ast, and wish to beat
him." No equivocation here, surely. On superstition he comments,--"It
has been long a bugbear, by reason of its having been united with
hypocrisy. But let them be fairly separated, and then superstition will
be honest feeling, and God, who loves all honest men, will lead the poor
enthusiast in the path of holiness." Herein lies the germ of a truth.
Again, Lavater says,--"A great woman not imperious, a fair woman not
vain, a woman of common talents not jealous, an accomplished woman who
scorns to shine, are four wonders just great enough to be divided among
the four corners of the globe." Whereupon Blake adds,--"Let the men do
their duty, and the women will be such wonders; the female life lives
from the life of the male. See a great many female dependents, and you
know the man." If this be madness, would that the madman might have
bitten all mankind before he died! To the advice, "Take here the grand
secret, if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none: court
mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion," he appends,
with an evident reminiscence of Rathbone Place, "And go to hell."

But this private effervescence was not enough; and long thinking
anxiously as to ways and means, suddenly, in the night, Robert stood
before him, and revealed to him a secret by which a facsimile of poetry
and design could be produced. On rising in the morning, Mrs. Blake was
sent out with a half-crown to buy the necessary materials, and with that
he began an experiment which resulted in furnishing his principal means
of support through life. It consisted in a species of engraving in
relief both of the words and the designs of his poems, by a process
peculiar and original. From his plates he printed off in any tint he
chose, afterwards coloring up his designs by hand. Joseph, the sacred
carpenter, had appeared in a vision, and revealed to him certain secrets
of coloring. Mrs. Blake delighted to assist him in taking impressions,
which she did with great skill, in tinting the designs, and in doing up
the pages in boards; so that everything, except manufacturing the paper,
was done by the poet and his wife. Never before, as his biographer
justly remarks, was a man so literally the author of his own book. If we
may credit the testimony that is given, or even judge from such proofs
as Mr. Gilchrist's book can furnish, these works of his hands were
exquisitely beautiful. The effect of the poems imbedded in their