which also recalls the earlier poem called the Mental Traveller

Her fingers number every nerve,

Just as a miser counts his gold,-
She lives upon his shrieks and cries,

And she grows young as he grows old.

All of which has to do with Blake's annoyance at the insistence by Hayley on the beauties of scansion in Greek poetry, and the lack of it in portions of Blake's own. Blake, who could alter but could not correct, felt his inspiration withered up.

The "shrieks and cries" of the Mental Traveller are heard again in Jerusalem, page 67, line 61.

The "human form " of Imagination is being "bound down" there, just as Hayley wanted to bind it down, by tying Blake to drudgery in art and "numbering every fibre" by scansion in poetry, but Blake would not be bound. Hayley also rebelled against his Biblical phraseology and preferred Greek gods and goddesses.

In the world at large Blake traced the "corporeal" war of the "silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword" to the reasoning" mathematical form, and all else that goes to the memory and that ends, at its highest, in "Vala," that aspect of Nature "built by the reasoning power in Man," through whom came war on earth. War, called "Luvah's winepress," is further defined in Vala as energy enslaved." War is argument in the head, slaughter in the heart, and sexual love without imagination in the loins, in one plane, but if you pass "earth's central joint" you see all this in reverse order.

66

This theory is comprehensible when we remember that everything has a spiritual cause and not a natural cause," and that whether Blake be right about Greek art or not (“the Isles of Grecia lovely "), certainly war will end when mankind are able to divide their emotions between the contemplation of poetic beauty and the forgiveness of sins.

From November 1801 to February 1802 Blake was reading Greek with Hayley. They began because Hayley in writing the Life of Cowper wished to form some opinion of his translations of Homer, and Blake's company helped him in the weary task of reading these over and, as Hayley's letters tell us, "comparing them with the original." This led to the picking up by Blake of some smattering of Greek,

and to his falling into a state of rebellion against Hayley's attempt to fasten Greek rules of art upon him. He had already strongly resented being asked to admire Klopstock when German was the favourite language with Hayley.

The first of the scraps of doggerel printed among the Resentments" (see Chatto and Windus's edition of Blake's Poems) and the isolated prose page on Homer and Virgil, called a "Sibylline leaf" by Gilchrist, show the state of irritation to which Hayley now reduced him. The latter utterances show that Hayley was a particular nuisance in exclaiming about the unity of Homer. "Of course," says Blake, "every poem is a perfect unity, but why Homer's is peculiarly so, I cannot tell."

At first Blake works off his wrath in these "Sibylline leaves," but presently he feels that more is needed. He remains uneasy. He attempts to convert Hayley. But Hayley is obstinate, and Blake betrays this naïvely by writing a year later to Butts, "I do not wish to imitate by being obstinate." Then he sees that much of the wickedness which he found in Sir Joshua Reynolds (artistic wickedness), and that he rebuked in his notes to the Discourses, which we shall presently read, and in his myth of Palamabron in Vala, is repeated with emphasis in Hayley's poetic position. He writes Milton in consequence. He sees much poetry in the classics, but detects—as we all are prepared now to admitthat myth of an older time is found in a much altered state in their poems, as traditions of human proportion belonging to an older art are in their sculpture. But Blake discovered this for himself. So he begins his Milton, and the preface contains what he said in vain (because too urbanely) to selfsatisfied Hayley.

Gilchrist makes a mistake about this subject through thinking that Jerusalem and not Milton was written at Felpham.

În times but recently passed Blake had been of different attitude towards Greek art. A letter to Mr. Cumberland, which is here given in full because it has not yet been published, shows his feeling in 1800, just before he came to Felpham.

"Greece" is mentioned even in the prophetic books in two totally different tones. It is within the intellectual temple built by Urizen that is the reasoned theory of Nature that has done so much harm to our imagination's elastic and vital powers, but, like Asia, which is also within, it is "ornamented

with exquisite art" (Jerusalem, page 58, line 37), and in page 60, line 13, we hear that "the Isles of Grecia lovely" once all belonged to the brotherhood of art (Jerusalem) in days of innocence. This was written after Blake had recovered from the pestering of Hayley, but at the time of the following letter the pestering had not begun. The date of the journey to Felpham is September 20; this is therefore more than two months earlier.

It was probably written to "G. Cumberland of Bristol," the only man of this name mentioned by Gilchrist as knowing Blake at all. He does not refer to him until the year 1813, when he says, "Among present friends may be mentioned Mr. George Cumberland of Bristol." But Blake must have been on friendly terms with him for at least thirteen years by that time, as the familiar opening of the letter shows. He was presumably met at the house of one of the pupils during the prosperous Hercules Buildings period, and perhaps procured at Windsor the unfortunate offer of employment in the Royal Family. Blake's encouragement of our National Gallery before its birth is not sufficiently well known.

MR. CUMBERLAND, Bishopsgate, Windsor Great Park.

2nd July 1800.

DEAR CUMBERLAND-I am to congratulate you on your plan for a National Gallery being put into execution. All your wishes shall in due time be fulfilled. The immense flood of Grecian light and glory which is coming into Europe will more than realise our warmest wishes. Your honours will be unbounded when your plan shall be carried into Execution, as it must be if England continues a Nation. I hear that it is now in the hands of the Minister, that the King shows it great countenance and encouragement, that it will soon be up before Parliament, and that it must be extended and enlarged to take in originals, both of Painting and Sculpture, by considering every valuable Original that is brought into England or can be Purchased Abroad as its Objects of acquisition. Such is the Plan, as I am told, and such must be the plan if England is to continue at all worth notice, as you have yourself observed, only now we must possess Originals as well as France, or be nothing.

Excuse, I entreat you, my not returning Thanks at the proper moment for your kind present. No persuasion could make my stupid head believe that it was proper for me to trouble you with a letter of mere Compliment and expression of Thanks. I begin to emerge from a deep pit of Melancholy, Melancholy without any real reason for it, a disease which God keep you from, and all good men. Our artists of all ranks praise your outlines and wish for more. Flaxman is very warm in your commendation, and more and more of a Grecian. Mr. Hayley has lately mentioned your book on outline in Notes to an essay on

sculpture, in six epistles, to John Flaxman. I have been too little among friends, which I fear they will not Excuse, and I know not how to apologise for. Poor Fuseli, sore from the lash of envious tongues, praises you and dispraises with the same breath; he is not naturally good-natured, and is artificially very ill-natured, yet even from him I learn the Estimation you are held in among artists and connoisseurs.

I am still employed in making Designs and little Pictures, with now and then an engraving, and find that in future to live will not be so difficult as it has been. It is very extraordinary that London, in so few years, from a city of mere Necessaries, or at least a commerce of the lowest order of luxuries, has become a city of Elegance in some degree, and that its once stupid inhabitants should enter into an emulation of Grecian manners. There are now, I believe, as many Booksellers as there are Butchers, and as many Print-shops as of any other trade. We remember when a print-shop was a rare bird in London, and I myself remember when I thought my pursuit of Art a kind of Criminal Dissipation and neglect of the main chance, which I hid my face for not being able to abandon as a passion which is forbidden by Law and Religion. But now it appears to be Law and Gospel too, at least I hear so from the few friends I have dared to visit in my Stupid Melancholy. Excuse this communication of sentiments which I feel necessary to my repose at this time. I feel very strongly that I neglect my duty to my Friends, but it is not want of Gratitude, or Friendship either, but perhaps an Excess of both.

Let me hear of your welfare. Remember my, and my wife's respectful compliments to Mrs. Cumberland and family, and believe me to be for ever yours, WILLIAM BLAKE.

13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, 1800.

It was from this "stupid melancholy," caused chiefly by being kept by the force of circumstances to ill-paid hackwork, that Blake had bounded up into wild joy and hope when" the gate was open at Felpham. But the generous and appreciative patron that he hoped Flaxman had found for him turned out to be as convinced that he should be kept to merely technical tasks as any one in London, and the open gate slammed-to again.

Blake continued to keep his temper and to "bear all" Hayley's dreadful patronage at Felpham till 1803, and Hayley continued to be delighted with him and to write of him as "our excellent," our "good," "the kind Blake," and when in May both Blake and his wife had fever he wrote of them with delight when they recovered, calling them "our good Blakes." He really seems to have considered them as a pair of ingenious and amiable savages who showed much intelligence, considering, and were quite part of the live stock of his plantation.

CHAPTER XX

FOR READERS WHO STUDY BLAKE

BLAKE'S dealings with his MS. of Vala in 1802 at the period of re-collecting were not confined to the choosing of a Greek motto. It must have been now that he also adopted the name "Albion" for Man. While he was going over his earlier prints in the many portfolios that filled his sixteen boxes, and discussing within himself his style of drawing on copper, he must, since he says that he returned to his earliest method, have considered the engravings that were mentioned in the opening chapters here, representing Jocund Day and Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion. It will be noticed by any student of the art of engraving that both these, Jocund Day in particular, are more in his later manner than anything done during his drudgery years preceding the present re-collecting. It is to be suspected that it was now that he added the words about Albion to the plate, and that we are bewildering ourselves in vain if we try to believe that this nickname for Man-it does not seem more to us at the present day-was picked up by Blake in his days of apprenticeship, dropped again when he wrote Vala, and resumed when he read over the MS.

It is a point on which we have no certain information, but if indeed it really was so chosen, forgotten, and readopted, a tolerable conjecture may be offered, namely, that the word "Albion" was heard, but not seized upon, as a symbol at the time when it first began to come over to us from France. In the book of America we have it merely as meaning England, England being itself a symbol, of course, but not one of such universal meaning as the " Albion " of the revised Vala and of Jerusalem. Man, shut out from brotherhood in the land of vision, is a darkened being not yet called "Albion" in the first draft of Vala, though this was begun after America was engraved. It would appear