In the course of another lengthy aphorism, the knave' is said to

be only an enthusiast, or momentary fool. Upon which Mr. Blake breaks out still more characteristically: Man is the ark of God: the

mercy seat is above upon the ark;

and in the midst is the holy law.

a phantom of the earth and water.

cherubim guard it on either side,

Man is either the ark of God or

If thou seekest by human policy

'to guide this ark, remember Uzzah. 2d Sam. 6th ch. Knaveries

are not human nature; knaveries are knaveries. This aphorism 'seems to lack discrimination.' In a similar tone, on Aphorism 630, commencing, A God, an animal, a plant, are not companions of man; nor is the faultless,-then judge with lenity of all,' Blake writes, It is the God in all that is our companion and friend. For 'our God Himself says, "You are my brother, my sister, and my 'mother;" and St. John, "Whoso dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, ' and God in him." Such an one cannot judge of any but in love, and his feelings will be attractions or repulsions. God is in the lowest effects as well as in the highest causes. He is become a worm that he may nourish the weak. For let it be remembered 'that creation is God descending according to the weakness of man : 'our Lord is the Word of God, and everything on earth is the Word of God, and in its essence is God.'

Surely gold-dust may be descried in these notes; and when we remember it is a painter, not a metaphysician, who is writing, we can afford to judge them less critically. Another characteristic gleaning or two, ere we conclude. An ironical maxim, such as Take here 'the grand secret if not of pleasing all yet of displeasing none: court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion,' meets with the hearty response from an unfashionable painter, And go to hell.' When the Swiss tells him that 'Men carry their character not seldom

in their pockets: you might decide on more than half your acquaint

ance had you will or right to turn their pockets inside out;' the artist candidly acknowledges that he 'seldom carries money in his

pockets: they are generally full of paper,' which we readily believe. Towards the close, Lavater drops a doubt that he may have 'perhaps already offended his readers;' which elicits from Blake a final note of sympathy. 'Those who are offended with anything in this book, 'would be offended with the innocence of a child, and for the same reason, because it reproaches him with the errors of acquired folly.'

Enough of the Annotations on Lavater, which, in fulfilment of biographic duty, I have thus copiously quoted; too copiously, the reader may think, for their intrinsic merit. To me they seem mentally physiognomic, giving a near view of Blake in his ordinary moments at this period. We, as through a casually open window. glance into the artist's room, and see him meditating at his work, graver in hand.

Lavater's Aphorisms not only elicited these comments from Blake, but set him composing aphorisms on his own account, of a far more original and startling character. In Lavater's book I trace the external accident to which the form is attributable of a remarkable portioncertain 'Proverbs of Hell,' as they were waywardly styled-of an altogether remarkable book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, engraved two years later; the most curious and significant book, perhaps, out of many, which ever issued from the unique man's press.

Turning from the Annotations on Lavater to higher, less approachable phases of this original Mind, the indubitably INSPIRED aspects of it, it is time to note that the practice of verse had, as we saw in 1784, been once more resumed, in a higher key and clearer tones than he had yet sounded. Design more original and more mature than any he had before realized; at once grand, lovely, comprehensible, was in course of production. It must have been during the years 1784-88, the Songs and Designs sprang from his creative brain, of which another chapter must speak.

CHAPTER IX.

POEMS OF MANHOOD. 1788-89. [ÆT. 31-32.]

THOUGH Blake's brother Robert had ceased to be with him in the body, he was seldom far absent from the faithful visionary in spirit. Down to late age the survivor talked much and often of that dear brother; and in hours of solitude and inspiration his form would appear and speak to the poet in consolatory dream, in warning or helpful vision. By the end of 1788, the first portion of that singularly original and significant series of Poems, by which of themselves, Blake established a claim, however unrecognised, on the attention of his own and after generations, had been written; and the illustrative designs in colour, to which he wedded them in inseparable loveliness, had been executed. The Songs of Innocence form the first section of the series he afterwards, when grouping the two together, suggestively named Songs of Innocence and of Experience. But how publish? for standing with the public, or credit with the trade, he had none. Friendly Flaxman was in Italy; the good offices of patronising blue-stockings were exhausted. He had not the wherewithal to publish on his own account; and though he could be his own engraver, he could scarcely be his own com positor. Long and deeply he meditated. How solve this difficulty with his own industrious hands? How be his own printer and publisher?

The subject of anxious daily thought passed-as anxious meditation does with us all-into the domain of dreams and (in his case)

of visions. In one of these a happy inspiration befel, not, of course, without supernatural agency. After intently thinking by day and dreaming by night, during long weeks and months, of his cherished object, the image of the vanished pupil and brother at last blended with it. In a vision of the night, the form of Robert stood before him, and revealed the wished-for secret, directing him to the technical mode by which could be produced a fac-simile of song and design. On his rising in the morning, Mrs. Blake went out with half-a-crown, all the money they had in the world, and of that laid out 1s. 10d. on the simple materials necessary for setting in practice the new revelation. Upon that investment of 1s. 10d. he started what was to prove a principal means of support through his future life,-the series of poems and writings illustrated by coloured plates, often highly finished afterwards by hand,-which became the most efficient and durable means of revealing Blake's genius to the world. This method, to which Blake henceforth consistently adhered for multiplying his works, was quite an original one. It consisted in a species of engraving in relief both words and designs. The verse was written and the designs and marginal embellishments outlined on the copper with an impervious liquid, probably the ordinary stopping out varnish of engravers. Then all the white parts or lights, the remainder of the plate that is, were eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the outline of letter and design was left prominent, as in stereotype. From these plates he printed off in any tint, yellow, brown, blue, required to be the prevailing, or ground colour in his fac-similes; red he used for the letter-press. The page was then coloured up by hand in imitation of the original drawing, with more or less variety of detail in the local hues.

He ground and mixed his water-colours himself on a piece of statuary marble, after a method of his own, with common carpenter's glue diluted, which he had found out, as the early Italians had done before him, to be a good binder. Joseph, the sacred carpenter, had

appeared in vision and revealed that secret to him. The colours he used were few and simple: indigo, cobalt, gamboge, vermilion, Frankfort-black freely, ultramarine rarely, chrome not at all. These he applied with a camel's-hair brush, not with a sable, which he disliked.

He taught Mrs. Blake to take off the impressions with care and delicacy, which such plates signally needed, and also to help in tinting them from his drawings with right artistic feeling; in all which tasks she, to her honour, much delighted. The size of the plates was small, for the sake of economising copper; something under five inches by three. The number of engraved pages in the Songs of Innocence alone was twenty-seven. They were done up in boards by Mrs. Blake's hand, forming a small octavo; so that the poet and his wife did everything in making the book,-writing, designing, printing, engraving, everything except manufacturing the paper: the very ink, or colour rather, they did make. Never before surely was a man so literally the author of his own book. Songs of Innocence, the author and printer W. Blake, 1789,' is the title. Copies still occur occasionally; though the two series bound together in one volume, each with its own title-page, and a general one added, is the more usual state.

First of the Poems let me speak, harsh as seems their divorce from the Design which blends with them, forming warp and woof in one texture. It is like pulling up a daisy by the roots from the green sward out of which it springs. To me many years ago, first reading these weird Songs in their appropriate environment of equally spiritual form and hue, the effect was as that of an angelic voice singing to oaten pipe, such as Arcadians tell of; or, as if a spiritual magician were summoning before human eyes, and through a human medium, images and scenes of divine loveliness; and in the pauses of the strain, we seem to catch the rustling of angelic wings. The Golden Age independent of Space or Time, object of vague sighs and