Gilchrist on Blake: The Life of William Blake by Alexander Gilchrist. Richard Holmes

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СКАЧАТЬ Sees angels on Peckham Rye 1782 Marries Catherine Boucher in Battersea 1784 Death of father, opens his own printshop 1787 Death of beloved brother Robert, aged 19 1789 Fall of the Bastille in Paris. Engraves Songs of Innocence 1790 Writing The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Moves to Hercules Buildings, Lambeth 1793 Engraves Visions of the Daughters of Albion 1794 Songs of Innocence and of Experience 1800 Moves to cottage in Felpham, Sussex 1803 Returns to London, to 17 South Molton Street 1804 Tried for sedition and treason at Chichester Begins to write and engrave Jerusalem 1807 Quarrels with Cromek 1809 His Exhibition and Descriptive Catalogue, criticized as ‘insane’ Beginning of Blake’s lost decade 1810 Engraves Milton, with the hymn ‘Jerusalem’ in Preface 1811 Article by Crabb Robinson, ‘William Blake, Painter, Poet and Religious Dreamer’ published in Germany 1817 Aged sixty 1818 Befriended by the young painter John Linnell 1820 Finishes Jerusalem, his last Prophetic Book, and illustrates Virgil’s Pastorals 1821 Moves to 3 Fountain Court, Strand 1824 Adopted by his young disciples, ‘the Ancients’ (including Samuel Palmer, George Richmond, Frederick Tatham) 1825 Interviewed by Crabb Robinson, and visited by Coleridge 1826 Illustrates the Book of Job and Pilgrim’s Progress 1827 Starts to illustrate Dante’s Divina Comedia Blake dies on 12 August 1828 Alexander Gilchrist born at Newington Green, London Anne Burrows born in Gower Street, London 1830 Alan Cunningham’s Lives of the British Painters 1847 D.G. Rossetti buys Blake’s manuscript notebook 1851 Alexander Gilchrist and Anne Burrows married 1855 Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of William Etty RA The Gilchrists meet Thomas and Jane Carlyle The Gilchrists meet Samuel Palmer 1856 The Gilchrists move to No. 6 Cheyne Row, Chelsea 1859 Anne Gilchrist, ‘Our Nearest Relation’, in All the Year Round 1861 (March) The Gilchrists meet the Rossettis (November) Death of Alexander Gilchrist 1862 Anne Gilchrist moves to Shottermill, near Haslemere, Surrey 1863 (October) Publication of Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of Blake 1871 Anne Gilchrist and family leave for America 1880 Publication of the second edition of Life of Blake 1881 (July) Death of Beatrice Gilchrist 1883 Publication of Anne Gilchrist’s Life of Mary Lamb 1885 (November) Death of Anne Gilchrist

       ONE Preliminary

      From nearly all collections or beauties of The English Poets,’ catholic to demerit as these are, tender of the expired and expiring reputations, one name has been hitherto perseveringly exiled. Encyclopaedias ignore it. The Biographical Dictionaries furtively pass it on with inaccurate despatch, as having had some connexion with the Arts. With critics it has had but little better fortune. The Edinburgh Review, twenty-seven years ago, specified as a characteristic sin of ‘partiality’ in Allan Cunningham’s pleasant Lives of British Artists, that he should have ventured to include this name, since its possessor could (it seems) ‘scarcely be considered a painter’ at all. And later, Mr Leslie, in his Handbook for Young Painters, dwells on it with imperfect sympathy for awhile, to dismiss it with scanty recognition.

      Yet no less a contemporary than Wordsworth, a man little prone to lavish eulogy or attention on brother poets, spake in private of the Songs of Innocence and Experience of William Blake, as ‘undoubtedly the production of insane genius,’ (which adjective we shall, I hope, see cause to qualify), but as to him more significant than the works of many a famous poet. There is something in the madness of this man,’ declared he (to Mr Crabb Robinson), ‘which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.’

      Of his Designs, Fuseli and Flaxman, men not to be imposed on in such matters, but themselves sensitive – as Original Genius must always be – to Original Genius in others, were in the habit of declaring with unwonted emphasis, that ‘the time would come’ when the finest ‘would be as much sought after and treasured in the portfolios’ of men discerning in art, ‘as those of Michael Angelo now.’ ‘And ah! Sir,’ Flaxman would sometimes add, to an admirer of the designs, ‘his poems are grand as his pictures.’

      Of the books and designs of Blake, the world may well be ignorant. For in an age rigorous in its requirement of publicity, these were in the most literal sense of the words, never published at all: not published even in the mediæval sense, when writings were confided to learned keeping, and works of art not unseldom restricted to cloister-wall or coffer-lid. Blake’s poems were, with one exception, not even printed in his life-time; simply engraved by his own laborious hand. His drawings, when they issued further than his own desk, were bought as a kind of charity, to be stowed away again in rarely opened portfolios. The very copper-plates on which he engraved, were often used again after a few impressions had been struck off; one design making way for another, to save the cost of new copper. At the present moment, Blake drawings, Blake prints, fetch prices which would have solaced a life of penury, had their producer received them. They are thus collected, chiefly because they are (naturally enough) already ‘RARE,’ and ‘VERY RARE.’ Still hiding in private portfolios, his drawings are there prized or known by perhaps a score of individuals, enthusiastic appreciators, – some of their СКАЧАТЬ