William Blake
Richard Garnett
Richard Garnett
William Blake / Painter and Poet
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Title: William Blake
Painter and Poet
Author: Richard Garnett
Release Date: June 11, 2016 [eBook #52300]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM BLAKE***
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London. Published as the Act directs March 8. 1823 by Willm Blake N3 Fountain Court Strand
The Sons of God. Design from the Book of Job.
WILLIAM BLAKE
PAINTER AND POET
By
RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D.
Keeper of the Printed Books in the British Museum
LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED, ESSEX STREET, STRAND
NEW YORK, MACMILLAN AND CO.
1895
CHAPTER I
Preliminary observations – Blake’s Birth – Education – Marriage – Early Poems – Drawings and Engravings
The position of William Blake among artists is exceptional. Of no other painter of like distinction, save Dante Rossetti, can it be said that his fame as a poet has fully rivalled his fame as a painter; much less that, in the opinion of some, his fame as a seer ought to have exceeded both. Many painters, from Reynolds downwards, have written admirably upon art; in some instances, notably Haydon’s, the worth of their precepts greatly exceeds that of their performance. But, Rossetti always excepted, perhaps no other painter of great distinction, save Michael Angelo alone, has achieved high renown in poetry, and the compass of Michael Angelo’s poetical work is infinitesimal in comparison with his work as an artist. Again, the literary achievements of an Angelo or a Reynolds admit of clear separation from their performances as artists. The critic who approaches them from the artistic side may, if he pleases, omit the literary side entirely from consideration. This is impossible with Blake, for not only do the artistic and the poetical monuments of his genius nearly balance each other in merit and in their claim upon the attention of posterity, but they are the offspring of the same creative impulse, and are indissolubly fused together by the process adopted for their execution. A study of Blake, therefore, must include more literary discussion than would be allowable in a monograph on any other artist. The poet and painter in Blake, moreover, are but manifestations of the more comprehensive character of seer, which suggests inquiries alien to both these arts; while the personal character of the man is so fascinating, and his intellectual character so perplexing, that the investigation of either of them might afford, and often has afforded, material for a prolonged discussion. In the following pages it will be our object, whenever compelled to quit the safe ground of biographical narrative, to subordinate all else to the consideration of Blake as an artist; but the Blake of the brush is too emphatically the Blake of the pen to be long dissociated from him, and neither can be detached from the background of abnormal visionary faculty.
From a certain point of view, artists may be regarded as divisible into three classes: those who regard the material world as an unquestionable solid reality, whose accurate representation is the one mission of Art; those to whom it is a mere hieroglyphic of an essential existence transcending it; and those who, uniting the two conceptions, are at the same time idealists and realists. The greatest artists generally belong to the latter class, and with reaso