Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/472

 better and stronger, I am still incapable of riding in the stage, and shall be, I fear, for some time; being only bones and sinews, all strings and bobbins like a weaver's loom. Walking to and from the stage would be, to me, impossible; though I seem well, being entirely free both from pain and from that sickness to which there is no name. Thank God! I feel no more of it, and have great hopes that the disease is gone.

I am, dear Sir,

Yours sincerely,

The visit to Hampstead was paid, but with little of the anticipated benefit to Blake's health, who was then suffering from diarrhœa, or, perhaps, dysentery. As he had truly said, that bracing air ill agreed with his constitution. But he cherished a wilful dislike to Hampstead, and to all the northern suburbs of London, despite his affection for the family who made Hampstead a home for him, and the happy hours he had spent there. He, perhaps from early associations, could only tolerate the southern suburbs. They who are accustomed to the varied loveliness of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, with their delightful mixture of arable, pasture, woodland, waste, and down, one shading off into the other, cannot but find the unvaried pastures and gentle hills of Middlesex and Hertfordshire wearisomely monotonous in their prevailing heavy tints and ever-recurring bounding lines; monotonous and unexhilarating, however agreeable they may be to the escaped Londoner. Mrs. Collins, of the Farm, always remembered Blake as 'that most delightful gentleman!' His amiable qualities and ordinarily gentle manner left a lasting impression on the most humble. During this visit he was at work upon the Dante. A clump of trees on the skirts of the heath is still known to old friends as the 'Dante wood.'

At the close of this year died another associate in the circle of the gifted, with whom Mr. and Mrs. Blake had still, in Fountain Court, been in the habit of exchanging visits as