With the Antique, Blake got on well enough, drawing with ‘great care all or certainly nearly all the noble antique figures in various views.’ From the living figure he also drew a good deal; but early conceived a distaste for the study, as pursued in Academies of Art. Already ‘life,’ in so factitious, monotonous an aspect of it as that presented by a Model artificially posed to enact an artificial part – to maintain in painful rigidity some fleeting gesture of spontaneous Nature’s – became, as it continued, ‘hateful,’ looking to him, laden with thick-coming fancies, ‘more like death’ than life; nay (singular to say) ‘smelling of mortality’ – to an imaginative mind! ‘Practice and opportunity,’ he used afterwards to declare, ‘very soon teach the language of art:’ as much, that is, as Blake ever acquired, not a despicable if imperfect quantum. ‘Its spirit and poetry, centred in the imagination alone, never can be taught; and these make the artist:’ a truism, the fervid poet already began to hold too exclusively in view. Even at their best – as the vision-seer and instinctive Platonist tells us in one of the very last years of his life (MS. notes to Wordsworth) – mere ‘Natural Objects always did and do weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination in me!’
The student still continued to throw off drawings and verses for his own delight; out of his numerous store of the former engraving two designs from English history. One of these engravings, King Edward and Queen Eleanor, ‘published’ by him at a later date (from Lambeth), I have seen. It is a meritorious but heavy piece of business, in the old-fashioned plodding style of line-engraving, wherein the hand monotonously hatched line after line, now struck off by machine. The design itself and the other water-colour drawings of this date, all on historical subjects, which now lie scattered among various hands, have little of the quality or of the mannerism we are accustomed to associate with Blake’s name. They remind one rather of Mortimer, the historical painter (now obsolete) of that era, who died, high in reputation with his contemporaries for fancy and correct drawing of the human figure, but neglected by patrons, about this very time, viz. in 1779, at the early age of forty. Of Mortimer, Blake always continued to entertain a very high estimate. The designs of this epoch in his life are correctly drawn, prettily composed, and carefully coloured, in a clear uniform style of equally distributed positive tints. But the costumes are vague and mythical, without being graceful and credible; what mannerism there is is a timid one, such as reappears in Hamilton always, in Stothard often; the general effect is heavy and uninteresting, – and the net result a yawn. One drawing dating from these years (1778-9), The Penance of Jane Shore in St Paul’s Church, thirty years later was included in Blake’s Exhibition of his own Works (1809). In the Descriptive Catalogue he speaks of it with some complacency as ‘proving to the author, and he thinks to any discerning eye, that the productions of our youth and of our maturer age, are equal in all essential points.’ To me, on inspecting the same, it proves nothing of the kind; though it be a very exemplary performance in the manner just indicated. The central figure of Jane Shore has however much grace and sweetness; and the intention of the whole composition is clear and decisive. One extrinsic circumstance materially detracts from the appearance of this and other water-colour drawings from his hand of the period: viz. that, as a substitute for glass, they were all eventually, in prosecution of a hobby of Blake’s, varnished, – of which process, applied to a water-colour drawing, nothing can exceed the disenchanting, not to say destructive effect.
There is a scarce engraving inscribed ‘W. B. inv. 1780’ which, within certain limitations, has much more of the peculiar Blake quality and intensity about it. The subject is evidently a personification of Morning, or Glad Day: a nude male figure, with one foot on earth, just alighted from above; a flood of radiance still encircling his head; his arms outspread, – as exultingly bringing joy and solace to this lower world, – not with classic Apollo-like indifference, but with the divine chastened fervour of an angelic minister. Below crawls a caterpillar, and a hybrid kind of nightmoth takes wing.
Meanwhile, the Poet and Designer, living under his father the hosier’s roof, 28, Broad Street, had not only to educate himself in high art, but to earn his livelihood by humbler art – engraver’s journey-work. During the years 1779 to 1782 and onwards, one or two booksellers gave him employment in engraving from afterwards better known fellow designers. Harrison of Paternoster Row employed him for his Novelists’ Magazine, or collection of approved novels; for his Ladies’ Magazine, and perhaps other serials; J. Johnson, a constant employer during a long series of years, for various books; and occasionally other booksellers, – Macklin, Buckland, and (later) Dodsley, Stockdale, the Cadells. Among the first in date of such prints, was a well-engraved frontispiece after Stothard, bold and telling in light and shade (The four Quarters of the Globe’), to a System of Geography (1779); and another after Stothard, (‘Clarence’s Dream’), to Enfield’s Speaker, published by Johnson in 1780. Then came with sundry miscellaneous, eight plates after some of Stothard’s earliest and most beautiful designs for the Novelists’ Magazine. The designs brought in young Stothard, hitherto an apprentice to a Pattern-draftsman in Spitalfields, a guinea a piece, – and established his reputation: their intrinsic grace, feeling, and freshness being (for one thing) advantageously set off by very excellent engraving, of an infinitely more robust and honest kind than the smooth style of Heath and his School, which succeeded to it, and eventually brought about the ruin of line-engraving for book illustrations. Of Blake’s eight engravings, all thorough and sterling pieces of workmanship, two were illustrations of Don Quixote, one, of the Sentimental Journey (1782), one, of Miss Fielding’s David Simple, another, of Launcelot Greaves, three, of Grandison (1782-3).
One Trotter, a fellow-engraver who received instructions from Blake, who engraved a print or two after Stothard, and was also draftsman to the calico printers, had introduced Blake to Stothard, the former’s senior by nearly two years, and then lodging in company with Shelly, the miniature painter, in the Strand. Stothard introduced Blake to Flaxman, who after seeing some of the early graceful plates in the Novelists’ Magazine, had of his own accord made their designer’s acquaintance. Flaxman, of the same age and standing as Stothard, was as yet subsisting by his designs for the first Wedgwood, and also living in the Strand, with his father; who there kept a well-known plaster-cast shop when plaster-cast shops were rare. A wistful remembrance of the superiority of ‘old Flaxman’s’ casts still survives among artists. In 1781 the sculptor married, taking house and studio of his own at 27, Wardour Street, and becoming Blake’s near neighbour. He proved – despite some passing clouds which for a time obscured their friendship at a later era – one of the best and firmest friends Blake ever had; as great artists often prove to one another in youth. The imaginative man needed friends; for his gifts were not of the bread-winning sort. He was one of those whose genius is in a far higher ratio than their talents: and it is Talent which commands worldly success. Amidst the miscellaneous journey-work which about this period kept Blake’s graver going, if not his mind, may be mentioned the illustrations to a show-list of Wedgwood’s productions: specimens of his latest novelties in earthenware and porcelain – tea and dinner services, &c. Seldom have such very humble essays in Decorative Art – good enough in form, but not otherwise remarkable – tasked the combined energies of a Flaxman and a Blake! To the list of the engraver’s