Page:William Blake, painter and poet.djvu/68

52 Exploring the Recesses of the Grave, reproduced from Thel, though one of the most poetical of the designs, is one of the least powerful. His rendering of Blair's thoughts is marvellously direct and impressive, whether the passion depicted be joy, as in The Reunion of the Soul and the Body (given here), or horror, as in The Death of the Strong Wicked Man, or an intermediate shade, as in The Soul hovering over the Body. None of these and few of the series, once seen, will easily be forgotten. The most famous, and deservedly so, is the marvellous one, a combination of two designs in America and The Gates of Paradise, where the aged man, impelled by a strong wind, totters towards the portal of the sepulchre, on the summit of which sits the rejuvenated spirit, personified by a strong youth, rejoicing in his deliverance, but dazzled by the as yet unwonted light. In all these designs the element of seemly, yet slightly formal and conventional grace which Blake had learned from Stothard, is very conspicuous. The least successful, as seems to us, is The Last Judgment, where Blake appears as a minor Michael Angelo, but this work as engraved differs widely from his description of the work as exhibited. It may well be believed that the modified version was distinguished by great splendour of colouring.

Other works of this period were two small frescoes exhibited at the Academy in 1808, Christ in the Sepulchre and Jacob's Dream; the "ornamental device" engraved (by Cromek) along with the frontispiece to Malkin's Father's Memoirs of his Child, a graceful and pathetic composition; three illustrations to Shakespeare, one of which, the highly imaginative conception of the appearance of the Ghost to Hamlet, is engraved in Gilchrist's biography; The Babylonian Woman on the Seven-headed Beast (1809) reproduced here; a continuous series of designs produced for Mr. Butts, to be mentioned more fully hereafter; and the pictures displayed along with The Canterbury Pilgrims at its exhibition (1809). We must now devote some attention to Blake's appearance as an æsthetic writer in the Descriptive Catalogue he put forth on this occasion, with which his other principal deliverances on the subject of art may be advantageously grouped.

Blake's Descriptive Catalogue and his Appeal to the Public to judge between himself and his rivals in the department of engraving, are a singular mixture of gold and clay. The dignity which characterised his demeanour in life forsakes him as soon as he takes the pen into his hand,