and then about to dawn; you turn plate after plate, and read motto after motto, in the hope of escaping from darkness into light. But the first might as well be looked at last; the whole seems a riddle which no ingenuity can solve. Yet, if the work be looked at for form and effect rather than for meaning, many figures may be pronounced worthy of Michael Angelo. There is wonderful freedom of attitude and position; men, spirits, gods, and angels, move with an ease which makes one lament that we know not wherefore they are put in motion. Well might Hayley call him his gentle visionary Blake." He considered the Jerusalem to be his greatest work, and for a set of the tinted engravings charged twenty-five guineas. Few joined the artist in his admiration. The Jerusalem, with all its giant forms, failed to force its way into circulation.

His next work was the Illustrations of Blair's Grave, which came to the world with the following commendation by Fuseli. "The author of the

moral series before us, has endeavoured to awaken sensibility by touching our sympathies with nearer, less ambiguous, and less ludicrous imagery, than what mythology, gothic superstition, or symbols, as far fetched as inadequate could supply. His avocation has been chiefly employed to spread a familiar and domestic atmosphere round the most important of all subjects, to connect the visible and the invisible world without provoking probability, and to lead the eye from the milder light of time to the radiations of eternity." For these twelve "Inventions," as he called them, Blake received twenty guineas from Cromek, the engraver-a man

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of skill in art and taste in literature. The price was little, but nevertheless it was more than what he usually received for such productions; he also undertook to engrave them. But Blake's mode of engraving was as peculiar as his style of designing; it had little of that grace of execution about it which attracts customers, and the Inventions, after an experiment or two, were placed under the fashionable graver of Louis Schiavonetti. Blake was deeply incensed -he complained that he was deprived of the profit of engraving his own designs, and, with even less justice, that Schiavonetti was unfit for the task.

Some of these twelve Inventions are natural and poetic, others exhibit laborious attempts at the terrific and the sublime. The old Man at Death's Door is one of the best-in the Last Day there are fine groups and admirable single figures-the Wise Ones of the Earth pleading before the inexorable Throne, and the Descent of the Condemned, are creations of a high order. The Death of the Strong Wicked Man is fearful and extravagant, and the flames in which the soul departs from the body have no warrant in the poem or in belief. The Descent of Christ into the Grave is formal and tame; and the hoary old Soul, in the Death of the Good Man, travelling heavenward between two orderly Angels, required little outlay of fancy. The frontispiece-a naked Angel descending headlong and rousing the Dead with the Sound of the last Trumpet-alarmed the devout people of the north, and made maids and matrons retire behind their fans.

If the tranquillity of Blake's life was a little dis

turbed by the dispute about the twelve "Inventions," it was completely shaken by the controversy which now arose between him and Cromek respecting his Canterbury Pilgrimage, and the famous one by Stothard. That two artists at one and the same time should choose the same subject for the pencil, seems scarcely credible-especially when such subject was not of a temporary interest. The coincidence here was so close, that Blake accused Stothard of obtaining knowledge of his design through Cromek, while Stothard with equal warmth asserted that Blake had commenced his picture in rivalry of himself. Blake declared that Cromek had actually commissioned him to paint the Pilgrimage before Stothard thought of his; to which Cromek replied, that the order had been given in a vision, for he never gave it. Stothard, a man as little likely to be led aside from truth by love of gain as by visions, added to Cromek's denial the startling testimony that Blake visited him during the early progress of his picture, and expressed his approbation of it in such terms, that he proposed to introduce Blake's portrait in the procession, as a mark of esteem. It is probable that Blake obeyed some imaginary revelation in this matter, and mistook it for the order of an earthly employer; but whether commissioned by a vision or by mortal lips, his Canterbury Pilgrimage made its appearance in an exhibition of his principal works in the house of his brother, in Broad Street, during the summer of 1809.

Of original designs, this singular exhibition contained sixteen-they were announced as chiefly "of a spiritual and political nature"-but then the

spiritual works and political feelings of Blake were

unlike those of any other man. One piece represented "The Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding Leviathan." Another, "The Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding Behemoth." This, probably, confounded both divines and politicians; there is no doubt that plain men went wondering away. The chief attraction was the Canterbury Pilgrimage, not indeed from its excellence, but from the circumstance of its origin, which was well known about town, and pointedly alluded to in the catalogue. The picture is a failure. Blake was too great a visionary for dealing with such literal wantons as the Wife of Bath and her jolly companions. The natural flesh and blood of Chaucer prevailed against him. He gives grossness of body for grossness of mind, tries to be merry and wicked-and in vain.

artists.

Those who missed instruction in his pictures, found entertainment in his catalogue, a wild performance, overflowing with the oddities and dreams of the author-which may be considered as a kind of public declaration of his faith concerning art and His first anxiety is about his colours. Colouring," says this new lecturer on the ChiaroScuro, "does not depend on where the colours are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on form or outline. Where that is wrong the colouring never can be right, and it is always wrong in Titian and Correggio, Rubens and Rembrandt; till we get rid of them we shall never equal Raphael and Albert Durer, Michael Angelo and Julio Romano. Clearness and precision have been my chief objects in painting these pictures

clear colours and firm determinate lineaments, unbroken by shadows-which ought to display and not hide form, as is the practice of the later schools of Italy and Flanders. The picture of the Spiritual Form of Pitt, is a proof of the power of colours unsullied with oil or with any cloggy vehicle. Oil has been falsely supposed to give strength to colours, but a little consideration must show the fallacy of this opinion. Oil will not drink or absorb colour enough to stand the test of any little time and of the air. Let the works of artists since Rubens' time witness to the villany of those who first brought oil painting into general opinion and practice, since which we have never had a picture painted that would show itself by the side of an earlier composition. This is an awful thing to say to oil painters; they may call it madness, but it is true. All the genuine old little pic

tures are in fresco and not in oil."

Having settled the true principles and proper materials of colour, he proceeds to open up the mystery of his own productions. Those who failed to comprehend the pictures on looking at them, had only to turn to the following account of the Pitt and the Nelson. "These two pictures," he says, "are compositions of a mythological cast, similar to those Apotheoses of Persian, Hindoo, and Egyptian antiquity, which are still preserved in rude monuments, being copies from some stu→ pendous originals now lost, or perhaps buried to some happier age. The Artist, having been taken, in vision, to the ancient republics, monarchies, and patriarchates of Asia, has seen those wonderful originals, called in the sacred Scriptures the che