Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/48

 xlii life; and ever since his publication in 1793 of a large engraving of Job in affliction, he had from time to time turned his attention to the book. In 1823 be began to make a duplicate set of the designs for Linnell, who had offered to publish a book of engravings to be done from them by the artist. For any account of these illustrations the reader must be referred to Gilchrist's Life of Blake; and it is only necessary to mention here that, magnificent as the original water-colour drawings unquestionably are, they are in every case inferior to the final version in the engraving, and that both they themselves and the many existing studies for them are mainly interesting as showing the evolution of the design in the mind of the artist, and the marvellous certainty of judgment that guided him in every elimination or change. The only one of the Job designs of this period known to me which can in any way be compared with the engraving, is a varnished water-colour on panel of "Satan smiting Job with sore Boils," in the possession of Sir Charles Dilke, in which the effect of colour is one of the most splendid that Blake ever attained. To 1825 belong a beautiful series of twelve water-colour drawings from Paradise Regained, in which the design is at once simple and dignified, while the colour has all the delicacy and finish which characterises his latest