The Savoy . So when mans desire torest from spiritual labour, and his thirst to fill his art with mere sensation, andmemory, seem upon the point of triumph, some miracle transforms them to anew inspiration ; and here and there among the pictures born of sensationand memory is the murmuring of a new ritual, the glimmering of new talis-mans and symbols. It was during and after the writing of these opinions that Blake did thevarious series of pictures which have brought him the bulk of his fame. Hehad already completed the illustrations to Youngs Night Thoughts, inwhich the great sprawling figure
The Savoy . So when mans desire torest from spiritual labour, and his thirst to fill his art with mere sensation, andmemory, seem upon the point of triumph, some miracle transforms them to anew inspiration ; and here and there among the pictures born of sensationand memory is the murmuring of a new ritual, the glimmering of new talis-mans and symbols. It was during and after the writing of these opinions that Blake did thevarious series of pictures which have brought him the bulk of his fame. Hehad already completed the illustrations to Youngs Night Thoughts, inwhich the great sprawling figures, a little wearisome even with the luminouscolours of the original water-colour, become nearly intolerable in plain blackand white ; and almost all the illustrations to the prophetic books, whichhave an energy like that of the elements, but are rather rapid sketchestaken while some phantasmic procession swept over him, than elaboratecompositions, and in whose shadowy adventures one finds not merely, as did. BLAKES ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 53 Dr. Garth Wilkinson, the hells of the ancient people, the Anakim, theNephalim, and the Rephaim ; . . gigantic petrifactions from which the firesof lust and intense selfish passion have long dissipated what was animal andvital ; not merely the shadows cast by the powers who had closed the lightfrom him as with a door and window shutters, but the shadows of those whogave them battle. He did now, however, the many designs to Milton, of whichI have only seen those to Paradise Regained ; the reproductions of thoseto Comus ; published, I think, by Mr. Ouaritch ; and the three or four to Paradise Lost ; engraved by Bell Scott; a series of designs which one goodjudge considers his greatest work ; the illustrations to Blairs Grave, whosegravity and passion struggle with the mechanical softness and trivial smooth-ness of Schiavonettis engraving ; the illustrations to Thorntons Virgil,whose influence is, I think, perceptible in the work of
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