Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/401

 plates, are still in the hands of this liberal friend, who discounted, as it were, Blake's bill on posterity, when none else would. While the Job was in progress, Blake received his money in the way handiest to him,—instalments of £2 to £3 a week; sums amply sufficient for all his ordinary wants, thanks to his modest ménage and simple habits. More he would hardly have spent, if he had had it. I have heard from one who himself had it from an authentic source, that but for this commission of Mr. Linnell's, Blake's last years would have been employed in engraving a set of Morland's pig and poultry subjects!

The set of drawings made for Mr. Linnell varies much in detail from that for Mr. Butts, and is often finer. The engravings were still further altered; faces in profile in the drawings are given full view in the prints, and so on. Both sets of designs are very finely drawn, and pure in colour; necessarily very much finer than the prints. No artist can quite reproduce even his own drawings. Much must be lost by the way.

The engravings are the best Blake ever did: vigorous, decisive, and, above all, in a style of expression in keeping with the designs, which the work of no other hand could have been in the case of conceptions so austere and primeval as these. Blake's manner of handling the graver had been advantageously modified since his acquaintance with Mr. Linnell. The latter had called his attention to the works of Albert Dürer, Marc Antonio, and the Italian's contemporary and disciple Bonosoni, a more elegant and facile, if less robust, Marc Antonio. From Bonosoni, especially, Blake gleaned much, and was led, on first becoming familiar with his work, to express a regret that he had been trained in the Basire school, wherein he had learned to work as a mere engraver, cross-hatching freely. He now became an artist, making every line tell. The results of this change of style are manifest in the engraved Inventions to Job. In them, too, Bonosoni's plan was adopted, of working wholly with the