against himself, for his view of woman was always Miltonic, and was founded on Old Testament ideas. To himself, as we know, he gave later the very frank if well-deserved title, "a mental prince."

But we can only guess at the terrific thunder of his reproaches, whose poetry was incomprehensible to the girl, by her answer. She listened to his tirade, and at the end, "Are you a fool?" said she. "That cured me of jealousy,' said Blake afterwards, doing himself rather more than justice, for more than two years later, in his own handwriting, on the margin of a book of Lavater's aphorisms, we find, where jealousy has been mentioned with rebuke, these words: "Pity the jealous!"

The shock, however, was a severe one. Blake's temperament being ardent, his character confident, and his heart. affectionate and trustful, the whole woof and warp of his emotional fabric was torn to scraps at once. Love, self-regard, and hope were wounded. Such a fit of extreme wretchedness came upon him that, strong as he was, or rather precisely because he was strong, he became seriously ill. Like "William Bond" in the ballad, he "came home in a black, black cloud, took to his bed, and there lay down." In fact, he never entirely recovered, for to the end of his life he was liable to suddenly fall into short illnesses that were only fits of extreme and helpless melancholy, for which he himself said he found "no cause." They were echoes of that first thunder-clap of disappointment. His parents, taking serious alarm, arranged with a friend of theirs, a market-gardener named Bouchier, that he should go and live at the garden-house for a while, in the hope that he might recover his health among the flowers.

Mr. and Mrs. Bouchier had a dark-eyed pretty daughter of four-and-twenty, named Catherine, who knew how to love though she did not know how to read and write. She had her own ideal, and was waiting for it. She was not to be deceived by small civilities. She had admirers, and one of them seems to have induced her mother to speak in his favour, for there is no reason to suppose that it was merely to get her out of the house that Mrs. Bouchier had already asked Catherine to make up her mind about marriage. But all the answer Catherine had given was: "I have not yet seen the man." Now on the night of Blake's arrival, as she came into the room where he was sitting with her family, she saw the man and grew faint. It was love at first sight, and never changed from that hour, but was still fresh and

whole all through Kate's long married life, and even during her short widowhood, between forty and fifty years later.

In the summer of 1782 she began to love. In 1827 Blake died. In 1831 she followed him.

Of his proposal to her we have a few words only, as of his jilting by his former love, but this is more than history has kept for us of all the other poets of the world. The words have been told over and over again, and it may almost be said that until they are known Blake's symbolic system. itself is only half revealed. When the declaration was made Blake had been describing his ill-treatment by Polly Woods, and telling how miserable it had made him.

"I pity you from my heart!" Catherine exclaimed.

Do you pity me?" he said. "Then I love you for that." "And I love you,” she answered.

This is certainly a true account of what was really said. The authority for the words must have been Mrs. Blake herself. Her memory was always good, as is that of most healthy and clever people not taught to read and write, and in this matter there is every reason to trust it, for the words she remembered were evidently the middle of a day's talk, the turning-point of the conversation, the climax that is not easily forgotten.

The response of Blake to her offer of pity tells several things. The "then" shows Catherine's love to have been betrayed by a look if not by a word already, so that Blake knew quite well that she loved him. Probably the true writing of his words would be: "Then I love you for that." But we are not forced to emphasise the point in order to find it evident. Whichever way the expression is read it means: "I, who have so lately loved, have already seen that you love me; and you are so pretty and dear that I have been sorry to think that I could not love you for such qualities-Polly Woods was pretty and dear-and I have often wished that I could find something different to love you for. I find it now in your pity."

Here indeed was something entirely unlike Polly Woods, and fit to win a new kind of love. It was a problem solved, and Blake never lost a second in pouncing on the solution of a problem while it was still red-hot in his heart.

Then came her formal acknowledgment of what he knew already. We are not told where the words were spoken, but in the long pathway of a nursery-garden is the probable place, for lovers can be seen so clearly, and from so far, that

a chaperon was not likely to be any nearer than the window of the house. This, though open to let in the warm air, and convenient for observation, would be well out of hearing.

It was not till he was more than forty years old that Blake had a garden of his own, but all through his works gardens are mentioned as places "of delight"-"a garden of delight" is the usual phrase in Vala. "Vala" herself is an allegoric personage, the essence of simplicity and feminine love, and an allegory of masculine love meets her in her garden, where it is said that "impressions of Despair and Hope for ever vegetate" (Night IX, line 375).

From what we know of the way in which Blake would snatch up an experience, treat it as what Swedenborg calls representative," and use it for a symbol, it is easily to be understood that his place of love-making was Mr. Bouchier's garden. But Mr. Bouchier the gardener was a practical man, and so was Mr. Blake the hosier. Mrs. Bouchier had her own favourite suitor for her daughter, the one whose cause she had meant to plead when she received the discouraging answer, "I have not seen the man." No one but the girl herself wanted the jilted invalid apprentice just out of his articles and his first love.

Finally it was decided that Blake should not see nor even communicate with Kate Bouchier for a year. If he was still in earnest at the end of that time, and if he had shown himself worthy, opposition was to be withdrawn.

Blake, though he loved, was not a lover, and therefore not madly impatient. He himself wished to show what he was made of. The plan suited him. There was never much doubt that he would stand the test. He stood it, and on Sunday, August 18, 1782, he was married in the church at Battersea, then newly rebuilt and decorated with painted windows to imitate real stained glass, which was not in that day so easily procurable as in our own.

Blake's father was only half pleased that his son had behaved steadily and gone through this year of trial that ended in marriage. His disapproval of a mere uneducated country girl was strong. He had looked on himself as patronising the Bouchiers when he sent his son to board with them. It was quite another thing to unite his family to theirs. To our eye the difference in social height between a hosier's son and a market-gardener's daughter may be too subtle for appreciation, but Mr. Blake felt it not merely because of the position, but chiefly for a reason he could not

give. He could not say that it was a derogation because he was really Mr. O'Neil. In actual fact, of course, he was Mr. Nobody-he was not even Mr. Blake.

He appears to have kept his counsel, if not his temper, and said nothing to his son. Of this we may feel certain. It is wholly incredible that William Blake could have known the story of his father's birth, and have made no symbolic use of it. On the contrary, he calls himself "English Blake."

After his marriage there was a period of estrangement from home affections. He set up house at 23 Green Street, Leicester Fields, a street in which Hogarth lived then, and where "junior branches of Royalty had lately abode." This surely ought to have comforted Mr. O'Neil Blake. Whether it did so or not, he kept his tent like Achilles. At this time also Flaxman married and settled down. He had been introduced to Blake by Stothard, whom Blake knew through Basire. Flaxman had spent several years in Italy, and had now returned to work entirely in London. He was one of Blake's best friends for many years from this time. His reputation helped Blake's then. Blake's memory perpetuates his now. A pitiful misunderstanding separated them at the last. In the end, which seemed a long way off in those honeymoon days, they both died in the same year; Flaxman going first, but only preceding Blake by a few months. Their names will always be remembered more closely together than those of most "tigers of wrath" and "horses of instruction" that are fated to run side by side on life's dusty road.

They did many services to each other. Blake lent Flaxman so much of his imagination that he began to recognise it again in Flaxman's designs, tame, sedate, and well schooled as Flaxman's drawing always was, like his just character and his formal handwriting.

Flaxman was one of the two artists referred to in the little couplet in Blake's MS. book, written in the times of their misunderstanding.

I found them blind, I taught them how to see,
And now they know neither themselves nor me;

and in this couplet to Flaxman's wife, written at the same late period (it is to be hoped that she never saw it)—

TO NANCY F

How can I help thy husband's copying me?

Should that make difference between thee and me?

Blake's politeness to Mrs. Flaxman has led him to overlook the obvious fact that thee should be the last word of the second line, and the shallow, unpoetical state of mind in which he wrote all his irate couplets, of which this is a good specimen, concealed from him the fact that if he had placed Mrs. Flaxman's pronoun at the end he would have placed it at the highest point of emphasis, and given his guest, as it were, the head of the table, as a man may in his wife's absence, and certainly Mrs. Blake is not present in the couplet. The repetition which he gives instead of real rhyme is not, of course, wrong in itself, but is clearly so in this place. Blake's very smallest errors have so much narrative hidden in them,-narrative of the mind, for whose sake only that of the body is worth recollecting, that this has its claim not to be passed over. Here, as in many other places, what seems merely literary criticism will often be found to help the personal story, as the personal story helps to direct literary criticism by explaining symbolic suggestions.

The first benefit that Blake received from the Flaxman family was an important personal service, one that showed kindness and courage on their part, for Blake was an alarming guest to take into society among quiet folk. They introduced him to Mr. and Mrs. Mathews, of 27 Rathbone Place.

While Blake is remembered Mr. and Mrs. Mathews cannot be forgotten, though he came to them only to be encouraged and patronised, as Michael Angelo went to Lorenzo dei Medici. Mr. Mathews was a clergyman, and not a merchant prince like Lorenzo, but he and his wife encouraged young artists and musicians, and he was not without a touch of that urbane generosity with which some of the best of artistic people who are not artists have, in periods of taste, won to themselves immortality, when they only intended to do an unrewarded kindness.

Flaxman was not, any more than Blake, a distinguished man when Mr. Mathews first took him up. A few years before he brought Blake to the house he was only a quiet boy, son of a plaster-cast seller, and very much in earnest about classical art. Mrs. Mathews read Homer with him in Greek, translating and explaining as she went along. This alone must have meant many long hours of patient kindness.

Since then Mr. and Mrs. Mathews had attained the leading position that they deserved. It was known that something better than gossip was to be heard at their house, and many people of admitted literary distinction were glad