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 printed in the 'Poetical Sketches.' One of the most beautiful of these, 'How sweet I roamed from field to field,' was certainly written before fourteen. At that age Blake was apprenticed to James Basire, engraver to the Society of Antiquaries, a liberal-minded and kind master, but his style of engraving was flat, formal, mechanical, but with solid excellence of drawing. It was adhered to in the main by Blate till late in life, when his mode of handling the graver was advantageously modified by the study of the work of Bonosoni, &c., and, though redeemed by the qualities of his genius, was an obstacle to his acceptance by a public accustomed to the soft and fascinating manner of Wollett, Strange, and Bartolozzi. In summer time Basire set Blake upon the congenial task of drawing the monuments in the old churches of London and above all in Westminster Abbey, where, rapt and happy, he worked for some years acquiring a knowledge and a fervent love of Gothic art which profoundly influenced him through life. During winter he engraved his summers work for Gough's 'Sepulchral Monuments,' one of the best plates in which, a 'Portrait of Queen Philippa, from her monument,' though it has Basire's name affixed, is, on the authority of Stothard, from Blake's hand. In the evenings he began to make drawings of subjects from English history or from his own already teeming fancy. A noteworthy example—'Joseph of Arimathea among the rocks of Albion'—he engraved so early as 1773.

The seven years' apprenticeship ended, in 1778 Blake became for a short time a student in the newly formed Royal Academy. Moser, the first keeper, had little to teach Blake, who tells how he was once looking over prints from Raphael and Michael Angelo in the library when Moser said to him, 'You should not study these old, hard, stiff, dry, unfinished works of art; I will show you what you should study.' 'He took down Le Brun and Rubens' "Galleries." How did I secretly rage! I said "These things you call finished are not even begun: how can they be finished?"' Here Blake drew for a short time from the living figure, but early conceived a dislike to, and quickly relinquished, academic modes of study. 'Natural objects always did and now do weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me,' he said in after life. As a mere child he gave evidence of that visionary power, that faculty of seeing the creations of his imagination with such vividness that they were as real to him as objects of sense, which, sedulously cultivated through life, became a distinguishing feature of his genius. Returning from a ramble over the hills round Dulwich, he said he had seen a tree filled with angels, bright wings bespangling every bough like stars: or, again, that he had beheld angelic figures walking amongst some haymakers; and only through his mother's intercession did he escape a flogging from his father, who regarded the story as a deliberate lie. As a boy, he perhaps believed these were supernatural visions: as a man, it must be gathered from his explicit utterances that he understood their true nature as mental creations.

Blake now supported himself mainly by engraving for the booksellers. For Harrison's 'Novelists' Magazine' he engraved those early and beautiful designs by Stothard which first brought the latter into notice, viz. two illustrations to 'Don Quixote,' one to the 'Sentimental Journey,' one to 'David Simple,' one to 'Launcelot Greaves,' and three to 'Grandison.' Already he had made Stothard's acquaintance, who introduced him to Flaxman, soon to prove an influential and staunch friend. Of original work belonging to this early date (1780) may be mentioned the scarce engraving 'Glad Day,' and a drawing, 'The Death of Earl Godwin,' which Blake contributed to the Royal Academy's first exhibition in Somerset House. In this year he found himself an involuntary participator in the Gordon riots, having become entangled in the mob and been carried along by it to witness the storming of Newgate and the release of the prisoners.

In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher, daughter of a market-gardener at Battersea, who proved herself one of the best wives that ever fell to the lot of a man of genius; and they set up housekeeping in lodgings at 23 Green Street, Leicester Fields.

In 1784 he opened a printseller's shop in Broad Street, in partnership with a fellow engraver, Parker; and Robert, Blake's youngest brother, between whom and himself there was the strongest sympathy and affection, lived with them. In this year he exhibited at the Royal Academy 'War unchained by an Angel, Fire, Pestilence, and Famine following,' and 'Breach in a City, the Morning, after a Battle.' In 1787 Robert died, the shop was given up, and Blake removed to 28 Poland Street. Unable to find a publisher for his 'Songs of Innocence,' he adopted a plan of reproducing them himself, revealed to him in a dream by his dead brother Robert, he used to tell. Next morning Mrs. Blake went out with their last half-crown to buy the necessary materials. The verse was written, and the design and marginal embellishments outlined on copper with an