macmillan. CHAPTER XXV. APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC. 1808-10. [ET. 51-53.] SCIHAVONETTI was, by 1808, engaged on the plate from Stothard's Canterbury Pilgrimage. At the end of the Blair, published, as we saw, in the autumn of 1808, appeared, to indignant Blake's unspeakable disgust doubtless, a flowery Prospectus of Cromek's, for publishing by subscription and 'under the immediate patronage of H.R.H. the Prince of 'Wales, a line engraving after' the now 'well-known Cabinet 'Picture; which, in fact, Cromek had exhibited throughout the three kingdoms at a shilling a head. It was now that Blake finished his 'fresco' of the Canterbury Pilgrimage, with the view of appealing to the public,'-the wrong kind of tribunal for him. To this end, also, he painted or finished some other 'frescos' and drawings. The completion of the Pilgrimage was attended by adverse influences of the supernatural kind—as Blake construed them. He had hung his original design over a door in his sitting-room, where, for a year perhaps it remained. When, on the appearance of Stothard's picture, he went to take down his drawing, he found it nearly effaced: the result of some malignant spell of Stothard's, he would, in telling the story, assure his friends. But as one of them (Flaxman) mildly expostulated, 'Why! 'my dear sir! as if, after having left a pencil drawing so long 'exposed to air and dust, you could have expected otherwise!' The fresco was ultimately bought by a customer who seldom failed-Mr. Butts; and was afterwards in the possession of VOL. I. T |