Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/349

 could he have perceived it. For Stothard's art—in his eyes far too glib, smooth, and mundane in its graces—he entertained a sincere aversion; though, as in the case of Reynolds, some degree of soreness may have aggravated the dislike. And the epithets he, in familiar conversation, applied to it, would, repeated in cold blood, sound extravagant and puerile.

On his part, too, the ordinarily serene Stothard, the innocent instrument of shifty Cromek's schemes, considered himself just as much aggrieved by Blake. Up to 1806 they had been friends, if not always warm ones; friends of nearly thirty years' standing. The present breach was never healed. Once, many years later, they met at a gathering of artists—of the Artists' Benevolent, I think. Before going in to dinner, Blake, placable as he was irascible, went up to Stothard and offered to shake hands; an overture the frigid, exemplary man declined, as Mr. Linnell, an eye-witness, tells me. Another time, Stothard was ill: Blake called and wished to see him and be reconciled, but was refused. There is something of the kingdom of heaven in this—on the one side. Such men are not to be judged by wayward words. Warm hearts generally spend their worst violence in them.

This squabble with Cromek was a discordant episode in Blake's life. The competition with Stothard it induced placed him in a false position, and, in most people's eyes, a wrong one. In Blake's own mind, where all should have been, and for the most part was, peace, the sordid conflict left a scar. It left him more tetchy than ever; more disposed to wilful exaggeration of individualities already too prominent, more prone to unmeasured violence of expression. The extremes he again gave way to in his design and writings—mere ravings to such as had no key to them—did him no good with that portion of the public the illustrated Blair had introduced him to. Those designs most people thought wild enough; yet they were really a modified version of his style. Such demand as had existed for his works, never considerable, declined.