Blake, William

William (1757-1827), an English poet, artist, and engraver. This poetartist, whose illuminated poems are a unique work, is one of the most interesting and perhaps the least understood of all who figure in the pages of literature. Called a connoisseur in his childhood, called a child in his old age, he was a mystic who saw visions of angels where others saw flowers and trees; who claimed to talk with men of a bygone age--with Moses, Virgil, and Homer--and who was accounted insane because he wrote poetry like an artist, letting symbols take the place of ideas. He died in poverty and obscurity, and now his drawings and engravings sell for thousands of dollars.

Blake was born in London. His father kept a hosier's shop. While he gave his boy but a scanty education, he seems to have recognized the child's artistic ability at an early date and to have done his best to encourage and develop it. At the age of ten young William was sent to a drawing school, where he received instruction for four years. Already he was haunting art sale rooms, where he became known as the "little connoisseur." After four years at drawing school, Blake was apprenticed to James Basine, a prominent engraver. Here he remained for seven years, becoming proficient in the art of engraving. On completing his apprenticeship Blake began to engrave for the booksellers, at the same time continuing his art studies at the Royal Academy. Blake married in 1782. About this time he began to see something of literary society. In certain circles it became a common thing for him to recite or sing poems of his own composition. In 1783, at the suggestion of friends, he published Poetical Sketches, a volume of boyish, but rather promising poems. In 1789 Songs of Innocence appeared, followed in a few years by a companion volume, Songs of Experience. These books were produced by an original method which Blake believed to have been revealed to him in a dream by his dead brother. He engraved the poem, together with a decorative design, upon copper. The pages printed from these copper plates were afterward colored by hand, his wife aiding him in the work. Many of the songs in these volumes rank among the best poems of the romantic school of which Swinburne calls Blake the founder. Between these two volumes of verse intervened several Prophetic Books, as Blake called them. These "prophecies" are obscure, and often incoherent. It is on account of the unintelligibility of these poems that Blake came to be regarded as insane. He seems to have been under influences for which no outward facts can account. But whether he was a prey to a disordered fancy, or whether, as his ideas became more profound and complex, he lacked ability to express them in logical language, has never been clearly settled. However this may be, the artist's power increased as the poet's ability to write acceptably decreased. His Inventions to the Book of Job, consisting of twenty-two engravings and twenty-one original designs in color, with the original colored drawings by the artist, sold in London in 1903 for $28,000. Illustrations for Thornton's Virgil, for Young's Night Thoughts, for the Divina Commedia, and for L'Allegro and Il Penseroso are among his other works. For twenty-eight years Blake sent pictures to the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy. His paintings are usually weird in subject. The procession of the Canterbury pilgrims is one of the most widely known.

I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. "What!" it will be questioned, "when the sun rises, do you not see a disk of fire, somewhat like a guinea?" "O no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying `holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty!'" I question not the corporeal eye, any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through, and not with it!

SAID OF BLAKE.

Blake, that sublime visionary.--Edmund Clarence Stedman.

One of the most extraordinary persons of the age.--Charles Lamb.

It is by the sublimity of his genius, and not by any mental defect, that Blake is most clearly distinguished from his fellows.--J. W. Comyns Carr.