so effectual a manner that I have compelled what should have been of freedom, my just rights as an artist and a man. And if any attempt to refuse me this be made, I am inflexible, and will relinquish any engagement of designing at all unless left to my own judgment, as you, my dear friend, have always left me, for which I shall never cease to honour and respect you. When we meet I will perfectly describe to you my conduct and the conduct of others towards me, and you will see that I have laboured hard indeed and have been borne on angels' wings. After this letter Gilchrist closes a chapter by repeating that Jerusalem was written at Felpham, and "very grandly designed, if very mistily written," which was all that Blake got for trying too hard to make himself clear. The Songs of Innocence and Experience still pass as comparatively easy to understand, though half of them are incomprehensible till Jerusalem is explained. CHAPTER XXI SCHOLFIELD THE next letter to Butts describes the adventure with Scholfield which disturbed Blake's last months at Felpham. It runs as follows, and the beginning has this much of unexpected interest. We learn from it that Blake wrote out his letters from a rough draft, and did not improvise them in the careless manner of modern correspondents. It is dated Felpham, August 16, 1805, and after a few words about seven drawings forwarded, that "about balances our account"-Butts has been advancing him money at last, after Blake's repeated refusals to accept it-the letter continues: Our return to London draws on apace. Our expectation of meeting again with you is one of our greatest pleasures. Pray tell me how your eyes do. I never sit down to work but I think of you and feel anxious for the sight of that friend whose eyes have done me so much good. I omitted, very unaccountably, to copy out in my last letter that passage from my rough sketch which related to your kindness in offering to exhibit my two last pictures in the Gallery in Berners Street. It was in these words: "I sincerely thank you for your kind offer of exhibiting my two pictures. The trouble you take on my account I trust will be recompensed to you by Him who seeth in secret. If you should find it convenient to do so, it will be gratefully remembered by me among the other kindnesses that I owe to you." I go on with the remaining subjects which you gave me commission to execute for you, but I shall not be able to send any more before my return, though perhaps I may bring some with me finished. I am at present in a bustle to defend myself against a very unwarrantable warrant from a Justice of the Peace in Chichester, which was taken out against me by a private in Captain Seathes' troop of 1st or Royal Dragoons for an assault and seditious words. The wretched man has terribly perjured himself, as has his comrade, for as to sedition, not one word relating to the King or Government was spoken either by him or me. His enmity arises from my having turned him out of my garden, into which he was invited as an assistant by a gardener at work therein without my knowledge that he was so invited. I desired him as politely as possible to go out of the garden; he made me an impertinent answer. I insisted on his leaving the garden. He refused. I still persisted in desiring his departure. He then threatened to knock my eyes out, with many abominable imprecations, and with some contempt for my person. It affronted my foolish pride. I therefore took him by the elbows and pushed him before me till I had got him out. There I intended to have left him, but he, turning about, put himself in a posture of defiance, threatening and swearing at me. I, perhaps foolishly and perhaps not, stepped out at the gate, and, putting aside his blows, took him again by the elbows, and, keeping his back to me, pushed him forward down the road about fifty yards, he all the while endeavouring to turn round and strike me, and raging and cursing, which drew out several neighbours. At length when I had got him to where he was quartered, which was very quickly done, we were met at the gate by the master of the house-the Fox Inn (who is the proprietor of my cottage) -and his wife and daughter, and the man's comrade, and several other people. My landlord compelled the soldiers to go indoors, after many abusive threats against me and my wife from the two soldiers; but not one word of threat on account of sedition was uttered at that time. This method of revenge was planned between them after they had got together into the stable. This is the whole outline. I have for witnesses the gardener, who is ostler at the Fox, and who evidences that, to his knowledge, no word of the remotest tendency to Government or sedition was uttered; our next-door neighbour, a miller's wife (who saw me turn him before me down the road, and saw and heard all that happened at the gate of the inn), who evidences that no expression of threatening on account of sedition was uttered in the heat of their fury by either dragoon. This was the woman's own remark, and it does high honour to her good sense, as she observes that whenever a quarrel happens the offence is always repeated. The landlord of the inn and his wife will evidence the same, and will evidently prove the comrade perjured who swore that he heard me while at the gate utter seditious words, and d-- the K-, without which perjury I could not have been committed, and I had no witnesses with me before the Justices who could combat his assertion, as the gardener remained in the garden all the while, and he was the only person I thought necessary to take with me. I have been before a Bench of Justices this morning, but they, as the lawyer who wrote down the accusation told me in private, are compelled by the military to suffer a prosecution to be entered into, although they must know, and it is manifest, that the whole is a fabricated perjury. I have been forced to find bail. Mr. Hayley was kind enough to come forward, and Mr. Seagrave, a printer in Chichester, Mr. H. in £100, and Mr. S. in £50, and myself am bound in £100 for my appearance at the Quarter Sessions, which is after Michaelmas. So I shall have the satisfaction to see my friends in town before this contemptible business comes on. I say contemptible, for it must be manifest to every one that the whole accusation is a wilful perjury. Thus you see, my dear friend, that I cannot leave this place without some adventure. It has struck a consternation through all the villages round. Every man is now afraid of speaking to or looking at a soldier, for the peaceable villagers have always been forward in expressing their kindness for us, and they express their sorrow at our departure as soon as they hear of it. Every one here is my evidence for peace and good neighbourhood, and yet such is the present state of things this foolish accusation must be tried in public. Well, I am content, I murmur not, and doubt not that I shall receive justice, and am only sorry for the trouble and expense. I have heard that my accuser is a disgraced sergeant. His name is John Scholfield. Perhaps it will be in your power to hear something about the man. I am very ignorant of what I am requesting of you; I only suggest what I know you will be kind enough to excuse if you can learn nothing about him, and what, I as well know, if it is possible you will be kind enough to do in this matter. Dear sir, this perhaps was suffered to clear up some doubts, and to give opportunity to those I doubted to clear themselves of all imputation. If a man offends me ignorantly and not designedly, surely I ought to regard him with favour and affection. Perhaps the simplicity of myself is the origin of all offences committed against me. If I have found this I shall have learned a most valuable thing well worth three years' perseverance. I have found it. It is certain that a too passive manner, inconsistent with my active physiognomy, has done me much mischief. I must now express to you my conviction that all is come from the spiritual world for good and not for evil. Give me your advice in my perilous adventure. Burn what I have peevishly written about any friend. I have been very much degraded and injuriously treated, but if it all arise from my own fault, I ought to blame myself. O why was I born with a different face? Why was I not born like the rest of my race? When I look, each one starts; when I speak, I offend, Then my verse I dishonour, my pictures despise, When elate, I'm envied; when meek, I'm despised. This is but too just a picture of my present state. I pray God to keep you and all men from it, and to deliver me in His own good time. Pray write to me and tell me how you and your family enjoy health. My much terrified wife joins me in love to you and Mrs. Butts and all your family. I again take the liberty to beg of you to cause the enclosed letter to be delivered to my brother, and remain sincerely and affectionately yours, WILLIAM BLAKE. This description of Blake's two manners-the "elate” and the "meek "though its truthfulness goes back to his early days with Basire or at Rathbone Place, only applies to him when questions of art were brought forward in the conversation. Then the old story of his conversation with Moser, keeper at the Royal Academy when he was a student, would always repeat itself. People would say things contrary to Blake's profoundly religious, artistic opinions. At first he would "inwardly rage," then he would "speak his mind," and, it may be added, this speaking would be with no note of acrimony or personal discourtesy, and yet with a startling abruptness, as though a near clap of thunder broke the blue silence of a summer sky. The present writer has had the privilege of seeing an Irish poet who reproduces these and other characteristics of Blake, including the colour of his hair, as the late W. G. Wills reproduced his stately everyday courtesy. He will, it is to be hoped, pardon the use here made of him. It is something to sit as a model for a portrait of Blake. Counting on his pardon, the sketch shall be made, but not named. This poet (he is a most musical and beautiful writer) has a way of remaining silent in company during general conversation, yet wearing an expression of alertness and intelligence, showing him to be fully in sympathy with what is being said, and absolutely ready to reply, to contest, or to accept. Yet a silence as absolute as that of a fish will wrap him up. Suddenly his eye, always brilliant and beautiful (like Blake's), will absolutely flash (like Blake's), his golden hair, always rather rebellious and wavy, will seem like flames rising from his head (like Blake's), and he will thunder out a dictum (as Blake would) in a moving voice for which there is no harmonising or suitable tone belonging to the conversation actually in progress, so that the good-natured among those who are talking are apt to smile and the irritable to rage. Like Blake, again, this enthusiast has combined lyric talent with poetic religious convictions (in his case these are about Shakespeare) quite unrecognised by orthodoxy, and professing to supersede the usual faith, outdoing it on its own ground (as Blake did); lastly, he writes poetry on his pet kind of worship which is sometimes of unsurpassed sweetness, pathos, dignity, and beauty (as Blake did), and he is not discouraged to find it unknown, as happened with Blake's revelation. In his presence the present writer has sometimes even felt an amused and regretful consciousness of seeming to resemble Hayley in his polite disapprobation," though trying to avoid his "affected scorn." He admits being, like Hayley, a sincere admirer of the unnamed model now sitting for Blake, though, unlike Hayley, he has never been of the smallest use to him, nor "earned a place in the story." " One thing more the present writer has learned from him, and from others of those who live beyond the Bristol Channel, and who (among them) have enabled him to make sketches that build up for him recognisable portraits of Blake's |