And my servant Job shall pray for you. (Plate XVIII, Blake’s Job)

When the morning-stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. (Plate XIV, Blake’s Job)]

[Sidenote:  The Horizontal and the Vertical]

The horizontal and the vertical are two very important lines, the horizontal being associated with calm and contemplation and the vertical with a feeling of elevation.  As was said above, their relation to the sides of the composition to which they are parallel in rectangular pictures is of great importance in uniting the subject to its bounding lines and giving it a well-knit look, conveying a feeling of great stability to a picture.

How impressive and suggestive of contemplation is the long line of the horizon on a calm day at sea, or the long, horizontal line of a desert plain!  The lack of variety, with all the energy and vitality that accompany it, gives one a sense of peace and rest, a touch of infinity that no other lines can convey.  The horizontal lines which the breeze makes on still water, and which the sky often assumes at sunset, affect us from the same harmonic cause.

The stone pine and the cypress are typical instances of the sublime associated with the vertical in nature.  Even a factory chimney rising above a distant town, in spite of its unpleasant associations, is impressive, not to speak of the beautiful spires of some of our Gothic cathedrals, pointing upwards.  How well Constable has used the vertical sublimity of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral can be seen in his picture, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he has contrasted it with the gay tracery of an arch of elm trees.  Gothic cathedrals generally depend much on this vertical feeling of line for their impressiveness.

The Romans knew the expressive power of the vertical when they set up a lonely column as a monument to some great deed or person.  And a sense of this sublimity may be an unconscious explanation of the craze for putting towers and obelisks on high places that one comes across in different parts of the country, usually called someone’s “folly.”

In the accompanying diagrams, A, B, C and D, E, F, pages 152 [Transcribers Note:  Diagram X] and 153 [Transcribers Note:  Diagram XI], are examples of the influence to be associated with the horizontal and vertical lines.  A is nothing but six straight lines drawn across a rectangular shape, and yet I think they convey something of the contemplative and peaceful sense given by a sunset over the sea on a calm evening.  And this is entirely due to the expressive power straight lines possess, and the feelings they have the power to call up in the mind.  In B a little more incident and variety has been introduced, and although there is a certain loss of calm, it is not yet enough to destroy the impression.  The line suggesting a figure is vertical and so plays up to the same calm feeling as the horizontal lines.  The circular disc of the sun has the same static quality, being the curve most devoid of variety.  It is the lines of the clouds that give some excitement, but they are only enough to suggest the dying energy of departing day.