recapture the humanist delight in natural life, in the world that we know, in the simple pleasure of the healthy senses. The old order of belief had been invaded by doubts, by facts, by science. Energy had been replaced by enthusiasm, and few any longer accepted delight in visible beauty as sufficient to stifle the desires of the heart. Merry England had gone for ever, and men were finding a trouble in the soul, a trouble which bewitched the old refrains even when played by those who took most delight in them. The desire to escape was the motive of the coming poetry. Blake takes leave of the eighteenth century in the beautiful criticism contained in his own address “To the Muses”:
Whether in Heaven ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air
Where the melodious winds have birth;
How have you left the ancient love
That bards alone enjoy’d in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move!
The sound is forc’d, the notes are few.
We feel that “Blind Man’s Buff” convinced Blake that he could do nothing with the eighteenth century couplet until he had transformed its pedestrian pace to a running rhythm, and changed its goal from prosaic reality to some everlasting gospel of poetic life. For that, his time had not yet come. He is less unhappy in his “Imitation of Spenser,” though its second line, “Scatter’st the rays of light, and truth’s beams” might have seemed as rough to Edmund Spenser as we know its similars did to those who apologised for printing the Poetical Sketches.
The two songs which introduce us to “my black-eyed maid” are probably among the latest of the Sketches; in these, only love – or rather a boy’s expectation of love from the companionship of woman – occurs for the first time. The charm of the friendship between a boy and girl, the delight that comes of country walks together, is rendered in the lines:
So when she speaks, the voice of Heaven I hear;
So when we walk, nothing impure comes near.
Each field seems Eden, and each calm retreat;
Each village seems the haunt of holy feet.
How boyish it all is: this romance that can flush with pleasure, but hardly stammer its greeting or good-bye! There is as much inexperience as innocence in it, and we know it for the redeeming moment of the awkward age.
Enough has been quoted to remind us of the promise, strictly incalculable, of Blake’s first printed book; enough to show that he was at the mercy of his influences. In beauty and strangeness and precocity only Chatterton, who died at the age of seventeen, can be compared with him. In precocity Chatterton surpassed him, because the Bristol boy was content with one art, whereas Blake was already deserting literature, almost as soon as he had proved his powers, for the drawings on which he must have spent the greater part of his education.
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, plate 14, 1789 and 1794.
Relief etching, with pen and watercolour, touched with gold.
King’s College, Cambridge (United Kingdom).
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, plate 7, 1789 and 1794.
Relief etching, with pen and watercolour, touched with gold.
King’s College, Cambridge (United Kingdom).
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, plate 28, 1789 and 1794.
Relief etching, with pen and watercolour, touched with gold.
King’s College, Cambridge (United Kingdom).
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, plate 17, 1789 and 1794.
Relief etching, with pen and watercolour, touched with gold.
King’s College, Cambridge (United Kingdom).
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, plate 29, 1789 and 1794.
Relief etching, with pen and watercolour, touched with gold.
King’s College, Cambridge (United Kingdom).
Apprenticeship and Marriage, 1771–1787
Blake left the drawing school at the age of fourteen to become formally apprenticed to the engraver James Basire,[11] and to adopt this profession as his own. It was during this apprenticeship that most of the Poetical Sketches must have been written; we have lingered over them already partly because the earliest were written at the drawing school, but mainly to illustrate what Blake’s writings might have become had he followed his talent with poetry and literature. Writing, however, became the private satisfaction of his leisure, and we turn to Frederick Tatham[12] to learn how Blake arrived, and how he spent his apprenticeship, at Basire’s:
His love for art increasing, and the time of life having arrived when it was deemed necessary to place him under some tutor, a painter of eminence was proposed, and necessary applications made; but from the huge premium required, he requested, with his characteristic generosity, that his father would not on any account spend so much money on him, as he thought it would be an injustice to his brothers and sisters. He therefore himself proposed engraving as being less expensive, and sufficiently eligible for his future avocation. Of Basire, therefore, for a premium of fifty guineas, he learnt the art of engraving.
All ideas of the shop had been abandoned and, if we are to believe J. T. Smith, the boy had been “sent away from the counter as a booby [foolish lad].” Nonetheless, Blake’s father seems to have continued to support his son. First of all he took his son to work with Ryland,[13] who introduced the stipple technique to England and was then engraver to the king. Blake must have not liked him, for on leaving Ryland’s studio he remarked: “Father, I do not like the man’s face; it looks as if he will live to be hanged.” Twelve years later, after falling into difficulties, Ryland committed a forgery on the East India Company and was condemned to the gallows. Blake’s father followed the boy’s wishes and took him next to James Basire. This James, the best known of four engravers, kept his shop at 31 Great Queen Street, and was retained professionally by the Society of Antiquaries. He was a man of fifty-one when Blake became his apprentice, and had been warmly esteemed by William Hogarth and many others. Basire had studied in Rome, and was particularly admired for his dry style, which no doubt recommended him to those, like the Society of Antiquaries, who were concerned with ancient monuments.
Indeed, Basire’s chief patrons were antiquaries who had every reason to appreciate the precision of his plates. Basire’s severe style solidified Blake’s insistence on strict form and severe outline in all drawing. Basire was a good teacher and a kind master, and the seven years that Blake spent with him were extremely formative. Blake’s exuberant imagination accepted this controlling influence, without which his execution might never have equalled his creative power of design.
The boy proved an apt and industrious pupil, who soon learned to copy to Basire’s satisfaction whatever work he was set to perform.
James Basire (1730–1802) was a British engraver and draughtsman. In 1770, he became a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. He engraved mostly portraits and historical subjects.
Frederick Tatham (1805–1878) was a British artist who was part of the Shoreham Ancients, which was a group of artists who were followers of William Blake. He wrote on Blake’s life. He looked after Catherine, Blake’s wife, who after her death bequeathed him with all of Blake’s written works. He later destroyed some of these because he joined a sect which led him to believe the works of the artist were inspired by the devil.
William Wynne Ryland (1738–1783) was an English engraver, also a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists.
