Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/429

 Rh together in the chambers of the Vatican, engaged, without jealousy, as he imagined, in the carrying out of one great common object; and he used to compare it (without any intentional irreverence) to the co-labours of the holy Apostles. He dwelt on this subject very fondly. . . . Among spurious old pictures, he had met with many "Claudes," but spoke of a few which he had seen, really untouched and unscrubbed, with the greatest delight; and mentioned, as a peculiar charm, that in these, when minutely examined, there were, upon the focal lights of the foliage, small specks of pure white which made them appear to be glittering with dew which the morning sun had not yet dried up. . . . His description of these genuine Claudes, I shall never forget. He warmed with his subject, and it continued through an evening walk. The sun was set; but Blake's Claudes made sunshine in that shady place.'. . . . 'Of Albert Dürer, he remarked that his most finished woodcuts, when closely examined, seemed to consist principally of outline;—that they were "everything and yet nothing." .... None but the finest of the antiques, he held, equalled Michael Angelo.'

As we have seen, Blake's was no 'poetic poverty,' of a kind to excite the pensive interest of sentimental people without shocking their nerves; but real, prosaic poverty. Such 'appearances' as I have described tasked his whole income to maintain. And his was an honourable code: he was never, amid all his poverty, in debt. 'Money,' says Mr. Palmer, 'he used with careful frugality, but never loved it; and believed that he should be always supplied with it as it was wanted: in which he was not disappointed. And he worked on with serenity when there was only a shilling in the house. Once (he told me) he spent part of one of these last shillings on a camel's hair brush. . . . He would have laughed very much at the word status, which has been naturalised into our language of late years.' Last shillings were, at all periods of Blake's life, a frequent incident of his household economy. For, while engrossed in