THE BATTLE OF PROGRESS.

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In a letter to Horace Scudder (Jan. 3rd, '80) reference is made to his essay on Blake in The Century :

Rejoicing to the spirit and the eyes is the article on Blake, which, thanks to you, reached me a few days ago; with its hearty yet discriminating appreciation, its insight begetting or begotten of sympathy.

"I am specially taken with the description of Blake's 'visionary eye, that far-seeing, vivid and wide-open orb, which looks at one from so many of Blake's figures, and most significantly from his own face.'"

The second edition of the Life of William Blake was now, March 2nd, 1880, taken in hand and pushed energetically through by Anne Gilchrist, upon whom the responsible editing fell. Anent a small discrepancy of date contained in the first edition she says to William Rossetti :-"I am glad to ascertain that Mr. Swinburne's change in the date of Blake's birth rests only on Tatham's authority. He was a mere stripling, I suppose not above seventeen or eighteen, at the time of Blake's death; and proved in every way such a care.. less guardian of Blake's precious artistic effects (for all that did not pass into Linnell's hands came into his), destroying the manuscripts on a great scale, as I heard from his own lips, and having the plates stolen from him; that very little weight indeed is to be attached to his statements except as to Mrs. Blake, after her husband's death. Of her, no doubt, he saw a great deal.

"The date of birth my husband obtained from the baptismal register of St. James's Church (if I am not mistaken); how else should he have known the circum

stance of his having been christened as one in a batch of six'? In fact I remember his search there.

"It is curious there should have been a mistake about Maria Flaxman, for Mrs. Flaxman's surviving sister, Miss Denman, was Alec's source of information; but no doubt he was mistaken, these letters show that Mrs. Flaxman's name was Anna.

"I have been reading in the Jerusalem again, and have found several more coherent and indeed beautiful passages. I incline to think Blake's religious enthusiasm (always a strong feature) took quite a fierce development in the solitude of Felpham and under the sublime influence of the sea, and that the Jerusalem is in a special sense the fruit of this. The needful preparation for my tracing it would be a careful study of Jacob Boehmen and Swedenborg."

says:

And a month later to Dante Gabriel Rossetti she "Dear Mr. Rossetti : I gladly send you the new Blake letters-it is very important you should see them before we go to press with one important exception they are less interesting and beautiful than the Butts letters, but still a very valuable accession. It is evident from them, that Blake and Hayley parted very good friends; that poor old Hayley behaved well from first to last, and had no other fault than this involuntary one of incapacity through lack of imagination and of the finer gifts to understand or really to see Blake at all."

Gabriel Rossetti (in reply) writing of the new letters "I fear they will prove rather a disappointment if not somewhat a dissatisfaction to lovers of Blake. It is painful to find him drawn (doubtless by

'THE RASCAL THANKS.'

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an unavoidable predicament) into so much praise and so many expressions of thanks, when we have seen his feelings expressed so differently in private memoranda. The thanks I (like yourself) believe to have been essentially deserved by poor Hayley, but the admiration expressed for Hayley's works must surely be turned on.' Alms for dire necessities! Even Blake, I suppose, could not always be above them.

"There is just one letter (that in which the puzzling Truchsessian collection is spoken of) which is in Blake's visionary vein, and an addition to our knowledge of him.

"The allusion to Edward of Oxford' is another puzzle, not to be solved as far as I can judge."

Anne Gilchrist answers :-" In regard to the new "In letters, I felt as you did at first, a good deal disappointed. But I cannot doubt Blake's sincerity, or realize the possibility of his having stooped to conscious flattery: I think the warmth of old Hayley's zeal and friendliness in the Trial and on other occasions really went to Blake's heart, and made him look at his empty verses through a deceptive glow of feeling and endow them with meanings of his own, just as a man of fine gifts often contrives to endow with the like in his imagination a woman who has really nothing within her trivial prettiness. And when the glow faded with time and the deeper sense of Hayley's utter incapacity to understand or perceive greatness alone remained, he may have jotted down those sarcasms in the notebook. I could not help thinking, as I was copying, of the lines

S

'I write the rascal thanks till he and I

With thanks and compliments are both drawn dry;' but there is nothing very black in that, and I think

'Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache,
Do be my enemy for friendship's sake,'

has a kind of pathetic meaning-such a worthy, kindly old fellow, yet such a blighting influence on the inner life!

"The only Edward of Oxford we can find a trace of in the voluminous Life of Hayley,' as having been a guest at Felpham in those years, was Edward Marsh, of Oriel College; who used to read aloud Hayley's own poems to him in a very melodious and effective manner."

Dante Gabriel Rossetti proved a helpful counsellor in preparing the second edition of the Blake; entering into it with the same spirit of generous ardour as he had over the first, being an excellent critic, who looked at his subject broadly-from the vantage ground which genius alone commands.

Anne Gilchrist's task of editing the second edition was not an easy one. It was a tradition in the family to avoid notes; to recast the text rather than to use them. Thus, too, as a consequence, her work as editor is not apparent.

Before bidding adieu to Blake in the present volume it will not be out of place if we give the reader the chat that we enjoyed the other day with Mr. George Richmond; the only living man who has conversed with William Blake-when a student, closed the poet's eyes

GEORGE RICHMOND, R.A.

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and kissed William Blake in death, as he lay upon his bed, in the enchanted work-room at Fountain Court.

The Academician showed us a cast of Blake's head and face, taken by Deville, when Blake was about fifty years old.

"The first mask that the phrenologist took: he wished to have a cast of Blake's head as representative of the imaginative faculty."

Deville's wish was not surprising; (when regarding the mask) we ask if any man ever possessed a fuller temple or a more finely packed brow?-the quivering intensity in the closed eyes and dilated nostrils is wonderful; and when we pass our hand over his stubborn English chin, we understand Hayley's surprise, when calling at the cottage at Felpham, at finding Blake grinding away, graver in hand, during a hot day in August; and the quiet pluck with which he always buckled to etching (for Bookseller Johnson) when Mrs. Blake placed the "empty plate" upon the little round oak table.

Mr. Richmond drew our attention to the position of Blake's ear, which is low down, away from the face near the back of the neck, showing an immense height of head above:-" I have noticed this relation of ear finely characterized in three men-Cardinal Newman, William Blake and Henry Hallam." Mr. Richmond pointed out an engraving after his portrait of Newman, which instanced the noble characteristic happily. "I told Mr. Gladstone that I never understood his character, until the day when I sat in church behind him; then I saw the tremendous bulwark of the statesman's neck,"