Page:William Blake, his life, character and genius.djvu/46

 32 consisted in all of 537 coloured drawings. These are said to have been sold by Edwards for twenty guineas.

In looking over these illustrations, one is struck by their poverty, their monotony, and as a whole, their lack of interest. It cannot be denied that they have something of the Blakeian touch, the Blakeian idiosyncrasy; but there is nothing of that wild grandeur, and little of that passionate symbolism which lifts many of the designs for his own scriptures into the clear empyrean of art, where their otherwise too manifest blemishes are forgotten, or become potential beauties. The fact is, Blake's art was more or less an adjunct of, and subservient to, his poetry. It was literary rather than pictorial in the commonly accepted sense, having grown and developed under his hand as an additional means of giving expression to the burning thoughts that were in him. As such it must be judged, rather than as art pure and simple. If judged from the imitative standpoint, nothing could well, at times, be weaker; but if regarded from the higher ground of imaginative conception and realisation, there is very little in English art that will bear comparison with it. On that side it places him on the same plane as Shakespeare, Hogarth, Turner, and others of that small but godlike company.

Two other events of some importance in the career of a man like Blake occurred during the Lambeth period, and should not be passed over unrecorded. One was the vision of "The Ancient of Days" before referred to, which he saw hovering above his head at the top of the staircase. Smith tells us that he was