A History of English Literature

Receipt of My Mother's Picture' and 'To Mary' (Mrs. Unwin) can scarcely be
surpassed, and 'The Castaway' is final as the restrained utterance of
morbid religious despair. Even in his long poems, in his minutely loving
treatment of Nature he is the most direct precursor of Wordsworth, and he
is one of the earliest outspoken opponents of slavery and cruelty to
animals. How unsuited in all respects his delicate and sensitive nature was
to the harsh experiences of actual life is suggested by Mrs. Browning with
vehement sympathy in her poem, 'Cowper's Grave.'
WILLIAM BLAKE. Still another utterly unworldly and frankly abnormal poet,
though of a still different temperament, was William Blake (1757-1827), who
in many respects is one of the most extreme of all romanticists. Blake, the
son of a London retail shopkeeper, received scarcely any book education,
but at fourteen he was apprenticed to an engraver, who stimulated his
imagination by setting him to work at making drawings in Westminster Abbey
and other old churches. His training was completed by study at the Royal
Academy of Arts, and for the rest of his life he supported himself, in
poverty, with the aid of a devoted wife, by keeping a print-and-engraving
shop. Among his own engravings the best known is the famous picture of
Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, which is not altogether free from the weird
strangeness that distinguished most of his work in all lines. For in spite
of his commonplace exterior life Blake was a thorough mystic to whom the
angels and spirits that he beheld in trances were at least as real as the
material world. When his younger brother died he declared that he saw the
released soul mount through the ceiling, clapping its hands in joy. The
bulk of his writing consists of a series of 'prophetic books' in verse and
prose, works, in part, of genius, but of unbalanced genius, and virtually
unintelligible. His lyric poems, some of them composed when he was no more
than thirteen years old, are unlike anything else anywhere, and some of
them are of the highest quality. Their controlling trait is childlikeness;
for Blake remained all his life one of those children of whom is the
Kingdom of Heaven. One of their commonest notes is that of childlike
delight in the mysterious joy and beauty of the world, a delight sometimes
touched, it is true, as in 'The Tiger,' with a maturer consciousness of the
wonderful and terrible power behind all the beauty. Blake has intense
indignation also for all cruelty and everything which he takes for cruelty,
including the shutting up of children in school away from the happy life of
out-of-doors. These are the chief sentiments of 'Songs of Innocence.' In
'Songs of Experience' the shadow of relentless fact falls somewhat more
perceptibly across the page, though the prevailing ideas are the same.
Blake's significant product is very small, but it deserves much greater
reputation than it has actually attained. One characteristic external fact
should be added. Since Blake's poverty rendered him unable to pay for
having his books printed, he himself performed the enormous labor of
_engraving_ them, page by page, often with an ornamental margin about
the text.
ROBERT BURNS. Blake, deeply romantic as he is by nature, virtually stands
by himself, apart from any movement or group, and the same is equally true
of the somewhat earlier lyrist in whom eighteenth century poetry
culminates, namely Robert Burns. Burns, the oldest of the seven children of
two sturdy Scotch peasants of the best type, was born in 1759 in Ayrshire,
just beyond the northwest border of England. In spite of extreme poverty,
the father joined with some of his neighbors in securing the services of a
teacher for their children, and the household possessed a few good books,
including Shakspere and Pope, whose influence on the future poet was great.
But the lot of the family was unusually hard. The father's health failed
early and from childhood the boys were obliged to do men's work in the
field. Robert later declared, probably with some bitter exaggeration, that