Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/342

 the late Sir William Stirling Maxwell. It was sent to the International Exhibition of 1862.

Thinking to take a leaf out of Cromek's book, Blake determined to show his work, and 'shame the fools' who preferred Stothard; to show it under more advantageous conditions than were to be had in the Academy Exhibitions. In May, 1809,—the year in which our old friend Hayley brought out his Life of Romney, and made a second marriage even more ill-advised than the first;—in May, Blake opened an Exhibition of his own, on the first floor of his brother the hosier's house, at the corner of Broad Street. The plan had the merit of cheapness, at any rate, involving little outlay or risk; the artist, in fact, not having money to venture. The Exhibition comprised sixteen 'Poetical and Historical Inventions,' as he designated them,—eleven 'frescos,' seven drawings: a collection singularly remote from ordinary sympathies, or even ordinary apprehension. Bent on a violent effort towards justifying his ways to men and critics, he drew up and had printed a Descriptive Catalogue of these works, in which he interprets them, and expounds at large his own canons of art. Of which more anon. The price of this Catologue, which included admission to the Exhibition, was half a crown.

A singular enterprise, for unpractised Blake, was this of vying with adroit, experienced Cromek! As if a simpleminded visionary could advertise, pufif, and round the due preparatory paragraphs for newspaper and magazine, of 'latest fine arts intelligence.' An exhibition set going under such auspices was likely to remain a profound secret to the world at large. A few, however, among the initiated were attracted by curiosity to see a picture which was the subject of a notorious quarrel between two friendly artists, and which had been painted in rivalry of Stothard's already famous work. An English artist who died lately at Florence, above ninety years of age,—Mr. Seymour Kirkup, celebrated, among other things, as the discoverer of Giotto's fresco in the Chapel of the Podestà,—was one of these few: Mr. Henry