Page:William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911).djvu/6

— 6 — yield in spite of himself. And of Burne-Jones a pretty little anecdote has been told which perhaps brings out more than anything else the fascinating power of Rossetti's genius. It is said that a critic looking at a picture of Burne-Jones remarked that it was merely an imitation of Rossetti. "And if so", the artist answered, "I am quite content to imitate Gabriel". It was this ascendency over others to which were added great capacity for criticism, so rare in artists, an unselfish delight in the work of others, a splendid memory for any poetry which had won his admiration, and "a voice rarely equalled for simple recitations" (Hunt) which made Dante Gabriel Rossetti the soul of the Praeraphaelitic movement and earned for him the name of Father of Praeraphaelitism, bestowed upon him by William Sharp in his "Life of Rossetti", 1883. And it could not be, but that the bend of Rossetti's genius was the dominating power of the Praeraphaelitic movement, and that the influence which exercised its power on Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the influence to which all other Praeraphaelites were subjected.

The influence which William Blake exercised on Dante Gabriel Rossetti was of a three-fold nature. He owes much to him:


 * a) as a philosopher,
 * b) as a poet,
 * c) as a painter.

It was however, as I mentioned above, Blake's mysticism, by which Dante Gabriel Rossetti was mostly impressed, and therefore I shall speak of this influence in the first place. It should, however, be borne in mind that Blake's philosophic doctrines were laid down in a literary and in an artistic form, viz: in his poems and in his pictures, and that therefore it is often very difficult and sometimes impossible to separate Blake the philosopher from Blake the artist or the poet, so that when I make this division for the sake of clearness and discuss successively Blake's influence from a philosophical, literary, and artistic point of view, these influences must not be thought of as existing isolated, but as continually supporting and correcting each other.