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into the hands of Schiavonetti, by whom they were rendered with a mingled grace and grandeur which won for them a wider popularity than Blake's austere style could have achieved. The breach of contract and the consequent loss of his copyright were injuries which Blake deeply resented; and Cromek's conduct in relation to his next enterprise enhanced the sense of injustice. For having seen a design of Blake's from the 'Canterbury Pilgrimage' and vainly endeavoured to negotiate for its publication on the same terms, Cromek went to Stothard and suggested the subject to him, who, ignorant that Blake was already engaged upon it, accepted the offer, and thus was occasioned a breach between the friends which was never closed. Blake having completed his 'Canterbury Pilgrimage' as a 'fresco'—a word which he applied to a method of his own of painting in water-colour on a plaster ground of glue and whiting laid on to canvas or board—appealed to the public by opening an exhibition of this and other of his works. The 'Descriptive Catalogue' written for the occasion interprets his pictures, expounds his canons of art, and contains some admirable writing on the characters in Chaucer's 'Prologue.' Lamb preferred Blake's to Stothard's 'Pilgrimage,' and called it 'a work of wonderful power and spirit, hard and dry, yet with grace.' In 1808 Blake, for the last time, exhibited at the Royal Academy. He then sent 'Christ in the Sepulchre guarded by Angels' and 'Jacob's Dream,' one of his most poetic works; and also executed for Mr. Butts 'The Whore of Babylon,' now in the British Museum; and for the Countess of Egremont 'The Last Judgment,' from one of the Blair drawings, of which, towards the close of life, he painted a replica containing some thousand figures lightly finished and with much splendour of colour.
To John Linnell, with whom Blake first became acquainted in 1813, is due all honour for having been the stay of the neglected artist's declining years, and for having commissioned his noblest work. Through him, too, there gathered round a circle of friends and disciples—John Varley, George Richmond, Samuel Palmer, Oliver Finch, and others. John Varley, who gave a very materialistic interpretation to Blake's visionary power, would sit by him far into the night and say 'Draw me Moses' or 'Julius Cæsar,' straining his own eyes in the hope of seeing what Blake saw, who would answer 'There he is,' and draw with alacrity, looking up from time to time as if he had a flesh-and-blood sitter before him, sometimes suddenly leaving off and remarking, 'I can't go on, it is gone,' or 'it has moved, the mouth is gone.' Thus were produced the famous visionary heads, or 'Spiritual Portraits'—some forty or fifty slight pencil sketches, all original, many full of character and power. One of them—the 'Ghost of a Flea'—was engraved in Varley's 'Zodiacal Physiognomy' and in the 'Art Journal' for August 1858. The original drawings all passed into the hands of Mr. Linnell. Blake was wont to say to his friends respecting these 'visions,' 'You can see what I do if you choose. Work up imagination to the state of vision, and the thing is done.'
In 1820 Blake designed and executed his first and last woodcuts to illustrate Thornton's school Virgil (the 'Pastorals'). Rude in execution, but singularly poetic and beautiful, these prints were at the time so much ridiculed by the engravers that some of them were recut by another hand. The obscure little book is now much prized for their sake, Samples of both styles were given to illustrate an article on the principles of wood engraving in the 'Athenæum,' 21 Jan. 1843. Blake made his last move in 1820, to 3 Fountain Court, Strand, where, amid increasing poverty and neglect, he executed and engraved for Linnell those sublime 'Inventions to the Book of Job' on which his highest claim as an artist rests. And whilst they were in progress the same friend, himself still a struggling artist, commissioned a series of drawings from the 'Divina Commedia,' to be also engraved, paying him on account the two or three pounds a week necessary for subsistence. A hundred designs were sketched in, some finished, but only seven engraved and published in 1827. For Blake's labours were drawing to a close. His strength had been for some time declining, but he worked on with the old ardour to within a few days of the end. 'I cannot think of death as more than the going out of one room into another,' he had said in speaking of Flaxman's death; and in that spirit, not serene merely, but joyous and full of radiant visions, he gently, almost imperceptibly, drew his last breath, 12 Aug. 1827.
The following is a list of Blake's writings, all engraved and coloured by hand, except those marked * which are type-printed and unillustrated: 1. *'Poetical Sketches,' 1783. 2. 'Songs of Innocence,' 1789. 3. 'Book of Thel,' 1789. 4. 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell,' 1790; consisting partly of aphorisms or proverbs, mostly vigorous and profound, that condensed form of expression proving singularly favourable to Blake; partly of five 'memorable fancies' in which Swedenborg's influence upon him, very potent through
