Page:Life of William Blake, Pictor ignotus (Volume 1).djvu/320

Æt. 63—64.] designing such pastorals! His mind must have been impregnated with rural images, enabling him, without immediate reference to Nature, to throw off these beautiful suggestions, so pastoral in feeling, of Arcadian shepherds and their flocks, under the broad setting sun or tranquil moon. As Thornton's purpose was to give his young readers pictured images of his author's words, the designs accompany the poem literally, and line for line. Thenot addresses Colinet, who leans lonesome against a tree, crook in hand, and sheep beside, and so on.

The original designs, in sepia, are of much delicacy and grace. Their expression and drawing are a little distorted in the transference to wood, even under Blake's own hands. The blocks, moreover, proved in the first instance too wide for the page and were, irrespective of the composition, summarily cut down to the requisite size by the publishers. They are now, together with the drawings, in the possession of Mr. Linnell, who has kindly permitted impressions from three of them to be taken for the present work.

Dr. Thornton found further employment for Blake in etchings, scattered through the two volumes of 1821, from antique busts: Theocritus, Virgil, Augustus, Agrippa, Julius Caesar, Epicurus; task-work Blake well and honestly performed. A drawing of his, from Poussin's Polypheme, was put into Byfield's hands to engrave; which the latter did, poorly enough. As for the rest of the two hundred and thirty cuts, though executed by some of the best wood engravers of the time, they are, with the exception of one or two by Bewick and Thurston, of singularly laughable calibre. The designers obviously thought they could not be too puerile in addressing boys. The old, rude woodcuts to Croxall's Æsop are respectable works of art, compared with these. It is a curious practical satire on the opinion of Blake the engravers had, that the book, which has become scarce, is seldom looked at now but for Blake's slight share in it.