name one with whom I was united in close friendship, the late Secretary of the Civil Service Commission, John Gorham Maitland, the extent of whose powers and attainments his great modesty veiled from the world. At Cambridge he seemed never to have any work to do; yet he was third classic of his year, second Chancellor's medallist, and seventh wrangler. His mind embraced all subjects, and was as fitted for the work of life as for speculation. His superiors in the Civil Service Commission-I can speak for one of them at least, Sir John Lefevre-knew his capacity and worth. A few young men at College, attracted to companionship by a common taste for literature and speculation, make a Society for a weekly essay and discussion. Such societies have often been made in public schools and Universities. This Society was founded about 1820 by some members of St. John's College, among whom was Tomlinson, the late Bishop of Gibraltar. In a few years it gravitated to Trinity, and it began to be famous in the time of Buller, Sterling, Maurice, and Trench. Then came the halo of Tennyson's young celebrity. Mr. Venables has alluded to the Society in his Life of Henry Lushington, as the chief pleasure and occupation of Lushington's Cambridge days. Quoting from one of Lushington's Essays a charming passage of reminiscences of his college life, Mr. Venables adds to the quotation a happy description of his own. "There is,' he says in one of the accompanying essays, a deep truth and tenderness in the tone in which Giusti recalls those four happy years spent without care; the days, the nights "smoked away" in free gladness, in laughter, in uninterrupted talk; the aspirations, the free open-hearted converse, as it was then, of some who now meet us disguised as formal worldlings; all the delights of that life, whether at Cambridge or at Pisa, that comes not again.' Youthful conversation of the higher class, though it would seem crude and pedantic to mature minds, is more ambitious, more earnest, and more fruitful, than the talk which furnishes excitement and relaxation in later life. Our Cambridge discussions would have been insufferably tedious to an experienced and accomplished listener of fifty; but in the audacity of metaphysical conjectures or assertions, in the partisanship of literary enthusiasm, in the exuberant spirits, the occasional melancholy, the far-fetched humour of youth, all were helping each other, governed by the incessant influence of contagious sympathy. Like many past and future generations of students, we spent our days— 'In search of deep philosophy, Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, Some fifteen generations of young "Apostles" have passed from college into life. A few have gained eminence, several distinction. The just pride of members of the Society in the fame of its greater ornaments cannot surely be proscribed by the most cynical. Within the Society itself there is no hierarchy of greatness. All are friends. Those who have been contemporaries meet through life as brothers. All, old and young, have a bond of sympathy in fellow-membership. All have a common joy and a common interest in the memory of bright days that are gone, of daily rambles and evening meetings, of times when they walked and talked with single-hearted friends in scenes hallowed by many memories and traditions-or by the banks of Cam, or in the lime-tree avenues of Trinity, or within sound of the great organ of the great chapel of King's, or in the rural quiet of Madingley or Grantchester,sometimes perhaps "Yearning for the large excitement which the coming years would yield," but all, as they stood on the threshold of life, hopeful and happy, gladdened by genial influences which are never forgotten, and sunned by warm friendships of youth which never die. WILLIAM BLAKE. THE life of a most extraordinary man has recently appeared, and should be studied by all who are interested in the curiosities of literature and art. To this generation he is nearly unknown. To his contemporaries he most frequently seemed to be a madman. Yet of this strange being-at once a poet and a painter-Wordsworth said: "There is "something in his madness which "interests me more than the sanity of "Lord Byron and Walter Scott." Fuseli and Flaxman declared that the time would come when his designs should be as much sought after and treasured in portfolios as those of Michael Angelo. "Blake is d -good to steal from," said Fuseli. 66 And, ah! sir," said Flaxman, "his poems are as grand as his pictures." Who is the unknown genius that is praised so highly, and what has he done? The answer is given in two goodly volumes, to which three ardent admirers have contributed. The late Mr. Gilchrist, who distinguished himself by the production of a good biography of Etty, has traced the incidents of Blake's life; Mr. Dante Rossetti, one of the leading preRaphaelite painters, has edited Blake's poetry and criticised his style of art; and Mr. W. M. Rossetti has produced a critical catalogue of Blake's designs. The work produced by three such able men is very interesting. Perhaps they overrate Blake's merits, but their opinion, if exaggerated, is worth examining; and they have done really a good work in rescuing from oblivion one of the most extraordinary men of our nation. William Blake was born in 1757, and he died in 1827. He was born, he 1 The Life of William Blake, "Pictor Ignotus," with Selections from his Poems and other Writings: By the late Alexander Gilchrist, author of "The Life of William Etty:" illustrated from Blake's own works in facsimile by W. J. Linton, and in Photolithography; with a few of Blake's original Plates. "Did lived, and he died in London. His threescore and ten years covered a most important, a most active period in the history of English art and poetry; and what manner of man he was we can see at once in the earliest incident of his childhood which is known. When he had not yet entered his teens he saw a vision. He beheld a tree at Peckham Rye all filled with angels. He told his father of the sight on coming home, and was about to receive a flogging for the supposed lie, when his mother interfered and saved him for that once. All his life he saw such visions. you ever see a fairy's funeral, madam ?" he once said, quite gravely, to a lady; "I have." And then he described how, in the stillness of his garden, he had seen a procession of little creatures of the size and colour of green and grey grasshoppers, bearing a body laid out on a roseleaf, which they buried with songs. At this time he was an artist, and drew with wonderful truthfulness the sights which he saw in vision. really saw what he drew; and if the vision changed its appearance he could not go on. He He once saw and drew the ghost of a flea! See the portrait of this amazing monster at page 255-a sketch of singular vigour, which any one once seeing will never forget. As he was drawing this ghostly flea, it appeared in vision to move its mouth, and he had to take the portrait over again. Mr. Richmond, the well-known portrait-painter, was one of his admirers, and finding his invention flag during a whole fortnight, went to Blake, as was his wont, for advice. When he told Blake that his power of invention had been failing him, the strange visionary turned suddenly to Mrs. Blake and said, "It is just so with us, is it not, for weeks together when the visions forsake us ? What do we do then, Kate ?" "We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake,” and the vision came. He would insist on it, too, that no one could really draw well any imaginary scene who did not see it as a reality in vision. He was surrounded with strange sights and sounds which nobody else saw or heard. "What! when the sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?" he supposes some one to ask, and he answers, 66 Oh! no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!' I question not my corporeal eye, any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through, and not with it." Although this is the side of his character which first fixes our attention, Blake was, after all, not a mere visionary, but had a sharp, observing eye for external nature, and understood perfectly that no one can draw visions well unless he can first draw real things well. He drew well and easily, and he had a quick and clear insight into character. At the age of fourteen his father proposed to bind him as an apprentice to Ryland, the engraver. "Father," he said, "I do not like the man's face; he will live to be hanged." And twelve years afterwards Ryland actually was hanged. He was bound apprentice to Busire, the engraver, and worked hard under him till he was twenty-one years of age. Then he studied in the newly-formed Royal Academy, and began to make original designs, some like those of his friend Stothard, to illustrate books. At the same time he was cultivating poetry. When he was yet fourteen, indeed, he threw off verses of no mean merit, and thenceforward he wrote what, for the time, we must consider very remarkable poems, though, regarding his poetical works as a whole, we cannot share Mr. Gilchrist's surprise that Blake is little known as an English poet. For the most part his poems are wanting in form, or they are difficult to understand, or the sentiment which they convey is out of all proportion to the world of fact. We cannot without long quotations, which no one would much care to read, of his poems; but we can, in a short example, show what we mean by objecting to the disproportion between his ideas and facts: A robin redbreast in a cage A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons This is rather a wild way of saying that redbreasts ought not to be caged, that a dovecot is a pretty sight, and that cock-fighting is a barbarous sport. Apart from these faults, which will prevent sober critics from speaking of Blake's poems in the somewhat extravagant terms adopted by Mr. Rossetti and by Mr. Gilchrist, there is a power and an originality in his style which cannot be overlooked, especially when we remember the date to which most of the poems belong. One of the most curious studies in criticism concerns the rise and fall of Pope's poetical ascendancy in the last century. So much has been written upon this theme that it may seem to be now exhausted; but the truth is, that we are not yet in full possession of the facts that would enable us to trace with perfect accuracy the movement either of flow or of ebb. In the middle of last century we find Pope enthroned in our literature with imperial power. So far as we can trace, the first conscious or critical lapsing from his authority-the first open treason--is to be found in a work published in 1787 by a young man of twenty-two. Henry Headley, of Trinity College, Oxford, then gave to the world a book of beauties, which he entitled, "Select Beauties of Ancient English Poets, with Remarks." Among these remarks will be found a most determined protest against the influence of Pope. He tells us that the translation of Homer, timed as it was, operated like an inundation on our literature; that the consequences which have ensued from the sway of Pope have been full of harm; that "in proportion as his "works were read and the dazzle of his "not originally have been scribblers in 66 verse, were gained, and the art of "tagging smooth couplets, without any "reference to the character of a poet, "became an almost indispensable requi"site in a fashionable education;" that hence arose "a spurious taste" which "reprobated and set at defiance our older masters;" and that "to cull "words, vary pauses, adjust accents, "diversify cadence, and by, as it were, "balancing the line, make the first part "of it betray the second," had become the chief accomplishment of an age whose poetical art seemed to consist entirely "of a suite of traditional "imagery, hereditary similes, readiness "of rhyme, and volubility of syllables." But the revolt thus openly proclaimed by the daring young critic, in 1787, had for some time been secretly fermenting, and it is common in this connexion to fix upon the publication of Percy's "Reliques," in 1765, as the first distinct sign of a change. Now it is universally allowed that the most remarkable specimens in Percy, of what may be termed ballad-thinking, are of Scottish origin; and Mr. Robert Chambers, in a recent tract which has not received the attention it deserves, attempts to make good the position that these famed Scottish ballads are by no means of such ancient origin as Percy imagined; that, in fact, they were produced in the early part of last century. We have not yet examined into this question so closely as to be able to give a decisive answer to it, and we reserve to ourselves the right of hereafter rejecting Mr. Chambers's theory; but in the meantime we cannot help thinking that he has made out a fair case for inquiry. The great difficulty of the question depends on the nature of the evidence which has to be weighed. It turns almost wholly on the delicacies of style and other points of internal evidence, which no cautious critic will care to decide off-hand. To detect and follow out resemblances is always a very ticklish task. The resemblance which strikes us to-day we cannot see to the comparison many fresh times before we can quite make up our minds. In this case we start back with astonishment from the conclusion that "the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens" is a veritable product of Pope's own day and generation. Yet Mr. Chambers has made out a strong case in favour of that conclusion. And if in accordance with this theory it should in the end prove that some of the best ballads in Percy-those which secured for his three volumes their chief influencewere produced in Scotland at the very time when Pope was in England elaborating his style and establishing his supremacy, it will then follow that the seeds of the revolt against the English poet were being sown at the very same time when his authority began to be planted in the hearts of the people. Parallel with the movement of poetry in England there began a movement of poetry in Scotland. Nothing could be more splendid or self-asserting than the beginnings of the former; nothing more humble and retiring than the beginnings of the latter. But ere long the influence of the unpretending crept into the domain of pretentious song, grew there into favour, at length overthrew the giant, and great was the downfall. Now Blake asserted his originality at a time when it was an extraordinary merit to do so-when as yet the ballad style which Percy favoured had not thoroughly told upon the public ear. Blake was eight years of age when, in 1765 (Mr. Gilchrist is wrong in the date 1760), Percy published his ballads, and he began to write in his eleventh year. His poems show a remarkable precocity, that does not suffer by comparison with the similar precocity of Chatterton, who was but four years ahead of him in age. By the year 1770 Chatterton had done his work and died at the age of seventeen. His younger compeer had begun to compose two years before, and had produced some strains which, for his age, are quite wonderful. The following piece was written certainly before the boy was fourteen, and shows a rare How sweet I roam'd from field to field, He shew'd me lilies for my hair, With sweet May-dews my wings were wet, And shut me in his golden cage. He loves to sit and hear me sing, And mocks my loss of liberty. To our thinking the finest verses penned by Blake are those addressed to a tiger; and whoever will read them, remembering the sort of style which was in vogue at the time of their composition, will have no difficulty in detecting in them the notes of a man of true genius. If this be madness, it is that species of it to which all genius is said to be near akin : Tiger, tiger, burning bright In what distant deeps or skies And what shoulder and what art What the hammer, what the chain, he is quite unintelligible; if he is not unintelligible, then he is either enigmatical, or he says common things with a disproportionate ponderosity, not of words, but of images. We gave some examples from the passage in which Blake tells us that a cock-fight "doth the rising sun affright." Here is more in the same style of disproportionate grandeur : Kill not the moth nor butterfly, The bleat, the bark, bellow and roar, It is when he turns from the sublime and the difficult to the simple and easy, that he shows to best best advantage. Witness the following bit of simplicity : Piping down the valleys wild, And he, laughing, said to me: While he wept with joy to hear. In a book, that all may read.' And I stain'd the water clear, Every child may joy to hear. Blake was peculiar in his mode of publication. He engraved his poems, he surrounded each page with drawings to illustrate the text, and he carefully coloured these drawings by hand. His illustrative designs, whether mixed up with the text or drawn on a separate page, are of various degrees of merit and of interest. In every design there is evident the perfect ease of a master. |