Page:Life of William Blake 2, Gilchrist.djvu/449

 Rh which the young ought to 'rise up before the grey hairs. It is true that the drawings for the series were made when he was in the vigour of life. But every line of these plates was cut directly by the patient, wrinkled hand. He was poor, though contented, at this period of life. He had struggled through years of shameful and Bœotian neglect into the valley of age and dechne. Even his patron, Mr. Butts, was alienated from him. The Royal Academy had given him a grant of £25 out of its funds, showing that want was endeavouring to stare him out of countenance. At this juncture John Linnell stepped forward and gave the commission, at his own risk, for the execution of these designs from the Book of Job. In pleasant little instalments of from £2 to £3 per week was the simple and frugal Old Master paid, while, day by day, the sharp graver cut these immortal lines.

At this time he was like a simple stoic philosopher, surrounded, in his one room in Fountain Court, Strand (how very strange a place for such a work!—one would have thought them rather to have been graven among the mountains and Druidic cairns), by a little band of loving disciples, some of whom are amongst us at this day—two at least well known to fame—George Richmond, the eminent portrait-painter, and Samuel Palmer, whose profoundly poetic water-colour landscapes are still to be seen, year by year, on the walls of 'The Old Water-Colour Society.' No profits were realised by the engravings-—their sale hardly covering expenses. The price of Paradise Lost will occur to the literary reader as he sighs over the last sentence; but, regardless of mere money, success, the old man ploughed over his last fields as the sun of life stood red in the horizon, and the vale darkened beneath his feet. The 'long patience' of this stalwart son of toil and imagination endured to the end, and saw no earthly reward. The thin, enduring furrows of these 'inventions,' traced by the ploughshare of his graver, have borne fruit since then; but not for him, nor for her he left behind.

We must not attempt a full description of these inventions.