a solitary visitor to the abortive exhibition in Broad Street, and in 1810, writing an account of the memorable man for the Patriotische Annalen of good Dr. Perthes of Hamburgh'[1] (ch. xxxv). Obviously Gilchrist had never seen the paper, and knew of it only from the reference in Crabb Robinson's own 'Reminiscences,' which were shown him in MS. Like the author himself he misquotes the title of the magazine, and this has probably hindered recent students from following up the matter. Crabb Robinson's published account is as follows:
I amused myself this spring [of 1810] by writing an account of the insane poet, painter and engraver, Blake. Perthes of Hamburgh had written to me asking me to send him an article for a new German magazine, entitled 'Vaterlandische Annalen,' which he was about to set up. Dr. Malkin having in the memoirs of his son given an account of Blake's extraordinary genius, with specimens of his poems, I resolved out of these materials to compile a paper. This I did, and it was translated into German by Dr. Julius, who many years afterwards introduced himself to me as my translator. The article appears in the single number of the second volume of the 'Vaterlandische Annalen,' For it was at this time that Buonaparte united Hamburgh to the French Empire, on which Perthes manfully gave up the magazine, saying, as he had no longer a 'Vaterland,' there could be no 'Vaterlandische Annalen,' But before I drew up this paper I went to see a gallery of Blake's paintings, which were
- ↑ This is the only reference to the paper to be found in Gilchrist; reference is, however, made to Dr. Julius' translation of the poems therein given by Mr. Sampson in his recent Oxford edition of Blake's works, but not to Crabb Robinson's paper itself. The same applies to other recent works on Blake.
