him that there is no want of work. Blake had been in difficulties during his last months at Hercules Buildings when receiving £1 each for illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts, and naturally feared to have trouble in earning his bread on returning to London. He recalls Hayley's own last encouraging words, "Do not fear that you can want employment," and assures him that he is not neglecting the head of Romney that he is engraving for him. It is, of course, for his Life of Romney. The letter ends with Blake's fresh impressions of London:

"God send better times. Everybody complains, but all go on cheerfully and with spirit. The shops in London improve; everything is clean and neat. The streets are widened where they were narrow. Even Snow Hill is become almost level, and is a very handsome street, and the narrow part of the Strand near St. Clement's is widened and become very elegant."

The date of this is not 1903, as one might suppose, but 1803. Blake should come back now and see the Strand again, if only by moonlight, as Hamlet's father saw Elsinore.

A month or two later, after the turn of the year, Blake went back to Sussex and surrendered to his bail to be tried for insulting the King.

In looking backwards over his life we find Blake's name as only seven or eight times connected with Royalty. The first time is in the passage about "the King" of a derisive though dignified nature that he has written in Tiriel. He strikes this passage out. The second is the symbolic use of the King in America. The third is when he sacrificed all his pupils and reduced himself to embarrassment in order not to be discourteous to the Sovereign by teaching other humbler subjects of the Crown after refusing to be drawing-master to the Royal Family. The fourth time is when some of his designs were shown to George III, who (probably detecting that they were "Sunday pictures") would not look at them. The fifth is this trial for treason. The sixth, if we do not count a kind word for "old George II" in a note on Lavater, is the dedication of Blair's Grave to the Queen. The seventh is the following note, made not for publication, and in connection with we do not know what public event, but the date must be about 1809:

Princes appear to me to be fools; Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools. They seem to be something else besides human life. I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble them

selves about Politics. If men were wise, Princes, the most arbitrary, could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest Government is compelled to be a tyranny.

To these may be added a constant suspicion of the Government that it is said Blake had. He supposed it to have engaged the soldier Scholfield to try to entrap him into treasonable utterances, as the agents provocateurs do in France.

If this be counted as an eighth, however, then the ninth and last connection of Blake's name with Royalty occurred after his death. We seem to have reached the ninth " Night"

of Vala.

Mr. Kirkup relates (as recorded in a note to pages 81-83 of the first edition of Swinburne's Essay) that a gift of £100 was sent to Blake's widow by the Princess Sophia. Considering what loyalty to Royalty had cost the Blakes, Mrs. Blake might have looked on this as a poor and partial restitution, but she was able to subsist on the sale-carefully spun out-of Blake's drawings and engraved books, and did not expect to need to subsist at all for very long. "She sent back the money with all due thanks, not liking to take or keep what, as it seemed to her, she could dispense with, while many to whom no chance or choice was given might have been kept alive by the gift."

If ever a Blake Church is formed, its priests will not have far to go for the first saint of its calendar.

Gilchrist's account of what now happened at the trial for treason need not be improved, and is adopted here, the present writer having nothing of importance to add to it or to correct in it:

The trial came off at Chichester on 11th January 1804, at the Quarter Sessions, the Duke of Richmond (the radical, not the corn law duke) being the presiding magistrate. The Sessions were held in those days in the Guildhall, which is the shell of a Gothic building, having been formerly the chancel of an early English date to the old church of the Grey Friars convent. The fragmentary chancel and the Friary grounds are still extant, just within what used to be the city walls, at the north-east corner of the cheerful old cathedral town.

A few days before the impending trial Hayley met with an accident which very nearly prevented his attending to give evidence in his protégé's favour. It was of a kind, however, to which he was pretty well accustomed. A persevering and fearless rider, he was in the eccentric habit of using an umbrella on horseback to shade his eyes, the abrupt unfurling of which commonly followed, naturally enough, by the rider's being forthwith pitched on his head. He had on this occasion lighted on a flint with more than usual violence, owing his life indeed

to the opportune shield of a strong new hat. Living or dying, however," he declares to his doctors, he "must make a public appearance within a few days at the trial of our friend Blake." And on the appointed day he did appear in court to speak to the character and habits of the accused.

The local report

follows, that was looked up, it would appear, by D. G. Rossetti in the Sussex Advertiser for January 16, 1804. It says:

William Blake, an engraver at Felpham, was tried on a charge exhibited against him by two soldiers for having uttered seditious and treasonable expressions, such as d- -n the King; dn all his subjects; d-n his soldiers; they are all slaves. When Bonaparte comes it will be cut-throat for cut-throat, and the weakest must go to the wall,-I will help him, etc.

Something curiously like the sentiments of some of Blake's less poetic fellow-countrymen will be noticed here by those who remember what used to be said in the early days of the Boer War.

Gilchrist's account goes on:

Mrs. Blake used afterwards to tell how, in the middle of the trial, when the soldier invented something to support his case, her husband called out "False!" with characteristic vehemence, and in a tone which electrified the whole court, and carried conviction with it. Rose greatly exerted himself for the defence. In his cross-examination of the accuser, "he most happily exposed," says Hayley, "the falsehood and malignity of the charge, and also spoke very eloquently for his client," though in the midst of his speech seized with illness, and concluding it with difficulty. Blake's neighbours joined with Hayley in giving him the same character of habitual gentleness and peaceableness, which must have a little astonished the soldier after his peculiar experience of those qualities. A good deal of the two soldiers' evidence being plainly false, the whole was received with suspicion. It became clear that whatever the words uttered, they were extorted in the irritation of the moment by the soldiers' offensive conduct.

"After a very long and patient hearing," the Sussex Advertiser continues, "he was by the jury acquitted, which so gratified the auditory that the court was, in defiance of all decency, thrown into an uproar by their noisy exultations. The business of the aforegoing Sessions," it is added, "owing to the great length of time taken up by the above trials" (Blake's and others), "was extended to a late hour on the second day, a circumstance that but rarely happens in the western division of the country. The Duke of Richmond sat the first day from ten in the morning till eight at night without quitting the court or taking any refreshment."

An old man at Chichester, lately dead, who was present as a stripling at the trial, attracted thither by his desire to see Hayley, "the great man" of the neighbourhood, said, when questioned, that the only thing he remembered of it was Blake's flashing eye. Great was Hayley's satisfaction.

CHAPTER XXII

GRATITUDE TO HAYLEY

AFTER the trial, Eartham being too far off, a congratulatory supper was held at Lavant, at the house of "Mrs." Poole, who lived only ten minutes' drive from Chichester. It was she who had invited Blake's sister, and had lent him the horse called "Bruno." Blake, in his letter of no date, printed by Gilchrist between that of November 22, 1801, and January 25, 1803, gives the long flight of rhymed verse, printed in his collected works under the title Los the Terrible, remarking that they were "composed above a twelvemonth ago while walking to Lavant to meet my sister." The supper after the trial seems to have been a delightful meal. Blake, after his return to town, mentions Mrs. Poole constantly with expressions of affectionate gratitude. There is nothing to show that Mrs. Blake was either at the trial or at the supper. She was still suffering from the rheumatism caught in the damp cottage, and travelling was hard work in those days.

Blake returned by coach, apparently on the day after the conclusion of the trial, which seems to have lasted to the evening of January 11th or 12th. The next knowledge we have of him is from the letter to Hayley dated "London, January 14, 1804, which he says that he writes immediately on his arrival." It seems that the horse that threw Hayley had come from some cavalry stables.

Blake has learned during his journey by coach from an old soldier, his fellow-passenger, that

No one, not even the most expert horseman, ought ever to mount a trooper's horse. They are taught so many tricks, such as stopping short, falling down on their knees, running sideways, and in various and innumerable ways endeavouring to throw the rider, that it is a miracle if a stranger escape with his life. All this I heard with some alarm, and heard also what the soldier said confirmed by another person in the coach. I therefore, it is my duty, beg and entreat you

never to mount that wretched horse again, nor again to trust to one who has been so educated. God our Saviour watch over you and preserve you.

The letter goes on to show how buoyant Blake's hopes were at this moment, while it explains why Mrs. Blake was not at his trial, and what provision he had made for her during his absence:

I have seen Flaxman already, as I took to him early this morning your present to his scholars. He and his are all well and in high spirits, and welcomed me with kind affection and generous exultation in my escape from the arrows of darkness. I intend to see Mr. Lambert and Mr. Johnson, the bookseller, this afternoon. My poor wife has been near the gate of death, as was supposed by our kind and attentive fellow-inhabitant (Blake had not the whole of 17 South Molton Street) the young and very amiable Mrs. Enoch (a kind-hearted little Jewess, no doubt), who gave to my wife all the attention that a daughter could pay to a mother, but my arrival has dispelled the formidable malady, and my dear and good woman begins to resume her health and strength. Pray, my dear sir, favour me with a line concerning your health, how you have escaped the double blow, both from the wretched horse, and from your innocent humble servant, whose heart and soul are more and more drawn out towards you, Felpham, and its kind inhabitants. I feel anxious, and therefore pray to my God and Father for the health of Miss Poole, and hope that the pang of affection and gratitude is the gift of God for good. I am thankful that I feel it. It draws the soul

toward eternal life and conjunction with spirits of just men made perfect by love and gratitude, the two angels who stand at the gate of heaven, ever open, ever inviting guests to the marriage. O foolish philosophy! Gratitude is heaven itself. There could be no heaven without gratitude. I feel it, and I know it. I thank God and man for it, and above all you, my dear friend and benefactor in the Lord. Pray give my and my wife's duties to Miss Poole, and accept them yourself.

As "Miss Poole" is sometimes called "Mrs. Poole," she was perhaps an elderly maiden lady.

Blake is now at South Molton Street again, and this is the first of the portfolio of letters he writes from there. He begins to rejoice in his freedom, and prepares his two titlepages and prints them off, one to Jerusalem, and the other to Milton. He does not foresee how he is to be harassed by running errands for exacting Hayley. His delight in being able to" prophesy and dream dreams" unmolested could not better be shown than by this bold commencement of his two greatest books in one year. The title-page of the Milton, a Poem in 12 Books, is the one that does him, perhaps, the most credit, in view of the fact that he only printed two, for when we remember the immense change in his feeling toward Hayley since the day-only a few months ago-when he "wrote