Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/213

 not whence it came. At last I saw the broad leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures, of the size and colour of green and grey grass-hoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. It was a fairy funeral!'

Among the engravings executed by Blake's industrious hands during his first year at Felpham, I make note of a fine one of Michael Angelo, at the end of the first edition (in quarto) of Fuseli's famous Lectures on Painting,—the first three, delivered at the Academy in March 1801, published in May. It is an interesting and characteristic full-length portrait. The great Florentine is standing, looking out on the world with intent, searching gaze, the Coliseum in the background. This and the circular plate on the title-page of the same volume, well engraved by F. Legat, were both designed by Fuseli himself. Grand and suggestive, in a dim allegoric way, is this drooping female figure, seated on the earth, her crossed arms flung down in expressive abandon, the face bowed between them and hidden by her streaming hair. This is a design I could swear to as Blake's whether 'adopted' by Fuseli or not.

Hayley, desiring the artist's worldly advancement, introduced him to many of the neighbouring gentry; among them Lord Egremont of Petworth, Lord Bathurst of Lavant, Mrs. Poole; and obtained him commissions for miniatures. Some of which, reports Hayley, 'that singularly industrious man who applied himself to various branches of the art' and 'had wonderful talents for original design' executed 'very happily.' Blake, indefatigable in toil, would also, at his craft of engraving, honestly execute for bread whatever was set him, good or bad. Humble as the task was, for so imaginative a man, of tracing servilely, line by line, other men's conceptions, he would patiently and imperturbably work at a design, however inferior to his own, though with an obvious and natural absence of enthusiasm. Blake's docility, however, had a limit. He was