The Portable William Blake

It was at the latter end of the year 1825 that I put in writing my recollections of this most remarkable man. The larger portions are under the date of the 18th of December. He died in the year 1827. I have therefore now revised what I wrote on the 10th of December and afterwards, and without any attempt to reduce to order, or make consistent the wild and strange rhapsodies uttered by this insane man of genius, thinking it better to put down what I find as it occurs, though I am aware of the objection that may justly be made to the recording the ravings of insanity in which it may be said there can be found no principle, as there is no ascertainable law of mental association which is obeyed; and from which therefore nothing can be learned.

This would be perfectly true of mere madness—but does not apply to that form of insanity ordinarily called monomania, and may be disregarded in a case like the present in which the subject of the remark was unquestionably what a German would call a Verunglückter Genie, whose theosophic dreams bear a close resemblance to those of Swedenborg—whose genius as an artist was praised by no less men than Flaxman and Fuseli—and whose poems were thought worthy republication by the biographer of Swedenborg (Wilkinson), and of which Wordsworth said after reading a number —they were the “Songs of Innocence and Experience showing the two opposite sides of the human soul”—“There is no doubt this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott!” The German painter Götzenberger (a man indeed who ought not to be named after the others as an authority for my writing about Blake) said, on his returning to Germany about the time at which I am now arrived, “I saw in England many men of talents, but only three men of genius, Coleridge, Flaxman, and Blake, and of these Blake was the greatest.” I do not mean to intimate my assent to this opinion, nor to do more than supply such materials as my intercourse with him furnish to an uncritical narrative to which I shall confine myself. I have written a few sentences in these reminiscences already, those of the year 1810. I had not then begun the regular journal which I afterwards kept. I will therefore go over the ground again and introduce these recollections of 1825 by a reference to the slight knowledge I had of him before, and what occasioned my taking an interest in him, not caring to repeat what Cunningham has recorded of him in the volume of his Lives of the British Painters, etc. etc....

Dr. Malkin, our Bury Grammar School Headmaster, published in the year 1806 a Memoir of a very precocious child who died ... years old, and he prefixed to the Memoir an account of Blake, and in the volume he gave an account of Blake as a painter and poet, and printed some specimens of his poems, viz. “The Tyger,” and ballads and mystical lyrical poems, all of a wild character, and M. gave an account of Visions which Blake related to his acquaintance. I knew that Flaxman thought highly of him, and though he did not venture to extol him as a genuine seer, yet he did not join in the ordinary derision of him as a madman. Without having seen him, yet I had already conceived a high opinion of him, and thought he would furnish matter for a paper interesting to Germans, and therefore when Fred. Perthes, the patriotic publisher at Hamburg, wrote to me in 1810 requesting me to give him an article for his Patriotische Annalen, I thought I could do no better than send him a paper on Blake, which was translated into German by Dr. Julius, filling, with a few small poems copied and translated, 24 pages....

In order to enable me to write this paper, which, by the bye, has nothing in it of the least value, I went to see an exhibition of Blake’s original paintings in Carnaby Market, at a hosier‘s, Blake’s brother. These paintings filled several rooms of an ordinary dwelling-house, and for the sight a half-crown was demanded of the visitor, for which he had a catalogue. This catalogue I possess, and it is a very curious exposure of the state of the artist’s mind. I wished to send it to Germany and to give a copy to Lamb and others, so I took four, and giving 10s., bargained that I should be at liberty to go again. “Freel as long as you live,” said the brother, astonished at such a liberality, which he, had never experienced before, nor I dare say did afterwards. Lamb was delighted with the catalogue, especially with the description of a painting afterwards engraved, and connected with which is an anecdote that, unexplained, would reflect discredit on a most amiable and excellent man, but which Flaxman considered to have been not the wilful act of Stodart. It was after the friends of Blake had circulated a subscription paper for an engraving of his “Canterbury Pilgrims,” that Stodart was made a party to an engraving of a painting of the same subject by himself. Stodart’s work is well known, Blake’s is known by very few. Lamb preferred it greatly to Stodart’s, and declared that Blake’s description was the finest criticism he had ever read of Chaucer’s poem.

In this catalogue Blake writes of himself in the most outrageous language—says, “This artist defies all competition in colouring”—that none can beat him, for none can beat the Holy Chost—that he and Raphael and Michael Angelo were under divine influence-wbile Corregio and Titian worshipped a lascivious and therefore cruel deity—Reubens a proud devil, etc. etc. He declared, speaking of colour, Titian’s men to be of leather and his women of chalk, and ascribed his own perfection in colouring to the advantage he enjoyed in seeing daily the primitive men walking in their native nakedness in the mountains of Wales. There were about thirty oil-paintings, the colouring excessively dark and high, the veins black, and the colour of the primitive men very like that of the Red Indians. In his estimation they would probably be the primitive men. Many of his designs were unconscious imitations. This appears also in his published works—the designs of “Blair’s Grave,” which Fuseli and Schiavonetti highly extolled—and in his designs to illustrate “Job,” published after his death for the benefit of his widow.

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To this catalogue and in the printed poems, the small pamphlet which appeared in 1783, the edition put forth by Wilkinson of “The Songs of Innocence,” and other works already mentioned, to which I have to add the first four books of Young’s Night Thoughts, and Allan Cunningham’s Life of him, I now refer, and will confine myself to the memorandums I took of his conversation. I had heard of him from Flaxman, and for the first time dined in his company at the Aders’. Linnell the painter also was there—an artist of considerable talent, and who professed to take a deep interest in Blake and his work, whether of a perfectly disinterested character may be doubtful, as will appear hereafter. This was on the 10th of December.

I was aware of his idiosyncracies and therefore to a great degree prepared for the sort of conversation which took place at and after dinner, an altogether unmethodical rhapsody on art, poetry, and religion—he saying the most strange things in the most unemphatic manner, speaking of his Visions as any man would of the most ordinary occurrence. He was then 68 years of age. He had a broad, pale face, a large full eye with a benignant expression—at the same time a look of languor, except when excited, and then he had an air of inspiration. But not such as without a previous acquaintance with him, or attending to what he said, would suggest the notion that he was insane. There was nothing wild about his look, and though very ready to be drawn out to the assertion of his favourite ideas, yet with no warmth as if he wanted to make proselytes. Indeed one of the peculiar features of his scheme, as far as it was consistent, was indifference and a very extraordinary degree of tolerance and satisfaction with what had taken place. A sort of pious and humble optimism, not the scornful optimism of Candide. But at the same time that he was very ready to praise he seemed incapable of envy, as he was of discontent. He warmly praised some composition of Mrs. Aders, and having brought for Aders an engraving of his “Canterbury Pilgrims,” he remarked that one of the figures resembled a figure in one of the works then in Aders’s room, so that he had been accused of having stolen from it. But he added that he had drawn the figure in question 20 years before he had seen the original picture. However, there is “no wonder in the resemblance, as in my youth I was always studying that class of painting.” I have forgotten what it was, but his taste was in close conformity with the old German school.

This was somewhat at variance with what he said both this day and afterwards—implying that he copies his Visions. And it was on this first day that, in answer to a question from me, he said, “The Spirits told me.” This lead me to say: Socrates used pretty much the same language. He spoke of his Genius. Now, what affinity or resemblance do you suppose was there between the Genius which inspired Socrates and your Spirits? He smiled, and for once it seemed to me as if he had a feeling of vanity gratified. “The same as in our countenances.” He paused and said, “I was Socrates”—and then as if he had gone too far in that—“or a sort of brother. I must have had conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ. I have an obscure recollection of having been with both of them.” As I had for. many years been familiar with the idea that an eternity a parte post was inconceivable without an eternity a parte ante, I was naturally led to express that thought on this occasion. His eye brightened on my saying this. He eagerly assented: “To be sure. We are all coexistent with God; members of the Divine body, and partakers of the Divine nature.” Blake’s having adopted this Platonic idea led me on our tête-à-tête walk home at night to put the popular question to him, concerning the imputed Divinity of Jesus Christ. He answered: “He is the only God”—but then he added—“And so am I and so are you.” He had before said—and that led me to put the question—that Christ ought not to have suffered himself to be crucified. “He should not have attacked the Government. He had no business with such matters.” On my representing this to be inconsistent with the sanctity of divine qualities, he said Christ was not yet become the Father. It is hard on bringing together these fragmentary recollections to fix Blake’s position in relation to Christianity, Platonism, and Spinozism.

It is one of the subtle remarks of Hume on the tendency of certain religious notions to reconcile us to whatever occurs, as God’s will. And applying this to something Blake said, and drawing the inference that there is no use in education, he hastily rejoined: “There is no use in education. I hold it wrong. It is the great Sin. It is eating of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. That was the fault of Plato: he knew of nothing but the Virtues and Vices. There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God’s eyes.” On my asking whether there is nothing absolutely evil in what man does, he answered: “I am no judge of that—perhaps not in Cod’s eyes.” Notwithstanding this, he, however, at the same time spoke of error as being in heaven; for on my asking whether Dante was pure in writing his Vision, “Pure,” said Blake. “Is there any purity in God’s eyes? No. ‘He chargeth his angels with folly.’” He even extended this liability to error to the Supreme Being. “Did he not repent him that he had made Nineveh?” My journal here has the remark that it is easier to retail his personal remarks than to reconcile those which seemed to be in conformity with the most opposed abstract systems. He spoke with seeming complacency of his own life in connection with Art. In becoming an artist he “acted by command.” The Spirits said to him, “Blake, be an artist.” His eye glistened while he spoke of the joy of devoting himself to divine art alone. “Art is inspiration. When Mich. Angelo or Raphael, in their day, or Mr. Flaxman, does any of his fine things, he does them in the Spirit.” Of fame he said: “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.” This was confirmed to me on my subsequent interviews with him. His distinction between the Natural and Spiritual worlds was very confused. Incidentally, Swedenborg was mentioned—he declared him to be a Divine Teacher. He had done, and would do, much good. Yet he did wrong in endeavouring to explain to the reason what it could not comprehend. He seemed to consider, but that was not clear, the visions of Swedenborg and Dante as of the same kind. Dante was the greater poet. He too was wrong in occupying his mind about political objects. Yet this did not appear to affect his estimation of Dante’s genius, or his opinion of the truth of Dante’s visions. Indeed, when he even declared Dante to be an Atheist, it was accompanied by expression of the highest admiration; though, said he, Dante saw Devils where I saw none.

I put down in my journal the following insulated remarks. Jacob Böhmen was placed among the divinely inspired men. He praised also the designs to Law’s translation of Böhmen. Michael Angelo could not have surpassed them.

“Bacon, Locke, and Newton are the three great teachers of Atheism, or Satan’s Doctrine,” he asserted.

“Irving is a higly gifted man—he is a sent man; but they who are sent sometimes go further than they ought.”

Calvin. I saw nothing but good in Calvin’s house. In Luther’s there were Harlots. He declared his opinion that the earth is flat, not round, and just as I had objected the circumnavigation dinner was announced. But objections were seldom of any use. The wildest of his assertions was made with the veriest indifference of tone, as if altogether insignificant. It respected the natural and spiritual worlds. By way of example of the difference between them, he said, “You never saw the spiritual Sun. I have. I saw him on Primrose Hill.” He said, “Do you take me for the Greek Apollo?” “No!” I said. “That (pointing to the sky) that is the Greek Apollo. He is Satan.”

Not everything was thus absurd. There were glimpses and flashes of truth and beauty: as when he compared moral with physical evil. “Who shall say what God thinks evil? That is a wise tale of the Mahometans—of the Angel of the Lord who murdered the Infant.”—The Hermit of Parnell, I suppose.—“Is not every infant that dies of a natural death in reality slain by an Angel?”

And when he joined to the assurance of his happiness, that of his having suffered, and that it was necessary, he added, “There is suffering in Heaven; for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is the capacity of pain.”

I include among the glimpses of truth this assertion, “I know what is true by internal conviction. A doctrine is stated. My heart tells me It must be true.” I remarked, in confirmation of it, that, to an unlearned man, what are called the external evidences of religion can carry no conviction with them; and this he assented to.

After my first evening with him at Aders’s, I made the remark in my journal, that his observations, apart from his Visions and references to the spiritual world, were sensible and acute. In the sweetness of his countenance and gentility of his manner he added an indescribable grace to his conversation. I added my regret, which I must now repeat, at my inability to give more than incoherent thoughts. Not altogether my fault perhaps.

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On the 17th I called on him in his house in Fountain’s Court in the Strand. The interview was a short one, and what I saw was more remarkable than what I heard. He was at work engraving in a small bedroom, light, and looking out on a mean yard. Everything in the room squalid and indicating poverty, except himself. And there was a natural gentility about him, and an insensibility to the seeming poverty, which quite removed the impression. Besides, his linen was clean, his hand white, and his air quite unembarrassed when he begged me to sit down as if he were in a palace. There was but one chair in the room besides that on which he sat. On my putting my hand to it, I found that it would have fallen to pieces if I had lifted it, so, as if I had been a Sybarite, I said with a smile, “Will you let me indulge myself?” and I sat on the bed, and near him, and during my short stay there was nothing in him that betrayed that he was aware of what to other persons might have been even offensive, not in his person, but in all about him.

His wife I saw at this time, and she seemed to be the very woman to make him happy. She had been formed by him. Indeed, otherwise, she could not have lived with him. Notwithstanding her dress, which was poor and dirty, she had a good expression in her countenance, and, with a dark eye, had remains of beauty in her youth. She had that virtue of virtues in a wife, an implicit reverence of her husband. It is quite certain that she believed in all his visions. And on one occasion, not this day, speaking of his Visions, she said, “You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you were four years old, and he put his head to the window and set you a-screaming.” In a word, she was formed on the Miltonic model, and like the first Wife Eve worshipped God in her husband. He being to her what God was to him. Vide Milton’s Paradise Lost—passim.

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He was making designs or engravings, I forget which. Carey’s Dante was before [him]. He showed me some of his designs from Dante, of which I do not presume to speak. They were too much above me. But Götzenberger, whom I afterwards took to see them, expressed the highest admiration of them. They are in the hands of Linnell the painter, and, it has been suggested, are reserved by him for publication when Blake may have become an object of interest to a greater number than he could be at this age. Dante was again the subject of our conversation. And Blake declared him a mere politician and atheist, busied about this world’s affairs; as Milton was till, in his (M.’s) old age, he returned back to the God he had abandoned in childhood. I in vain endeavoured to obtain from him a qualification of the term atheist, so as not to include him in the ordinary reproach. And yet he afterwards spoke of Dante’s being then with God. I was more successful when he also called Locke an atheist, and imputed to him wilful deception, and seemed satisfied with my admission, that Locke’s philosophy led to the Atheism of the French school. He reiterated his former strange notions on morals—would allow of no other education than what lies in the cultivation of the fine arts and the imagination. “What are called the Vices in the natural world, are the highest sublimities in the spiritual world.” And when I supposed the case of his being the father of a vicious son and asked him how he would feel, he evaded the question by saying that in trying to think correctly he must not regard his own weaknesses any more than other people’s. And he was silent to the observation that his doctrine denied evil. He seemed not unwilling to admit the Manichæan doctrine of two principles, as far as it is found in the idea of the Devil. And said expressly he did not believe in the omnipotence of God. The language of the Bible is only poetical or allegorical on the subject, yet he at the same time denied the reality of the natural world. Satan’s empire is the empire of nothing.

As he spoke of frequently seeing Milton, I ventured to ask, half ashamed at the time, which of the three or four portraits in Hollis’s Memoirs (vols. in 4to) is the most like. He answered, “They are all like, at different ages. I have seen him as a youth and as an old man with a long flowing beard. He came lately as an old man—he said he came to ask a favour of me. He said he had committed an error in his Paradise Lost, which he wanted me to correct, in a poem or picture; but I declined. I said I had my own duties to perform.” It is a presumptuous question, I replied—might I venture to ask—what that could be. “He wished me to expose the falsehood of his doctrine, taught in the Paradise Lost, that sexual intercourse arose out of the Fall. Now that cannot be, for no good can spring out of evil.” But, I replied, if the consequence were evil, mixed with good, then the good might be ascribed to the common cause. To this he answered by a reference fo the androgynous state, in which I could not possibly follow him. At the time that he asserted his own possession of this gift of Vision, he did not boast of it as peculiar to himself; all men might have it if they would.

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On the 24th I called a second time on him. And on this occasion it was that I read to him Wordsworth’s Ode on the supposed pre-existent State, and the subject of Wordsworth’s religious character was discussed when we met on the 18th of Feb., and the 12th of May. I will here bring together Blake’s declarations concerning Wordsworth, and set down his marginalia in the 8vo. edit. A.D. 1815, vol. i. I had been in the habit, when reading this marvellous Ode to friends, to omit one or two passages, especially that beginning:

But there’s a Tree, of many one,

lest I should be rendered ridiculous, being unable to explain precisely what I admired. Not that I acknowledged this to be a fair test. But with Blake I could fear nothing of the kind. And it was this very stanza which threw him almost into a hysterical rapture. His delight in Wordsworth’s poetry was intense. Nor did it seem less, notwithstanding the reproaches he continually cast on Wordsworth for his imputed worship of nature; which in the mind of Blake constituted Atheism.

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The combination of the warmest praise with imputations which from another would assume the most serious character, and the liberty he took to interpret as he pleased, rendered it as difficult to be offended as to reason with him. The eloquent descriptions of Nature in Wordsworth’s poems were conclusive proofs of atheism, for whoever believes in Nature, said Blake, disbelieves in God. For Nature is the work of the Devil. On my obtaining from him the declaration that the Bible was the Word of God, I referred to the commencement of Genesis—In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. But I gained nothing by this, for I was triumphantly told that this God was not Jehovah, but the Elohim; and the doctrine of the Gnostics repeated with sufficient consistency to silence, one so unlearned as myself.

The Preface to the Excursion, especially the verses quoted from book i. of the Recluse, so troubled him as to bring on a fit of illness. These lines he singled out:

Jehovah with his thunder, and the Choir

Of shouting Angels, and the Empyreal throne,

I pass them unalarmed.

Does Mr. Wordsworth think he can surpass Jehovah? There was a copy of the whole passage in his own hand, in the volume of Wordsworth’s poems sent to my chambers after his death. There was this note at the end: “Solomon, when he married Pharaoh’s daughter, and became a convert to the Heathen Mythology, talked exactly in this way of Jehovah., as a very inferior object of Man’s contemplations; he also passed him unalarmed, and was permitted. Jehovah dropped a tear and followed him by his Spirit into the abstract void. It is called the Divine Mercy. Sarah dwells in it, but Mercy does not dwell in Him.”

Some of Wordsworth’s poems he maintained were from the Holy Ghost, others from the Devil. I lent him the 8vo edition, two vols., of Wordsworth’s poems, which he had in his possession at the time of his death. They were sent me then. I did not recognise the pencil notes he made in them to be his for some time, and was on the point of rubbing them out under that impression, when I made the discovery.

The following are found in the 3rd vol., in the fly-leaf under the words: Poems referring to the Period of Childhood.

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“I see in Wordsworth the Natural man rising up against the Spiritual man continually, and then he is no poet, but a Heathen Philosopher at Enmity against all true poetry or inspiration.”

Under the first poem:

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety,

he had written, “There is no such thing as natural piety, because the natural man is at enmity with Cod.” P. 43, under the Verses “To H. C., six years old”—“This is all in the highest degree imaginative and equal to any poet, but not superior. I cannot think that real poets have any competition. None are greatest in the kingdom of heaven. It is so in poetry.” P. 44, “On the Influence of Natural Objects,” at the bottom of the page. “Natural objects always did and now do weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me. Wordsworth must know that what he writes valuable is not to be found in Nature. Read Michael Angelo’s sonnet, vol. iv. p. 179 ” That is, the one beginning

No mortal object did these eyes behold

When first they met the placid light of thine.

It is remarkable that Blake, whose judgements were on most points so very singular, on one subject closely connected with Wordsworth’s poetical reputation should have taken a very commonplace view. Over the heading of the “Essay Supplementary to the Preface” at the end of the vol. he wrote, “I do not know who wrote these Prefaces; they are very mischievous, and direct contrary to Wordsworth’s own practice” (p. 341). This is not the defence of his own style in opposition to what is called Poetic Diction, but a sort of historic vindication of the unpopular poets. On Macpherson, p. 364, Wordsworth wrote with the severity with which all great writers have written of him. Blake’s comment below was, “I believe both Macpherson and Chatterton, that what they say is ancient is so.” And in the following page, “I own myself an admirer of Ossian equally with any other poet whatever. Rowley and Chatterton also.” And at the end of this Essay he wrote, “It appears to me as if the last paragraph beginning ‘Is it the spirit of the whole,’ etc., was written by another hand and mind from the rest of these Prefaces; they are the opinions of [a] landscape-painter. Imagination is the divine vision not of the world, nor of man, nor from man as he is a natural man, but only as he is a spiritual man. Imagination has nothing to do with memory.”

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19th Feb. It was this day in connection with the assertion that the Bible is the Word of God and all truth is to be found in it, he using language concerning man’s reason being opposed to grace very like that used by the Orthodox Christian, that he qualified, and as the same Orthodox would say utterly nullified all he said by declaring that he understood the Bible in a Spiritual sense. As to the natural sense, he said Voltaire was commissioned by God to expose that. “I have had,” he said, “much intercourse with Voltaire, and he said to me, ‘I blasphemed the Son of Man, and it shall be forgiven me, but they (the enemies of Voltaire) blasphemed the Holy Ghost in me, and it shall not be forgiven to them.”’ I ask him in what language Voltaire spoke. His answer was ingenious and gave no encouragement to cross-questioning : “To my sensations it was English. It was like the touch of a musical key; he touched it probably French, but to my ear it became English.” I also enquired as I had before about the form of the persons who appeared to him, and asked why he did not draw them. “It is not worth while,” he said. “Besides there are so many that the labour would be too great. And there would be no use in it.” In answer to an enquiry about Shakespeare, “he is exactly like the old engraving —which is said to be a bad one. I think it very good.” I enquired about his own writings. “I have written,” he answered, “more than Rousseau or Voltaire—six or seven Epic poems as long as Homer and 20 Tragedies as long as Macbeth.” He shewed me his ‘Version of Genesis,’ for so it may be called, as understood by a Christian Visionary. He read a wild passage in a sort of Bible style. “I shall print no more,” he said. “When I am commanded by the Spirits, then I write, and the moment I have written, I see the words fly about the room in all directions. It is then published. The Spirits can read, and my MS. is of no further use. I have been tempted to burn my MS., but my wife won’t let me.” She is right, I answered; you write not from yourself but from higher order. The MSS. are their property, not yours. You cannot tell what purpose they may answer. This was addressed ad hominem. And it indeed amounted only to a deduction from his own principles. He incidentally denied causation, every thing being the work of God or Devil. Every man has a Devil in himself, and the conflict between his Self and God is perpetually going on. I ordered of him to-day a copy of his songs for 5 guineas. My manner of receiving his mention of price pleased him. He spoke of his horror of money and of turning pale when it was offered him, and this was certainly unfeigned.

In the No. of the Gents. Magaxine for last Jan. there is a letter by Cromek to Blake printed in order to convict Blake of selfishness. It cannot possibly be substantially true. I may elsewhere notice it.

13th June. I saw him again in June. He was as wild as ever, says my journal, but he was led to-day to make assertions more palpably mischievous, if capable of influencing other minds, and immoral, supposing them to express the will of a responsible agent, than anything he had said before. As, for instance, that he had learned from the Bible that Wives should be in common. And when I objected that marriage was a Divine institution, he referred to the Bible—“that from the beginning it was not so.” He affirmed that he had committed many murders, and repeated his doctrine, that reason is the only sin, and that careless, gay people are better than those who think, etc. etc.

It was, I believe, on the 7th of December that I saw him last. I had just heard of the death of Flaxman, a man whom he professed to admire, and was curious to know how he would receive the intelligence. It was as I expected. He had been ill during the summer, and he said with a smile, “I thought I should have gone first:, He then said, ”I cannot think of death as more than the going out of one room into another.” And Flaxman was no longer thought of. He relapsed into his ordinary train of thinking. Indeed I had by this time learned that there was nothing to be gained by frequent intercourse. And therefore it was that after this interview I was not anxious to be frequent in my visits. This day he said, ”Men are born with an Angel and a Devil.” This he himself interpreted as Soul and Body, and as I have long since said of the strange sayings of a man who enjoys a high reputation, ”it is more in the language than the thought that this singularity is to be looked for.” And this day he spoke of the Old Testament as if [it] were the evil element. Christ, he said, took much after his mother, and in so far was one of the worst of men. On my asking him for an instance, he referred to his turning the money-changers out of the Temple—he had no right to do that. He digressed into a condemnation of those who sit in judgement on others. ”I have never known a very bad man who had not something very good about him.”

Speaking of the Atonement in the ordinary Calvinistic sense, he said, “It is a horrible doctrine; if another pay your debt, I do not forgive it.”

I have no account of any other call—but there is probably an omission. I took Götzenberger to see him, and he met the Masqueriers in my chambers. Masquerier was not the man to meet him. He could not humour Blake nor understand the peculiar sense in which he was to be received.

My journal of this year contains nothing about Blake. But in January 1828 Barron Field and myself called on Mrs. Blake. The poor old lady was more affected than I expected she would be at the sight of me. She spoke of her husband as dying like an angel. She informed me that she was going to live with Linnell as his housekeeper. And we understood that she would live with him, and he, as it were, to farm her services and take all she had. The engravings of Job were his already. Chaucer’s “Canterbury Pilgrims” were hers. I took two copies—one I gave to C. Lamb. Barron Field took a proof.

Mrs. Blake died within a few years, and since Blake’s death Linnell has not found the market I took for granted he would seek for Blake’s works. Wilkinson printed a small edition of his poems, including the “Songs of Innocence and Experience,” a few years ago, and Monkton Mylne talks of printing an edition. I have a few coloured engravings—but Blake is still an object of interest exclusively to men of imaginative taste and psychological curiosity. I doubt much whether these mems. will be of any use to this small class. I have been reading since the Life of Blake by Allan Cuningham, vol. ii. p. 143 of his Lives of the Painters. It recognises more perhaps of Blake’s merit than might be expected of a Scotch realist.

From CRABB ROBINSON’S REMINISCENCES, 1869

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