Eight plates, after Stothard, for the Novelist's Magazine, 1779, 1782.

Clarence's Dream, for Enfield's Speaker, after Stothard. Published by Johnson, 1780.

Four plates for Scott of Amwell's Poems, after Stothard. Published by Buckland, 1782.

Two plates, after Stothard, for the Lady's Pocket-Book, 1782 or 1783.

Nine or ten plates for Ritson's English Songs, out of a total of nineteen, after Stothard. Published by Johnson,

1783.

The Fall of Rosamond (circular; 2 inches), after Stothard. Published by Macklin, 1783.

Zephyrus and Flora, Calisto, after Stothard. Published after the death of Blake's father by Parker and Blake, 1784, though probably engraved before.

This gives hardly more than thirty plates in six years— five plates a year. If they averaged in price ten pounds a plate, that was as much as we can suppose to have been paid, and means a pound a week of laborious, artistic, skilful, and anxious work. If a statistician were to calculate how much an hour Blake made, he would find it amounted to a sum resembling that which is paid now to young doctors, writers, and the clergy, but refused by artists' models in the schools and stevedores at the docks. There is no reason to believe

even if we suppose the prices paid were the best in the market, and that a dozen or more plates have been lost since Blake's time altogether-that Blake made more than thirty or thirty-five shillings a week.

He

Though his brother James was acting as the head of the family now, Blake seems to have felt that he had suddenly attained a position of ascendency, after having been looked down upon for the whole of his life up to this time. was the only married brother. He had a house of his own, where he was master. Even from the point of view that a business man takes, he believed that his choice of a profession was about to be justified. As usual, we find him putting down his personal feelings in a work of art without loss of time. In the year after that at whose close the death of his father and his own change of house to Broad Street happened, we find that he executed several pictures of Joseph and his Brethren, in one of which the brethren bow down to Joseph. They form (Gilchrist's catalogue says) “a fine sheaf-like group."

H

The works that he had executed with the brush, along with the engravings already quoted, before 1785, are all important:

The Penance of Jane Shore.

King Edward and Queen Eleanor (from which he engraved). War unchained by an Angel. (Marked Butts in the list. We have no letters to Butts till many years later. Presumably the picture was not sold when painted.)

A Breach in a City, the Morning after a Battle.

The Bard, from Gray. (This picture was exhibited in London in 1906 at the Carfax Gallery. Its brown tone curiously recalls Giorgione. We should not have ventured to compare Blake to a Venetian artist in his lifetime. would have gone into a paroxysm of rage.)

He

The Bard and the Joseph series went to the Academy Exhibition in 1785, and were therefore done within nine months after Blake's father died. They must have been his first designs in his new home. The Josephs are traced by Gilchrist, who says that they were not marked with the star, that meant for sale, not sold, at the Royal Academy in those days, he explains (when did the change of meaning begin?); and he relates how they afterwards were bought by a picture-dealer at a furniture sale in their original and unbecoming rosewood frames (so, gold was not necessary at the Royal Academy then!), and were sent to the International Exhibition of 1862.

For two years and a half Robert lived with William as his pupil. He was always the best beloved and most popular of the Blake brothers. William's affection for him was one of the strongest feelings he had ever known, and its memory lasted all his life. The happy days of brotherhood and close union did not last long. One story from those times makes us intimate with that home and lets us into all its secrets. It is well known now, and has been repeated in every biography. Here it is in the words of Gilchrist :

"One day a dispute arose between Robert and Mrs. Blake. She, in the heat of discussion, used words to him his brother (though her husband too) thought unwarrantable. A silent witness thus far, he could now bear it no longer, but, with characteristic impetuosity - when stirred rose and said to her: Kneel down and beg Robert's pardon directly, or you never see my face again.' A heavy threat, uttered in tones which, from Blake, unmistakably showed that it was meant. She, poor thing, 'thought it very hard,' as she would

afterwards tell, to beg her brother-in-law's pardon when she was not in fault! But being a duteous, devoted wife, though by nature nowise tame or dull of spirit, she did kneel down and meekly murmur, Robert, I beg your pardon, I am in the wrong.' 'Young woman, you lie,' abruptly retorted he, I am in the wrong.'

Two things we see once more from this, though we already knew them-Blake was not in love with his wife, yet lovingly reconciled to being her husband, but his wife was in love with him fully, absolutely. Robert-" Bob," as every one called him-was a moral education to Blake at this time, and kept his heart alive with brotherly love when it might have fallen into the death of self-satisfaction. So great was the danger and so near, that Blake knew ever afterwards through what peril he had then gone, and what death had been at the farther side for him if he had not been guided through by his affection for Robert.

Love in the one complete sense of that word—the real and perfect madness that inhabits, as Shakespeare has told us, "in the finest wits of all"-would never come to Blake again. He had had it. Polly Woods had brought it and taken it away. That was all she had had to do with him. She had done it, and gone. It could never be done again. Every one noticed through all the mature and all the declining years of Blake's life how devotedly attached he was to his wife. She was his "beloved." That was his name for her. It was a true name. He had earned the right to use it by his fidelity from the hour of his great discovery that love does not live only in the hot sunshine, but even more in the moony night. But she was not his love. As for the girl that was, or that had been, he had no more to do with her. He never wished to see her again, and he never saw her. That was a comfort, so far, of a kind.

But he could not get it quite out of his head that there was something very grand and noble in himself, or he would not have made this great discovery of his, and returned to the wife that loved him the gift of pity that she had brought to him in his dark hour, restoring it with such high-piled interest. Bob, with his cheery ways and his cleverness and companionability, put all that now out of the region of Blake's daily meditations. There was a contagious healthfulness about Bob. He was in no sort of moral danger himself, and by his mere presence he saved his brother from drifting into something very like the character of a Pharisee. This was

Robert's "message." It had also been in early times his part in life to attract the affection of his play-fellow, J. T. Smith, whose attention became in this way drawn to William, the arrogant and gifted brother. Smith being of a gossiping nature, the result was that when he came to write his Book for a Rainy Day he told us several scrappy but illuminating facts about Blake that we could very ill have spared. Had there been no Bob and no Smith, posterity would now have only half a Blake.

And then Robert, having delivered his message and played his part, seemed to have found no other business in life, and though they tried hard to keep him, he would not stay. Blake did all he could for him. He did not leave the nursing to his wife. He threw himself into the desperate struggle with death, as though he could force the enemy out by his own strength. During the last fortnight he watched day and night by his brother's bed without sleeping. He had his reward. He saw the soul spring from the suddenly still, blind body, and ascend upwards, clapping its hands for joy. Then taking this sight with him Blake went to bed, and slept continuously for three days and nights.

CHAPTER XI

AFTER ROBERT HAD GONE

WHEN he woke up and returned to the activities of life, Blake felt an absolute need for a fresh set of opinions to console him and a fresh set of aspirations to arouse him to effort. He could not take up his existence where he had laid it down when he fell into that long sleep, probably with a last conscious wish that he might wake from it as his brother had awakened from the sleep of life.

His wife was now his only companion. As they drew closer together she must have told him something of the sense of desolation and hopeless misery with which she had gone about her household duties during those three long days, while he had lain from night to morning, and round again to night, in an unapproachable isolation of slumber that must have seemed almost more terrifying than that of the dead body which lay in the next room.

Then it must have been that he told her of the vision that he had seen-the soul of Robert escaping, not merely in peace, or in an awful joy, but with childish and exuberant glee.

She had not seen it. What sort of reality had these visions that one could see while they were hidden from another? Blake argued. He was always arguing. It must ever be held as one of the innumerable wonders that cling about him that he alone among our greatest poets was so greatly given to this unpoetic habit. He had argued with the keeper of the Royal Academy when he was only a student. He argued with the guests of Mrs. Mathews. He argued with all the books he read, as we see by his notes on their margins. He was not in the least likely to spare his wife. But at last all argument came down to this-" Were it not better to believe vision with all our might and strength, though we are fallen and lost?" In the first of what are now