Page:William Blake, painter and poet.djvu/39

 had returned after seven years' absence. In 1795 he designed three illustrations for Stanley's translation of Burger's "Lenore," and in 1796 executed a much more important work, 537 drawings for an edition of Young's Night Thoughts projected by a publisher named Edwards. Forty-three were engraved and published in 1797, but the undertaking was carried no further for want of encouragement, and the designs, after remaining long in the publisher's family, eventually came into the hands of Mr. Bain of the Haymarket, who is still the possessor. The most important are described by Mr. Frederic Shields in the appendix to the second volume of Gilchrist's biography. Mr. Shields' descriptions are so fascinating that from them alone one would be inclined to rate the drawings very high: but Mr. Gilchrist thinks these ill adapted for the special purpose of book illustration which they were destined to subserve, and reminds us that the absence of colour is a grave loss. Blake is said to have been paid only a guinea a plate for the forty-three engravings, on which he worked for a year. The Lambeth period, however, seems not to have been an unprosperous one, for he had many pupils. Several curious anecdotes of it were related after his death on the alleged authority of Mrs. Blake, but their truth seems doubtful. It is certain that during this period he met with the most constant of his patrons, Mr. Thomas Butts, who for nearly thirty years continued a steady buyer of his drawings, and but for whom he would probably have fallen into absolute distress.

It is now time to speak of the literary works—"pictured poesy," like the woven poesy of The Witch of Atlas—produced during this period. In 1789, the year of publication of the Songs of Innocence, the series opens with Thel. In 1790 comes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; in 1793, The Gates of Paradise, The Vision of the Daughters of Albion, and America; in 1794, Europe, A Prophecy, and Urizen; in 1795, The Song of Los, and The Book of Ahaniah. In 1797 Blake seems to have written, or to have begun to write, the mystical poem ultimately entitled Vala, never published by him, and more than fifty years after his death found