Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/83

 in the marketable quality of his genius, in his versatile talents, his superior technic attainments—or, rather, superior consistency of attainment; above all, in his inborn grace and elegance. He could make the refined Domestic groups he so readily conceived, whether all his own or in part borrowed, far more palatable to the many, the cultivated many—cultivated Rogers for example, his life-long patron—than Blake could ever make his Dantesque sublimity, wild Titanic play of fancy, and spiritually imaginative dreams. I think the latter, as we shall see when we come to the Songs of Innocence and Experience, was at this period of his life influenced to his advantage as a designer by contact with Stothard's graceful mind; but that any capability of grander qualities occasionally shown by Stothard was derived, and perhaps as unconsciously, from Blake. And Stothard's earlier style is far purer and more 'matterful,' to use an expression of Charles Lamb's, than the sugar-plum manner of his latter years. In Stothard as in Blake, however nominally various the subject, there is the tyrannous predominance of certain ruling ideas of the designer's. Stothard's tether was always shorter than Blake's; but within the prescribed limits, his performance was the more (superficially) perfect, as well as soft, and rounded.

In 1784 I find Blake engraving after Stothard and others in the Wit's Magazine. The Wit's Magazine was a 'Monthly Repository for the Parlour Window'—not designed (as the title in those free-speaking days might warrant a suspicion) to raise a blush on Lady's cheek:—a miscellany of innocently entertaining rather than strictly witty gleanings, and original contributions, mostly amateur. A periodical curious to look back upon in days of a weekly Punch! It would be difficult now to find a literary parallel to Mr. Harrison's plan of 'creating a spirit of emulation, and rewarding genius:' by awarding 'one silver medal' per month to the 'best witty tale, essay, or poem,' another to 'the best answer' to the munificent proprietor's 'prize enigmas.' A full list of the names and addresses