Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/125

 Rh have discarded my graver. But as I know that he who works and has his health cannot starve, I laugh at fortune, and go on and on. I think I foresee better things than I have ever seen. My work pleases my employer, and I have an order for fifty small pictures at one guinea each, which is something better than mere copying after another artist. But above all, I feel happy and contented. Having passed now nearly twenty years in ups and downs, I am used to them, and perhaps a little practice in them may turn out to benefit. It is now exactly twenty years since I was upon the ocean of business, and, though laugh at fortune, I am persuaded that she alone is the governor of worldly riches, and when it is fit she will call upon me. Till then I wait with patience, in hopes that she is Bottom," in the National Gallery, is one of the finest of his oil paintings. It is, however, in some of his small sketches and studies, many of them in water-colours, that his ability really asserts itself.

He is likely to have made Blake's acquaintance in 1780, when he returned from Italy and settled down in Broad Street, Carnaby Market, close to Blake's own home. It was under Blake's influence that his imaginative quality first began to develop itself, and that his style underwent a change in the direction of restraint and refinement. He remained Blake's constant friend and admirer. He is said to have been the author of the Advertisement of the designs to Young's Night Thoughts, and he afterwards composed the prospectus of the illustrations of Blair's Grave. Several of his designs were engraved by Blake's hand.