CHAPTER XXXVII.
LAST DAYS. 1827 [ÆT. 69.]
The last letter Mr. Linnell received from Blake dates nearly three months after that which closed the previous chapter: —
Dear Sir,
I thank you for the ten pounds you are so kind as to send me at this time. My journey to Hampstead on Sunday brought on a relapse which has lasted till now. I find I am not so well as I thought; I must not go on in a youthful style. However, I am upon the mending hand to-day, and hope soon to look as I did; for I have been yellow, accompanied by all the old symptoms.
He was not to mend; though still, so long as breath lasted, to keep on at his life-long labours of love. This letter was written but six weeks before his death.
In the previous letter of April 25th, Blake had said of himself, 'I am too much attached to Dante to think much of anything else.' In the course of his lingering illness, he was frequently bolstered up in his bed that he might go on with these drawings. The younger Tatham had commissioned a coloured impression of that grand conception in the Europe, the Ancient of Days, already noticed as a singular favourite with Blake and as one it was always a happiness to him to
