fluence he dreaded, 'was particularly active in raising doubts concerning the possibility of executing without a model; and, when once he had raised the doubt, it became easy for him to snatch away the vision time after tune; for when the artist took his pencil, to execute his ideas, his power of imagination weakened so much, and darkened, that memory of nature and of pictures of the various schools possessed his mind, instead of appropriate execution, resulting from the inventions.' It was thus at Felpham that he returned to himself in art, and it was at Felpham also that he had what seems to have been the culminating outburst of 'prophetic' inspiration, writing from immediate dictation, he said, 'and even against my will.' Visions came readily to him out of the sea, and he saw them walk on the shore, 'majestic shadows, grey but luminous, and superior to the common height of men.'
It was at Felpham that Blake wrote the two last of the Prophetic Books which remain to us, Milton and Jerusalem. Both bear the date of 1804 on the title-page, and this, no doubt, indicates that the engraving
