Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/65

 modern Water Colours,' in the same street (No. 15). Literary celebrities were not wanting: in Wardour Street, Mrs. Chapone; in Poland Street, pushing, pompous Dr. Burney, of Musical History notoriety.

In the catalogue of the now fairly established Royal Academy's Exhibition for 1780, its twelfth, and first at Somerset House—all previous had been held in its 'Old Room' (originally built for an auction room), on the south side of Pall Mall East—appears for the first time a work by 'W. Blake.' It was an Exhibition of only 489 'articles' in all, waxwork and 'designs for a fan' inclusive; among its leading exhibitors, boasting Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mary Moser, R.A., Gainsborough and Angelica Kauffman, R.A. Cosway, and Loutherbourg, Paul Sandby and Zoffany, Copley (Lyndhurst's father), and Fuseli, not yet Associate. Blake's contribution is the Death of Earl Godwin exhibited in 'The Ante-room' devoted to flower-pieces, crayons, miniatures, and water-colour landscapes—some by Gainsborough. This first Exhibition in official quarters went off with much éclat, netting double the average amount realized by its predecessors: viz. as much as 3,000l.

In the sultry, early days of June, 1780, the Lord George Gordon No-Popery Riots rolled through Town. Half London was sacked, and its citizens for six days laid under forced contributions by a mob some forty thousand strong of boys, pickpockets, and 'roughs.' In this outburst of anarchy, Blake long remembered an involuntary participation of his own. On the third day, Tuesday, 6th of June, 'the Mass-houses' having already been demolished—one, in Blake's near neighbourhood, Warwick Street, Golden Square—and various private houses also; the rioters, flushed with gin and victory, were turning their attention to grander schemes of devastation. That evening, the artist happened to be walking in a route chosen by one of the mobs at large, whose course lay from Justice Hyde's house near Leicester Fields, for the destruction of which less than an hour had sufficed, through Long Acre,