Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/89

 Bard. The others are subjects from the Story of Joseph: Joseph's Brethren bowing before him; Joseph making himself known to them; Joseph ordering Simeon to be bound. The latter series I have seen. The drawings are interesting for their imaginative merit, and as specimens, full of soft tranquil beauty, of Blake's earlier style: a very different one from that of his later and better-known works. Conceived in a dramatic spirit, they are executed in a subdued key, of which extravagance is the last defect to suggest itself. The design is correct and blameless, not to say tame (for Blake), the colour full, harmonious and sober. At the head of the Academy-Catalogues of those days, stands the stereotype notification, 'The pictures &c. marked (*) are to be disposed of.' Blake's are not so marked: let us hope they were disposed of! The three Joseph drawings turned up within the last ten years in their original close rose-wood frames (a far from advantageous setting), at a broker's in Wardour Street, who had purchased them at a furniture-sale in the neighbourhood. They were sent to the International Exhibition of 1862. Among Blake's fellow-exhibitors, it is now curious to note the small galaxy of still remembered names—Reynolds, Nollekens, Morland, Cosway, Fuseli, Flaxman, Stothard (the last three yet juniors)—sprinkling the mob of forgotten ones: among which such as West, Hamilton, Rigaud, Loutherbourg, Copley, Serres, Mary Moser, Russell, Dance, Farington, Edwards, Garvey, Tomkins, are positive points of light. This year, by the way, Blake's friend Trotter exhibits a Portrait of the late Dr. Johnson, 'a drawing in chalk from the life, about eighteen months before his death,' which should be worth something.

Blake's brother Robert, his junior by nearly five years, had been a playfellow of Smith's, whose father lived near (in Great Portland Street); and from him we hear that 'Bob, as he was familiarly called,' had ever been 'much beloved by all his companions.' By William he was in these years not only taught to draw and engrave, but encouraged to exert his imagination in original sketches. I have come across some of