BLAKE'S SIBYLLINE LEAF ON HOMER

O

AND VIRGIL.

WING to the demands on our space this quarter, I

shall not be able to write as full a note upon the Sibylline Leaf, of which we give a facsimile, as I should otherwise have done.

As to the date of the Leaf, although the water-mark in the original from which our facsimile was made, is dated 1821, yet, I think, the plate itself must have been made many years previously to this. The Sibylline Leaf entitled "The Ghost of Abel" was etched in 1788.

Perhaps the chief source of difficulty in understanding Blake's literary pieces arises from his persistent and entirely indefensible use of common words in a limited and special sense of his own. So when in the present note on Virgil he says: "Grecian is Mathematic form. Mathematic form is eternal in the reasoning memory. Living form is eternal existence, Gothic is living form," he is opposing the words "Greek" and "Gothic" in a limited and special sense of his own. He held that Jupiter "begot on Mnemosyne or Memory the great Muses, which are not inspiration, as the Bible is;" and therefore to him all classic art was formed by the daughters of Memory, that is, produced by the head, while Gothic is "surrounded by the daughters of Inspiration," that is, begotten of the heart. To what extent he carried this special use of the word "Gothic" may be seen from the inscription on his engraving after an old Italian drawing attributed to Michael Angelo, of "Joseph of Arimathæa

116 BLAKE'S SIBYLLINE LEAF ON HOMER AND VIRGIL.

among the Rocks of Albion." This," he adds, "is one of the

Gothic Artists who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages." In this sense of the word the Bible, equally with his own works, are essentially "Gothic." As nothing, in so short a space, can throw so much light upon the leaf in question as the Preface to the Book of Milton, I cannot do better than give it entire. "The

stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the sublime of the Bible; but when the New Age is at leisure to pronounce, all will be set right, and those grand works of the more ancient and consciously and professedly inspired men, will hold their proper rank; and the daughters of memory shall become the daughters of inspiration. Shakespeare and Milton were both curbed by the general malady and infection from the silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword. Rouse up, O young men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings! For we have hirelings in the camp, the court, and the university; who would, if they could, for ever depress mental, and prolong corporeal war. Painters! on you I call! Sculptors! Architects! suffer not the fashionable fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works or the expensive advertising boasts that they make of such works: believe Christ and His Apostles, that there is a class of men whose whole delight is in destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just and true to our own imaginations, those worlds of eternity in which we shall live for ever, in Jesus our Lord." Though much of this is but a revolt against the dead classicism of the last century, yet, as Mr. Swinburne points out, it is, in the spirit of it, certainty and truth for all time, notwithstanding in the letter it may read like foolishness. HERBERT P. HORNE.

ON DESIGN.

WHEN we sit down to write on any of the nicer questions connected with the Arts, there are two things which very soon become considerably embarrassing in the first place, Art cannot in the very nature of the case be treated with that logical precision, which is the proper and easy method of the Sciences; and secondly, there is so very much which we must allow to personal predilection. The result is that we are constantly unable to speak with that assured and attractive dogmatism, which the general public hail as the evidence of knowledge and far-sightedness: and the criticism of Art altogether falls into a serious disrepute, when people see, as they will inevitably always see, men, who are equally capable of giving an opinion, differing from one another so gravely as they do in the opinions which they give. What consolation can we offer ourselves in the presence of this distressing difficulty? Perhaps this is as good as any other: we must set ourselves so earnestly upon seeing things as things are in their balanced relation with one another, that we shall have no time for worrying over the reception which our conclusions meet with: and we must avoid, as we would avoid evil itself, talking with that popular but absurd assuredness, with which everything is either black or white, false or true, of the first importance or of no importance at all.

I have been asked to write this little Article or Note in the summer number of the "Hobby Horse" on Design. I may say in starting, that personally there is nothing in Art which has so much attraction and permanent satisfaction for me as this particular element of it. If the Design in a work of Art is interesting I can forgive almost any shortcomings: if the Design is uninteresting, the presence of hardly any excellencies can give me more than a passing thrill of excitement. I believe also that you will find, that in the work of all the greatest artists, who have ever lived, this element of Design is always a powerful one: most patently on the surface it is no doubt in the more abstract presentments of the idealists; but the great naturalists have it too: it is more obvious in the early Italians or Michael Angelo, but, if you look for it, you will find it in reality hardly less in Velasquez.

And what does one mean by Design?

In order to get at a simple answer to this question, we will go with your leave to a popular expression, which is a narrow and misleading expression certainly as are many popular ones, but which will help us, I think, by its very narrowness in clearing our ideas. You know then that it is a common custom to speak about people who invent patterns for wall-papers, or printed stuffs, or embroideries, people who invent shapes

for metal-work or stained-glass or pottery, as Designers. They are spoken of under this title, which has in it some tinge of contemptuousness, to distinguish them from the more honourable workers in Architecture, and Sculpture, and the Painting of Pictures. I do not accept this contemptuous phraseology, I can tell you, and so I have said before now in the pages of the "Hobby Horse"; although of course nobody would be ridiculous enough to maintain that Architecture, Sculpture, and PicturePainting were not of higher importance than the making of paper-patterns and pottery. However we are not at the present moment engaged in fighting this battle: and the popular, but false distinction, to which I am calling your attention, will help us certainly on the point with which we are concerning ourselves.

Now let us take a wall-paper. In a wall-paper then it is quite evident that the thing which is of most importance is the arrangement of its pure lines and its masses in such a relationship with one another, that they produce a whole effect, which is complete; a whole effect, that is, whose unity is so satisfactory, that we have no sense of demanding more or less. In a wall-paper the arrangement of lines and masses is the one radically and prominently necessary thing. We all of us feel that if these are unsatisfactory no other qualities can redeem the matter, not daintiness of colour or draughtsmanship. Now I am sure that in all permanently acceptable Architecture, or Sculpture, or Picture-Painting this exquisite arrangement of lines and masses, simply in themselves, is by no means less necessary, but it is less obviously necessary beyond a doubt; because in these three kinds of Art there are other elements entering as well, which are of such importance and interest, that they conflict with, and even at first sight obscure, the presence of this one. Popular language therefore has unfortunately perhaps, but not unnaturally, come to speak only of those kinds of Art, in which the arrangement of pure lines and masses is the patently necessary element, as Designs: and it is from their consideration therefore that we most readily arrive at a definition of what Design is.

If somebody then asked us, what it is that we mean by Design, we might answer them, I think, more unsatisfactorily than by saying, It is the inventive arrangement of abstract lines and masses in such a relation to one another, that they form an harmonious whole; a whole, that is, towards which each part contributes, and is in such a combination with every other part that the result is a unity of effect, which completely satisfies us.

In this explanation there are two things to which we may for a few moments direct our attention: we say, that Design has to do with abstract lines and masses: we say secondly, that it aims at producing an harmonious whole.

When a man then is designing, (so far indeed as it is possible to select and separate in him many various interests and efforts, which are going on at the same time and with influences on one another), he deals with whatever objects he is concerned in the representation of merely as lines and masses. They are the material, so to say, out of which the interesting lines and masses are to be invented, which will go towards