Page:William Blake, painter and poet.djvu/78

62 opulence. Putting the Job aside for the present, the most remarkable appear to be the nine designs for Paradise Lost, the property of Mr. J. C. Strange, in which, says Mr. Rossetti, Blake is king of all his powers of design, draughtsmanship, conception, spiritual meaning, and impression. Another set, belonging to Mr. Aspland, of Liverpool, omits one subject and adds four. Another set of Miltonic designs for Comus, rather distinguished by grace than grandeur, has been recently published by Mr. Quaritch. Another set of no less than one hundred and eighteen designs for Gray's works, in 1860 in the possession of the Duke of Hamilton, are reputed to rank among Blake's finest productions, but have not been inspected by any one competent to describe them. Among others especially commended by Mr. Rossetti are The Sacrifice of Jephthah's Daughter, Ruth, The Judgment of Paris, The Wise and Foolish Virgins, Fire, Famine, Samson subdued, The Finding of Moses, Moses erecting the Brazen Serpent, The Ghost of Samuel appearing to Saul, The Entombment, The Sealing of the Sepulchre, The Angel rolling the Stone from the Sepulchre, The River of Life, and Hecate. To these may be added The Resurrection of the Dead, now in the British Museum, reproduced by us. Many others, not belonging to the Butts collection, are described with equal enthusiasm; and, apart from all questions of technical execution, usually splendid, but lost upon those who have not access to the original works, it may be said that the conceptions, as described by Mr. Rossetti, would be impossible to one unendowed with the highest artistic imagination, and that the body is worthy of the spirit.

Prominent among these designs are the set of illustrations to Job, now the property of the Earl of Crewe. A duplicate set belonged to Mr. Linnell, who, "discounting as it were," says Gilchrist, "Blake's bill on posterity when no one else would," commissioned this from him, tracing the outlines from Butt's copy himself, and handing them over to Blake to complete. This was done in September, 1821, and when the drawings were completed in 1823 Linnell went further still, and commissioned Blake to engrave them, a stroke which has probably effected more than anything else for the artist's fame, for the drawings which have set him on such a pinnacle, if unengraved, would have remained virtually unknown to the world. The terms also were liberal. Blake was to receive £100 for the twenty-two plates and £100 more out of the profits.