Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/35

 Rh refuse me this, I am inflexible, and will relinquish any engagement of designing at all, unless altogether left to my own judgment, as you, my dear friend, have always left me; for which I shall never cease to honour and respect you." The greater part of the magnificent collection brought together by this patron was dispersed, about the middle of the last century, by his son, Thomas, who was for a time Blake's pupil, and instructed by him in the art of engraving. The whole of the remainder, including many of the artist's noblest productions, has been recently disposed of by the present representative of the Butts family.

In September 1800, Blake left London to work for Hayley at Felpham. The prospect of life in the country filled him with unbounded delight. He had dreams of the beginning of a new life, in which he has to emerge at last from the confusion and unrest of his past existence into a state of freedom and spiritual felicity. With no care but art, he imagined that he would be able, unmolested, to "converse in heaven and walk with angels." His wife was overwhelmed with the same enthusiasm. "My dear and too-overjoyous woman," he wrote to Hayley just before their departure from London, "has exhausted her strength.... Eartham will be my first temple and altar; my wife is like a flame