Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/78

 William Blake would be a novelty in music. One would fain hear the melody invented for

or for some of the Songs of Innocence. 'He was listened to by the company,' adds Smith, 'with profound silence, and allowed by most of the visitors to possess original and extraordinary merit.' Phœnix amid an admiring circle of cocks and hens is alone a spectacle to compare mentally with this!

The accomplished hostess for a time took up Blake with much fervour. His poetic recitals kindled so much enthusiasm in her feminine bosom that she urged her husband to join his young friend Flaxman, in placing the poems—those of which we gave an account at the date of composition—in the clear light of print and to assume half the cost. Which, accordingly, was done, in 1783: the year in which happened the execution for forgery of the gifted fellow-engraver—in whose face the boy Blake, twelve years before, had so strangely deciphered omens of his fate—Ryland. This unfortunate man's prepossessing appearance and manners inspired, on the other hand, so much confidence in the governor of the prison in which he awaited trial, that on one occasion the former took him out for a walk, implicitly trusting to his good faith that he would not avail himself of the opportunity to run away. Ryland's was the last execution at Tyburn, then still on the outside of London. This was the year, too, in which Barry published his Account of the Pictures in the Adelphi. On one copy I have seen a characteristic pencil recollection, from Blake's hand, of the strange Irishman's ill-favoured face: that of an idealized bulldog, with villainously low forehead, turn-up nose, and squalid tout-ensemble. It is strong evidence of the modest Flaxman's generous enthusiasm for his friend that, himself a struggling artist, little patronized, he should have made the first ofter of printing these poems, and at his