Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/33

 Rh star of the Nativity sheds a flood of light through a window in the stall. A less striking but not less beautiful work of the same type is "The Angel appearing to Zacharias," where the sense of solemnity pervading the whole is enhanced by the richness of the ornaments and the jewelled colour. The effect of light both in this and in the preceding picture has a distinctly Rembrandtesque quality. But perhaps the most remarkable of the whole group is Captain Archibald Stirling's "Temptation of Eve." Eve is a beautiful nude figure, with luxuriant yellow hair, standing in the midst with her right arm uplifted; her face is radiant, charmed by the serpent whose golden yellow coils surround her, circling upwards behind, its crested head lifted high above her head, and holding the fruit in its mouth. Adam lies stretched in sleep upon the grass, by the writhing folds of the serpent's tail, one hand resting upon a spade at his side. The dark trunk of the Tree of Mystery stands massively on the left, overarching the composition with its deadly branches. In the background is a rocky landscape, with a waterfall. Above, in the dark blue sky of night, the moon is being eclipsed.

It was not long after the designs for Young's Night Thoughts had been completed (in 1797) that Blake entered upon his friendship with Butts, who in 1799 gave him an order for fifty small