hands it would be a vulgar subject of poor fishermen and a journeyman carpenter. The following Discourse is written with the same end in view Gainsborough had in making the above assertion; namely, to represent vulgar artists as the models of executive merit.'
And again: 'Real effect is making out the parts. Why are we to be told that masters who could think, had not the judgment to perform the inferior parts of art? (as Reynolds artfully calls them); that we are to learn to think from great masters, and to perform from underlings—to learn to design from Raphael, and to execute from Rubens?'
Blake had, in truth, just personal grounds for speaking with indignant emphasis on this topic. 'The lavish praise I have received from all quarters, for invention and drawing,' says he elsewhere, 'has generally been accompanied by this: "He can conceive, but he cannot execute," This absurd assertion has done, and may still do me, the greatest mischief.'
In the MS. note-book are some stray verses, manifestly the overflowings of the same mood as these notes. We .shall be best able to appreciate their vigour of meaning, and tolerate the occasional hobbling of the verse, by taking them in connexion with the foregoing:—
Raphael, sublime, majestic, graceful, wise,—
His executive power must I despise?
Rubens, low, vulgar, stupid, ignorant,—
His power of execution I must grant!
The cripple every step drudges and labours,
And says, 'Come, learn to walk of me, good neighbours!'
Sir Joshua, in astonishment, cries out,
'See what great labour springs from modest doubt!'
On Colourists.
Call that the public voice which is their error?
Like as a monkey, peeping in a mirror,
Admireth all his colours brown and warm,
And never once perceives his ugly form.
