William Blake Part 9

That was the true state of affairs. But Blake obeyed his spiritual friends, and for a long time no sign appeared in his letters that there was anything the matter.

Hayley was also anxious to teach Blake Greek. Like most men of his times, he believed that no man could attain to the highest degree of excellence who had not mastered Greek and Latin. He probably thought that a knowledge of Greek would at least correct some of Blake's vagaries. Blake was quick at languages, and soon Hayley was able to write to Johnson: "Blake is just become a Grecian, and literally learning the language.... The new Grecian greets you affectionately."

Blake, however, never attained to his teacher's proficiency; he learnt just enough to be able to formulate to himself the nature of the Greek genius, and to see it in relation to his own. "The Muses were the Daughters of Memory." The inspiration of the Bible was from a higher source than Memory. Memory is the indelible record of experience.

Inspiration is always a breaking into experience to the creation of something new. Then only is the new creation handed over to Memory. Thus Inspiration feeds Memory, but is not its fruit. Imagination is the true instrument of Inspiration. When Blake saw all this clearly, he wrote in the Preface to _Milton_: "We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are just and true to our own Imaginations." Greek and Latin have their abiding place in Memory, and Blake was about to write fine things about Memory, which he calls the Halls of Los; but for himself they did not stimulate his imagination. To master them would add to his culture; but mere culture is always barren.

Hayley's last attempt to teach Blake was in March 1805, the month in which Klopstock died. He translated parts of Klopstock's _Messiah_ aloud for Blake's benefit. Certain lines by Blake with big gaps have been preserved, which are hard for us to understand. The only thing we are quite sure about them is that they were written "after _too much_ Klopstock."

There was one great name that held Hayley and Blake alike at this time. We know that Blake had always admired Milton's superb gifts, while he disliked his theology. Blake's special friends had also been preoccupied with Milton. Fuseli, for example, not only disagreed with Dr Johnson's strictures on the poet, but he had been inspired by his ardent imagination to paint a series of pictures ill.u.s.trating the poet's works, and these had been on public view at a Milton Gallery opened on May 20th, 1799, and reopened March 21st, 1800.

While Blake was with Hayley he naturally heard much of Milton from his latest biographer; and again their united interest in Cowper led them back to Milton, because of Cowper's cherished desire to edit Milton, with notes and translations.

In 1790, when Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery was a success, "bookseller"

Johnson was fired with the idea of bringing out a magnificent Milton Gallery, "surpa.s.sing any work that had appeared in England." It was to contain Cowper's notes and translations and Fuseli's ill.u.s.trations, for which the best engravers were to be found. The services of Sharpe and Bartolozzi were enlisted, and Blake was asked to engrave _Adam and Eve observed by Satan_. The project fell through owing to Cowper's mental indisposition; but when Hayley was engaged on the _Life of Cowper_ and Blake on its engravings, Cowper's _Milton_ came uppermost again in their minds, and it occurred to Hayley that it would be a good plan to bring out a fine edition of the delayed work, with engravings after designs by Romney, Flaxman, and Blake. The profits of the work were "to be appropriated to erect a monument to the memory of Cowper in St Paul's or Westminster Abbey." To this work was to be added Hayley's _Life of Milton_, so that the whole necessarily would spread out to three quarto volumes. The project was abandoned. Instead of the three volumes, one volume with Cowper's notes finally appeared in 1808, and instead of the proceeds going to a monument in St Paul's, they were given for the emolument of an orphan G.o.dson of the Suss.e.x Bard.

Thus Blake's thought and time were fully occupied. Besides the designs for Hayley's ballads, engravings were required for the Cowper _Life_. b.u.t.ts was to be kept supplied with a fresh picture as fast as Blake could paint it; and his own more secret thought was ruminating over Milton, and his stay at Felpham, and his dreams for the future. These were to take form in his longest poetical works--_Milton_, _The Four Zoas_, and _Jerusalem_; but as they are of extreme importance for understanding Blake, they must be kept over to another chapter.

Blake was thoroughly interested in this work, for he admired Cowper, and considered that his letters were "the very best letters that were ever published." It is necessary to remember his reverence for Cowper, as also for Wesley and Whitefield, because in the poems there are many vigorous attacks made on religion, and some of Blake's modern imitators follow him in the attack. The moderns for the most part are irreligious, but Blake professed to love true religion and true science. What he hated above all things was religion divorced from life and art. Such religion becomes very intense, as in the Pharisees, and when great decisions are called for, as in the trial of Christ, it invariably utters its voice on the wrong side.

Blake's engravings for the Cowper _Life_ were after designs by other artists, the most important being the head of Cowper by Romney. To engrave after another is irksome, and there was further irritation when he found that Hayley was as ready to instruct him how to engrave as to paint miniatures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MIRTH AND HER COMPANIONS.]

Since Hayley could never disguise his inmost thoughts, Blake soon perceived that he intended to keep him strictly to the graver, as he had no opinion of his original works, whether in poetry or design. Blake found relief in painting for Thomas b.u.t.ts, who was his friend and patron for over thirty years, and to whom he sent exquisite pictures, and some letters priceless for their revelation of the writer.

From these we learn the nature of Blake's spiritual crisis at Felpham.

Miniature portrait painting drove home to him the vast difference between historical designing and portrait painting. Portrait requires nature before the painter's eye, historical designing depends on imagination.

Nature and imagination were as ant.i.thetical in Blake's eye as nature and grace in the theologian's, and just here he kept as far away from pantheism as he could in his obstinate determination to keep nature and imagination as separate as the sheep and the goats. While agreeing with Blake in keeping them apart, I suppose most of us would say that the finest portrait painting depended on imagination no less than historical designing.

The atmosphere of Felpham induced in Blake long fits of abstraction and brooding, and he pushed his thoughts on miniature forwards to the recollecting of all his scattered thoughts on art. He determined to discontinue all attempts at eclecticism. Venetian _finesse_ and Flemish _picturesque_ were "excellencies of an inferior order" and "incompatible with the grand style." He was convinced that the reverse of this--uniformity of colour and long continuation of lines--produces grandeur. So said Sir Joshua, who did not always practise what he preached in his discourses; so said Michael Angelo, whose profession and practice were one; so said Blake, who was decided, while adhering to the principles of the great Florentine, to be true to his own genius, so that his work should be as distinct from Michael Angelo's as Caracci's from Correggio's, or Correggio's from Raphael's.

Here was strength for Blake in knowing his own mind about his art and methods, and following it. It helped him out of his paralysing diffidence, which Hayley fostered, and made more clear the real issue between him and his patron. He strove to see the situation in the largest light possible.

The old question of G.o.d's providence exercised him. Did G.o.d bring him to Felpham? Did G.o.d keep him there? If so, it must be because it was not fit for him at present to be employed in greater things. That thought kept him patient. When it is proper his talents will be properly exercised in public. But G.o.d guides by cleansing man's understanding and pus.h.i.+ng him forwards to a decision. He understood his art, yet Hayley objected to his doing anything but the mere drudgery of business. He trusted his art, and he saw how he must work. Let him trust himself, and then? He saw all clearly now, as he had seen it in the first month, although he had stifled his apprehensions. G.o.d had given him a great talent. It would be affected humility to deny it. If he stayed with Hayley he would paint miniatures, make money, and make his beloved Kate comfortable for life; but he would sell his divine birthright. If he obeyed G.o.d by following the gifts He had bestowed on him, then farewell to Hayley and lovely Felpham: he must return without delay to London, and once more he and Kate together must face the grinding life of poverty. Anyone who knows Blake must know what decision he would make. He made it silently, irrevocably. By the beginning of October 1803 he and Kate were back again in London, lodging in South Molton Street, with a sense of escape and liberty which more than compensated for the uncertain prospect of the future.

Blake had not quite finished with Felpham. Before leaving he had had a disagreeable affair with a private in Captain Leathe's troop of 1st or Royal Dragoons. From a letter of Blake's to Mr b.u.t.ts, dated August 16th, 1803, we learn that this man was found by him in the garden, invited to a.s.sist by the gardener without his knowledge. He desired him politely to go away; and on his refusal, again repeated his request. The man then threatened to knock out his eyes, and made some contemptuous remarks about his person. Blake thereupon, his pride being affronted, took the man by the elbows and pushed him before him down the road for about fifty yards.

In revenge, the soldier charged Blake with uttering sedition and d.a.m.ning the King. Blake had no difficulties in gathering witnesses for his defence. He was summoned before a bench of justices at Chichester and forced to find bail. Hayley kindly came forward with 50, Mr Seagrave, printer at Chichester, and protege of Hayley's, with another 50, and himself bound in 100 for his appearance at the Quarter Sessions after Michaelmas. The trial came off at Chichester on January 11th, 1804. The Duke of Richmond presided as magistrate. Hayley had procured for the defence Samuel Rose (Cowper's friend), and between them they had no difficulty in releasing Blake.

There would have been no need to repeat this story, except that the event made a deep impression on Blake. Skofield, the soldier's name, became in his mind an abiding symbol, and the soldier's contempt for his person decided him to change his deportment.

Blake's humble birth and childlike trust of his fellows had united to produce in him a too pa.s.sive and docile manner. There was plenty of fire within, and the lamb knew how to roar; but he judged that his roar need not be provoked if his appearance somehow warded people off from taking a liberty with him. Diffidence is not a virtue. Blake's too pa.s.sive deportment changed as he gradually became more self-confident. Hence the Skofield episode left a lasting mark on both his mind and body.

Blake's decisive step in leaving Hayley and following his own will immediately preceded the noonday glory of his genius. Hayley must have thought that Blake was extremely ungrateful after the invariable kindness that he had shown him; and if Hayley liked to call his neighbouring friends around him and put his case to them, probably all, without a single dissentient voice, would have agreed that he had shown himself a Christian and a gentleman, and that charity itself could not demand of him to trouble himself any further about such a crazed visionary as Blake.

Blake not only thought otherwise, but turning to the Gospel as he was wont to do, he found a word of Christ that convinced him that Christ was on his side. "He who is not with me is against me." There were a thousand evidences that Hayley was not with the real Blake that was striving to manifest himself in time, and therefore he was against him, and an enemy to his genius. Blake went to Felpham shaken in himself and diffident. When there is diffidence (dispersal of faith) there is a lamentable waste of precious energy. Blake left Felpham rea.s.sured that the light he had seen in his youth was the true light, and confident (confidence is concentration of faith) that if he remained faithful to his real self, he would also be found on the side of Christ, and that this true self-confidence must result in beautiful work of the creative order. That was the supreme hour in his life. The full vision must come. Like Habakkuk, he was on his tower, a.s.sured that though it tarry it would come and not tarry. He was not impatient. "The just shall live by his faith."

Blake had faith, and he asked no more; but he gained a thousandfold more, and the full vision came to him in a way that must seem odd to a child of the world, but wonderfully appropriate to one who understands what is the nature of the fire that sustains and consumes the artist's soul.

During the months of 1803-4 a certain Count Truchsess, who owned a valuable collection of pictures, exhibited them at a gallery in the New Road, opposite Portland Place, London. The pictures were by German, Dutch, Flemish, Italian, Spanish, and French masters. The masters included Albert Durer, Hans Holbein senior, Breughel, Vandyck, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Bourdon, Watteau.

Blake went to see the pictures, and must have been unusually excited and thrilled at seeing works by Michael Angelo and Albert Durer directly, and not through the blurred medium of poor engravings. The divine frenzy stirred in his soul. The next day, suddenly, he was enlightened with the light he enjoyed in his youth. The cloud that had hung over him for twenty years vanished, the grim spectre (reason) who had haunted his ways and checked his inspiration fled with the cloud. Blake was drunk with intellectual vision, and in his drunken hilarity came to himself, knew what was his proper work, and once for all gave himself with pa.s.sionate surrender to that which his whole and undivided being saw to be good.

It will take us the rest of our time gathering some of the fruits of Blake's richly matured genius.

Blake wrote an enthusiastic account of his mystic experience to Hayley, of all men--Hayley who had so exasperated him, and made him sore, and, in his soreness, say biting things. Now he was thoroughly at peace with himself, and could regard Hayley with the kindness and tolerance that before had been impossible. For a while he continued to correspond with him while he was occupied with his _Life of Romney_. Blake engraved a portrait of the artist for the frontispiece which never appeared, and a fine engraving of Romney's _s.h.i.+pwreck_, which appeared along with the other engravings by Caroline Watson. The _Life of Romney_ was a dreary performance. Like the _Life of Cowper_, it revealed its subject only when it gave his letters.

For the rest, it abounds in a welter of elegant eighteenth-century words and phrases which a.s.sure us that "the poet" never saw even Romney and Cowper as they really were, and therefore it is not surprising that he saw in Blake merely a mild and harmless visionary who might do paying work if only he would listen to the wise counsel that he was always ready to give.

Peace be with Hayley! Among those that appear before Peter's Gate, we cannot help thinking that he will be more readily admitted than the vast crowd of eighteenth-century squires who will knock at the gate, and stamp and fume if it is not opened to them on the instant.

CHAPTER IX

THE BIG PROPHETIC BOOKS

Blake's "three years' slumber," as he called it, hypnotized, I presume, by Hayley's lulling kindness, were amongst the most important in his life. If he slumbered, yet his dreams were unusually active; and, since feelings are more intense in dreams than when wide-awake, it is not surprising that Blake's inner life was in a violent commotion. Any stirring of his feeling immediately set his supersensual faculty vigorously to work. Visible persons and things were tracked back to invisible princ.i.p.alities and powers, his cosmic consciousness quickened, the need to create possessed him, and he found relief only in giving rhythmic expression to his spiritual reading of mundane things.

This was the mental process that we saw at work in his _French Revolution_ and _America_. Now it was moving among the persons and things connected with his own life; but it is not less important, for the same mighty agencies govern individuals and nations alike, and link them up together, so that they are interchangeable manifestations of eternal laws and states.

The practical outcome was _Milton_, _Jerusalem_, and a revision of _The Four Zoas_, begun some time about 1795. These claim our close attention, for they contain, for those who have patience to probe their forbidding exterior, the treasure of one who had run the road of excess, not of profligacy but rebellion, and now reached the palace of wisdom.

On April 25th, 1803, Blake wrote to Thomas b.u.t.ts: "I have written this poem (_Milton_) from immediate dictation." Later in the same year (July 6th), he writes: "I can praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the secretary; the authors are in Eternity. I consider it the grandest Poem that this world contains. Allegory addressed to the intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal understanding, is my definition of the most sublime Poetry." In the Preface to _Milton_ Blake a.s.serts, in effect, that Shakespeare and Milton were shackled by the Daughters of Memory, who must become the Daughters of Inspiration before work of the highest creative order can be produced.

Here he regards Memory as a hindrance, and comparing the Preface with the above quotations, we learn that he strove to put Memory aside while the authors in Eternity were dictating to him.

But in the _Jerusalem_ there are, scattered throughout, references to what he calls the Halls of Los, familiar to readers of mystical literature as the Akas.h.i.+c or Etheric records, and called by Yeats the great Memory.

"All things acted on Earth are seen in the bright Sculptures of Los's Halls, and every Age renews its powers from these Works."[4]

Here Memory serves to renew an age, and then becomes the recipient of the age's inspired works.

These pa.s.sages, taken together, open up again the great questions of Inspiration, Memory, Creation, Mechanism, and since each one of these words is now made to stand for differing conceptions, they are ambiguous, and we may not use them without first defining sharply what we mean. We speak of the true poet like Shakespeare, the true mystic like Blake, the true saint like Catherine of Siena, and the true Book like the Bible as all being inspired, yet in each case the inspiration is of a different order. The common element which justifies the one word is originality.

Shakespeare's inspiration depends on the great Memory, on his own complex nature, and his consuming spirit of observation; but at the moment of his inspiration, all these things seem in abeyance, and the words well up as if a spirit not himself had given them to him. His originality consists in the unique impression that his rich understanding gives of the elements supplied by the Past and Present, but not in the creation of a new element. The same may be said of Dante, Milton, Sh.e.l.ley.

The inspiration of the Bible contains all these elements, which const.i.tute its purely human side, but there is something else which has given it its supreme power in all ages. The writers of the Bible remember and observe and think, but they also utter themselves as they are moved by the Holy Ghost. It is this last mysterious happening that inspires the creative element. The inspired poet has aided his observation and experience by drawing on the great Memory, the inspired Bible has added to the great Memory something that was not in it before. The poet can renew us, yet keeps us within the circle of the cosmic consciousness. The Bible can inspire us and lift us out of the circle far above the seven heavens of the cosmos. And that is our rescue from that nightmare of eternal recurrence which set Nietzsche's fine brain tottering down to its foundations.

The inspiration of the poet is general, and that of the Bible unique; but there still remains a special kind to which Blake, like many other mystics, laid claim.

When Blake was perplexed at Felpham, he referred to his spiritual guides, who were in their turn subject to G.o.d. They, according to him, were the real authors and inspirers of his prophetic books. This sort of language was rare in the eighteenth century, but is quite familiar to readers of theosophical books, ancient or modern.

They teach that there are seven planes of consciousness from the physical to the mahaparanirvanic, which together make up the cosmos. The two highest planes are beyond the reach of human conception; but there are not a few to-day who claim to have attained to the fifth nirvanic plane. Here the consciousness is so finely developed, and its vibrations respond so readily, that the subject comes into touch with other intelligences, and often submits to them entirely for guidance.

In St Paul's day this teaching was familiar at Ephesus in the form of gnosticism. He did not disbelieve in the reality of the seven planes, but he disagreed with the gnostics in their blind faith in the trustworthiness of the guides. He believed that many of them were so evil that when Christians became conscious of them, they needed the whole armour of G.o.d to protect them against their wiles. Here is the difference between the Christian and pantheistic teaching. The pantheist thinks that because a thing is spiritual it is therefore holy and good; Christianity believes in fallen spiritual beings. The pantheist believes that to reach the nirvanic plane is to attain to holiness; Christianity says that all the planes of the cosmos are tainted, and if one reached even the seventh, one would still have need of cleansing. Theosophy keeps one for ever within the cosmic circle; Christianity lifts one beyond the circle into the ascended Christ, and teaches that one is safe on the different subtle planes of consciousness only while one abides in Him. Doubtless there are good guides, but the danger is great because it is so difficult to try the spirits.

Blake here as elsewhere wavers between the two views. With certain reservations he dips on the Christian side. He travels round the cosmos, but in a spiral; and the top of his spiral--his Jacob's Ladder--reaches not to the seventh plane but to the Throne of G.o.d, which is far above the charmed circle. Hence man is able to climb beyond the defiled cosmos into the pure heaven of G.o.d. That is his redemption.

Blake's vision, then, ranging freely among the planes of consciousness, gives him access to the great Memory which is within the cosmos; and at rare moments he goes beyond the cosmos, and then his words proceed from the highest inspiration.