hundred closely engraved pages arranged in four chapters of equal length, and the latter of two books making up forty-five pages in all. Both bear the date 1804. They were engraved in the same manner as his earlier books, the Jerusalem having illustrations, as well as text, on almost every page; the Milton only a few, and those much more roughly executed. Several shorter poems were written about the same time: The Mental Traveller, The Everlasting Gospel, and others, all very mystical and obscure in character.

The engravings and paintings produced during this period (for Blake worked as a painter also, though without much pecuniary success) were numerous and important. Among them may be mentioned Christ in the Sepulchre, The Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding Behemoth (these two are in the National Gallery); Jacob's Dream; The Canterbury Pilgrims; Nelson guiding Leviathan; The Bard, from Gray; Satan calling up his Legions, and The Ancient Britons, besides several portraits and drawings done for clients.

Most of these pictures were shown in 1809 at Blake's own exhibition, which failed to attract buyers, but gave the artist an opportunity to write his Descriptive Catalogue and Public Address, both of extreme interest as setting forth most of his views upon art. His note to the Canterbury Pilgrims, in particular, was considered by Charles Lamb to be the best criticism of Chaucer in existence.

But the two masterpieces which remain to us as the final and most perfect productions of his genius are the illustrations to Blair's Grave and those to the Book of Job, issued in 1808 and 1825 respectively.

The illustrations to the Grave comprise twelve designs, most of them mystical. Some are severe and solemn, like that of The King, Councillor and Warrior in the Tomb, with the calm, stiff lines of its figures lying in the low vault. Others are rich in allegory, like The Descent of Man into the Vale of Death: a long procession of men winding their way down into the valley of shadows, some old and tottering, some creeping on their knees, some in despair, others only sad-faced, and a few rushing headlong to their doom. There are moral scenes, such as The Death of the Strong, Wicked Man, in which Blake seems to have found a pleasure in representing the effect of agony upon superabundant physical strength, and the expression of intense horror in the face of the dying man and in that of his soul, which, as solid and muscular as himself, flies away in the midst of flames, with terrified gestures. And, as if to prove that the artist

could also depict scenes of peace and happiness, the next page shows us the death of the good man, surrounded by his family in prayer, while his soul, upheld by angels, rises in ecstasy to heaven. In other designs, again, the feeling of mysticism predominates. Such, for example, is the picture of the soul floating over the body it has just left, still in contact with it, and regarding it with eyes full of love and sorrow. And such also is the Reunion of the Soul and the Body; the body, as a male figure, rising from the tomb encircled by the flames of eternal life, while the soul flies down from the clouds, and flings her arms round him, gazing at him in ecstasy, as if she would fain, in one embrace, lose her whole self in him. All these drawings, simple, almost classical, are full of meaning and intense thought; they express, still better than Blair's poem, the pathos of death, with the hope of resurrection and eternal life.

One only of these designs is complex in idea and in execution. This is the Vision of the Last Judgment, and into this Blake has introduced, besides certain well-known conventional figures, many of his mystical conceptions. We see Christ on His Throne, the Book of Life open upon His knees: around Him are the four and twenty Elders, and angels bearing the symbols of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Recording Angel holds the book in which men's deeds are inscribed. Beneath Christ's feet, angels, having each six wings, sound their trumpets in the midst of flames. The angel of Death sheathes his sword, while the angel of Divine Justice draws his from its scabbard. The dead arise: whole families, reunited once more, mount upwards to meet the Saviour. On the other side, Satan, encircled by the serpent, is hurled into the abyss: the hypocrites vainly plead their seeming innocence: devils and evildoers are dragged downwards together: many call upon the rocks to cover them, and the Harlot of Babylon, below, flies away in shame and terror. Over all shines the divine light which issues from Christ Himself, reflected dazzlingly upon the faces of the angels and of the chosen, and changing to sombre flames when it falls upon the multitude of the wicked. The treatment of all these details fails to give the impression of power and vastness that Michelangelo could produce but the whole effect is perhaps more harmonious and more luminous, the scenes of horror being overpowered and almost blotted out by the supernatural radiance of a vision at once more brilliant and more intellectual.

More remarkable still are the illustrations to the Book of Job.

These are twenty in number, and each represents an episode in the life of the patriarch, or translates into visible form some idea evoked by the words of the book. Each is surrounded by a border in which, lightly sketched, are seen allegorical figures, flames, angels, stars, intertwined with biblical quotations; the whole harmonising with, and completing the effect of, the principal subject. All, without exception, are of the most striking character.

Nowhere else do we find such clear visions of the invisible world, nowhere such skies darkened with misery or darting forth flashes of sombre lightning, as if they shared the thoughts and feelings of men, nowhere such a power of expression condensed into a few outlines or a few attitudes. It is difficult to choose between so many masterpieces. Here we see Job in his prosperity, at prayer beneath a tree with his family, while behind him his flocks stretch out to the horizon in serried ranks, like the illimitable waves of the ocean. Further on is the Tempter passing before God among the angels, with a defiant, ironical bearing, and, below, Job praising the Lord, all unconscious of these presences. We see the bearer of evil tidings, which he begins to impart even before he has come near, while, further off, another follows him, beneath a sky full of clouds, towards which Job and his wife raise their hands in vain supplication. We see Job, naked, miserable, terrifying, as, with arms extended, he pronounces his famous curse," Let the day perish wherein I was born!" His wife and his friends lie prostrate upon the ground, their faces hidden so as not to behold the divine wrath, while clouds of smoke rise from an earth, parched, rocky, desolate, strewn with vast ruins, beneath a lowering sky. We see the Spirit passing before the face of Eliphaz, and making the hair of his head to stand up, in a vision which is as actual in the clouds above as are the terrified faces of his listeners below. We see the dreams that came to scare Job upon his bed, horrible forms as solid as the sleeper's own, flashing their fiery eyes upon him, and pulling at him with their scaly arms and hooked claws, serpents vomiting flames, creatures with one goat-foot, clouds in which flashes of lightning become huge membranous wings, a vision wild and terrifying by reason of its clearness. We have a glorious picture of the day of Creation," when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy," in which Job, his wife and his friends, gaze enraptured upon the wonders of the sky above them : the sun with his horses, the moon upon her black dragon, and the angels standing, with arms raised to heaven, in an endless line,

and singing their triumphal hymn among the stars. We have Job's prayer and his sacrifice, the heaven lit up, and the light of the glory of God covering the altar, so that the very fire of the sacrifice seems darkened. And we have the last scene, on which the sun shines again, while the moon appears through the thick trees: the harp, lute and trumpet are once more in the hands of Job and his many descendants, and behind them can be seen again great stretches of distance covered with innumerable flocks. But every one of these illustrations calls for description; and no description can give a clear idea of the intensity of vision, the solemn grandeur of feeling, which pervade the whole series and make it perhaps the only collection of illustrations really worthy to accompany the sublime and ancient poem.

Blake's last work was a series of illustrations to Dante, and before undertaking these, he actually took the trouble to learn Italian. "Every leaf," says Mr. Ellis, " looks gigantic from the massive and complex nature of the designs. . . . A thousand pounds would probably be an under-estimate of their present market value." 1 Only a very few were engraved, the most remarkable being perhaps that depicting the episode of Paolo and Francesca. The two lovers are seen at rest for a moment in the midst of the huge spiral vortex which whirls the imprisoned souls through space, and reveals, in a parting of its folds, the strip of ground upon which Dante lies prostrate at the feet of Virgil. Above, in a bright circle of divine light, appears a radiant vision of the immortal kiss. All these drawings are still in the possession of Mr. Linnell; and only a few of them have been reproduced.

But this period of masterpieces was not a time of prosperity. The struggle for daily bread continued; and Blake remained poor. He received only the scantiest remuneration for his work. The drawings for the Grave brought him twenty guineas; the Job plates a hundred and fifty. And these amounts, comparatively large though ridiculously under the actual value of his work, came to him only once. He was often compelled to accept a few shillings for one of his masterpieces. This was the time when he and his wife were said to have lived on half a guinea a week, and when she used sometimes to set before him an empty plate, to remind him that he must execute some trivial commission or other to provide the day's dinner. It was at one of these times that Blake wrote in his note-book :" Tuesday, January 20, 1807, between Two and seven in the Evening, 1 Ellis and Yeats: William Blake, Vol. I, chap. xv.

Despair." Such moments must, however, have been of rare occurrence, for him to have noted this one so precisely.

And as if poverty were not enough, he had, in connection with the Blair drawings, to endure the humiliation of seeing lucrative work, which should have been given to him, taken out of his hands, and entrusted to another artist. This piece of sharp practice, which Blake seems for a time to have attributed to Flaxman and Hayley, was the work of Cromek the engraver. Cromek was the publisher of the Grave; and he not only paid Blake a ridiculously small sum for his drawings, but went further and, in spite of a tacit or perhaps even verbal arrangement with the artist, who was to have the advantage of engraving them, gave the work to another engraver, Schiavonetti, whose style was more popular at the time than that of Blake. Thus the illustrator of a book which, by reason of its plates, secured 589 subscribers at twelve shillings and sixpence each, and brought in about £368, had to content himself with a payment of only twenty guineas. About the same time Cromek, having seen Blake at work upon the sketch for a picture of The Canterbury Pilgrims, afterwards commissioned a similar picture from Stothard, published an engraving of it, and left Blake with his work on his hands. It was this incident which led Blake to organise an exhibition of his pictures at his old home, where his brother James still kept a hosier's shop, and to write the Descriptive Catalogue, already referred to. The exhibition, however, proved an almost complete failure.

Nor was this all. Penury could more easily be borne by the artist than the violently abusive criticism to which he was at the same time subjected. After the appearance of Blair's Grave, Leigh Hunt's paper, The Examiner, published an article ridiculing Blake's illustrations (which the writer regarded entirely from a superficial point of view, without at all perceiving their inner significance) accusing them of indecency, and more humiliating still to a spiritualist like Blake— praising their realism. In September, 1809, followed another even more violent attack, on the subject of his exhibition. In this, he was called "an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement," and the Descriptive Catalogue was stigmatised as "a wild farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness and egregious vanity." Finally, in 1810, the death of Schiavonetti gave The Examiner an opportunity of once more decrying Blake's work, in eulogy of the engraver whose "tasteful hand" had bestowed an 1 Rossetti M.S., p. 10