Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/364

 Cary (Lamb's Cary, translator of Dante) was talking with his friend Flaxman of the few Englishmen who followed historical painting, enumerating Stothard, Howard, and others. Flaxman mentioned a few more, and among them Blake. 'But Blake is a wild enthusiast, isn't he?' Ever loyal to his friend, the sculptor drew himself up, half offended, saying, 'Some think me an enthusiast.'

Among Blake's new intimates were John Varley, Richter, and Holmes, the water-colour painters. From the works of the last two, Blake learned to add greater fulness and depth of colour to his drawings, such, indeed, as he, bred in the old school of slight tints, had hardly thought could have been developed in this branch of art. The painters in watercolours had, by this time, laid the foundation of that excellence, which has become an English speciahty. An adventurous little band of now mostly forgotten men, whom their great successors, Turner, Copley Fielding, De Wint, Prout, David Cox, have pushed from their stools, had, in 1805 (tired of the Academy's cold shade), started their first separate Exhibition in Pall Mall, as a daring experiment.

Buyers for coloured copies of the Songs of Innocence and Experience would generally be found by Blake's artist friends, when no other encouragement could. Task-work as an engraver, Flaxman, still wishful to serve as of old, obtained him, in 1816, from the Longmans: a kind office Blake did not take quite in good part. He would so far rather have been recommended as a designer! So long ago as 1793, the author of the Songs of Innocence had engraved Flaxman's outlines to the Odyssey, as Piroli's substitute. Piroli's engravings of the sculptor's Æschylus and Iliad appeared in 1795 and 1796. And now, twenty-four years later, Blake, not a whit more prosperous with the world, had thankfully to engrave his friend's compositions from the Works and Days of Hesiod, published in 1817. January 1st, Blake dates his plates. They are sweet and graceful compositions, harmonious and contenting so far as they go, but deficient in