Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/330

 inadequate, could supply. His invention 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.

Such is the plan and the moral part of the author's invention. The technic part and the execution of the artist, though to be examined by other principles, and addressed to a narrower circle, equally claim approbation, sometimes excite our wonder, and not unseldom our fears, when we see him play on the very verge of legitimate invention. But wildness so picturesque in itself, so often redeemed by taste, simplicity, and elegance, what child of fancy, what artist would wish to discharge? The groups and single figures, on their own basis, abstracted from their general composition and considered without attention to the plan, frequently exhibit those genuine, unaffected attitudes, those simple graces, which nature and the heart alone can dictate, and only an eye inspired by both discover. Every class of artists, in every stage of their progress or attainments, from the student to the finished master, and from the contriver of ornament to the painter of history, will find here materials of art and hints of improvement.'

The designs to Blair are in the same key as those to The Night Thoughts of eight years previous; but are more mature, purer, and less extravagant. Both sets of designs occupy, to some extent, the same ground. And thus similar motives occur, and even compositions, as already noticed. Blake's previous etching, by the way, of the Skeleton Reanimated, compares favourably with the present one by Schiavonetti, showing, as do all the etchings to Young, that he could have executed his own designs to The Grave. The chief want of those etchings was what engravers call colour.

Blair's Grave, a poem written before the Night Thoughts, though published the same year (1743), was, sixty-two years