This leaflet has not been seen in the original by the present writer. He quotes it from Gilchrist, but believes it to be produced there with remarkable accuracy. The way in which a semi-colon or a colon is dropped in without any sufficient cause here and there, sometimes doing duty for a full stop, and sometimes for a comma, or for an even slighter pause, is entirely in the manner of Blake. He adopted it probably from Lavater's translator, whose punctuation is of this description, and can only be wondered at. It defies explanation.

Blake seems to have been almost entirely without commissioned employment as an engraver at this time. Outlines to the Odyssey were published in 1793 from plates engraved by him after Flaxman's designs, and Gilchrist has no knowledge of other work so produced. Blake made fourteen plates for Stedman's Surinam, published by Johnson in 1796. £5 was his payment for Flaxman's plates. prices of the others were probably in proportion.

In 1797 he is noticed as engraving "for Johnson "—

Alfred in the Neatherd's Cottage,

King John absolved,

Queen Elizabeth and Essex;

also

The Death of Lucretia,

Death of Cleopatra,

Caius Marius,

Mars and Rhea Silvia.

The

This is the year of the engraving of many of his designs to Young's Night Thoughts. The designing of the whole. five hundred and seventy-two and the writing of the poem Vala make it a most memorable year in Blake's life and in the history of literature. The number of hours during which he worked remains as much a wonder as the quality of the work and the price at which it was paid. He had £1 each for the plates to Young's Night Thoughts.

In 1798 we know very little of his work. Some of that attributed to 1797 must necessarily have run on into the following year. Undated works may also belong here.

For 1799 are noted religious pictures for Butts: a Last Supper, a Charity, a Rachel giving Joseph the Coat of Many Colours, Adoration of the Kings, The Sons of God and