at sixty-seven years of age he applied himself to learning Italian. He only engraved seven out of the hundred drawings. He was peculiarly fitted to interpret and illustrate the great mediæval master of supernatural awe and terror. These seven india-*proof plates, 11 in. by 14 in., are rare, and cost the lover of Blake no less than twenty-five guineas to-day.
His Inventions to the Book of Job are equally sought after, and were produced in his later years when poverty began to overtake him. Still sustained by his loving wife, he worked in one small room which served as kitchen, bedchamber, and studio. In this room, in a court near the Temple, the great visionary took his farewell of this world. Bolstered up in bed, he employed his last energies on touching and retouching one of his last prints. Throwing it from him at last, he exclaimed, "There! that will do! I cannot mend it!" Seeing his wife in tears, he said, "Stay, Kate! Keep just as you are. I will draw your portrait, for you have ever been an angel to me." And the dying painter made a fine likeness. He lay chanting verses and music, and seemed happy to the last. He died on August 12, 1827.
In the reproduction of Cleopatra the delicacy of stipple is employed to fine advantage. It was engraved by E. Harding, Junior, in 1794. It is a composite portrait, the face being from an antique gem and the head-dress from a coin in Dr. Hunter's Museum. This is, without doubt, as authentic a portrait of the great queen Cleopatra as it is possible to get, and in the soft delicacy of the delineation there is nothing more to be desired. It is in work of
