Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/434

 disappeared in the water. As Blake truly maintained, the faculty for seeing such airy phantoms can be cultivated. I have mentioned that she coloured Blake's designs under his direction, and successfully. One drawing, undoubtedly designed as well as executed by herself, is now in Mr, Linnell's possession. It is so like a work of Blake's, that one can hardly believe it to have been the production of another hand. Captain Butts has also one, of small size, in pen and ink: a seated figure of a woman, which I would not hesitate, at first sight, to call a Blake; and even on inspection it proves a very fair drawing. I have no doubt of this too being bonâ fide Mrs. Blake's. Some of the characteristics of an originally uneducated mind had clung to her, despite the late culture received from her husband:—an exaggerated suspiciousness, for instance, and even jealousy of his friends. But vulgarity there was none. In person, the once beautiful brunette had, with years, grown—as we have elsewhere observed—common and coarse-looking, except 'in so far,' says one who knew her, 'as love made her otherwise, and spoke through her gleaming black eyes.' This appearance was enhanced by the common, dirty dress, poverty, and perhaps age, had rendered habitual. In such cases, the traces of past beauty do but heighten the melancholy of its utter ruin. Amid so much that was beautiful in her affectionate, wifely spirit, these externals were little noticed. To friends who remember Blake in Fountain Court, those calm, patriarchal figures of Job and his Wife in the artist's own designs, still recall the two, as they used to sit together in that humble room.

I have met, who at any period of the poet-artist's life knew much of Blake, speak with affection of him. A sweet, gentle, lovable creature, say all; courageous too, yet not bitter. Of course, casual acquaintances were more startled than pleased by his extravagances and vehemences of speech. To men of the world, his was a mind which, whether judged by his writings or his talk, inevitably seemed scarcely a sane, still less a trustworthy one. The impression he made on