Aldborough Town Hall
From a Drawing by C. Stanfield

Where the low porches, stretching from the door,
Gave some distinction in the days of yore,
Yet now neglected, more offend the eye,
By gloom and ruin, than the cottage by:
Places like these the noblest town endures,
The gayest palace has its sinks and sewers.

Here is no pavement, no inviting shop,
To give us shelter when compell'd to stop;
But plashy puddles stand along the way,
Fill'd by the rain of one tempestuous day;
And these so closely to the buildings run,
That you must ford them, for you cannot shun;
Though here and there convenient bricks are laid,
And door-side heaps afford their dubious aid.
Lo! yonder shed; observe its garden-ground,
With the low paling, form'd of wreck, around:
There dwells a fisher; if you view his boat,
With bed and barrel-'tis his house afloat;

Look at his house, where ropes, nets, blocks, abound,

Tar, pitch, and oakum-'tis his boat aground:

That space inclosed, but little he regards,

Spread o'er with relics of masts, sails, and yards:
Fish by the wall, on spit of elder, rest,

Of all his food, the cheapest and the best,

By his own labour caught, for his own hunger dress'd.

Sir

Pamful as it is

it is to me

to leave

my) Herife at this Time, yet the Tear

of having my

When the

Absence miputed to motwis different from these which would have been the real ones, induced me to attempt the Journey to wickham & Ian Jarly write in Hope that if I be not at the Whitethisch by the hue apponited (which is impracticable) you

would nevertheles

if I

will

expect me tite & after 18; should not then be with you, you be so good

ал

to conclude that I am

detained by Impediment which cannot be. 9 shall take i

removed.

with

meny Love

but fotite expect that you

Sufficient

have

I shall look for d payment

wery hind: Bebekend. myself to Judge

of what they should be of

litters 12 Crepe Me that I a

Mn habbe in to afferir, with some tray.
ell that I am oblijed her rather

A

Fretful herself, he of his wife in vain

For comfort sought-" He would be well again ;
Time would disorders of such nature heal-

O if he felt what she was doom'd to feel!

The Family of Friends.

In a large Town, a wealthy thriving Place Where hopes of Gain excite an Auxoris Race Which dark Tense Wreaths of clendy Mumes Cloak "And mark for Leagues around the Place of Smoke. Where Fire to Water lends its powerful Aid And Skam produces, trong Ally to Trade Arrived a Stranger whom no Merchant knew Nor could conjecture what he camisto do "He wat 100 Old or Fortune new to win Nor did he show a Prosport to begin May And there was something the Of Fortune gained before homes to dd He brought us Sewants with his Those he fought. were soon this Habity and his tranniers taught. His Manner ciril Kind & pee : His Habit such as ayed Men's will be "To self indulgent, wealthy Men like him. Plead for these Failings __ this their Way, their Whir

-

in his Air that told The man was jo

Beginning of the MS. of Crabbe's "Family of Friends"

Such sleepless nights! such broken rest! her frame
Rack'd with diseases that she could not name!
With pangs like her's no other was oppress'd!"
Weeping, she said, and sigh'd herself to rest.

The suffering husband look'd the world around,
And saw no friend; on him misfortune frown'd;

Blake.

Then here is WILLIAM BLAKE, for whom the classic forms and traditions William have nothing to say at all; whose ethereal imagination and mystic mind have taken their deepest impressions from the Elizabethan dramatists and from Ossian; whose aim, fitfully and feverishly accomplished, is to fling the roseate and cerulean fancies of his brain on a gossamer texture woven out of the songs of Shakespeare and the echoes of Fingal's airy hall; a poet this for whom time, and habit, and the conventions of an age do not exist; who is no more nor less at home in 1785 than he would be in 1585 or 1985; on whom his own epoch, with its tastes and limitations, has left no mark whatever; a being all sensitiveness and lyric passion and delicate, aerial mystery.

He

William Blake (1757-1827) was the second son of James Blake, a hosier of Broad Street, Golden Square, where he was born on the 28th of November 1787. was scarcely educated at all, beyond learning to read and write, but at ten years of age he began to copy prints, and at eleven years to write verses. He became at fourteen apprenticed to Basire, the engraver, and later worked in the schools of the Royal Academy. It is not here to the purpose to follow stage by stage the artistic career of Blake. In 1783 Flaxman the sculptor, in combination with another friend, caused. Blake's juvenile poems, Poetical Sketches, to pass through the press. This volume, all written before 1777, with much very crude and feeble work, contained some of the poet's most perfect songs. His father died in 1784, and Blake set up next door to the paternal shop as a printseller, in partnership with a fellow-student. This arrangement lasted three years. Blake then started alone in Poland Street, and his first act was to bring out the Songs of Innocence, engraved, in a manner invented by the painterpoet, on copper, with a symbolic design in many colours, and finished by hand. The interest awakened by these astonishing productions was small, but Blake was not dejected. In 1789 he engraved The Book of Thel, and in 1790, in prose, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In 1791 he published in the usual way the least important of his poetical books, The French Revolution. In 1794 the exquisite Songs

VOL. IV.

B

of Experience followed. By this time he had moved again from Poland Street to Lambeth, where he continued to produce his rainbow-coloured rhapsodies. Among these, The Gates of Paradise, The Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and America, a Prophecy, were finished within a few months. Europe and Urizen also belong to 1794. At this period Blake's apocalyptic splendour of invention was at its height. There was a distinct decline in clearness of intellectual presentment in The Song of Los and Ahania (both 1795). Blake now turned mainly to painting and picture-engraving. In 1800 he left London for Felpham, near Bognor, to be near Hayley, who wanted Blake's constant services as an engraver. He was greatly delighted with Felpham: "Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates."

Here he lived in peace until 1803, when occurred the very strange incident of his being arrested on a charge of sedition brought against him in revenge by a spiteful sergeant of dragoons. Blake was acquitted at Chichester in 1804, but he was excessively disturbed. "The visions were angry with him," he believed, and he returned to London. From lodgings in South Molton Street he began once more to issue prophetic "poems" of vast size and mysterious import-Jerusalem and Milton, both engraved in 1804. These he declared to be dictated to him supernaturally, "without premeditation, and even against my will." After this, although he continued to write. masses of wild rhythm, The Ghost of Abel (1822) was the only literary work which he could be said, by any straining of the term, to "publish." By this time he had moved (1821) to the latest of his tenements, Fountain Court, in the Temple. In 1825 his health began to fail, and he was subject to painful and weakening recurrences of dysentery. He retained the habit of draughtsmanship, however, until a few days before his death on the 12th of August 1827, when he passed away smiling, after an ecstatic vision of Paradise. He had been a seer of luminous wonders from his very infancy, when he had beheld the face of God at a window and had watched shining angels walking amongst the hay-makers. In his early manhood he was habitually visited by the souls of the great dead, "all majestic shadows, grey but luminous, and superior to the common height of man." The question how far Blake believed in the objective actuality of his visions has never been answered; but it is evident that in his trances he did not distinguish or attempt to distinguish between substance and phantom. Blake was, in early life, a robust and courageous little man, active, temperate, and gentle, with extraordinary eyes. Of his unworldliness many tales are told, humorous and pathetic. His faith was like that of a little child, boundless and unreasoning. His wife, Catherine