Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/61

 mind! 'Practice and opportunity,' he used afterwards to declare, 'very soon teach the language of art:' as much, that is, as Blake ever acquired, not a despicable if imperfect quantum. 'It's spirit and poetry, centred in the imagination alone, never can be taught; and these make the artist:' a truism, the fervid poet already began to hold too exclusively in view. Even at their best—as the vision-seer and instinctive Platonist tells us in one of the very last years of his life (MS. notes to Wordsworth)—mere 'Natural Objects always did and do weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination in me!'

The student still continued to throw off drawings and verses for his own delight; out of his numerous store of the former, engraving two designs from English history. One of these engravings, King Edward and Queen Eleanor, 'published' by him at a later date (from Lambeth), I have seen. It is a meritorious but heavy piece of business, in the old-fashioned plodding style of line-engraving, wherein the hand monotonously hatched line after line, now struck off by machine. The design itself and the other water-colour drawings of this date, all on historical subjects, which now lie scattered among various hands, have little of the quality or of the mannerism we are accustomed to associate with Blake's name. They remind one rather of Mortimer, the historical painter (now obsolete) of that era, who died, high in reputation with his contemporaries for fancy and correct drawing of the human figure, but neglected by patrons, about this very time, viz. in 1779, at the early age of forty. Of Mortimer, Blake always continued to entertain a very high estimate. The designs of this epoch in his life are correctly drawn, prettily composed, and carefully coloured, in a clear uniform style of equally distributed positive tints. But the costumes are vague and mythical, without being graceful and credible; what mannerism there is is a timid one, such as reappears in Hamilton always, in Stothard often; the general effect is heavy and uninteresting,—and the net result a yawn. One drawing