Chapter XII: Declining Years and Death

Blake, like the Patriarch, wrestled through his dark night till the day dawned. He had wrenched the secret out of the angel messenger. Henceforth he was an Israelite indeed--a guileless Prince with God, with a word of God on his lips for such as had ears to hear. Doubtless if we could arrange the details of human experience we would decree that after such a contact with the Divine a man should for the rest of his days sail on a halcyon sea into a haven of rest. But though the giants are slain, their ghosts return; and Blake, like Jacob, was still haunted by spectres which only did not deter him because he had painfully learnt to discern between the shadow and the substance.

The day dawned, but not in the way that most would choose. Worldly success was farther from him than ever. Instead of himself arising like a blaze of light on the England that he loved, it was his spirit that was secretly illumined by the spiritual sun; and while he could live by the memory of his resplendent vision of Christ, yet as he moved among men he was merely observed to halt on his thigh, or in other words to be touched with that frenzy or madness which marks those who have rashly gazed on the sun.

For the next ten years--years of rich spiritual maturity--Blake worked incessantly; but his life was so obscure that his biographers have been able to glean but a handful of facts.

Immense changes were taking place in European literature and art. The new spirit and the old spirit were energetically at work side by side. At home, Jane Austen brought the novel as understood and treated by Fanny Burney to consummate perfection. Sir Walter Scott cast a magic glow of romance over the past. Wordsworth was piercing through the sacramental significance of nature. Coleridge was dreaming weird mystical dreams in the open daylight. Abroad, Goethe was exploring the riches of man's fallen nature. Beethoven, bursting away from Haydn, was introducing a world of passion into his music. Napoleon was a new kind of man.

Did Blake read the signs of the times? And what did he think of them? We know that he admired Wordsworth, but feared lest nature should ensnare him. The rest is guess-work. Blake could hardly have known how to place himself among the great moderns. It is we, looking back over the lapse of a century, who can see his deep affinity with many that came after him. I would say more. He had anticipated much of the better side of Nietzsche's teaching, but had seen it still more clearly in the character and teaching of Christ. He is strictly the Evangelist to the modern world enamoured of art, strength, and spontaneity, to bring it back to Christ.

Amidst these changes we can just discern a change in Blake's spiritual life which is common to all original geniuses. The Psalmist sang: "Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children whom thou mayst make princes." Blake had hardly had a father, but he had had friends or brothers that were too apt to play the part of the heavy father. These were passing one by one, and their places were being taken by young men, sons who sat at the feet of the wise man and gave him the reverence that was his due.

We cannot say that Blake had a genius for friendship. With none of his old friends had he been really intimate. He was always uncompromising on his convictions, and these were so peculiar that not even Swedenborgian Flaxman could always understand him. His feeling for Flaxman survived with difficulty. What might have grown to a close friendship for Hayley died the moment he saw him as he was. Stothard had refused his offered hand after their quarrel. There remained Fuseli, of whom he wrote:

"The only man that e'er I knew
Who did not make me almost spew
Was Fuseli."

Fuseli was a learned man who could scamper about the world's history with breathless speed. He lectured on the different ages of art with all the fluency of a Swiss polyglot waiter. Out of the copious flow of his eloquence one can, with long patience, fish up such fine things as this on Michael Angelo: "A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty," or this on Rembrandt's Crucifixion: "Rembrandt concentrated the tremendous moment in one flash of pallid light. It breaks on the body of Christ, shivers down His limbs, and vanishes on the armour of a crucifix; the rest is gloom."

Fuseli had shared with Blake an admiration for Lavater. In an age of crude scepticism he openly confessed his faith in Christ. With Blake he reckoned outline the foundation of great art. Here was much on which the two men could meet. But Fuseli never quite dug down to fundamental principles.

He declared again and again that "our ideas are the offspring of our senses," and Blake regarded such damnable Lockian heresy as rank atheism; and among his other heresies, also damnable in Blake's eyes, was an enthusiasm for Titian and Correggio, and a summary denial that Albert Duerer was a man of genius. Hence, Fuseli and Blake, with regard for one another, were never intimate friends. It was about the year 1818 that Blake found himself in the midst of a new and younger circle. George Cumberland, himself young and orthodox on outline, introduced him to John Linnell and John Varley.

John Varley moved from 2 Harris Place to 5 Broad Street, Golden Square, about 1806. His house was shared with William Mulready, who married his sister. His wife, Esther, was sister of John Gisborne, who moved in the Shelley and Godwin set. Another sister married Copley Fielding. Here was a group of artists connected by marriage.

Varley helped to found the Water Colour Society in 1804, and drew to himself many young men who were more or less his pupils. Among these, besides Mulready, were W. H. Hunt, John Linnell, Samuel Palmer, James Holmes.

With the big, fat, genial Varley Blake soon became friends. Varley was a typical once-born man, and his clean earthiness made its irresistible appeal to the twice-born Blake with his head in the skies. Besides his water-colours he pursued with equal ardour and success the study of astrology.

Minds of Blake's order have been apt to believe in astrology, like Jacob Boehme and Paracelsus; but Varley failed to convert Blake because, no doubt, of the extremely materialistic explanation that he could only give of his science. The stars, according to the astrology that the Western mind scoffs at, are supposed to exert a direct influence on the destinies and characters of men. But there is an Oriental doctrine that dispenses with such a crude theory, considering that the stars have no more direct influence on character than the hands of a clock on time. Like all mysticism, East and West, it regards the universe as the macrocosm and man the microcosm. Between the two there is a correspondence, and therefore the state of the microcosm can be read by the starry indications of the macrocosm as the time can be known by the hands of an exact clock or sundial.

Varley understood nothing of all this, and so failed to convince Blake. But he gave him what he needed far more, hearty good will and unpatronizing faith and reverence. Blake could pursue his visions and report on them, certain that his companion would believe in his marvels with that perfect credulity which so many are ready to give who have rejected the marvels of Christianity. At his bidding he evoked visions of past worthies, and sketched them while they waited. From 1819 to, 1820 Blake executed no less than fifty heads, including his famous _Ghost of a Flea_.

Those of us who were thrilled in our boyhood by the tales of Lord Lytton like to know that Varley was consulted by him before writing his fascinating _Zanoni_ and _Strange Story_.

A still greater comfort and help to Blake was John Linnell.

John Linnell began by copying George Morland, passed under the influence of Sir Benjamin West, and then became a pupil of Varley, who sent him straight to nature. Varley's brother Cornelius attended a baptist chapel, and he induced Linnell to go with him and listen to the sermons of its pastor, the Reverend John Martin. He was convicted of sin, converted, duly immersed, and regularly enrolled. Henceforth religion of a puritanic kind ruled his life, and made him easy to dissenters of the different sects, but stiff and uncompromising towards the Church of England and the clergy. At one time he had thoughts of joining the quakers, whose position is far different from that of the baptists; but he was deterred by Bernard Barton, who, though fond of art himself, warned him that the Friends as a whole looked with extreme suspicion on anyone addicted to such a questionable pursuit as that of making pictures.

Blake was introduced to Linnell by George Cumberland in 1818 at Linnell's house in Rathbone Place. They soon became intimate. Their religious conception of art united them, and Linnell much relished Blake's tirades against kings and priests. It was only when Blake spoke with equal licence of the sex passion that Linnell felt an adverse tug at their friendship.

Linnell took over for his country house Collins' Farm, North End, Hampstead, and there Blake became a regular visitor on Sunday afternoons until sickness and death put an end to his visits.

North End, now in the County of London, is still a village on the Heath. On Saturdays, Sundays, and Bank Holidays it is overlaid with trippers, orange-peel, and paper bags. But no sooner do the holiday-makers return to work than North End and its marvellous portion of heath resumes its mystery, and the dreamer can dream undisturbed till the next people's holiday.

It is pleasant to think of Blake arriving at Collins' Farm, then after the friendly greetings emerging by the Bull and Bush, sacred meeting-house of many artists, crossing the road to Rotten Row, mounting the hillock and viewing the fir-trees which still stand in all their mysterious beauty. If only North End had been south instead of north! Blake declared with seeming perverseness that the North upset his stomach. Varley would have explained to him that his ruling sign being Leo, he required like all lions the warm sunny south.

Linnell introduced him to many of his young friends, who, catching the infection, hailed Blake as a master and sat at his feet to learn. We note this deference because it is what Blake so richly deserved; but even among his new young friends there was nothing like complete discipleship. Blake's art was an inseparable part of his whole passionate, chequered spiritual life. No one whose inner life does not repeat the same broad outlines can really approach near to him as an artist. James Holmes, with his easy, superficial, courtly life, might teach Blake to brighten his water-colours, but he was completely outside of his spiritual travail, and could only wonder mildly why young idealists like Calvert, Palmer, and Richmond could be so preoccupied with Blake's half-crazed thoughts.

Even among those chosen three, there were no sons of thunder.

Edward Calvert caught Blake's spirit in his lovely and simple woodcuts, but quite rightly followed his own bent, which led him ultimately along a different path from Blake's zigzag lightning tract. The master always transpierced Nature, and lived in a transcendental region: Calvert, serene and calm, detected the heart of the Divine beating equally in Nature, and reproduced what he heard and saw in musical and sweet landscapes, where storms never come, and which modern artists would probably prefer to see disturbed by an earthquake.

Samuel Palmer, with youthful impulse and generosity, gave himself to Blake, and, rendered receptive by his love and enthusiasm, soon assimilated all the master's principles. Palmer's rich nature allowed of much reverence for Linnell too, and in his early work it is easy to find examples first of Blake's influence and then of Linnell's. Like Calvert, he was deeply and equably devout. He did not demand that austerity which drew Linnell to the baptist, John Martin; nor that passion for which Blake went to hell. The gentler elements of his soul led him away from harsh sects to the more temperate Church of England, which can, among other things, still nourish those souls that require the kind of diet that George Herbert could provide so bountifully.

We look with extreme interest to see how Blake's professed disciples set about to unite their religion and art. They did it as many other Christian artists have done it, as Fra Angelico did supremely well; yet they missed Blake's daemonic energy, and so have failed to meet that demand of our own age which will at all cost have passion for the driving force of religion if it is to have religion at all. Samuel Palmer painted and etched some exquisite pictures; but he was in after years gently apologetic for Blake's _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, and he left the problem of the synthesis of religion and art in the light of Christianity precisely where it was left by the best Italian Christian artists.

George Richmond completed the little inner circle of three disciples. He was only sixteen when he met Blake at John Linnell's, North End, and then walked with him back to Fountain Court, Strand, thrilling with a unique impression as if he were verily walking with the prophet Isaiah. For a while he was plastic clay in the hands of Blake, revealing the master's influence in _Abel the Shepherd_ and _Christ and the Woman of Samaria_, but like his friends, Calvert and Palmer, he had sufficient native energy to follow his own instinct, and when he found himself in portrait painting there is nothing to remind us even remotely of Blake. His sitters appear a noble family. Cardinal Newman, Bishop Wilberforce, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs Gaskell, and many others are extraordinarily beautiful, and might all be taken for brothers and sisters. Richmond's religious feelings brought him into fellowship with the tractarian movement, which of all recent religious movements in England allows most standing-ground for one devoted to religion and art. He did not paint Titans, but he puts us in love with his beautiful family, and that surely is no mean achievement.

Among Blake's friends must be mentioned Crabb Robinson and Frederick Tatham, not because of their intrinsic importance to Blake, but their use to us. Robinson was often sorely perplexed by the vehement paradoxes that Blake wilfully poured into his ears; but at the same time, he thought it worth while to jot them down in his diary.

Tatham came near enough to Blake to enable him to fulfil several of the indispensable qualifications of the biographer. Afterwards he became an Irvingite, and, conscience-ridden, destroyed many of Blake's works that had come into his hands because he reckoned them unsound.

One other very curious friendship stands out, that with Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.

Wainewright was born out of due season. He might have avoided the unpleasant and ugly things that befell him if he had been a contemporary of the Borgias. He was an artist, and art is no respecter of persons. We are tempted to say that art is fallen man's supreme consolation. It is assuredly the meeting-place between a certain kind of saint and a certain kind of sinner. The highest artist-saint, like Jesus Christ, appears to create himself rather than works of art, and such always makes an irresistible appeal to the artist-sinner, as we see that Christ did to Oscar Wilde in his _De Profundis_ and to George Moore in his _Brook Kerith_. The latter seems to be as far as the artist can reach without religion, and it could teach most Christians something about their Master. When Blake discovered that the Real Man in each one of us has imagination for his chief and working faculty, he overcame once for all the provoking dualism of art and religion, and at the same time he became an attraction to those who live an imaginative life, especially among sinners. Wainewright was drawn to Blake for precisely the same reason that many modern enthusiasts are who could hardly be reckoned religious. He is permanently interesting to the psychologist as to the artist, and hence he could not escape the notice of Lord Lytton, who introduced him into his _Lucretia_, and above all of Oscar Wilde, who darted upon him, and who, with such a subject, was loosened to write in his most witty, brilliant, and characteristic style.

Here I must mention, in order, Blake's chief works from 1810 to the end.

In 1793 was published a small book of engravings _For Children, The Gates of Paradise_. Blake re-issued this in 1810, changing the _For Children_ to _For the Sexes_. The changes do not throw fresh light on Blake. Rather, what is important to know, we see, in spite of the changes, that Blake's deepest thoughts were the same in 1795 and 1810. I will quote only the first two lines:

"Mutual Forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the Gates of Paradise."

Forgiveness of sins, so impossible for the Pharisee, so easy for the artist, is the heart of Christ's gospel. Blake leaned to that form of Christianity which best understood forgiveness. At this time he was inclined to think that the Church of Rome came nearest to Christ.

Blake reprinted _The Prologue and Characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims_ in 1812. Then followed five years of indefatigable production, but the works are lost for this world, though Blake would probably say that they were published in the other, and read, and remembered.

About 1817 he engraved leaflets, _Laocoon_, and _On Homer's Poetry_, and _On Virgil_.

The first is covered with small writing, fresh proverbs of hell, which are the same in substance as the earlier proverbs, but less provocative. The _Laocoon_ perfectly expressed his own experience during years of obscure struggle. He found the same mighty conflict described from cover to cover of the Bible. Christians have been accustomed to see there the history of their sin, conviction, struggle, and victory. Blake had nothing to say against all this, but he named that which was striving for the victory the spirit of art, and all the things that accompany the conflict--prayer, praise, fasting--he explained in terms of art. Protestantism had made necessary such a vehement vindication of the beautiful. To-day, I suppose, we accept naturally Blake's aphorisms, but need to rediscover some of those other things that protestantism and catholicism alike have insisted on so uncompromisingly in the past.

From _On Homer's Poetry_ I quote the following:

"Unity and Morality are secondary considerations and belong to Philosophy and not to Poetry, to Exception and not to Rule, to Accident and not to Substance. The Ancients called it eating of the Tree of Good and Evil."

In other words, poetry, like life and love and other instinctive things, goes deeper and before our fine-spun distinctions of number and morality. Philosophers have sprung up since Blake's day who are wonderfully agreed with him.

This on the cause of European wars is striking: "The Classics! it is the Classics, and not Goths nor Monks, that desolate Europe with Wars."

From _On Virgil_ I gather this, which needs no comment: "A warlike State never can produce Art. It will rob and plunder and accumulate into one place, and translate and copy and buy and sell and criticize, but not make."

During Blake's last year in South Molton Street he executed seventeen woodcuts for Dr Thornton's _Pastorals of Virgil_. These are very simple and childlike or childish, according to our state when we look at Blake's work. They seem to me of very unequal merit; but the best of them are invaluable, for they show that Blake at the age of sixty-three had not lost that childlike innocence, the parody of which is all that most men attain to in their second childhood.

In 1821 Blake removed to 3 Fountain Court, Strand, where he had the plainest of neutral rooms, not without value as a background for his visions. Here relief was at hand, but he knew it not. Harassed by poverty, he must raise money somehow. His collection of engravings, which had steadily grown since the day that he had endowed his bride with it as his sole treasure, was marketable, and with as little fuss as need be he sold it to Messrs Colnaghi and Company. It was the final self-stripping. Humbled and disciplined by the inexorable years, having surrendered himself and his last precious possession, he was ready to bring forth the rich fruit of his mature genius. His old friend and patron Butts gave him a commission to paint twenty-one water-colour designs illustrating the Book of Job. He was allowed to show them, and they drew forth from his friend Linnell a further commission to execute and engrave a duplicate set, with the written agreement that he should receive L100 for the designs and copyright and another L100 out of the profits. There were no profits forthcoming; but Linnell paid him in instalments L50 besides the first L100. We may note here that the Royal Academy in 1822 made him a grant of L25. And so, at last, Blake had sufficient means to enable him to devote himself to his joyous work without the gnawing distraction of poverty and want.

There is no book in the world better suited for Blake's genius than the Book of Job. It has been in itself a complete Bible to the mystic in all ages. In it is given a marvellous description in dramatic form of that mysterious and awful self-stripping which the saint experiences after his conversion and not before. It is an expansion of the text that even here death is the gate of life. The same truth is insisted on by all the prophets, especially by the prophets to the nations like Ezekiel and Jonah; by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; by the personal experience of St Paul; and recently by Hegel, till it has become a commonplace both in religion and philosophy.

Blake was troubled by no modern criticism of the Book of Job, which by post-dating it several hundred years has robbed it of much of its literary interest. To him it was the porch of the Sanctuary, the oldest book in the Bible, at once the most ancient and most modern of books. Job, after his dark night of testing and judgment, emerged simple and guileless, a Patriarch who served God solely because that was the supremely right thing to do. Who was Job? The Book gives no hint of his parentage. Who wrote the wonderful prologue? Who could write it? Again the Book is silent. Tradition says Moses; and if tradition speak truly, then several very interesting things follow. Job was probably the son of Issachar,[6] and as such went down with his father into Egypt when Joseph had been advanced in that land. He would then remove to Uz in Chaldaea, carrying within treasures of Egyptian learning. In later years, Moses, fleeing from Egypt into the desert of Midian, would become his neighbour. Moses is admittedly one of the world's greatest initiates. As such he could certainly have written the prologue and the epilogue. And how lofty a level the drama maintains throughout! Even Job's friends, who pour out pithy things in rich poetical language surpassing that attained by all laureates, are rebuked for uttering only what everybody knows. Yet so universal is the Book in its symbolism that it can afford, if need be, to dispense with picturesque details of its authorship and date, and stand simply on its merits as an inspired dramatic epic of Man's passage from his consciousness of degradation as a worm, and his stubbornness as a wild ass's colt, to the dignity and power of a son of God.

Blake had already traced the course of man's day of judgment in Night IX of _The Four Zoas_, and had painted a fresco of the subject in 1820. In the poem he had used his own peculiar mythology, and closed his poem to nearly all readers. The Book of Job obliged him to drop his own symbolism and use the simple and universal symbols that the drama itself supplies. A brief reference to each design in order will make his purpose clear.

_Design I._--Job and his wife and family, like true Israelites, are at prayer under a spreading fig-tree. The shepherd sons have for the time left their flocks at rest and hanged their musical instruments on the tree. At first sight the picture presents a scene of idyllic peace. But there are ominous signs. The sun is setting, night is fast coming, and the fig-tree suggests the immemorial symbol of Israel's wrestling during the dark night.

_Design II._--An illustration of the prologue of the Book. It is a marvellous representation of what an initiate only--a Moses, a Blake--could have imagined of the cosmos, with its heavenly portion peopled with the angelic sons of God in the middle, the earth and its inhabitants below, and above and beyond all God in His Heaven.

Satan, a magnificent figure, comes with the Sons of God to present himself before God. In his fiery aura are two shadowy figures making with him a trinity of evil.

_Design III._--The crash of Job's family. He has built his house, and prospered regardless of those who made it possible for him to build it; and in the sudden turn of events it has become a mere ruin.

_Design IV._--Job and his wife are under the fig-tree, the man bearing with noble and unbroken fortitude the arrival of bad news.

_Design V._--Once more the cosmos. Satan is rushing headlong towards earth to wreak his full power on Job in the midst of his charities, yet forbidden to touch the one thing that Job would so gladly surrender, his life. Heaven cannot remain impassive at suffering on earth. Its sun is darkened and the Almighty on His Throne is grieved at His heart.

_Design VI._--Satan's last malice on Job. He is reduced to sheer nakedness and wretchedness. Nothing of his former life that gave him comfort remains to him. He is "wrecked on God." "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, Blessed be the name of the Lord." With such faith and resignation his sun has not quite set.

_Design VII._--The friends arrive. Once more Blake felt at home from his personal experience. He had never had beyond Catherine and Robert a perfect spiritual friend. He had never lacked corporeal ones. The remembrance of them gave zest and spirit to the portrayal of Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.

_Design VIII._--Job's corporeal friends have done their worst. They and his wife have quenched his last hope. His sun has gone down. Naked and covered with boils from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he lifts up both hands and curses the day that saw his birth.

_Design IX._--The vision of Eliphaz, and his terror, for which Blake recalled his own terror on the threshold.

_Design X._--The corporeal friends stripped of their wordy disguise. They are spiritual enemies that point the finger of scorn at the just, upright man. There is a glimmer of light on the horizon, for Job can still say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

_Design XI._--A worse stage of misery. Hitherto Job had held fast his faith in God. Now he no longer sees God as He is. In the terrors of his dreams and visions he cannot discern between God and Satan. Satan stretches over him with a face reminiscent of God's. As Job turns away his head in horror, it becomes impossible for him to detect the cloven hoof; and so he touches that horror of great darkness, worse than all physical suffering, where not only man but God has turned His face, and in Its place loom the commandments of stone, which recall the darkness and thunders of Sinai.

_Design XII._--The horror of darkness has passed. The stars are shining, and the youthful Elihu essays to utter the wisdom that the old men have lacked. Blake could recall the ministry of his young friends, who had come so recently into his life, and by their love had caused the stars to appear. Elihu does not utter perfect wisdom, for that cannot be reached from human experience.

_Design XIII._--The source of perfect wisdom. "The Lord answered Job out of the Whirlwind." Job sees Him as He is in His true lineaments, and listens as the Almighty speaks. Blake, too, reads breathlessly the marvellous description of creation till his spirit flames up, and the creative fire gives birth to his next most glorious design.

_Design XIV._--The creation and the immense joy of it. There is the creation of the whole cosmos, when the morning Stars sang together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy. Never was such joy again till the beginning of the New Creation, when the Son of God was born in Bethlehem, as Luke, artist and saint, narrates with such artless simplicity and beauty. The Scriptures assure us of a time when that joy shall be eternal. Meanwhile it is the artists who in true creation have a foretaste of the joy. It is Blake who has presented it in its most spiritual and universal aspect.

_Design XV._--A grotesque. I presume that Blake, like Leonardo da Vinci, discovered something grotesque as he explored the universe.

_Design XVI._--The universe once more. It is the consummation of the judgment. Satan and his shadowy companions who dwell in man have taken definite form and substance. The man who has walked the way of excess has brought all his latent evil out, and has given it substance, so that he can arise in his strength and cast it out for ever.

_Design XVII._--Job's beatific vision. He is blessed and his house, now only his wife, but through her and God's blessing he may be fruitful and multiply, and build his house in the divine order. His sun has risen and will no more set.

_Design XVIII._--Job stands before an altar of burnt-offering. Like Jacob he has prevailed, and God accepts him and his prayers for his friends.

_Design XIX._--Job and his wife once more under the fig-tree, whose fruit has ripened. He is the recipient of friendly gifts and offerings from his neighbours.

_Design XX._--Job, with memories engraven on the chambers of his imagery, stretching forth his hands over his new family of beautiful daughters.

_Design XXI._--A return to the first scene. But the sun is rising, and Job and his family, taking their instruments of art, are worshipping God in the beauty of holiness.

Blake completed his engravings for Job in March 1825, and they were published March 1826.

They might well have been the crowning work of his life, and followed by his _Nunc dimittis_, but there was boundless mental energy in the old man, though his body was failing.

It was in 1825 that Blake met Crabb Robinson at the house of Mr Aders, where Mrs Aders, daughter of Raphael Smith, was in the habit of entertaining many interesting people.

Crabb Robinson was a most excellent man--well accoutred, steady on his legs, with well-set head, without superstition, and just enough prejudice to starch his mind.

He knew Blake at the time that he was learning Italian for the sake of Dante that he might execute Dante designs for Linnell. From Robinson's reminiscences, we do just get a glimpse of Blake struggling with Dante, and delighting to mystify his respectable friend. Unfortunately, the reported references in their conversations to Dante are few, though enough perhaps to indicate Blake's attitude. He was not one of Dante's elect. But with closer study he was beginning to fall under his spell, and we may safely surmise that if Dante had come into Blake's life in his youth, instead of Swedenborg, Blake would have become the greatest catholic mystic artist of the age.

Little more remains to be told.

Blake in great pain of body--stomach trouble and shivering fits--was driven to his bed. When he knew the end was near, he said to his wife: "I have no grief but in leaving you, Catherine. We have lived happy, we have lived long, we have been ever together, but we shall be divided soon. Why should I fear death? Nor do I fear it. I have endeavoured to live as Christ commanded, and I have sought to worship God truly in my own home, when I was not seen of men."

While the wife ministered to him he exclaimed suddenly, "You have ever been an angel to me, I will draw you." And he did. In answer to her, he expressed a wish to be buried at Bunhill Fields by the Church of England.

At midday on August 12th, 1827, he burst into strong joyous song, and then corrected his previous word about parting by assuring Catherine that he would always be there to take care of her. Then he remained quite quiet till his spirit passed away.