Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/214

 wont to say he had refused but one commission in his life,—to paint a set of handscreens for a lady of quality, one of the great people to whom Hayley had introduced him; that he declined! For Lady Bathurst it was, I think,—the Bathursts had then a seat near Lavant, which subsequently, like most other estates in the neighbourhood, was absorbed by the Duke of Richmond. Blake taught for a time in her family, and was admired by them. The proposal was, I believe, that he should be engaged at a regular annual salary for tuition and services such as the above; as painter in ordinary, in fact, to this noble family. Besides bestirring himself to obtain Blake commissions, Hayley did what his means would allow to furnish employment himself. The interior of his new villa was fitted up in a manner bespeaking the cultivated man of letters and taste,—thanks, in great part, to his friendly relations with such artists as Flaxman and Romney,—was adorned with busts, statues, and pictures. Among the latter were interesting portraits of distinguished contemporaries and friends, and of the Hermit himself; all from Romney's hand, and originally painted for the library at Eartham. There was one of Gibbon, sitting and conversing; there were others, in crayons, of Cowper, Charlotte Smith, Anna Seward, Madame de Genlis; above all, there were fine studies of Lady Hamilton in various fancy characters, as Cassandra, Andromeda, Cecilia, Sensibility, &c. When, twenty years earlier, Hayley had built himself, at Eartham, a large and handsome room, specially to contain his fine collection of books in many languages, Flaxman had superintended the sculptured ornaments, and had modelled for it busts of the poet and his friend Romney. The new library at Felpham, Blake, during his residence in Sussex, decorated with temperas:—eighteen heads of the poets, life size, some accompanied by appropriate subsidiary compositions. Among them were Shakespeare, Homer, Camoens, Sir Philip Sidney, Cowper, Hayley himself (encircled by cooing doves). Within twenty years after Hayley's death, the marine villa passed, by sale, from the hands