Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/193

 children), Thomas Alphonso, had been an articled pupil of the sculptor's. Early in 1798, beginnings of curvature of the spine had necessitated a return from Flaxman's roof into Sussex. There, after two years' more suffering, he died of the accumulated maladies engendered in a weakly constitution by sedentary habits; a victim of forcing, I suspect.

In 1799, the author of the Triumphs of Temper was seeing through the press one of his long Poetical Essays, as smooth and tedious as the rest, on Sculpture; in the form of 'Epistles to Flaxman.' It was published in 1800, with three trivial illustrations. Two of these are engraved by Blake: The Death of Demosthenes, after a bald outline by Hayley junior, whom the father easily persuaded himself into believing, as well as styling, his 'youthful Phidias;' and a portrait of the 'young sculptor,' after a medallion by his master, Flaxman, the drawing of which was furnished Blake by Howard; the combined result being indifferent. This was the occasion of Blake's first coming into direct personal communication with Hayley, to whom he submitted an impression of the plate of The Death of Demosthenes, which 'has been approved,' he writes, February 18th, 1800, 'by Mr. Flaxman;' adding his hopes that the young sculptor 'will soon be well enough to make hundreds of designs both for the engraver and the sculptor.'

On April 25th, 1800, the long intermittent tragedy of Cowper's life came to an end, amid dark and heavy clouds: the last years of suffering having been smoothed by a pension obtained through Hayley's intercession. A week later died Hayley's hapless son. And our poor bard had to solace himself in his own way, by inditing sonnets to his child's memory, 'on his pillow,' at four o'clock in the morning; a daily sonnet or two soon swelling into MS. volumes.

Blake, to whom death ever seemed but as 'the going out of one room into another,' was, of all men, one who could offer consolation as sincere as his sympathy. On hearing the sorrowful news he wrote at once the following characteristic letter:—