Page:Life of William Blake 2, Gilchrist.djvu/430

326 idealism to its utmost verge is perhaps in the strange design called 'The Ghost of a Flea;' but examine the features of the ghost, and say if, for material, he is not indebted first to the baser and more truculent lines of the human skull and nose, and eye and hair, and then to those insect-like elements which he had observed in the plated beetle and the curious fly. The solemn boundaries of form become ridiculous when they wander without enclosing some expressive fact visible to the eye either in heaven above or in earth beneath, and the question only remains, How much of this array of fact is needful adequately to convey the given idea? Jan Van Huysum would here pronounce a judgment entirely at the opposite pole from that of William Blake; and there is no surer mark of the true connoisseur than to be able to put himself 'en rapport' with the designer, and to judge at once his aim and the degree in which it has been realised. It would introduce a dangerous axiom to say that, in proportion to the grandeur and unearthliness of a thought, the aid of common facts is less needed; it entirely depends on what idea and what facts are in question. As applied to the human form, and to the highest idealisations of it yet known, and never to be surpassed, it would repay the reader who can see the collections of Michael Angelo's drawings at Oxford, to observe with what grand reverence and timidity that learned pencil dwelt on the most minute expressions of detail, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot; and it was this abundant learning which enabled the far-stretching soul of the mighty Florentine to avoid and to eliminate, amongst a hundred details, all those lines and forms which would not accord with the brooding and colossal majesty of his prophets, the frowning eagerness of his sibyls, the cosmic strength of the first father, or the waving beauty of the mother of us all. A leading principle in Blake's design was that 'a good and firm outline' is its main requisite. The claims of colour versus drawing, are not very fully opened out by his practice. Most of his works