Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/412

 would be, besides Blake and Mr. Linnell, Dr. Thornton, John Varley, and his brother Cornelius,—the latter living still, well known in the scientific world and a man devoted to the ingenious arts; all, as one of them confessed to me, men 'who did not propose to themselves to be as others,' but to follow out views of their own. Sometimes Mulready would be of the company: Richter also—a name familiar to frequenters of the old Water-colour Society's exhibitions — who was a fervent disciple of Emanuel Kant, and very fond of iterating the metaphysical dogma of the non-existence of matter. Of Richter's, by the way, still survives, in odd corners of the world, a curious thin octavo, published by Ackermann, in 1817. I can here only quote the characteristic title of this (mentally) very physiognomic brochure, which runs thus:— ' ''Daylight. A recent Discovery in the Art of Painting. With Hints on the Philosophy of the Fine Arts, and on that of the Human Mind, as first dissected by Emanuel Kant''.' A meeting at twilight, in the British Institution, of the Old Masters' Ghosts is the artifice for enunciating, in dialogue, the author's views as to representing on canvas the true ' perpendicular light from the sky.' This dialogue occupies thirteen octavo pages; besides which there are fiftytwo pages of notes, discourse at large on the same subject, 'and on the human mind, as first dissected by Kant.' Such hobbies as these offer a piquant contrast to those smooth, Book-of-Beauty faces exhibition-goers may remember as the staple of the old man's doings in later years.

More often the circle at Hampstead would be Blake, Linnell, and John Varley. A curiously contrasted trio—as an eye-witness reports—to look upon in animated converse: Blake, with his quiet manner, his fine head—broad above, small below; Varley's the reverse: Varley, stout and heavy, yet active, and in exuberant spirits—ingenious, diffuse, poetical, eager, talking as fast as possible: Linnell, original, brilliant, with strongly marked character, and filial manner towards Blake, assuming nothing of the patron, forbearing to