axman to Hayley, friend and biographer of Cowper,
favorably known to his contemporaries, though now wellnigh forgotten,
Blake was invited to Felpham, and began there a new life. It is pleasant
to look back upon this period. Hayley, the kindly, generous, vain,
imprudent, impulsive country squire, not at all excepting himself in his
love for mankind, pouring forth sonnets on the slightest
provocation,--indeed, so given over to the vice of verse, that

"he scarce could ope
His mouth but out there flew a trope,"--

floating with the utmost self-complacence down the smooth current of his
time; and Blake, sensitive, unique, protestant, impracticable,
aggressive: it was a rare freak of Fate that brought about such
companionship; yet so true courtesy was there that for four years they
lived and wrought harmoniously together,--Hayley pouring out his
harmless wish-wash, and Blake touching it with his fiery gleam. Their
joint efforts were hardly more pecuniarily productive than Blake's
single-handed struggles; but his life there had other and better fruits.
In the little cottage overlooking the sea, fanned by the pure breeze,
and smiled upon by sunshine of the hills, he tasted rare spiritual joy.
Throwing off mortal incumbrance,--never, indeed, an overweight to
him,--he revelled in his clairvoyance. The lights that shimmered across
the sea shone from other worlds. The purple of the gathering darkness
was the curtain of God's tabernacle. Gray shadows of the gloaming
assumed mortal shapes, and he talked with Moses and the prophets, and
the old heroes of song. The Ladder of Heaven was firmly fixed by his
garden-gate, and the angels ascended and descended. A letter written to
Flaxman, soon after his arrival at Felpham, is so characteristic that we
cannot refrain from transcribing it:--

"DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,--We are safe arrived at our cottage,
which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It
is a perfect model for cottages, and, I think, for palaces of
magnificence,--only enlarging, not altering, its proportions, and
adding ornaments, and not principles. Nothing can be more grand
than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple, without intricacy, it
seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to
the wants of man. No other formed house can ever please me so
well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be
improved, either in bea