our undying gratitude. Yet we must be just and not blame them for their lost opportunity. Their significance lies in the fact that they objected to being perfect dunces like the rest of their English sisters, and so they made a bold dash to understand the things that men understand. They were not the first learned women the world had seen. The ladies of the Italian Renaissance could have given them points all round. Their work was that of restoration and not revolution, and that was more than sufficient to occupy their thoughts and energies without their peering into the new world that was at work in Blake. When whiffs of the new spirit blew on them from Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, and Hume, they were chilled and shocked, and thanked Heaven that in Dr Johnson there was a champion who knew all about the new and stoutly maintained the old. That was sufficient for them. Unfortunately they lived at a time when Society was more than usually artificial and woman suppressed, and the odd contrast between them and their sisters made them appear to men somewhat as monsters, like singing mice or performing pigs. The charge of being a Blue-stocking must always brand with a stigma, but happily now that women are establishing their right to meet men on an equality, the charge need never be made again.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY MARRIED LIFE AND EARLY WORK

We saw that William and Catherine Blake after their marriage settled at 23 Green Street, Leicester Fields. This was in 1782. Here they remained for two years, learning, not without pain, to adjust themselves to each other. Mrs Blake’s love was maternal and whole-hearted. Hers was not a nature to question why love should involve the accepting of immeasurable cares. The cares came one by one and not always singly, and she meekly and bravely accepted them, contented to live her life in her husband’s life, and happy when she perceived that she could smooth his path and shelter him from rough blasts.

Blake at this time was an extraordinarily difficult man to live with. He was by turns vehement, passionate, wildly self-assertive and submissive to others far inferior to himself. His visions were less bright than they had been, and his mind was choked with theories about the elemental things of life that every woman understands by instinct. He was conscious of his own genius and of the shortcomings of his successful contemporaries. His rampant egotism sowed his consciousness with resentments that poisoned his blood and bred bitterness. He made frantic efforts to grasp the liberty he had seen from afar, but he only succeeded in confounding liberty with licence, and peremptorily demanding the latter with his wife in a way that was bound to give her pain. I will not attempt to lift further the veil of their early married life. We have no right to pry. Mr Ellis has constructed this period as far as is possible from the poems of Blake, and to his Real Blake I must refer the curious reader; but for my own part I am content to note the signs of trouble in the various poems and not to probe deeper into the secret things which no right-minded person can ever wish to be proclaimed on the house-top. Suffice it to say that Mrs Blake’s self-forgetful love won the day, and when the early storms had passed, and the adjustments been made, they were united by a bond which, untouched by the fickleness of the flesh, could defy all shocks and changes because it was founded on the enduring reality of the spirit.

In the early years of married life Blake continued with his wife’s company the long walks which had been an early habit. Nothing could have been better for him. Walking till he was tired, rhythmic swing of his arms, unchecked sweating, did more than all else to cleanse his whole being and to cause that uprise of the spirit which was eventually to bring unity and peace to his chaotic and divided self.

His marriage had disturbed another elemental relationship of life. His father disapproved of it, and this led to an estrangement. We must admit that the father had not acquitted himself badly of his paternal duties. It is true he had foolishly wished to thrash him for reporting his visions, believing that the boy lied; but he had helped him to be an artist, and had never really opposed him when a boy. No one can reasonably demand more of a father. Nature has no superstitions about parent birds when their young have left the home nest. Gratitude and reverence to parents is still a beautiful thing, and would doubtless be given spontaneously to them if they could learn not to interfere when their children have grown up.

It has often been affirmed that the old man was a student of Swedenborg. If so, there had been at once a bond of sympathy between father and son. But the truth is that he had not read much of Swedenborg for the simple reason that he died four years before any theological work of importance by Swedenborg was translated into English. Everything shows that the father could not understand the son, who must have appeared to him eccentric, headlong, and obstinate. When William heard on July 4th, 1784, of his father’s death, he paid all due respect to his memory, but he was not moved by any violent grief.

We do not suppose that Mr Blake made his fortune by hosiery, but he left a little money which was divided among the sons. James took on the business and the mother lived with him. William, assisted by Mrs Mathew (if we may trust the testimony of J. T. Smith), took the house Number 27, next door to his brother, and there he opened a print shop in partnership with Parker, who had been a fellow-pupil at Basire’s. Robert, who was teething when we last saw him, was now grown up and proved understanding and sympathetic of William’s visionary point of view. It was agreed that Robert should live with William at Number 27 and become his apprentice.

Once more Blake was all mixed up with his immediate kith and kin. When one remembers that he had no illusions about fathers and saw clearly that the father of one’s flesh might be the enemy of one’s spirit, it seems incredible that he should have planted himself and his wife next door to a brother who was, he knew, an enemy to his spirit, and to a mother who would hardly approve of the young wife, and who would not be behindhand with her advice; but Blake was not strong in common sense, nor could he keep his neck out of a noose until it had first nearly strangled him.

Robert was a comfort to him, but he can only have added to Mrs Blake’s cares. For at this time William was passionately devoted to Robert, and his feeling to his wife had not yet quite resolved itself into that enduring comradeship which was to be his priceless treasure to the end of his days. The oft-repeated tale of Mrs Blake’s obedience when her husband said peremptorily: “Kneel down and beg Robert’s pardon directly, or you will never see my face again,” throws a searchlight on the whole situation. One sees William’s peril and Catherine’s care, and how her self-forgetful love was the one thing that could bring these discordant elements into a lasting harmony.

This arrangement lasted for two and a half years, when Robert fell desperately ill. William nursed him tenderly, and during the last fortnight sat with him day and night. At the end he saw Robert’s soul rise from his body, clapping its hands for joy as it ascended to its perfect life of liberty. Then William, tired out, went to sleep, and did not wake up till after three days and three nights.

The print shop was not successful. Blake lacked the necessary business quality, and the failure was aggravated by disagreements with Parker. The partnership was dissolved, Parker going his own way, and