Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/30

 xiv is generally associated, is intimately connected with this event. For it was not long before his brother returned one night in a vision and revealed to him the method of relief-etching, which enabled him to print and illuminate them for an expense which his slender means would permit. The nature of these books is well known through the facsimiles which have been published; and it is only necessary to mention them here, for the reason that they are the first decisive step in his career as a visionary artist, and also because it was the mode of their production which gave rise to what is in many ways the most distinctive and characteristic section of the whole of his artistic productions—his Printed Drawings; since it is reasonable to believe that it was the satisfactory result obtained on a small scale in these books and in certain other small designs separately printed in a similar manner, which led him to the idea of modifying his method for the treatment of independent subjects on a larger scale. The date of this further invention is probably 1795 (or a little earlier), as this is the year of all the dated prints known to me; and it was upon their production that he was engaged at the time when his correspondence with George Cumberland begins. The "Creation of Adam" is, from its nature, the most conspicuous of them, and is perhaps the greatest extant monument of Blake's