Blake's, allowances must be made for a want of early familiarity with the conventions of printed speech, parallel to his want of dexterity with those of the painter's language; which explains a good deal of the crudeness and eccentricity.

It was a favourite dogma of Blake's not, certainly, learned of the political economists, that the true power of Society depends on its recognition of the arts. Which is his meaning when, pardonably regarding himself as a representative of high art, he mysteriously announces, 'The value of this artist's year is the criterion of Society, and as it is valued, so does society flourish or decay.' Society had little to congratulate itself upon in its recognition of this artist's year.' Miserably did she undervalue it, to her discredit and our loss. This artist's fresh and daring conceptions it would have been well to have embodied in happier, maturer, more lucid shape, than 'society' ever vouchsafed him the slenderest help towards realizing. As it is, one of his archaic-looking drawings is often more matterful and suggestive, imprisons more thought and imagination, than are commonly beaten out thin over the walls of an entire exhibition.

In September or October 1809, the engraving of his Canterbury Pilgrimage was commenced. And, fulfilling the voluntary engagement recorded in the prospectus, the print,-somewhat smaller in size than the picture,—was issued on the 8th of the following October; a year or two before the plate after Stothard's picture emerged from the difficulties which befel it. Blake thus forestalled his forestaller, to the indignation of Stothard in his turn; the print being of the same size as Cromek's intended one, and having inevitable resemblances to it in general composition.

It was launched without the slightest help from the elaborate machinery usually put in motion to secure a welcome for an important engraving, and, by energetic Cromek, worked on so unprecedented a scale. As may readily be believed, the subscribers might

almost have been counted on the hand. Blake's work, indeed, lacks all the alluring grace of Stothard's felicitous composition, in which a wide range of previous art is indirectly laid under contribution, or, to speak plainly, cribbed from, after the fashion of most well-educated historical painters; whereas Blake boldly and obstinately draws on his own resources. Bare where Stothard's composition is opulent, yet challenging comparison as to the very qualities in which Blake was most deficient, his design creates an unfavourable impression before the superficial spectator has time to recognise its essential merits. A good notion of the work may be obtained from our reduced outline with the series of heads, on the same scale as the original, engraved below it. 'Hard and dry,' as Lamb observes, it is,-uncouth compared with Stothard's; but, tested by the poetry and spirit of Chaucer, it is in all points of character and arrangement, undoubtedly superior. There is, too, a mediæval look about Blake's which does not distinguish Stothard's version.

I have heard that Blake retouched the plate of the Canterbury Pilgrimage, and did not improve it. There are impressions, rather black and heavy in effect, which would seem to confirm this

rumour.

To judicious counsel from a friend Blake was always amenable, but was stiffened in error by hostile criticism. Unaided by the former while at work on his fresco and engraving, he had been in the very worst mood for realizing success, or even the harmonious exercise of his powers. He was in the temper to exaggerate his eccentricities, rather than to modify them. If Cromek, instead of throwing up Blake's drawing when he could not dictate terms, had gone on and gently persuaded the designer to soften his peculiarities; or if Blake had suffered his design to be engraved by Schiavonetti, and doctored (as that engraver so well knew how) by correct, smooth touches, some of Blake's favourite hard, determinate outline' being sacrificed a little, a different fortune would have awaited the compo

sition. It might have become almost as well known and admired as Stothard's, certainly as the Blair, instead of being a curiosity sought only by collectors of scarce things.

Blake was at no pains, throughout this business or afterwards, to conceal his feelings towards Stothard. To the end of his life he would, to strangers, abuse the popular favourite, with a vehemence to them. unaccountable. With friends and sympathizers, he was silent on the topic. Such was the mingled waywardness and unworldliness of the man; exaggerating his prejudices to the uncongenial, waiving them with the few who could interpret them aright. He was blind to the fact that his motives for decrying Stothard were liable to misconstruction; and would have been equally unguarded could he have perceived it. For Stothard's art-in his eyes far too glib, smooth, and mundane in its graces-he entertained a sincere aversion; though, as in the case of Reynolds, some degree of soreness may have aggravated the dislike. And the epithets he in familiar conversation applied to it, would, repeated in cold blood, sound extravagant and puerile.

On his part, too, the ordinarily serene Stothard, the innocent instrument of shifty Cromek's schemes, considered himself just as much aggrieved by Blake. Up to 1806 they had been friends, if not always warm ones; friends of nearly thirty years' standing. The present breach was never healed. Once, many years later, they met at a gathering of artists-of the Artists' Benevolent, I think. Before going in to dinner, Blake, placable as he was irascible, went up to Stothard and offered to shake hands; an overture the frigid, exemplary man declined, as Mr. Linnell, an eye-witness, tells me. Another time, Stothard was ill: Blake called and wished to see him and be reconciled, but was refused. There is something of the kingdom of heaven in this-on the one side.

by wayward words. Warm hearts violence in them.

Such men are not to be judged

generally spend their worst

This squabble with Cromek was a discordant episode in Blake's life. The competition with Stothard it induced, placed him in a false position, and, in most people's eyes, a wrong one. In Blake's own mind, where all should have been, and for the most part was, peace, the sordid conflict left a scar. It left him more tetchy than ever; more disposed to wilful exaggeration of individualities already too prominent, more prone to unmeasured violence of expression. The extremes he again gave way to in his design and writings-mere ravings to such as had no key to them-did him no good with that portion of the public the illustrated Blair had introduced him to. Those designs most people thought wild enough; yet they were really a modified version of his style. Such demand as had existed for his works, never considerable, declined.

Now, too, was established for him the damaging reputation 'Mad,' by which the world has since agreed to recognise William Blake. And yet it is one-and let the reader note this-which none who knew the visionary man personally, at any period of his life, thought of applying to him. And, in his time, he was known to, and valued by, many shrewd, clear-headed men; of whom suffice it to mention Fuseli, Flaxman, Linnell. More on this point hereafter.

+

CHAPTER XXVI.

ENGRAVER CROMEK. 1807-1812. [ÆT 50-55.]

WHILE Blake had been nursing his wrath against Cromek and Stothard, and making ineffectual reprisals by exhibition and engraving, the course of Cromek's speculation had not run smoothly. As intimately, if indirectly, bearing on Blake's life of struggles, this matter ought, perhaps, to be glanced at here. We must first go back a little, and track Cromek in his versatile career. The retrospect will, here and there, throw a vivid ray of light on the real character of the man, and so enable us to construe Blake aright in the critical relation in which the two, for a time, stood to one another. It may help the reader to a conclusion as to the rights of that difficult case -for so Smith and Cunningham seemed to find it-Blake v. Stothard and Another.

During the progress, under the engraver, of his first publishing scheme, the active Yorkshireman had been turning his literary tastes to account. He had made a tour in Dumfriesshire, in quest of unpublished fugitive pieces of Robert Burns; a tour undertaken, according to his own statement, from pure interest in the poet. He discovered many previously unknown; others rejected 'on principle' by the great man's posthumous patron, prim Currie, of now seldom blessed memory. The visit was well timed. Burns had been dead ten years; but everything by him, everything about him, was already carefully treasured by those privileged enough to have aught to keep