Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/326

 were subjects eminently suited to show, in his enemies despite, what he could do: Christ in the Sepulchre guarded by Angels, and Jacob's Dream. Jacob's Dream, a fresco, using the word in Blake's peculiar sense, now in the possession of Lord Houghton, is a poetic and beautiful composition, of far deeper imaginative feeling than the much-praised landscape effect of Allston, the American, or the gracefully designed scene of Stothard, whose forte, by the way, did not lie in bringing angels from the skies, though he did much to raise mortals thither. In Blake's fresco, angelic figures, some winged, others wingless, but all truly angelic in suggestion, make radiant the mysterious spiral stairs heavenward; and some among them lead children—a very Blake-like touch.

This was the last time Blake exhibited at the Royal Academy; he had done so but five times in all. No wonder that his name was little known to an exhibition-going public. And in truth, dreams so devout as his, and brought from very different worlds, were ill suited to jostle in the miscellaneous crowd. Solitude and silence are needed to enter into their sequestered spirit.