Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/96

 40 generally met at Johnson's, the bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard. It was there he met Tom Paine, and was the cause of his escaping to America, when the Government were seeking for him for the punishment of his seditious and refractory writings. Blake advised him immediately to fly, for he said: "If you are not now sought, I am sure you soon will be." Paine took the hint directly, and found he had just escaped in time. In one of his conversations, Paine said that religion was a law and a tie to all able minds. Blake, on the other hand, said what he was always asserting, that the religion of Jesus was a perfect law of liberty. Fuseli was very intimate with Blake, and Blake was more fond of Fuseli than any other man on earth. Blake certainly loved him, and at least Fuseli admired Blake and learned from him, as he himself confessed, a great deal. Fuseli and Flaxman both said that Blake was the greatest man in the country, and that there would come a time when his works would be invaluable. Before Fuseli knew Blake, he used to fill his pictures with all sorts of fashionable ornaments and tawdry embellishments. Blake's simplicity imbued the minds of all who knew him; his life was a pattern, and has been spoken of as such from the pulpit. His abstraction from the world, his power of self-denial, his detestation of hypocrisy and gain, his