Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/31

 Rh genius as an artist. The Creator, a grand and terrific figure, ancient and winged, like some monument of an Oriental imagination, clothed about the body with flowing drapery, his hair streaming behind, with all the agony of creation upon his face, is forming Adam, who lies prostrate below him, out of the four elements. With his left hand he is taking up a clod of clay, and moulding his head with his right. Adam's left arm is stretched out towards the water beneath, with the palm of the hand open; about one of his legs, which are as yet only partially formed from the natural wood, are the coils of an immense worm, the emblem of nature and of mortality. Behind the hovering figure of the Almighty is a vast sun (representing Fire), a lurid yellow and red disk surrounded with red and black rays. Above are thick rolling clouds (Air) of a purplish black colour. Below Adam is the green Earth, with the dark blue Water lapping the edge.

At the same time as he was at work upon the Printed Drawings, Blake was engaged upon a number of small pictures (chiefly biblical in subject), painted in oil upon a gesso ground, which continue down to the end of the century, when he ceased to employ an oily vehicle. That he had not yet made up his mind to alienate himself from the influences, Greek, Flemish, and Venetian, which were to