of Blake to admiration and reverence, without slurring over those other considerations which need to be plainly and fully set forth if we would obtain any real idea of the man as he was,—of his total unlikeness to his contemporaries, of his amazing genius and noble performances in two arts, of the height by which he transcended other men, and the incapacity which he always evinced for performing at all what others accomplish easily. He could do vastly more than they, but he could seldom do the like. By some unknown process, he had soared to the top of a cloud-capped Alp while they were crouching in the valley: but to reach a middle station on the mountain was what they could readily manage step by step, while Blake found that ordinary achievement impracticable. He could not and he would not do it: the' want of will, or rather the utter alienation of will, the resolve to soar (which was natural to him), and not to walk (which was unnatural and repulsive), constituted, or counted in stead of, an actual want of power. Could Blake think, and embody his thoughts, like other men? There are instances in which he both could do so, and has done it but certain it is, regarding him in his most characteristic moods, that mostly he would not: and, in the case of so spacious, daring, and intuitive a mind, so vivid, uncompromising, exclusive, and peremptory a character, the aversion, when it reached a certain height, amounted to incapability. For "aversion" we might perhaps substitute the word " perversity:" Blake was the most perverse of mortals, except to his own ideal, his own inspiration. To these he was loyal beyond praise, and beyond words: to aught else,

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equally impenetrable and contumacious. moon partially eclipsed might be taken as no inapt image of Blake's mind: a glorious luminary, and not bedimmed or overclouded in its lucid part, but distinctly reft of light in a certain other portion. If those who urged him to do common things, or to do lofty things by common processes, were in the right, then Blake was not only in the wrong, but perverse, a son of perdition." If Blake, on the other hand, was essentially right as to his aims and methods, then the rugged gradient of his perversity was also an ascending plane of heroism. Raptin a passionate yearning, he realized, even on this earth and in his mortal body, a species of nirvana: his whole faculty, his whole personality, the very essence of his mind and mould, attained to absorption into his ideal ultimate,—into that which Dante's profound phrase designates "il Ben dell' intelletto."

Thus much may be truly and reverently said of Blake: something of the kind, indeed, cannot be left unsaid, if we would in any way appreciate, instead of merely disparaging and misconceiving, him. On certain grounds, in the totality of his intellect and aspiration, we must uphold and exalt him. So long as we consider Blake in these more general relations, to lower him would be to lower ourselves. The intrinsic greatness of the man and of his work is by this time patent and irrefutable:-clear to those persons who have examined the matter, and who are capable of entering into it with an understanding mind; contested, no doubt, by some others, and to the multitude unknown, but this goes for nothing as authority. When we proceed, however, to a more

strict analysis of the operations of Blake's intellect, we shall unquestionably find much to startle and disconcert us: not now because he fails to attempt ordinary things, or to perform them well, but because he does extraordinary things in an inconceivable-not to say an often insufferable— manner. In fact, the old much-urged question "Was Blake a madman ?" presents itself to us, and challenges an answer. His diligent and discerning biographer, Mr. Gilchrist, says decisively 166 "No": so does Mr. Swinburne, in that remarkable Critical Essay1 which has done more towards clearing up the darkest recesses of Blake's mind, and the most chaotic wastes of his writings, than had ever before been either achieved or attempted. This question about Blake is one on which I must necessarily have formed some kind of opinion, and ought ere I close to express it: but for the present I forbear, preferring that the reader should see something of the evidence before the deduction is presented for his consideration.

The facts to be stated regarding Blake's outer life are few, and mostly (save so far as they bear directly upon the peculiarities of his mental constitution, and the resultant works in poetry and design) are of an ordinary character. The inner life is a mine of prodigies and problems: few of these can be thoroughly explored or solved, and of many we can here take no real count at all. The works or rather (for many others have been lost) a certain proportion of the works-which

1 The books referred to are the Life of William Blake, by the late Alexander Gilchrist, 2 vols.: Macmillan and Co., 1863; and William Blake, a Critical Essay, by Algernon Charles Swinburne: Hotten, 1868.

the painter-poet produced in his incessantly laborious life, remain to us, and will, within our restricted scope and opportunities, form a principal object of our attention here.

2. THE EVENTS OF BLAKE'S LIFE.

London gave birth to William Blake; and, in doing so, produced one of the strangest of all the many-millioned natives of the great city, and one moreover of the most curious and abnormal personages of the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries; a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors. He was born on the 28th of November 1757,1 at No. 28 Broad Street, Carnaby Market, near Golden Square; a district at that time of very respectable standing, though now fully as dingy as decorous. No. 28 is a corner-house at the narrower end of the street, which varies considerably in width. He was the second son of James and Catharine Blake, and the second child out of a family of five. The father carried on business as a hosier, and was a moderately prosperous man: in religion a Dissenter. The first child, and great favourite of the parents, was John, who turned out badly and enlisted in

1A MS. which I have seen, the production of Mr. Frederick Tatham, who knew Blake well in his latter years, gives "20" November as the date of birth. The other date, "28" November, is assigned by Mr. Gilchrist; and his accuracy in such matters leads me to adopt it, though I am not distinctly aware whether he did more than reproduce this date from Allan Cunningham's entertaining but comparatively slight memoir.

the army. Then, next after William, came James; of him, as well as of the youngest brother Robert, and of a still younger sister, William's junior by seven years, we shall hear a little more as we proceed.

William Blake's education was of the scantiest, being confined to reading and writing: arithmetic also may be guessed at, but is not recorded, and very probably his capacity for acquiring or retaining that item of knowledge was far below the average. In boyhood he was fond of little country jaunts; these were readily obtainable at that time by a resident in the Golden Square district, remote though it now is from the outskirts -themselves interminable-of the capital, ever spreading, and ever the more closely cooping. up the teeming turmoil of its denizens. He began drawing very early, becoming (as Allan Cunningham has said) "at ten years of age an artist, and at twelve a poet." This last-named age is even, it would seem, too advanced by a year for the fact; for the Poetical Sketches, Blake's first printed volume, were stated in the prefatory words to have been begun in his "twelfth year," -and probably some other verses, still more childish in point of date, not to speak of execution, would have preceded them. He copied prints in his boyhood, and haunted sale-rooms: his parents, more especially his mother, seem to have encouraged this artistic turn. In 1767 he began attending the drawing-school of Mr. Pars in the Strand, a well-known academy, which pupils used to frequent as preparatory to the one which flourished in St. Martin's Lane. Here he had the opportunity of studying from the