The Portable William Blake (25 page)

WILLIAM BLAKE.

 

I inclose a ticket of admission if you should honour my Exhibition with a Visit.

17 South Molton Street,

Sm,

I send you a List of the different Works you have done me the honour to enquire after—unprofitable enough to me, tho’ Expensive to the Buyer. Those I Printed for Mr. Humphry are a selection from the different Books of such as could be Printed without the Writing, tho’ to the Loss of some of the best things. For they, when Printed perfect, accompany Poetical Personifications & Acts, without which Poems they never could have been Executed.

These last 12 Prints are unaccompanied by any writing.

The few I have Printed & Sold are sufficient to have gained me great reputation as an Artist, which was the chief thing Intended. But I have never been able to produce a Sufficient number for a general Sale by means of a regular Publisher. It is therefore necessary to me that any Person wishing to have any or all of them should send me their Order to Print them on the above terms, & I will take care that they shall be done at least as well as any I have yet Produced.

I am, Sir, with many thanks for your very Polite approbation of my works,

Your most obedient Servant,

WILLIAM BLAKE.

DEAR SIR,

I am forced to write, because I cannot come to you, & this on two accounts. First, I omitted to desire you would come & take a Mutton chop with us the day you go to Cheltenham, & I will go with you to the Coach; also, I will go to Hampstead to see Mrs. Linnell on Sunday, but will return before dinner (I mean if you set off before that), & Second, I wish to have a Copy of Job to shew to Mr. Chantry.

For I am again laid up by a cold in my stomach; the Hampstead Air, as it always did, so I fear it always will do this, Except it be the Morning air; & That, in my Cousin’s time, I found I could bear with safety & perhaps benefit. I believe my Constitution to be a good one, but it has many peculiarities that no one but myself can know. When I was young, Hampstead, Highgate, Homsea, Muswell Hill, & even Islington & all places North of London, always laid me up the day after, & sometimes two or three days, with precisely the same Complaint & the same torment of the Stomach, Easily removed, but excruciating while it lasts & enfeebling for some time after. Sr. Francis Bacon would say, it is want of discipline in Mountainous Places. Sr. Francis Bacon is a Liar. No discipline will turn one Man into another, even in the least particle, & such discipline I call Presumption & Folly. I have tried it too much not to know this, & am very sorry for all such who may be led to such ostentatious Exertion against their Eternal Existence itself, because it is Mental Rebellion against the Holy Spirit, & fit only for a Soldier of Satan to perform.

Though I hope in a morning or two to call on you in Cirencester Place, I feared you might be gone, or I might be too ill to let you know how I am, & what I wish.

I am, dear Sir,

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM BLAKE.

DEAR SIR,

I return you thanks for The Two Pounds you now send me. As to Sr. T. Lawrence, I have not heard from him as yet, & hope that he has a good opinion of my willingness to appear grateful, tho’ not able, on account of this abominable Ague, or whatever it is. I am in Bed & at work; my health I cannot speak of, for if it was not for the Cold weather I think I should soon get about again. Great Men die equally with the little. I am sorry for Ld. Ls.; he is a man of very singular abilities, as also for the D. of C.; but perhaps, & I verily believe it, Every death is an improvement of the State of the Departed. I can draw as well a-Bed as Up, & perhaps better; but I cannot Engrave. I am going on with Dante, & please myself.

I am, dr. Sir, yours sincerely,

WILLIAM BLAKE.

Friday Evening.
May 19, 1826.

DEAR SIR,

I have had another desperate shivering Fit; it came on yesterday afternoon after as good a morning as I ever experienced. It began by a gnawing Pain in the Stomach, & soon spread a deathly feel all over the limbs, which brings on the shivering fit, when I am forced to go to bed, where I contrive to get into a little perspiration, which takes it quite away. It was night when it left me, so I did not get up, but just as I was going to rise this morning, the shivering fit attacked me again & the pain, with its accompanying deathly feel. I got again into a perspiration, & was well, but so much weaken’d that I am still in bed. This entirely prevents me from the pleasure of seeing you on Sunday at Hampstead, as I fear the attack again when I am away from home.

I am, dr. Sir,

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM BLAKE.

DEAR SIR,

I thank you for the Receit of Five Pounds this Morning, & Congratulate you on the receit of another fine Boy; am glad to hear of Mrs. Linnell’s health & safety.

I am getting better every hour; my Plan is diet only; & if the Machine is capable of it, shall make an old man yet. I go on just as if perfectly well, which indeed I am, except in those paroxysms which I now believe will never more return. Pray let your own health & convenience put all solicitude concerning me at rest. You have a Family, I have none; there is no comparison between our necessary avocations.

Believe me to be, dr. Sir,

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM BLAKE.

DEAR SIR,

I thank you for the five pounds received to-day. Am getting better every morning, but slowly, as I am still feeble and tottering, though all the symptoms of my complaint seem almost gone. The fine weather is very beneficial and comfortable to me. I go on, as I think, improving my engravings of Dante more and more, and shall soon get proofs of these four which I have, and beg the favour of you to send me the two plates of Dante which you have, that I may finish them sufficiently to make show of colour and strength.

I have thought and thought of the removal. I cannot get my mind out of a state of terrible fear at such a step. The more I think, the more I feel terror at what I wished at first and thought a thing of benefit and good hope. You will attribute it to its right cause—intellectual peculiarity, that must be myself alone shut up in myself, or reduced to nothing. I could tell you of visions and dreams upon the subject. I have asked and entreated Divine help, but fear continues upon me, and I must relinquish the step that I had wished to take, and still wish, but in vain.

Your success in your profession is, above all things to me, most gratifying. May it go on to the perfection you wish, and more. So wishes also

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM BLAKE.

N 3, FOUNTAIN COURT, STRAND.

I have been very near the gates of death, and have returned very weak and an old man, feeble and tottering, but not in spirit and life, not in the real man, the imagination, which liveth for ever. In that I am stronger and stronger, as this foolish body decays. I thank you for the pains you have taken with poor Job. I know too well that the great majority of Englishmen are fond of the indefinite, which they measure by Newton’s doctrine of the fluxions of an atom, a thing which does not exist. These are politicians, and think that Republican art is inimical to their atom, for a line or a lineament is not formed by chance. A line is a line in its minutest subdivisions, straight Or crooked. It is itself, not intermeasurable by anything else. Such is Job. But since the French Revolution Englishmen are all intermeasurable by one another: certainly a happy state of agreement, in which I for one do not agree. God keep you and me from the divinity of yes and no too—the yea, nay, creeping Jesus—from supposing up and down to be the same thing, as all experimentalists must suppose.

You are desirous, I know, to dispose of some of my works, but having none remaining of all I have printed, I cannot print more except at a great loss. I am now painting a set of the Songs of Innocence and Experience for a friend at ten guineas. The last work I produced is a poem entitled Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion, but find that to print it will cost my time the amount of Twenty Guineas. One I have Finish’d. It contains 100 Plates, but it is not likely I shall get a Customer for it.

As you wish me to send you a list with the Prices of these things, they are as follows:

The Little Card I will do as soon as Possible, but when you Consider that I have been reduced to a Skeleton, from which I am slowly recovering, you will, I hope, have Patience with me.

Flaxman is Gone, & we must All soon follow, every one to his Own Eternal House, Leaving the delusive Goddess Nature & her Laws, to get into Freedom from all Law of the Members, into The Mind, in which every one is King & Priest in his own House. God send it so on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

I am, dear Sir, Yours affectionately,

WILLIAM BLAKE.

DEAR SIR,

I am going on better Every day, as I think, both in health & in work. I thank you for The Ten Pounds which I recieved from you this day, which shall be put to the best use; as also for the prospect of Mr. Ottley’s advantageous acquaintance. I go on without daring to count on Futurity, which I cannot do without doubt & Fear that ruins Activity, & are the greatest hurt to an artist such as I am. As to Ugolino, &c., I never supposed that I should sell them; my Wife alone is answerable for their having Existed in any finish’d State. I am too much attach’d to Dante to think much of anything else. I have Proved the Six Plates, & reduced the Fighting devils ready for the Copper. I count myself sufficiently Paid If I live as I now do, & only fear that I may be Unlucky to my friends, & especially that I may not be so to you.

I am, sincerely yours,

WILLIAM BLAKE.

DEAR SIR,

I thank you for the Ten Pounds you are so kind as to send me at this time. My journey to Hampstead on Sunday brought on a relapse which is lasted till now. I find I am not so well as I thought. I must not go on in a youthful Style; however, I am upon the mending hand to-day, & hope soon to look as I did; for I have been yellow, accompanied by all the old Symptoms.

I am, dear Sir,

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM BLAKE.

THE PROPHETIC BOOKS

THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL

(1793)

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden’d air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

 

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
THe just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow,
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

 

Then the perilous path was planted,
And a river and a spring
On every cliff and tomb,
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth;

 

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

 

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility,
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden’d air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

 

 

As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent, the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the Angel sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return of Adam into Paradise. See Isaiah xxxiv & xxxv Chap.