making folly. At six-and-twenty he fell in love with Katharine Burtcher, a servant—a poor man's daughter who lived near his father's house. He was describing to her some disappointment he had experienced in love. Dark-eyed Kate said, with a sigh, "I pity you from my heart." "Do you pity me? "said Blake, "then I love you for that." "And I love you," said the good girl; and so they married. This marriage offended his father; so Blake left his home, and went to live in Green Street. On his father's death, Blake and Parker, a fellow-apprentice, commenced business as printsellers, taking Robert, a favourite brother, as pupil. Genius cannot keep a shop;—the pet Benjamin died; Parker quarrelled; the shop was shut up; and Blake went to live in Poland Street. Here he began to design, engrave, compose music, and write songs—his wife and family beside him to cheer and encourage. Now came out his sixty-eight "Songs of Innocence and Experience," simple and touching as Wordsworth's inspirations. He began to be a confirmed mystic, hearing voices and seeing spirits. His books did not sell, and he had to live by the graver. The spirit of his dead brother, he believed, had taught him a new mode of engraving. He was so poor indeed now, that he could only buy copper plates about four inches by three. The "Gates of Paradise," with sixteen illustrations, was his next work, and after these came a quite unintelligible dream—Urizen, with twenty-seven designs—quite nightmares of hell, and founded on visions seen with his own dreamy eyes. Even his dear wife could not understand these, but was sure, with right heavenly faith, that they had "a meaning and a fine one." He was now living in Lambeth. Blake's name getting a little dimly known, he was employed to illustrate Young's Night Thoughts, which he did, rather astonishing the quiet meeting-house public. Flaxman, delighted with this work, introduced Blake to Hayley, the twaddling poet, who asked him down to Felpham in Sussex, to illustrate his life of his friend Cowper. Down he went; there he lived happily, wandering at evening by the sea, believing he met Moses and Dante, "gray, luminous, majestic, colossal shadows," as he called them; seeing fairies' funerals, and drawing the demon of a flea. After three years of this tranquil happiness he removed to London, and took a house, 17 South Molton Street, where he lived seventeen years. He now produced his "Jerusalem," with one hundred tinted engravings, for which he charged twenty-five guineas. The preface modestly began by saying, that "after my three years' slumber on the banks of the ocean, I again display my giant forms to the public." The giant forms were unreadable, and did not sell. For twelve inventions to illustrate Blair's Grave, Cromek, the publisher, paid him but twenty guineas, and, to his extreme vexation, gave them to Schiavonetti to engrave. Blake's style was not fashionable enough for the general public. Some of these designs are tame and dull enough, others grand, and a few ludicrous. The angel who blows the last trumpet stands on his head in the air; the death of the strong, wicked man is sublime; the old man at death's door is meagre, but fine. An unpleasant quarrel with the amiable Stothard followed up the vexation of this Schiavonetti business. Both artists began a Canterbury pilgrimage at the same time. Holland declared that Blake had seen him beginning his picture. Blake declared that Cromek, the publisher, had actually commissioned the picture before Stothard took up his pencil. Cromek said the thing was one of Blake's dreams; but in 1809 the rival pictures, with sixteen others, appeared at an exhibition of Blake's works in Broad Street, at the house of his brother, accompanied by a catalogue full of mad fancies and crazy, clever argument, railing against oil painting, "the demon Correggio," and indeed every painter who disregarded the purity of outline for mere sensual colour. His pictures of "the Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding Leviathan," and "the Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding Behemoth," sent people away stunned and puzzled, but still they excited interest. Charles Lamb sent Blake's chimneysweep song to the poet Montgomery, and Bernard Barton seeing it was delighted. After painting Lot's portrait, and seeing the devil glaring at him through the grate of his staircase window, this enthusiast, happy with one room for study, kitchen, and bedchamber, and eighteen shillings a week, would sit down and illustrate Job, whose patience he rivalled. For these tame, timid, and quaint illustrations we have no great admiration, though there is a fine religions enthusiasm about a few of them, particularly No. 14—"The Morning Stars singing together." The night was coming; Blake's small fame had been gradually going down since the time of his exhibition; people grew satiated and wearied of his originality and obscurity. He was poor and in a garret, yet independent, cheerful, vigorous, and free from debt. A kind friend, Mr. Linnel, employed him to engrave his book of Job illustrations, and at these he worked with ardour and enthusiastic skill, dreaming and brooding only when he had earned the time to do so. His next works were prophecies of the destinies of America and Europe, with eighteen and seventeen plates respectively. His visions grew more and more incoherent; his verse (a bad sign) rhymeless; there were all sorts of demigorgons; the nightmare, and all her ninefold; enormous fishes preying on dead bodies; the great sea serpent; angels pouring out spotted plagues; furies in the sun, &c.
In 1823 the poor sick genius retired to Fountain Court in the Strand, and with noble unabated vigour set to work illustrating Dante—engraving 7, and planning 102 designs. Kind friends aided him by buying his poems, and he wrought incessantly at "Jerusalem," tinting and tricking it with paternal love; but no one would give 25 guineas for a thing not to be understood, and it remained on his hands. He was now 71, and his strength began to fail. "I glory," he said to his wife, "I glory in dying; I have no grief but in leaving you, Kate." Three days before his death he sat bolstered up in bed tinting "The Ancient of Days," his favourite work. "It is done," he said; "I cannot mend it." He lay singing extemporaneous songs, and died on the 12th of August, 1828, without his wife, who watched him, knowing the moment of his death. Blake's mode of colour was a secret, revealed to him, he said, in a vision. The ground of his panel was a mixture of whiting and glue; his colours he mixed with diluted size; he used to varnish with glue water, and paint into that. In engraving he had also secrets, which perished with him and his brave wife. Blake was short and thin, with high pale forehead, and large dark eyes. His temper was irritable—his voice low and musical—his manners gentle and unassuming. He believed himself a martyr for poetic art, and pitied those who sold themselves for gain. He left 100 volumes of verse prepared for the press. Would we could recover some of these! A selection of his poems would certainly become classical, so burning are his words, and so tender is sometimes their harmony. Of uneducated men's unknown poetry they stand all but highest. Could Shelley or Byron surpass these "On the Tiger," published about 1788?—
Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
In the forest of the night;
What immortal hand or eye
Framed thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burned the fervour of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire.
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
When thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand formed thy dread feet?
When the stars threw down their spheres,
And sprinkled heaven with shining tears;
Did he smile his work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
The play of "Edward V." reads like a rather misshaped scrap of Marlow's. "Innocence "is the sweetest of idyls. "The Chimney-sweeper" is true, and even better than the Wood Street blackbird song of Wordsworth—and has, in its way, never been surpassed. His "Laughing Song" runs over with innocent joy. His "Gwinn King of Norway" is as fine as Chatterton's Sir Baldwin, and turns the miserable sickly verses of the fashionable poets of his own day—Darwin and Hayley—into street rhymsters. Mr. Rosetti, the eminent leader of the pre-Raphaelites has in his possession much of Blake's MS. poetry. We must remember that Blake led the way for the Lake school; for Scott did not publish Götz till 1799, and Coleridge and Wordsworth the Lyrical Ballads till 1798.—W. T.
BLAKENEY, Lord, a distinguished military officer, born in 1672, descended from an English family long seated at Mount Blakeney in the county of Limerick. He entered the army early in Queen Anne's reign, and soon showed that he possessed talents of no common order for military service. It was not to his professional merits, however, that he owed his advancement, but
