CHAPTER VIII.

MEDITATION: NOTES ON LAVATER. 1788. [ÆT. 30—31.J

ONE of Blake's engravings of the present period is a frontispiece after Fuseli to the latter's translation of the Aphorisms of his fellowcountryman, Lavater. The translation, which was from the original MS., was published by Johnson in 1788, the year of Gainsborough's death. If any deny merit to Blake as an engraver, let them turn from this boldly executed print of Fuseli's mannered but effective sitting figure, ostentatiously meditative, of Philosophic Contemplation, or whatever it may be, to the weak shadow of the same in the subsequent Dublin editions of this little book. For the Swiss enthusiast had then a European reputation. And this imposing scroll of fervid truisms and hap-hazard generalities, as often disputable as not, if often acute and striking, always ingenuous and pleasant, was, like all his other writings, warmly welcomed in this country. Now it as a whole reads unequal and monotonous, does not impress one as an elixir of inspired truth; induces rather, like most books of maxims, the ever recurring query, cui bono. And one readily believes what the English edition states, that the whole epitome of moral

wisdom was the rapid effusion' of one autumn.

In the ardent, pious, but illogical Lavater's character, full of amiability, candour, and high aspiration, a man who in the eighteenth century believed in the continuation of miracles, of witchcraft, and of the power of exorcising evil spirits, who, in fact, had a bona fide if convulsive hold of the super-sensual, there was much that was

german to William Blake, much that still remains noble and

interesting.

In the painter's small library the Aphorisms became one of his most favourite volumes. This well-worn copy contains a series of marginal notes, neatly written in pen and ink-it being his habit to make such in the books he read-which speak to the interest it excited in him. On the title-page occurs a naïve token of affection below the name Lavater is inscribed Will. Blake,' and around the two names the outline of a heart.

Lavater's final Aphorism tells the reader,' If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these as affected you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you, and then show your copy to whom you please.' Blake showed his notes to Fuseli; who said one assuredly could read their writer's character in them.

All Gold!' This should be written in letters of gold on our temples,' are the endorsements accorded such an announcement as The object of your love is your God;' or again, Joy and grief 'decide character. What exalts prosperity? What embitters grief? 'What leaves us indifferent? What interests us? As the interest of 'man, so is God, as his God so is he.'

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But the annotator sometimes dissents; as from this: You enjoy 'with wisdom or with folly, as the gratification of your appetites capacitates or unnerves your powers.' 'False!' is the emphatic denial, 'for weak is the joy which is never wearied.' On one Aphorism, in which 'frequent laughing,' and 'the scarcer smile of harmless quiet,' are enumerated as signs respectively of a little mind,' or of a noble heart;' while the abstaining from laughter merely not to offend, &c. is praised as a power unknown to many a vigorous mind; Blake exclaims, I hate scarce smiles; I love laughing!' 'A sneer is often the sign of heartless malignity,' says Lavater. Damn sneerers!' echoes Blake. To Lavater's censure of the 'pietist who

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'crawls, groans, blubbers, and secretly says to gold, Thou art my hope! and to his belly, Thou art my God,' follows a cordial assent. 'Everything,' Lavater rashly declares, may be mimicked by hypocrisy but humility and love united.' To which, Blake: All this 'may be mimicked very well. This Aphorism certainly was an over'sight; for what are all crawlers but mimickers of humility and love?' Dread more the blunderer's friendship than the calumniator's envy,' exhorts Lavater. I doubt this!' says the margin.

At the maxim, You may depend upon it that he is a good man, whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are characters 'decidedly bad,' the artist (obeying his author's injunctions) reports

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has not many enemies!' Uneasy, too,

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he feels at the declaration, Calmness of will is a sign of grandeur : 'the vulgar, far from hiding their will, blab their wishes-a single 'spark of occasion discharges the child of passion into a thousand 'crackers of desire.' Again: Who seeks those that are greater than himself, their greatness enjoys, and forgets his greatest qualities in their greater ones, is already truly great.' To this, Mr. Blake : I hope I do not flatter myself that this is pleasant to me.'

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Some of Blake's remarks are not without a brisk candour: as when the Zurich philanthropist tells one, The great art to love 'your enemy consists in never losing sight of man in him,' &c.; and he boldly replies, None can see the man in the enemy. If he is 'ignorantly so, he is not truly an enemy: if maliciously so not a 6 man. I cannot love my enemy, for my enemy is not a man but a 'beast. And if I have any, I can love him as a beast, and wish to 'beat him.' And again, to the dictum, 'Between passion and lie there is not a finger's breadth,' he retorts, Lie is contrary to passion.' Upon the aphorism, Superstition always inspires littleness; religion, 'grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself 'to deities,' Blake remarks at some length: 'I do not allow there is such a thing as superstition, taken in the true sense of the word.

A man must first deceive himself before he is thus superstitious, and 'so he is a hypocrite. No man was ever truly superstitious who was 'not as truly religious as far as he knew. True superstition is ignorant 'honesty, and this is beloved of God and man. Hypocrisy is as different from superstition as the wolf from the lamb.' And similarly when Lavater, with a shudder, alludes to the gloomy rock, on either side of which superstition and incredulity their dark abysses spread,' Blake says, Superstition has been long a bug-bear, by reason of its 'having been united with hypocrisy. But let them be fairly separated, ' and then superstition will be honest feeling, and God, who loves all 'honest men, will lead the poor enthusiast in the path of holiness. This was a cardinal thought with Blake, and almost a unique one in his century.

The two are generally of better accord. The since often-quoted warning, Keep him at least three paces distant who hates bread, music, and the laugh of a child!' is endorsed as the 'Best in the book.' Another, Avoid like a serpent him who speaks politely, yet writes impertinently,' elicits the ejaculation, A dog! get a stick to him!' And the reiteration, Avoid him who speaks softly and writes sharply,' is enforced with, Ah, rogue, I would be thy hangman!' The assertion that'A woman, whose ruling passion is not vanity, is superior to any man of equal faculties,' begets the enthusiastic comment, Such a woman I adore!' At the foot of another, on woman, 'A great woman not imperious, a fair woman not vain, a woman of common talents not jealous, an accomplished woman who scorns to 'shine, are four wonders just great enough to be divided among the 'four corners of the globe,' Blake appends, 'Let the men do their duty

' and the women will be such wonders: the female life lives from the

life of the male. See a great many female dependents and you know the man.'

In a higher key, when Lavater justly affirms that He only who has enjoyed immortal moments can reproduce them,' Blake exclaims,

Oh that men would seek immortal moments!-that men would converse with God!' as he, it may be added, was ever seeking, ever conversing, in one sense. In another place Lavater declares, that 'He who adores an impersonal God, has none; and without guide or 'rudder launches on an immense abyss, that first absorbs his powers ' and next himself.' To which warm assent from the fervently religious Blake Most superlatively beautiful, and most affectionately holy and pure. Would to God all men would consider it!' Religious, I say, but far from orthodox; for in one place he would show sin to be negative not positive evil;' lying, theft, &c. mere privation of good;' a favourite idea with him, which, whatever its merit as an abstract position, practical people would not like written in letters of gold on their temples, for fear of consequences.

One of the most prolix of these aphorisms runs, ‘Take from Luther his roughness and fiery courage, from this man one quality, 'from another that, from Raffaelle his dryness and nearly hard pre'cision, and from Rubens his supernatural luxury of colours; detach 'his oppressive exuberance from each, and you will have something very correct and flat instead, as it required no conjuror to tell us.' Whereon Blake, whom I here condense: Deduct from a rose its red, from a lily its whiteness, from a diamond hardness, from an oaktree height, from a daisy lowliness, rectify everything in nature, 'as the philosophers do, and then we shall return to chaos, and God 'will be compelled to be eccentric in His creation. Oh! happy philosophers! Variety does not necessarily suppose deformity. Beauty ' is exuberant, but if ugliness is adjoined, it is not the exuberance of 'beauty. So if Raffaelle is hard and dry, it is not from genius, but an 'accident acquired. How can substance and accident be predicated of the same essence? Aphorism 47th speaks of the "heterogeneous in works of Art and Literature, which all extravagance is; but exuberance is not. But,' adds Blake, the substance gives tincture 'to the accident, and makes it physiognomic.'

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