ters of Job. 21. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning.

While employed on these remarkable productions, he was made sensible that the little approbation which the world had ever bestowed on him was fast leaving him. The waywardness of his fancy, and the peculiar execution of his compositions, were alike unadapted for popularity; the demand for his works lessened yearly from the time that he exhibited his Canterbury Pilgrimage; and he could hardly procure sufficient to sustain life, when old age was creeping upon him. Yet, poverty-stricken as he was, his cheerfulness never forsook him; he uttered no complaint; he contracted no debt, and continued to the last manly and independent. It is the fashion to praise genius when it is gone to the grave; the fashion is cheap and convenient. Of the existence of Blake few men of taste could be ignorant; of his great merits multitudes knew, nor was his extreme poverty any secret. Yet he was reduced-one of the ornaments of the age-to a miserable garret and a crust of bread, and would have perished from want, had not some friends, neither wealthy nor powerful, averted this disgrace from coming upon our country. One of these gentlemen, Mr. Linnel, employed Blake to engrave his Inventions of the Book of Job; by this he earned money enough to keep him living-for the good old man still laboured with all the ardour of the days of his youth, and with skill equal to his enthusiasm. These engravings are very rare, very beautiful, and very peculiar. They are in the earlier fashion of workmanship, and bear no resemblance whatever to the polished and graceful style which now prevails. I have never seen a tinted copy, nor am I sure that tinting would accord with the extreme simplicity of the designs, and the mode in which they are handled. The Songs of Innocence and these Inventions for Job are the happiest of Blake's

works, and ought to be in the portfolios of all who are lovers of nature and imagination.

Two extensive works, bearing the ominous names of Prophecies, one concerning America, the other Europe, next made their appearance from his pencil and graver. The first contains eighteen, and the other seventeen plates; and both are plentifully seasoned with verse without the encumbrance of rhyme. It is impossible to give a satisfactory description of these works; the frontispiece of the latter, representing the Ancient of Days, in an orb of light, stooping into chaos, to measure out the world, has been admired less for its meaning than for the grandeur of its outline. A head and a tailpiece in the other has been much noticed; one exhibits the bottom of the sea, with enormous fishes preying on a dead body, the other, the surface, with a dead body floating, on which an eagle with outstretched wings is feeding. The two angels pouring out the spotted plague upon Britain; an angel standing in the sun, attended by three furies; and several other Inventions in these wild works, exhibit wonderful strength of drawing and splendour of colouring. Of loose prints-but which were meant doubtless to form part of some extensive work-one of the most remarkable is the Great Sea Serpent; and a figure, sinking in a stormy sea at sunset; the glow of which, with the foam upon the dark waves, produces a magical effect.

After a residence of seventeen years in South Molton Street, Blake removed (not in consequence, alas! of any increase of fortune) to No. 3, Fountain Court, Strand. This was in the year 1823. Here he engraved by day, and saw visions by night, and occasionally employed himself in making Inventions for Dante; and such was his application, that he designed in all one hundred and two, and engraved seven. It was publicly known that he was in a declining state of health; that old age had come upon

him, and that he was in want. Several friends, and artists among the number, aided him a little, in a delicate way, by purchasing his works, of which he had many copies. He sold many of his " Songs of Innocence," and also of " Urizen," and he wrought incessantly upon what he counted his masterpiece, the "Jerusalem," tinting and adorning it, with the hope that his favourite would find a purchaser. No one, however, was found ready to lay out twentyfive guineas on a work which no one could have any hope of comprehending; and this disappointment sank to the old man's heart.

He had now reached his seventy-first year, and the strength of nature was fast yielding. Yet he was to the last cheerful and contented. "I glory," he said, "in dying, and have no grief but in leaving you, Katharine; we have lived happy, and 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 commands, and have sought to worship God truly-in my own house, when I was not seen of men." He grew weaker and weaker-he could no longer sit upright; and was laid in his bed, with no one to watch over him, save his wife, who, feeble and old herself, required help in such a touching duty.

The Ancient of Days was such a favourite with Blake, that three days before his death, he sat bolstered up in bed, and tinted it with his choicest colours and in his happiest style. He touched and retouched it-held it at arm's length, and then threw t from him, exclaiming, "There! that will do! I cannot mend it." He saw his wife in tears-she felt this was to be the last of his works-"Stay, Kate!" cried Blake, "keep just as you are-I will draw your portrait--for you have ever been an angel to me"-she obeyed, and the dying artist made a fine likeness.

The very joyfulness with which this singular man

welcomed the coming of death, made his dying moments intensely mournful. He lay chanting songs, and the verses and the music were both the offspring of the moment. He lamented that he could no longer commit those inspirations, as he called them, to paper. "Kate," he said, "I am a changing man -I always rose and wrote down my thoughts, whether it rained, snowed, or shone, and you arose too and sat beside me-this can be no longer." He died on the 12th of August, 1828, without any visible pain-his wife, who sat watching him, did not perceive when he ceased breathing.

· William Blake was of low 'stature and slender make, with a high, pallid forehead, and eyes large, dark, and expressive. His temper was touchy, and, when moved, he spoke with an indignant eloquence, which commanded respect. His voice, in general, was low and musical, his manners gentle and unassuming, his conversation a singular mixture of knowledge and enthusiasm. His whole life was one of labour and privation, he had never tasted the luxury of that independence which comes from professional profit. This untoward fortune he endured with unshaken equanimity-offering himself, in imagination, as a martyr in the great cause of poetic art; pitying some of his more fortunate brethren for their inordinate love of gain; and not doubting that whatever he might have won in gold by adopting other methods would have been a poor compensation for the ultimate loss of fame. Under this agreeable delusion, he lived all his life—he was satisfied when his graver gained him a guinea a week--the greater the present denial, the surer the glory hereafter.

Though he was the companion of Flaxman and Fuseli, and sometimes their pupil, he never attained that professional skill, without which all genius is bestowed in vain. He was his own teacher chiefly; and self-instruction, the parent occasionally of great

beauties, seldom fails to produce great deformities. He was a most splendid tinter, but no colourist, and his works were all of small dimensions, and therefore confined to the cabinet and the portfolio. His happiest flights, as well as his wildest, are thus likely to remain shut up from the world. If we look at the man through his best and most intelligible works, we shall find that he who could produce the Songs of Innocence and Experience, the Gates of Paradise, and the Inventions for Job, was the possessor of very lofty faculties, with no common skill in art, and moreover that, both in thought and mode of treatment, he was a decided original. But should we, shutting our eyes to the merits of those works, determine to weigh his worth by his Urezin, his Prophecies of Europe and America, and his Jerusalem, our conclusion would be very unfavourable; we would say that, with much freedom of composition and boldness of posture, he was unmeaning, mystical, and extravagant, and that his original mode of working out his conceptions was little better than a brilliant way of animating absurdity. An overflow of imagination is a failing uncommon in this age, and has generally received of late little quarter from the critical portion of mankind. Yet imagination is the life and spirit of all great works of genius and taste; and, indeed, without it, the head thinks, and the hand labours in vain. Ten thousand authors and artists rise to the proper, the graceful, and the beautiful, for ten who ascend into "the heaven of invention." A work-whether from poet or painter-conceived in the fiery ecstasy of imagination, lives through every limb; while one elaborated out by skill and taste only will look, in comparison, like a withered and sapless tree beside one green and flourishing. Blake's misfortune was that of possessing this precious gift in excess. His fancy overmastered him-until he at length confounded "the mind's eye" with the corporeal organ,