Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/284

 trial? Is the wild, wild tale of Schofield exhausted here? Alas no! At leaf 51 of the Jerusalem occurs the design which is reproduced opposite. In some, perhaps in all, copies of the Jerusalem, as a whole, the names inscribed above the figures are not given, but at least three examples of water-colour drawings, or highly-coloured reproductions of the plate exist, in which the names appear as in our plate. Who 'Vala' and 'Hyle' may personify I do not pretend to conjecture, though dim surmises hurtle in the mind, which, like De Quincey in the catastrophe of the Spanish Nun, I shall keep to myself. These two seem, pretty clearly, to be prostrate at the discomfiture of Schofield, who is finally retiring fettered into his native element. As a historical picture then, Blake felt it his duty to monumentalise this design with due inscription. Two of the three hand-coloured versions, referred to above, are registered as Nos. 50 and 51 of the Catalogue in Vol. II., and the third version appears as No. 108 in the Burlington Catalogue. I may note another point bearing on the personal grudges shadowed in the Jerusalem. In Blake's Public Address (see Vol. II.), he says, ' The manner in which my character has been blasted these ' thirty years, both as an artist and a man, may be seen, ' particularly in a Sunday paper called the Examiner, pub - ' lished in Beaufort's Buildings (we all know that editors of ' newspapers trouble their heads very little about art and ' science, and that they are always paid for what they put ' in upon these ungracious subjects); and the manner in ' which I have rooted out the nest of villains will be seen in ' a poem concerning my three years Herculean labours at ' Felpham, which I shall soon publish. Secret calumny and ' open professions of friendship are common enough all the ' world over, but have never been so good an occasion of poetic imagery.' Thus we are evidently to look (or sigh in vain) for some indication of Blake's wrath against the Examiner in the vast Jerusalem. It is true that the Examiner persecuted him, his publications and exhibition, and that Leigh Hunt