Page 35 of Jerusalem. Uncoloured.
63 Design on page 41 of Jerusalem. Uncoloured.
64 Page 70 of Jerusalem. Uncoloured.
65 Page 76 of Jerusalem. Uncoloured.
66 The River of Life. Water-colours.
67 Fire. Water-colours
68 Famine. (1805). Water-colours
69 Dedication to the Queen, for Blair’s Grave. (1806). Pencil and tint (not engraved).
70 Satan watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve (Paradise Lost). (1806). Water-colours.
71 The Finding of Moses. Water-colours.
72 The Infant Jesus praying. Water-colours.
73 The Woman taken in Adultery. Water-colours.
74 The Burial of Moses. Water-colours.
75 The Temptation. Water-colours
76 The Ascension. Water-colours
77 Angels hovering over the Body of Jesus. (1808). Water-colours
78 The Angel rolling away the Stone from the Sepulchre. (1808). Water-colours
79 Jacob’s Ladder. (1808). Water-colours.
80 The Creation of Eve (Paradise Lost). Water-colours.
81 Queen Catherine’s Dream. Water-colours
82 The Judgment of Paris. (1817). Water-colours.
83 Four Subjects from A. Phillips’ Imitation of Virgil’s First Eclogue. (1821). Woodcuts, first state.
84 Four Subjects from A. Phillips’ Imitation of Virgil’s First Eclogue. (1821). Woodcuts, first state.
85 The Wise and Foolish Virgins. (1822). Water-colours
86 Mirth. Design for Milton’s L J Allegro. Stipple-engraving
87 The Fire of God is fallen from Heaven. Job, pi. 3. Line-engraving.
88 Then a Spirit passed before my Face. Job, pi. 9. Line-engraving
89 I am Young and Ye are Very Old. Job, pi. 12. Line-engraving
90 The Lord answering Job out of the Whirlwind. Job, pi. 13. Line-engraving
91 The Morning Stars singing together. Job, pi. 14. Line-engraving.
92 Job and his Daughters. Job, pi. 20. Line-engraving.
93 Study for Job and his Daughters. (A different design). Pencil and Indian-ink.
94 So the Lord blessed the Latter End of Job. Job, pi. 21. Line-engraving
95 Satan smiting Job. Tempera
96 The Tempter (Paradise Regained), No. 7. Water-colours
97 The Tempter Foiled (Paradise Regained), No. 10. Water-colours
98 Paolo and Francesca. Dante, Inferno, Canto V. Line-engraving, first state
99 The Falsifiers. Dante, Inferno, Canto XXIX. Line-engraving, first state
100 Lucia carrying Dante in his sleep. Dante, Purgatorio, Canto IX. Water-colours
101 The Angel in the Boat. Dante, Purgatorio, Canto II. Pencil and slight colour-wash.
102 The Earthly Paradise: Beatrice in the Car. Dante, Purgatorio, Canto XXIX. Water-colours
103 Portrait of Mrs. Blake. Lead pencil.
104 Portrait of William Blake at work, 1820. By John Linnell. Lead pencil
105 Portrait of William Blake on Hampstead Heath, 1821. By John Linnell. Lead pencil
Introduction by Laurence Binyon
FOR the sale of the Linnell collection of drawings, prints and books by Blake, the great room at Christie’s was full to overflowing. It was March of 1918. Copies of the Songs of Innocence, of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell; the set of water-colour designs for The Book of Job; the famous century of Dante illustrations; single drawings and rare prints; all were fetching or going to fetch hitherto unparalleled prices. Competition ran high, the excitement of the bidders was infectious. In the middle of the sale Lot 171 was announced; and observers on the edge of the crowd could see, lifted high in the hands of the baize-aproned, impassive attendant, a human mask, conspicuous in its white plaster. It was the life-mask of William Blake; and as those tense features were carried duly along the knots of dealers and bidders, who, pencil and catalogue in hand, threw up at it an appraising glance, the Ironic Muse could surely not have forborne a smile. The auctioneer invited bids, collecting from various quarters those imperceptible nods which give to auctions an air of magic and conspiracy; and still the white mask, with the trenchant lip-line and the full, tight-closed eyes, was held up and offered to every gaze, turned now this way and now that. It seemed to be the most living thing in the room; as if the throng of curious watchers, murmuring among themselves, and the auctioneer himself, were mere shadows engaged in a shadowy chaffering. It seemed to me that, next moment, those eyes would blaze open, seeing, not us, but some vision of celestial radiance; and that all who could not share that vision must dissolve into their native insignificance. Sentences floated through my brain: “I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit; I want nothing; I am quite happy.” “Painting exists and exults in immortal thoughts.” “Art is a means of conversing with Paradise.” I remembered how Blake died singing hymns of joy. And I thought of his “madness”; and suddenly it appeared as if the world, with its mania for possessing things, and its commercial values for creations of the spirit, were really insane, and the spirit inspiring Blake the only sane thing in it.
I.
A subtle fluid streams through Blake’s work, which has in it the germ of intoxication; hence people find it hard to judge of it without a certain extravagance, either of admiration or repulsion. Possibly indeed a quite “sane” estimate of it misses something of its essence. But, after all, he is an artist among the artists of the world, with affinities among them, if few of these are to be found among those of his own race, and fewer still among those of his own time. There is no need to judge him by a strange and special standard, as if he were a wholly isolated phenomenon. He is one of the greatest imaginative artists of England.
The first edition of “The Golden Treasury” contained none of Blake’s poems: now his songs are in every anthology. He has come into his kingdom as a poet. As a seer and as a quickening influence on the thought of later generations he is recognized. As an artist, also, he has of late years begun to receive more general homage. But Blake’s art, in its great qualities as in its frequent blemishes and deficiencies, is still not understood and appreciated as it should be; and chiefly because it is little known. Yet it is as painter, draughtsman and engraver that Blake is greatest. Nothing perhaps in his pictorial art quite matches the aerial radiance and felicity of his best songs. But nothing in his poetry has the sustained grandeur of the Job engravings, or of a whole series of splendidly imagined designs.
We are here concerned with Blake solely