Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/319

 half-deprecating attitude, stretches towards him her wistful, unavailing arms, from the edge of a cliff—typifying Earth's verge. It is in a rambling Introductory Letter to Johnes of Hafod, translator of Froissart, the account in question of the designer of the frontispiece is given, with extracts from his Poems: a well-meant, if not very successful, attempt of the kindly pedagogue to serve the ' untutored proficient,' as he terms Blake. The poor little defunct prodigy who is the subject of the Memoir, and who died in 1802, after little more than a six years' lease of life, was not only an expert linguist, a general reader, something of a poet, the historian and topographer of an imaginary kingdom, of which he drew an 'accurate map;' but was also a designer, producing copies from some of Raphael's heads so much in unison with the style and sentiment of the originals, as induced our late excellent and ingenious friend, Mr. Banks, the sculptor, to predict, "that if he were to pursue the arts as a profession, he would one day rank among the more dis* tinguished of their votaries."'

He was also an original inventor of 'little landscapes; accustomed to cut every piece of waste paper within his reach into squares' an inch or two in size, and to fill them with temples, bridges, trees, broken ground, or any other fanciful and picturesque materials which suggested themselves to his imagination.' The father gives tracings from six of these as 'specimens of his talent in composition;' himself descrying a 'decisive idea attached to each,' and that 'the buildings are placed firm on the ground;' not to mention a taste and variety, the 'result of a mind gifted with just feeling and fertile resources.'

The 'testimony of Mr, Blake' is added, who, being a man of imagination, can decipher more in these pre-Claudite jottings of pillar and post, arch and scrub, than his humble biographer can. What he says is, in its general tenor, interesting and true enough. But surely Mr. Blake saw double on the occasion,—for his sincerity never admits of doubt.