dinary recreation at any time was only a change of work from one
design to another. So were wrought out the (incomplete) series of plates
for Young's 'Night Thoughts'; the drawings for Hayley's 'Life of
Cowper,' and for the same feeble author's 'Ballads on Anecdotes relating
to Animals'; the 'Dante' designs: the 'Job' series of prints; a vast
store of aquarelle and distemper paintings and plates, and a whole
gallery of "portraits" derived from sitters of distinction in past
universal history. These sitters, it is needless to say, were wholly
invisible to other eyes than Blake's. The subjects vary from likenesses
of Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary to those of Mahomet and Shakespeare.
Sundry of the old masters, Titian included, reviewed his efforts and
guided his brush! Such assertions do not ill accord with the description
of his once seeing a fairy's funeral, or that he first beheld God when
four years old.

But all his fantasies did not destroy his faith in the fundamentals of
orthodoxy. He never ceased to be a believer in Christianity. His
convictions of a revealed religion were reiterated. While incessant in
asserting that he had a solemn message-spiritual to his day and
generation, he set aside nothing significant in the message of the
Scriptures. There is something touching in the anecdote of him and his
devoted Kate told by the portrait-painter Richmond. Himself discouraged
with his imperfect work, Richmond one day visited Blake and confessed
his low mood. To his astonishment, Blake turned to his wife suddenly,
and said, "It is just so with us, is it not, for weeks together, when
the visions forsake us! What do we do then, Kate?" "We kneel down and
pray, Mr. Blake."

So passed Blake's many years, between reality and dream, labors and
chimeras. The painter's life was not one of painful poverty. He and his
Kate needed little money; and the seer-husband's pencils and burin, or
the private kindness so constantly shown him, provided daily bread.
Despite the visions and inspirations and celestial phenomena that filled
his head, Blake withal was sane enough in everyday concerns. He lived
orderly, even if he thought chaos. Almost his last strokes were on the
hundred water-colors for the 'Divina Commedia,' the 'Job' cycle, the
'Ancient of Days' drawing, or a "frenzied sketch" of his wife which he
made, exclaiming in beginning it, "Stay! Keep as you are! You have ever
been an angel to me. I will draw you." Natural decay a