"exterior charm " upon the "bad drawings," the "deformity and nonsense," by which Blake had tried "to represent immateriality."

Blake's only revenge was the writing of a few lines of very poor satirical verse, which he did not even publish; and perhaps it is to the same circumstances that we owe the much-discussed couplet referring to Hayley:

And when he could not act upon my wife

Hired a Villain to bereave my Life. 1

The first part of this accusation probably refers to efforts made by Hayley to obtain Mrs. Blake's support in his interference with her husband's work, rather than to an attempt of any other kind. In the second, the allusion is either to the way in which the work of his hands was taken from him and given to others, that he might die of hunger, or to articles published by Leigh Hunt and presumably suggested by Hayley (which Blake calls " hiring a villain "), these also being an attempt to take away his life, that is to say, his genius and his inspiration. Whatever their meaning, the lines, scribbled in a moment of anger, and without any idea of publication, reveal the bitterness of his feelings towards some of his former friends.

Happily for him, he now found some new friends and new patrons. The most important of these was John Linnell, the landscape painter, to whom Blake was introduced in 1818, and who became a regular purchaser of his work up to the day of his death. It was for Linnell that he engraved the illustrations to the Book of Job, from drawings originally made for Mr. Butts. He it was also who commissioned the drawings for Dante; and he purchased, in addition, a series of illustrations to Paradise Regained. It was through him that Blake was given the work of executing a set of woodcuts-the only woodcuts he ever produced-for Phillips' translation of Virgil's first Eclogue, published by Dr. Thornton; and through him also that the artist made the acquaintance of several future buyers, among whom were Sir Thomas Lawrence, the famous portrait painter, and John Varley, now well known as a painter of landscapes and a leader of the English Watercolour School. Varley was at that time an enthusiastic student of Astrology, and is said to have foretold events which came to pass precisely as he had anticipated. He taught Blake something of the science; and Blake drew for him a series of visionary 1 Rossetti M.S. No. 78.

portraits, the subjects ranging from The Man who built the Pyramids to The Ghost of a Flea. It was at the house of one of these new friends that Blake met Lady Charlotte Bury, formerly a lady-in-waiting on the Princess of Wales, and the writer of a diary, published twenty years later, which gives, among a vast number of scandalous anecdotes and other recollections, an account of Blake's appearance and his sayings. At the same house, he made the acquaintance of Crabb Robinson (1776-1867), gossip and keen observer of men, to whom we owe so many stories of Goethe, Wieland, Wordsworth, Lamb and others of his friends, and who has left us a most curious record of his conversations with Blake and his impressions of the artist's character. Linnell was so much attached to Blake that he named one of his sons after him; and this William Linnell could still remember, only a few years ago, how he sat on Blake's knee as a child. The Linnell family still possesses most of Blake's original and unpublished works, among them the Dante drawings, and the manuscript of Vala, which Messrs. Ellis and Yeats arranged and printed for the first time in 1893.

Blake was thus able to pass his last years in peace, his sole regret being that his old age was a childless one. It is recorded of him that once, while he was repeating the parable of the Prodigal Son, at the words, "when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him," his voice faltered and he burst into tears. He does not seem to have complained, however; and his moments of real loneliness were few. He had found, at last, "good friends, willing pupils, quiet hours, kindly atmosphere";1 and in this peaceful state he ended his days. There was no clearly defined disease: only shiverings and a gradual sinking. On the day of his death, he composed and sang hymns to his Creator. He is said also to have drawn a last sketch of his wife, and told her that she had been an angel to him. Another account says that just before his death "his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened, and he burst out into singing of the things he saw in heaven.' "2 And a little later he expired, so peacefully that the exact moment of his death passed unnoticed. The date was August 12th, 1827, and his age seventy years.

So, painlessly and happily, his life ended, or rather, as he had himself said of Flaxman a few months before, he went " to his own eternal house, leaving the delusions of Goddess Nature and her laws

1 Ellis and Yeats: William Blake, Vol. 1, chap. xvii.

Gilchrist: William Blake, ch. xxxvii.

to get into freedom." He was buried, by his own desire, in Bunhill Fields Cemetery, the resting-place of other members of his family also. The grave was not a purchased one, and bears no identifying mark. 2 His widow, whose soul, as she herself said, had gone with him, lived for four years longer, during part of the time in one of Linnell's houses, and for part as housekeeper to Tatham, one of her husband's more recently acquired friends. Her last years cannot be better described than in the words of Messrs. Ellis and Yeats:

She lived on, the captive of her mercilessly vigorous health. She never forgot that her husband had looked on death as merely "going to another room." Often she would call out to him as though he were only a few yards away and would hear. Perhaps she knew best. Both Frederick Tatham and John Linnell did what they could for her. She was not allowed to want, and even sent back a gift of money that had been procured from the Royal munificence, saying that others needed it more. She continued to work as when Blake had been still in the same room, colouring and selling his designs. At last she became unable to eat and drink. She fretted, though uncomplainingly, at the closed door that kept her from being at his side, and presently the door softly opened, and she passed gently and gladly where she was weary of waiting to go. 3

Blake's sister survived her husband and his wife; but nothing is known of her, except that she died old, and, it is said, in great poverty. Blake had left a large number of manuscripts and finished drawings, nearly two hundred in all, according to some authorities. All these were given by his widow to Frederick Tatham, a member of the Irvingite Church, lately founded by Edward Irving, the tenets of which were, that the second coming of Christ was at hand; that faith, if only strong enough, could still perform the miracles of primitive Christianity, and that everyone ought to live in strict obedience to the Church's laws. Its members numbered several thousands, and, after Irving's death, took different lines, as Ritualists and Sacerdotalists, some uniting finally in their acceptance of High Church principles. They called themselves "Angels," and posed as strict guardians of religion and morality. Blake's doctrines had nothing in common with the teaching of any orthodox church. Naturally, therefore, his works were condemned and ordered to be destroyed; and all his papers were, in the name of morality and

1 Letter to George Cumberland: 12 April, 1827.

2 Mr. Herbert Jenkins, one of the most assiduous of present day Blake students, has recently succeeded in establishing the exact position of the grave. Ellis and Yeats: William Blake, Vol. 1, chap. xviii.

religion, either burnt or otherwise disposed of. In this way, many masterpieces have been lost to us, or, if not masterpieces, at any rate many writings which would have helped us to a clearer understanding of his doctrines and his philosophy. By a miracle, the manuscript of Vala escaped destruction, having been given by Blake himself to Linnell. As to some of the other works, though Tatham declared later that he had sold and not destroyed them, there is but too much reason to doubt his statement, in view of his barbarous mutilation of Blake's notes on Swedenborg. And, whatever their fate, not one of these lost books has ever been recovered.

S

III: HIS CHARACTER

UCH a life as this, viewed from the outside, seems commonplace enough. But there was nothing commonplace about Blake. On the contrary, everyone who came into contact with him was struck by his peculiar distinction; and his manner and conversation were alike unforgettable.

Physically, he was rather below the average in height, but strong and well-proportioned. He was never ill. He could work for many hours or walk the whole day long in the country, without experiencing the least fatigue. On one occasion he nursed his dying brother, watching for a whole fortnight by the bedside and allowing no one to take his place; and then, when all was over, slept continuously for three days. There seemed to be always in him a reserve of superfluous force demanding an outlet, which it found in these long walks, and in the unceasing, impetuous work which never allowed his hands to remain idle. But this force was a spiritual rather than a physical one. It showed itself most of all in his head.

Two things about him seem specially to have impressed anyone who saw him his hair and his eyes. We have several portraits of him, done at different ages, two by his wife, and one-the best known by Phillips, besides a cast of his head made by a phrenologist when he was about fifty. Further, he has, in several of his pictures, taken himself as the model for certain of his mystical figures, as in Los at his Forge (Jerusalem, p. 6) and the Resurrection of Albion (Jerusalem, p. 95). And in these and the two portraits drawn by his wife, we notice how the hair stands up, in thick waves, from the high forehead, making an almost continuous line with that of the profile, and reminding one of the rays of supernatural light emanating from the pictured head of Moses. His hair was of a light colour, shaded with gold, and is said by his contemporaries to have at times resembled a lion's mane. His eyes were even more striking: very wide open, and almost too large for their orbits, peculiarly bright, with the illumination in them of some internal radiance, burning and piercing into the very soul of those whom they looked upon. They seemed more luminous than the eyes of common men; and the very large pupils had an appearance of always trying to enlarge themselves