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 friends was afterwards added Fuseli, of maturer age and acquirements, man of letters as well as Art; a multifarious and learned author. From intercourse with minds like these, much was learned by Blake, in his art and out of it. In 1780, Fuseli, then thirty-nine, just returned from eight years’ sojourn in Italy, became a neighbour, lodging in Broad Street, where he remained until 1782. In the latter year, his original and characteristic picture of The Nightmare made ‘a sensation’ at the Exhibition: the first of his to do so. The subsequent engraving gave him a European reputation. Artists’ homes as well as studios abounded then in Broad Street and its neighbourhood. Bacon the sculptor lived in Wardour Street, Paul Sandby in Poland Street, the fair R.A., Angelica Kauffman, in Golden Square, Bartolozzi, with his apprentice Sherwin, in Broad Street itself, and at a later date John Varley, ‘father of modern Water Colours,’ in the same street (No. 15). Literary celebrities were not wanting: in Wardour Street, Mrs Chapone; in Poland Street, pushing, pompous Dr Burney, of Musical History notoriety.
In the catalogue of the now fairly established Royal Academy’s Exhibition for 1780, its twelfth, and first at Somerset House – all previous had been held in its ‘Old Room’ (originally built for an auction room), on the south side of Pall Mall East – appears for the first time a work by ‘W. Blake.’ It was an Exhibition of only 489 ‘articles,’ in all, waxwork and ‘designs for a fan’ inclusive among its leading exhibitors, boasting Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mary Moser, R.A., Gainsborough and Angelica Kauffman, R.A., Cosway and Loutherbourg, Paul Sandby and Zoffany, Copley (Lyndhurst’s father), and Fuseli, not yet Associate. Blake’s contribution is the Death of Earl Goodwin, a drawing probably, being exhibited in The Ante-room,’ devoted to flower-pieces, crayons, miniatures, and water-colour landscapes – some by Gainsborough. This first Exhibition in official quarters went off with much eclat, netting double the average amount realized by its predecessors: viz. as much as 3,000/.
In the sultry, early days of June, 1780, the Lord George Gordon No-Popery Riots rolled through Town. Half London was sacked, and its citizens for six days laid under forced contributions, by a mob some forty thousand strong, of boys, pickpockets, and ‘roughs.’ In this outburst of anarchy, Blake long remembered an involuntary participation of his own. On the third day, Tuesday, 6th of June, ‘the Mass-houses’ having already been demolished – one, in Blake’s near neighbourhood, Warwick Street, Golden Square – and various private houses also; the rioters, flushed with gin and victory, were turning their attention to grander schemes of devastation. That evening, the artist happened to be walking in a route chosen by one of the mobs at large, whose course lay from Justice Hyde’s house near Leicester Fields, for the destruction of which less than an hour had sufficed, through Long Acre, past the quiet house of Blake’s old master, engraver Basire, in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and down Holborn, bound for Newgate. Suddenly, he encountered the advancing wave of triumphant Blackguardism, and was forced (for from such a great surging mob there is no disentanglement) to go along in the very front rank, and witness the storm and burning of the fortress-like prison, and release of its three hundred inmates. This was a peculiar experience for a spiritual poet; not without peril, had a drunken soldier chanced to have identified him during the after weeks of indiscriminate vengeance: those black weeks when strings of boys under fourteen were hung up in a row to vindicate the offended majesty of the Law. ‘I never saw boys cry so!’ observed Selwyn, connoisseur in hanging, in his diary.
It was the same Tuesday night, one may add, that among the obnoxious mansions of magistrate and judge gutted of furniture, and consigned to
