Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/479

 CHAPTER XXXVII.

LAST DAYS. 1827 [. 69.]

The last letter Mr. Linnell received from Blake dates nearly three months after that which closed the previous chapter: —

He was not to mend; though still, so long as breath lasted, to keep on at his life-long labours of love. This letter was written but six weeks before his death.

In the previous letter of April 25th, Blake had said of himself, 'I am too much attached to Dante to think much of anything else.' In the course of his lingering illness, he was frequently bolstered up in his bed that he might go on with these drawings. The younger Tatham had commissioned a coloured impression of that grand conception in the Europe, the Ancient of Days, already noticed as a singular favourite with Blake and as one it was always a happiness to him to