EXTRACTS from the REMINISCENCES of BLAKE
(a) 1810
I WAS amusing myself this Spring by writing an account of the insane poet & painter engraver, Blake Perthes of Hamburg had written to me asking me to send him an article for a new German Magazine entitled Vaterländische Annalen wh. he was abt to set up. And Dr. Malkin having in the memoirs of his son given an acct of this extraordinary genius with Specimens of his poems, I resolved out of these to compile a paper. And this I did, & the paper was translated by Dr. Julius, who many years afterwards introduced himself to me as my translator. It appears in the single number of the 2d. vol. of the Vaterländische Annalen. For it was at this time that Buonaparte united Hamburg to the French Empire, on wh. Perthes manfully gave up the Magazine, saying, as he had no longer a Vaterland, there cd. be no Vaterländische Annalen. But before I drew up this paper, I went to see a Gallery of Blake's paintings, wh. were exhibited by his brother, a hosier in Carnaby Market; the entrance was 2/6, catalogue included.[1] I was deeply interested by the Catalogue as well as by the pictures. I took 4, telling the brother I hoped he wd. let me come in again. He said, 'Oh! as often as you please.' I dare say such a thing had never happened before or did afterwards.[2] I afterwards became acquainted with Blake & will postpone till hereafter what I have to relate of this extraordinary character, whose life has since been written very inadequately by Allan Cunningham in his Lives of the English artists. . .
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