Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/389

 one of Phillips' Pastorals. Wretched, jejune caricatures of the beautiful originals they proved, scarce any trace of Blake being left.

To conciliate the outraged arts, Dr. Thornton introduced the designs with an apology. 'The illustrations of this English Pastoral are by the famous, the illustrator of Young's Night Thoughts, and Blair's Grave; who designed and engraved them himself. This is mentioned as they display less of art than of genius, and are much admired by some eminent painters.'

One of the designs, engraved by Blake, was re-cut among the engravers, who scrupled not, by way of showing what it ought to have been, to smooth down and conventionalize the design itself; reducing a poetic, typical composition to mere commonplace, ' to meet the public taste.' This as an earnest of what had been contemplated for the whole series. The amendment was not adopted by Thornton. Both versions may be seen in the Athenæum for January 21st, 1843; where, in the course of a very intelligent article on the true principles of wood-engraving, they are introduced, with other cuts from Holbein, &c., to illustrate the writer's just argument: that 'amid all drawbacks there exists a power in the work of the man of genius which no one but himself can utter fully;' and that 'there is an authentic manifestation of feeling in an author's own work, which endears it to all who can sympathize with art, and reconciles all its defects. Blake's rude work,' adds the critic, 'utterly without pretension, too, as an engraving, the merest attempt of a fresh apprentice, is a work of genius; whilst the latter—the doctored cut—'is but a piece of smooth, tame mechanism.'

The more these remarkable designs are seen, the more power do they exert over the mind. With few lines, and the simplest, rudest hints of natural objects, they appeal to the imagination direct, not the memory; setting before us condensed, typical ideas. Strange to think of Blake, shut up in dingy, gardenless South Molton Street, designing such