Page:The poetical works of William Blake - lyrical and miscellaneous.djvu/31

 PREFATORY MEMOIR.

Trotter introduced him to Stothard, two years his senior; and Stothard made him known to Flaxman, who was at present subsisting on his work for Fedgwood. Flaxman professed to be — and one y fairly believe that he really was — a sincere admirer and firm friend of Blake; although the latter, at thnes, believed the contrary, as is amply proved by an epigram or two reproduced in. the present volume, as well as by occasional pas. sages in Blake's prose writings. Afterwards the isionary painter knew likewise Fuseli, whose llfe, prolonged to the age of eighty-three, ceased (in April 1825) only about two years before that of Blake himself. Him Blake always admired as an artist, and valued as a friend; indeed, if we may credit one of his own splenetic utterances in doggrel, Fuseli, being "both Turk and Jew," was "the only man who did not make him almost spuc." The pithy utterance of the Swiss painter, "Blake is dmned good to steal from," attested the genuinely appreciative estimate with which he repaid his friend's good opinion. The "stealing," according to Blake, was done by both Stothard and Flaxman; in other words, Blake supplied ideas, or designs more or less completely suggested, and his acquaintances availed themselves freely of these, and worked them up into materials of fame and fortrune. The transparent sincerity of Blake's character does not allow of our wholly discrediting these charges. In the case of Stothard, we shall see that the accusation takes eventually a more defined form. In that of Flaxman, it does not appear that any surreptitious appropriation of Blake's ideas is imputed, and therefore, supposing Flaxman to have been always.