William Blake Part 8

_The Song of Los_ (engraved 1795) adds many interesting particulars of the process by which the world, with its philosophies and religions, has become what it is.

Los, the Eternal Prophet, is the father of all systems of thought, but it does not follow that all are equally true. For Los is out of the divine order, and therefore the systems inspired by him and his many sons, while containing streaks of the eternal truths, are all out of focus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOS.

_From The First Book of Urizen._]

Thus Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brahma in the East, and it is defective because it is abstract. The same applies to all modern theosophical revivals of Hindoo religion. An abstraction for Blake was a falling away from concrete reality, and he found his deliverance in the Christian doctrine of G.o.d.

Palamabron, another son of Los, gave abstract Law to Trismegistus, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Abstract Law is also negative, and therefore Orc (pa.s.sion) finds himself chained down with the chain of Jealousy, and howls in impotent rage.

Sotho teaches Odin a Code of War which at any time may become the philosophy of a nation.

All these, abstract philosophy, abstract law, the Mahometan Bible, Codes of War, with the Churches, Hospitals, Castles, Palaces, which they involve, while seeking to catch the joys of eternity, serve in reality to obliterate and erase eternity altogether, and the children of men schooled in these philosophies behold the vast of Nature shrunk before their shrunken eyes. After the shrinkage there can only arise a philosophy of the five senses, and then Newton and Locke, especially Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire, have it all their own way.

From all this Blake looked for deliverance to the thought-creating fires of Orc, which had flared up in France, and might be expected to spread over Europe, and set even Asia in a conflagration. The Kings of Asia, snug in their ancient woven dens, are startled into self-exertion, and emerging uneasily from their dens, call on kings, priests, counsellors and privy admonishers of men to use their immemorial rights to teach the Mortal Worms, and keep them in the paths of slavery. Happily, Orc's fires are insatiable. Raging in European darkness, he arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps, and, while "milk and blood and glandous wine in rivers rush," led the wild dance on mountain, dale, and plain, till the sullen earth shrunk away, and there dawned the eternal day.

_The Book of Los_ (engraved 1795) begins with the lament of Eno, aged Mother, as she recalls the "Times remote, when love and joy were adoration and none impure were deemed." For now, alas! Los, who alone could teach joy and liberty, is bound "in a chain and compelled to watch Urizen's shadow." Yet he cannot be bound for ever. Maddened by hard bondage, he rends asunder the vast Solid that has bound him, only to fall through the horrible void of error--"Truth has bounds, Error none"--till his contemplative thoughts arise and throw out some sort of standing-ground amidst the dire vacuity. Urizen by his contemplative thoughts, it will be remembered, had created "a wide World of solid obstruction." Now the two daemons become rivals, and the grim conflict of the ages is waged incessantly. Los with hammer and tongs organizes lungs (understanding, see Swedenborg), and some Light even appears; but the book closes with no sign of the ultimate triumph of Los, for Los and Urizen are here rivals: there can be no victory until they cease to be rivals, and re-enter into the union of the eternal order.

_The Book of Ahania_ (engraved 1795) gives the story of Fuzon, Urizen's most fiery son, and therefore the one most obnoxious to his curse. He is mortally wounded by a poisoned rock hurled at his bosom from his father's bow, and his corse is nailed to the topmost stem of the Tree of Mystery, which is religion. Then follows the sad and beautiful lament of Ahania--the wife and emanation of Urizen, and mother of the murdered Fuzon. She recalls, like Eno, the former days, when Urizen stood in the divine order, and she, his lover and wife, joyed in the transports of love, when her heart leaped at the lovely sound of his footsteps, and she kissed the place whereon his bright feet had trod; when she knew the thrilling joys of motherhood, and nursed her Babes of bliss on her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s. These things were now but a memory. Urizen with stern jealous cruelty had put her away, compelling her to walk weeping over rocks and dens, through valleys of death, a shadow upon the void, and on the verge of nonent.i.ty, a deep Abyss dividing her from her eternal love. Thus she weeps and laments, wearing a sorrow's crown of sorrows, the remembering happier things.

These short prophetic books, though entirely congenial to the author, were written in a tongue unknown to the public, general or particular. There was every sign that Blake would continue to produce more works, and even on a much larger scale, in this particular kind of composition, and the signs were equally clear that he must look to something else to procure the wherewithal that would enable him and his wife to live.

This something was, of course, engraving, but even the demand for _his_ engraving was growing less, and the grim spectre of poverty made his unwelcomed and uncalled-for appearance along with the spectres whom Blake could command. Over this oppressive and grinding spectre he had no command at all.

In 1796 he was asked by Miller, a publisher in Old Bond Street, to make three ill.u.s.trations to be engraved by Perry for Stanley's English paraphrase of Burger's _Lenore_. The elements of romance and weird horror in Burger's work were quite in keeping with a side of Blake's nature that had shown itself in _Elinor_, and so the ill.u.s.trations were accomplished with marked power and success.

The same year he was engaged on designs for Young's _Night Thoughts_, intended to ill.u.s.trate a new and expensive edition of what was then considered one of England's great cla.s.sics. The work was to be published by Edwards, of New Bond Street.

Blake was less free and happy ill.u.s.trating Young than Burger. Young has since been slain by George Eliot, but even if she had not killed him, his popularity must have waned in another generation or two. For there was very little healthy human blood in his veins. He was other-worldly, and so was Blake; but whereas Blake saw in the other world a world of transcendent beauty of which this world was the vegetable mirror, Young saw in it only a reflection of his own particular world. Hence Blake was a mystic, and Young an egotist. Blake forgot himself in the magnificence of eternity, Young's religion was "egotism turned heavenwards."

This is probably the reason why Blake's designs for Young were among the least powerful and interesting things that he did. Give him the Book of Job, or Dante, and he transcends himself, but with Young or Blair to work upon, though he does remarkable work, yet it somehow falls short of his best.

Mr Frederick s.h.i.+elds, who covered the walls of the Chapel of the Ascension with strange pinks and ten thousand hands, has a.n.a.lysed all the more important of Blake's designs, which amounted to five hundred and thirty-seven. Of these only forty-three were published. _The Night Thoughts_ was to appear in parts: only one part was published, and Young was handed over to Stothard in 1802 before he was to be, in an elaborate dress, a complete success.

The following year (1797) Blake was at work on _The Four Zoas, or The Death and Judgment of the Ancient Man_. He revised this work a few years later at the time he was planning the _Milton_ and _Jerusalem_. I shall have something to say about it when dealing with _Jerusalem_. I will only say just now that the minor prophetic books were preliminary trials to his big flights, and when here, as in _Jerusalem_, a big flight is made, it is found that Blake's mythology has received its completion, and that all the things fermenting in him and striving for utterance do, in these long poems, come to the surface. Anyone who would know him intimately must not be discouraged by their extraordinary appearance, but struggle with them, as with a foreign language, until they yield the last secrets of their mystic author.

CHAPTER VIII

WILLIAM HAYLEY

William Hayley, "the poet," as he delighted to call himself, enjoyed a wide reputation as the author of _The Triumphs of Temper_, which appeared in 1780 and was intended as a poetical and pleasing guide to young ladies how to behave under the provocation of testy fathers and sour aunts, with the promise of a peerless husband if their tempers were triumphant.

For us the poem is pleasantly incongruous and stirs to laughter in the wrong places. The perfect heroine Serena, set down in the midst of artificial society by day, is transported to infernal and supernal regions by night. In the Inferno she sees all the wicked vices in action, and in the Paradise the graces attending on their queen Sensibility. Hayley humbly hoped to emulate Pope's satire in treating of Serena's days, and Dante's sublimities in her nights. He was singularly fortunate in the artists he found to embellish his darling offspring. Stothard and Maria Flaxman, in turn, supplied charming designs, and even Romney was induced to present the divine Emma as Sensibility with her pot of mimosa, to whom Stothard had already done more than justice.

Hayley had been a close student all his life, having mastered Greek and Latin and the more important modern languages. He had read extensively the world's best literature. Taught by Meyer, he had taken up miniature portrait painting till he excelled his master and his eyes failed. He wrote plays which Garrick nearly liked, but which the undiscerning public never liked at all. He reckoned himself not merely a connoisseur in art, music, architecture, and sculpture, but also as one who might have distinguished himself in any one of these difficult arts had envious time permitted. Confident that Heaven had bestowed on him her best gift of poetry, he felt it his duty to renounce his opportunity to excel in so many arts and devote himself to that which all discerning people acknowledged to be the highest.

_The Triumphs of Temper_ was his first great success, and the many highly flattering things said to him by artists and famous literary men confirmed him in the faith, though he had never really doubted, that he was a man of genius. That was the opinion of elegant Mrs Opie, feeling Anna Seward, diffident Romney, copious Hannah More, and portentously learned Edward Gibbon. Yet time has been pitiless with the bard of Suss.e.x, and instead of discovering a steady or even a flickering light s.h.i.+ning in the gross darkness of his times, we of the twentieth century can see in him, if we take the trouble to see at all, nothing but an amusingly solemn specimen of a male Blue-stocking.

With so a.s.sured a position and never a shadow of self-doubt, he was able to live with himself on most cordial terms of good temper and serenity, and, like others of his type, extend his self-esteem to his fellows, particularly if they were publicly admired. To these he generally effected an acquaintance by a polite little letter of self-introduction.

His most important catch was Romney, to whom he was introduced by Meyer in the autumn of 1776. Hayley possessed accidental advantages over Romney in good birth and education. Romney was sufficiently impressed through self-conscious lack of these, and when in addition he found that his diffidence was met by Hayley's confidence, his depression by serenity, he allowed him to gain that ascendancy over him which was out of all proportion to his intrinsic merit, and which has irritated all biographers of the artist against the poet. Yet if Hayley contrived to get possession of Romney and his pictures, he also helped him for a considerable time to fight against his melancholy. Let us in fairness remember that.

Another important friend was Cowper, whom Hayley caught considerably later in life. Visits were exchanged, and Hayley set himself with much good will to combat the ghastly melancholia that was getting its death-grip on him.

After Cowper's death there was some friendly wrangling between Hayley and Lady Hesketh about who should write his Life. Hayley was easily persuaded to undertake it, and by its accomplishment won for himself a latter rain of gratifying applause just when his popularity seemed to be on the decline.

Hayley lived till 1820, which was actually long enough to outlive his public. His _Life of Romney_ was not a success. He and his works would have died together but for his unfortunate habit of fastening himself on to great men. His cancerian grip of them has given him vicarious immortality, and made him obnoxious to the kicks of those who write the lives of Romney, or Cowper, or Blake.

The particular friend of Hayley who most concerns us here was Flaxman. He introduced Blake to Hayley from motives of pure kindness, knowing Blake's struggle to live, and believing that Hayley was just the man to help him.

Flaxman had drawn Hayley's attention to Blake in a letter written as early as 1784, in which he quotes Romney as saying that Blake's historical drawings rank with those of Michael Angelo. But not until 1800 did the two men meet. Early in that year--May 6th--Blake wrote to Hayley to condole with him on the loss of his son Thomas Alphonso, who had been studying sculpture with Flaxman. By September it was settled that Mr and Mrs Blake should leave Lambeth and go and settle at Felpham, where Blake would be only a stone's-throw from Hayley, and ready to help him in his poetical and biographical works by engraving for them suitable designs.

Blake was destined to stay three years at Felpham, and he always regarded this period as marking a most important crisis in his life. Since the publication of his _Poetical Sketches_ in 1783 he was conscious of being under a cloud. His visions that had been so bright and inspired him to songs of such divine simplicity had not vanished, but they had lost their crystalline clearness. His cloudy vision appeared in uncertain art. It is true that his allegiance to the linear schools never wavered, and Michael Angelo remained the supreme master in his eyes, but for a time he was fascinated by the luscious ornament and colour of the Venetian school, and with his pa.s.sion for uniting contraries believed that he might marry Florence and Venice. The same uncertainty appeared in his spiritual life.

We have followed him through various stages of rebellion, and seen how his faith in rebellion received a rude shock from the Reign of Terror. Since then he was learning more and more to explore the riches of the past, but he had not gone far enough to place his rebellion and to see it and that of his rebel contemporaries in its proper historical perspective. He was disturbed also by a restless ambition of worldly success. Many men whose gifts were much inferior to his own were famous and rich. Sir Joshua did all that a spiritually blind man could do, and was reckoned with the giants. Romney, whose art Blake much preferred to Reynolds's (he was decidedly of the Romney faction), on account of its greater simplicity and more scrupulous regard to outline, was sufficiently famous and remunerated; but Blake, whose gifts were rarer than any, had scant recognition and scant money, and he still hoped that with an influential patron he might take his place in contemporary fame, and incidentally make enough money to relieve him of all anxiety for the future. For he was being ground by poverty. His wants were simple enough--food, clothing, materials of work--but when the supply falls even a little below the want, then the grinding process begins and carries on its inexorable work until the spirit breaks. But now friend Flaxman had introduced him to poet Hayley, who was not only famous for his literary work, but also for a remarkable and untiring zeal in the service of those he reckoned his friends.

Blake's hopes rose high, and his spirits overflowed. He wrote an enthusiastic letter to Flaxman attributing to him all his present happiness, and enclosing lines in which he recalls his successive friends "in the heavens"--Milton, Ezra, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Paracelsus, Boehme--and concludes by affirming that he has seen such visions of the American War and the French Revolution that he "could not subsist on the earth, but by conjunction with Flaxman, who knows to forgive nervous fear." Flaxman had studied Swedenborg, and could perfectly understand such language.

On September 21st, 1800, Sunday morning, he writes to the "dear Sculptor of Eternity" that he has arrived at their cottage with Mrs Blake and his sister Catherine, and that Mr Hayley has received them with his usual brotherly affection.

He found Felpham "a sweet place for study." The quiet, cleanness, sweetness, and spiritual atmosphere of the place stirred his cosmic consciousness and gave him quick access to the great memory reaching back far beyond his mortal life, and enabled him to recall his works in eternity that were yet to be produced in time.

And Hayley was excessively kind. Still under a cloud, shaken in self-confidence, Blake's consequent diffidence united with his instinctive trust of men, and for a month he believed that Hayley was a prince.

Hayley was busy decorating his "marine villa," to which he had lately come from Eartham. Flaxman had already been drawn in to help, much as Mrs Mathew had used him at an earlier date; and now Blake was bidden to paint a set of heads of the poets which were to form a frieze to Hayley's library. Hayley was at work on some ballads, _Little Tom the Sailor_ and others, to which Blake was to contribute designs. _Little Tom_ was for the benefit of a Widow Spicer at Folkestone and her orphans, as Blake understood, and also for the emolument of Blake, as we learn from a letter of Hayley's to the Reverend John Johnson.

Hayley always loved to teach his friends. He had been anxious to improve Romney's epistolary style; and now it occurred to him that he might teach Blake miniature portrait painting. As usual, his purpose was thoroughly kind. He did not think that Blake's work had much marketable value; but he believed that if he proved an apt pupil he could procure him plenty of sitters from among his neighbours who would pay well, and thus Blake would become a real success.

In this Hayley showed himself a wise child of this world, but hardly a child of light. Blake's genius did not lie in drawing portraits. A face for him immediately became a symbol, and lost its time traits as it gained in eternal significance. It is often said that Enitharmon was Mrs Blake; but if this were so, she was Mrs Blake as no one but Blake could ever see her. In reality he possessed the faculty which was pre-eminent in the authors of the Book of Genesis and St John's Gospel. As the characters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Peter, James, and John were seen and portrayed in an eternal light, so likewise Blake would have striven to present his opulent sitters, but the result would not have been that for which they would have been willing to pay their money.

Blake took kindly and without question to the new task. "Miniature," he says, "has become a G.o.ddess in my eyes.... I have a great many orders, and they multiply." Hayley was glowing with satisfaction. But Blake, in one little month, after repeated efforts of self-deception, could no longer hide from himself that he saw Hayley as he really was. He was learned, of course, and genteel, and kind, and admired with gush what it was correct to admire. But of insight there was none. He was born under a watery sign and not a fiery. He was really a crab ambling around his enclosed garden with his lame leg, and getting his claws into the tender skin of those who, he had been told, were really men of fire.

Blake's disappointment was bitter. His patron was blind to his real genius, to which he must at all costs be faithful. Hayley was, and continued to be, very much a corporeal friend, but he was a spiritual enemy. Blake's fond hopes were dashed. He tottered on the verge of a horror of great darkness, and escaped the darkness only by falling into a mild and pleasant slumber, lulled by Hayley's amazing amiability, mildness, and crooning serenity. From this slumber he might--who knows?--never have awakened, but for the discernment of his real friends--Flaxman and b.u.t.ts--whose faith finally aroused him and drew him away from the enchanted ground.

But though he saw, he said nothing. His spiritual friends (on the other side) commanded him "to bear all and be silent, and to go through all without murmuring, and, in fine, hope, till his three years shall be accomplished." When Hayley was more than usually exasperating, Blake vented himself in an epigram, and, much relieved, went on quietly.

Thus, when Blake was convinced that Providence did not mean him to paint miniatures, he wrote:

"When Hayley finds out what you cannot do, That is the very thing he'll set you to do."

Again, Blake discovered that Hayley's virtues and faults were both of the feminine order. It was a feminine instinct that had prompted him to write _The Triumphs of Temper_ and the _Essay on Old Maids_. A brilliant epigram of Blake's accounts for this odd psychic twist, and flashes Hayley before us:

"Of Hayley's birth this was the happy lot: His mother on his father him begot."