Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/461

 my Journal, that his observations, apart from his visions and references to the spiritual world, were sensible and acute. In the sweetness of his countenance and gentility of his manner, he added an indescribable grace to his conversation. I added my regret, which I must now repeat, at my inability to give more than incoherent thoughts—not altogether my fault, perhaps.

'On the 17th, I called on him at his house in Fountain Court in the Strand. The interview was a short one, and what I saw was more remarkable than what I heard. He was at work, engraving, in a small bedroom,—light, and looking out on a mean yard—everything in the room squalid and indicating poverty, except himself. There was a natural gentility about him, and an insensibility to the seeming poverty, which quite removed the impression. Besides, his linen was clean, his hand white, and his air quite unembarrassed when he begged me to sit down as if he were in a palace. There was but one chair in the room, besides that on which he sat. On my putting my hand to it, I found that it would have fallen to pieces if I had lifted it. So, as if I had been a Sybarite, I said, with a smile, "Will you let me indulge myself?" and sat on the bed near him. During my short stay there was nothing in him that betrayed that he was aware of what, to other persons, might have been even offensive,—not in his parson, but in all about him. His wife I saw at this time, and she seemed to be the very woman to make him happy. She had been formed by him; indeed otherwise she could not have lived with him. Notwithstanding her dress, which was poor and dirty, she had a good expression in her countenance, and, with a dark eye, remains of beauty from her youth. She had an implicit reverence for her husband. It is quite certain that she believed in all his visions. On one occasion—not this day—speaking of his visions, she said: "You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you were four years old, and He put His head to the window, and set you screaming." . ..

He was making designs, or engraving—I forget which. Gary's Dante was before him. He showed me some of his designs from Dante, of which I do not presume to speak. They were too much above me. But Gotzenberger, whom I afterwards took to see them, expressed the highest admiration. . . . Dante was again the subject of our conversation. Blake declared him a mere politician and atheist, busied about this world's affairs; as Milton was till, in his old age, he returned back to the God he had abandoned in childhood. I, in vain, endeavoured to obtain from him a qualification