Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  “My hands are laboured day and night

  And rest comes never in my sight;

  My wife has no indulgence given

  Except what comes to her from heaven;

  We eat little, we drink less;

  This earth breeds not our happiness.”

  He beheld, he says, Time and Space as they were eternally, not as they are seen upon earth; he saw nothing as man sees: his hopes and fears were alien from all men’s; and upon him and his the light of prosperous days and the terrors of troubled time had no power.

  “When I had my defiance given

  The sun stood trembling in heaven;

  The moon, that glowed remote below,

  Became leprous and white as snow;

  And every soul of man on the earth

  Felt affliction and sorrow and sickness and dearth.”

  In all this we may see on one side the reflection and refraction of outer things, on the other side the projection of his own mind, the effusion of his individual nature, throughout the hardest and remotest alien matter. Strangely severed from other men, he was, or he conceived himself, more strangely interwoven with them. The light of his spiritual weapons, the sound of his spiritual warfare, was seen, he believed, and was heard in faint resonance and far reverberation among men who knew not what such sights and sounds might mean. If, worsted in this “mental fight,” he should let “his sword sleep in his hand,” or “refuse to do spiritual acts because of natural fears and natural desires,” the world would be the poorer for his defection, and himself “called the base Judas who betrays his friend.” Fear of this rebuke shook and wasted him day and night; he was rent in sunder with pangs of terror and travail. Heaven was full of the dead, coming to witness against him with blood-shedding and with shedding of tears:

  “The sun was hot

  With the bows of my mind and with arrows of thought.”

  In this spirit he wrought at his day’s work, seeing everywhere the image of his own mood, the presence of foes and friends. Nothing to him was neutral; nothing without significance. The labour and strife of soul in which he lived was a thing as earnest as any bodily warfare. Such struggles of spirit in poets or artists have been too often made the subject of public study; nay, too often the theme of chaotic versifiers. A theme more utterly improper it is of course impossible to devise. It is just that a workman should see all sides of his work, and labour with all his might of mind and dexterity of hand to make it great and perfect; but to use up the details of the process as crude material for cruder verse — to invite spectators as to the opening of a temple, and show them the unbaked bricks and untempered mortar — to expose with immodest violence and impotent satisfaction the long revolting labours of mental abortion — this no artist will ever attempt, no craftsman ever so perform as to escape ridicule. It is useless for those who can carve no statue worth the chiselling to exhibit instead six feet or nine feet of shapeless plaster or fragmentary stucco, and bid us see what sculptors work with; no man will accept that in lieu of the statue. Not less futile and not less indecent is it for those who can give expression to no great poem to disgorge masses of raw incoherent verse on the subject of verse-making: to offer, in place of a poem ready wrought out, some chaotic and convulsive story about the way in which a poet works, or does not work.

  To Blake the whole thing was too grave for any such exposure of spiritual nudity. In these letters he records the result of his “sore travail;” in these verses he commemorates the manner of his work “under the direction of messengers from heaven daily and nightly, not without trouble or care;” but he writes in private and by pure instinct; he speaks only by the impulse of confidence, in the ardour of faith. What he has to say is said with the simple and abstract rapture of apostles or prophets; not with the laborious impertinence and vain obtrusion of tortuous analysis. For such heavy play with gossamer and straws his nature was too earnest and his genius too exalted. This is the mood in which he looks over what work he has done or has to do: and in his lips the strange scriptural language used has the sincerity of pure fire. “I see the face of my Heavenly Father; He lays His hand upon my head, and gives a blessing to all my work. Why should I be troubled? why should my heart and flesh cry out? I will go on in the strength of the Lord; through hell will I sing forth His praises; that the dragons of the deep may praise Him, and that those who dwell in darkness and in the sea-coasts may be gathered into His kingdom.” So did he esteem of art, which indeed is not a light thing; nor is it wholly unimportant to men that they should have one capable artist more or less among them. How it may fare with artisans (be they never so pretentious) is a matter of sufficiently small moment. One blessing there assuredly was upon all Blake’s work; the infinite blessing of life; the fervour of vital blood.

  In spite however of all inspiration and of all support, sickness and uncongenial company impeded his hours of labour and corroded his hours of repose. A trial on the infamous charges of sedition and assault, brought by a private soldier whose name of Scholfield was thus made shamefully memorable, succeeded finally in making the country unendurable to him. It must be said here of the hapless Hayley that he behaved well in this time of vexation and danger: coming forward to bail “our friend Blake,” and working hard for the defence in a tumultuous and spluttering way: he “would appear in public at the trial, living or dying,” and did, with or without leave of doctors, appear and speak up for the accused. Blake’s honourable acquittal does not make it less disgraceful that the charge should at all have been entertained. His own courage, readiness of wit, and sincerity of spirit are fully shown in the letter relating this short and sharp episode in his quiet life. Some months later he returned to London once for all, and once for all broke off relations with Felpham: commending, it may be hoped, Hayley to the Muses and Scholfield to the halberts.

  Having read these letters, we are not lightly to judge of Blake as of another man. Thoughts and creeds peculiar to his mind found expression in ways and words peculiar to his lips. It was no vain or empty claim that he put forward to especial insight and individual means of labour. If he spoke strangely, he had great things to speak. If he acted strangely, he had great things to do. “Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire.” Let the tree be judged by its fruit. If the man who wrote thus had nothing to do or to say worth the saying or the doing, it may fairly be said that he was mad or foolish. The involving smoke, here again, implied the latent fire. Where the particles of dust are mere hardened mud, where the cloud is mere condensing fog hatched from the stagnation of a swamp, one may justly complain of the obstruction and the obscurity. There is here indeed too much of mist, but it is at least clear; the air that breeds it is high, the moisture that feeds it is pure. This man had never lived in the low places of thought. In the words of a living poet, whose noble verses are worthy to stand thus near Blake’s own —

  “He had seen the moon’s eclipse

  By the fire from Etna’s lips,

  With Orion had he spoken,

  His fast with honey-dew had broken.”

  His dialect was too much the dialect of a far country; but it was from a far country that he came, from a lofty station that he spoke. To a poet who has given us so much, to an artist who has done great things to such great purpose, we may give at least some allowance and some toleration. The distance is great which divides a fireside taper from the eclipsed moon on Etna. Rules which are useful or necessary for household versifiers may well be permitted to relax or even to dissolve when applied to one who has attained to see with unblinded eyes and to speak with adequate words of matters so far above them.

  The next point noticeable by us in the story of Blake’s life is his single-handed duel with Cromek and Stothard; and of this we need not wish to speak at much length. The engraver, swift and sharp in all his dealings — never scrupulous, insolent sometimes, and always cunning — had an easy game to play, and played it without shame; not even taking the trouble to hide his
marked cards or to load his dice in private. In spite or in consequence of this rapacity and mendacity, Cromek was evidently of some use to Blake. And even for the exercise of these special talents he is perhaps not to be blamed; the man did but work with such qualities as he had; did but put out to use his natural gifts and capacities. But that he should have done this at Blake’s expense is and must remain unpardonable: and therefore he must be left to hang with the head downwards from the memorial gallows to which biography has nailed him; a warning to all such others to choose their game more warily. A tradesman who, by their own account, swindled Blake and robbed Scott can hardly expect to be allowed safe harbourage under the compassionate shelter of complete oblivion or behind the weather-tight screen of simple contempt. It may be worth while to condense the evidence as to his dealings with Blake and Stothard. One alone of these three comes out clear from the involved network of suspicious double-dealing. In the matter of the engravings to Blair, Cromek had entrapped and cheated Blake from the first. In the matter of the drawing from Chaucer, he had gone a step further down the steep slope of peculation. After the proposal to employ Schiavonetti, Blake might at once have thrown him over as a self-detected knave. He did not; and was accordingly plundered again in a less dexterous and a more direct manner. It is fortunate that the shameful little history has at last been tracked through all its scandalous windings by so keen an eye and so sure a hand as Mr. Gilchrist’s. Two questions arise at first sight; did Cromek give Blake a commission for his design of the “Pilgrims”? did Stothard, when Cromek proposed that he should take up the same subject, know that the proposal was equivalent to the suggestion of a theft? Both these questions Blake would have answered in the affirmative; and in his dialect the affirmative mood was distinct and strong. Further evidence on the first head can be wanted by no one of decent insight or of decent candour. That Cromek, with more than professional impudence, denied the charge, is an incident in the affair neither strange nor important. The manner of his denial may be matched for effrontery with the tone of his insolent letter to Blake on the subject of the designs to Blair. With the vulgarities and audacities, the shifts and the doubles of this shuffling man of prey, no one need again be troubled. That a visitor caught with the spoons in his pocket should bluster, stammer, and grin as he pleads innocence or affects amazement, is natural and desirable; for every word and gesture, humble or shameless, incoherent or intrepid, serves to convict him twice over. Undoubtedly he saw Blake’s sketch, tried to conjure it into his pocket, and failed; undoubtedly, finding that the artist would not again give up his work to be engraved by other hands, he made such approach to an honest offer as was compatible with his character; undoubtedly also he then made money in his uncleanly way out of the failure by tossing the subject to another painter as a bait. No man has a right to express wonder that Blake refused to hold Stothard blameless. It is nothing whatever to the purpose that, while Cromek’s somewhat villainous share in the speculation was as yet under cover, Blake may have bestowed on Stothard’s unfinished design his friendly counsel and his frank applause. After the dealer’s perfidy had been again bared and exposed by his own act, it was, and it is yet, a stretch of charity to suppose that his associate was not likewise his accomplice. And the manner of Stothard’s retort upon Blake, when taxed by him with unfair dealing, was not of a sort qualified to disperse or to allay suspicion. He charged, and he permitted Cromek to charge, the plundered man with the act of plunder. Even though we, who can now read the whole account without admixture of personal feeling, may acquit Stothard of active or actual treachery, as all must gladly do who remember how large a debt is due from all to an artist of such exquisite and pleasurable talent, it is hopeless to make out for him a thoroughly sufficient case. The fellowship of such an one as Cromek leaves upon all who take his part at least the suspicion of a stain. All should hope that Stothard on coming out of the matter could have shown clean hands; none can doubt that Blake did. That on Stothard’s part irritation should have succeeded to surprise, and rancour to irritation, is not wonderful. If he was indeed injured by the fault of Cromek and the misfortune of Blake, it would doubtless have been admirably generous to have controlled the irritation and overcome the rancour; but in that case the worst that should be said of him is that he did not adopt the noblest course of action possible to him. Admitting this, he is not blameable for choosing to throw in his lot with Cromek; but we must then suppose not merely that Cromek had abstained from any avowal of his original treachery, but that Stothard was unhappily able to accept in good faith the bare assertion of Cromek in preference to the bare assertion of Blake. If we believe this, we are bound to admit no harsher feeling than regret that Cromek should so have duped and blinded his betters; but in common fairness we are also bound to restrict the question within these limits. For Stothard a door of honourable escape stands open; and all must desire rather to widen than to narrow the opening. No one can wish to straiten his chance of acquittal, or to inquire too curiously whether there be not a pretext for closing the door that now stands ajar. But for the rest, it is simply necessary to choose between Blake’s authority and Cromek’s; and to consider this alternative seriously for a moment would be at once an act of condescension towards Cromek and of impertinence towards Blake, equally unjustifiable on either side. It is possible that Blake was not wronged by Stothard; it is undeniable that he was wronged through him. It is probable that Stothard believed himself to be not in the wrong; it is certain that Blake was in the right.

  About the close of this quarrel, and before the publication of Blake’s designs to Blair as engraved for Cromek by Schiavonetti, a book came out which would have deserved more notice and repaid more interest than has yet been shown it. The graceful design by Blake on its frontispiece is not the only or even the chief attraction of Dr. Malkin’s “Memoirs of his Child.” The writer indeed treads ponderously and speaks thickly; but there is extant no picture at once so perfect and so quaint of a purely childlike talent. Even supreme genius, which usually has a mind now and then to try, has never given us the complete and vivid likeness which a child has for once given of himself. Even Shakespeare, even Hugo, even Blake, has not done this. The husky dialect of his father suffices to express something; and the portrait is significant and pleasant, reproducing as it does the solid grace and glad gravity proper to children; a round and bright figure, with no look of over-training or disease. But the child’s own scraps and scrawls contain the kernel and jewel of the book. His small drawings are certainly firmer, clearer, more inventive than could have been looked for in a six-year-old artist. Any slight imitative work in a child implies the energy which impels invention in a man. His little histories and geographies are delightful for illogical sequence of events and absurd coherence of fancy. Only a child could have invented and combined such unimaginable eccentricities of innocence. The language and system of proper names strongly recall Blake’s own habits of speech. The province of Malleb and the city of Tumblebob are no unfit abodes for Hand and Hyle, Kwantok and Kotope. The moral polity of Allestone is not unlike that which prevails among the Emanations “who in the aggregate are called Jerusalem.” The pamphlet, condensed and compressed into a form more thoroughly readable, would be worth republishing.

  It seems probable that the verses following were written by Blake about this time, as Mr. Gilchrist refers the design of the “Last Judgment,” executed on commission for Lady Egremont, to the year 1807. They are evidently meant to match the beautiful dedication of the designs to Blair, which were not brought out till the next year. Less excellent in workmanship, they are not less important by way of illustration. The existence of some mythical or symbolic island of Atalantis, where the arts were to be preserved as in paradise, now walled round or washed over by the blind and bitter waters of time, was a favourite vision with Blake. At a first reading some of these verses seemed to refer to the subsequent series of designs from Dante; but there is no evidence of any such later commission as we must in that case take f
or granted.

  “The caverns of the grave I’ve seen,

  And these I showed to England’s queen;

  But now the caves of Hell I view,

  Who shall I dare to show them to?

  What mighty soul in beauty’s form

  Shall dauntless view the infernal storm?

  Egremont’s Countess can control

  The flames of hell that round me roll.

  If she refuse, I still go on,

  Till the heavens and earth are gone;

  Still admired by noble minds,

  Followed by Envy on the winds.

  Re-engraved time after time,

  Ever in their youthful prime,

  My designs unchanged remain;

  Time may rage, but rage in vain;

  For above Time’s troubled fountains,

  On the great Atlantic mountains,

  In my golden house on high,

  There they shine eternally.”

  Blake was always looking westward for his islands of the blest. All transatlantic things appear to have a singular hold upon his fancy. America was a land of misty and stormy morning, struck by the fierce and fugitive fires of intermittent war and nascent freedom. In a dim confused manner, he seems to mix up the actual events of history with the formless and labouring legends of his own mythology; or rather to cast circumstances into the crucible of vision, and extract a strange amalgam of metals unfit for mortal currency and difficult to bring to any test.

  In 1808 the illustrations to “Blair’s Grave” appeared, and found some acceptance; a success on which the shameful soul of Cromek fed exultingly and fattened scandalously. The ravenous gamester had packed his cards from the first with all due care, and was able now to bluster without fear as he had before swindled without shame. Twenty pounds of the profits fell to the share of the designer for some of the most admirable works extant in that line. The sweetness and vivid grace of these designs are as noticeable as the energy and rapidity of imagination implied by them. Even in Blake’s lifetime their tender and lofty beauty drew down some recognition; and incautious criticism, as it praised them, forgot that the artist was not dead yet. The generous oversight was afterwards amply and consistently redeemed. For the moment it was perhaps not wonderful that even so much excellence should obtain something of mistrustful admiration. The noble passion and exaltation of spirit here made visible burnt its way into notice for a time; and Cromek was allowed to claim applause for his invention of Blake. We will choose two designs only for reference. None who have seen can well forget the glorious violence of reunion between soul and body, meeting with fierce embraces, with glad agony and rage of delight; with breasts yearning and eyes wide, with sweet madness of laughter at their lips; the startled and half-arisen body not less divine already than the descending soul, though the earth clings yet about his knees and feet, and though she comes down as with a clamour of rushing wind and prone impulse of falling water, fresh from the stars and the highest air of heaven. But for perfect beauty nothing of Blake’s can be matched against the design of the soul departing; in this drawing the body lies filled as it were and clothed with the supreme sleep of flesh, no man watching by it; with limbs laid out and covered, with eyelids close; and the soul, with tender poise of pausing feet, with painless face and sad pure eyes, looks back as with a serene salutation full of pity, before passing away into the clear air and light left at the end of sunset on heaven and the hills; where outside the opened lattice a soft cold land of rising fields and ridged moorland bears upon it the barren beauty of shadow and sleep, the breath and not the breeze of evening. The sweet and grave grace of this background, with a bright pallor in the sky and an effect upon field and moor of open air without wind, brings with it a sense as of music.