Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/260

 236 man. 'Flaxman is gone,' he adds, 'and we must soon follow, every one to his own eternal house, leaving the delusive Goddess Nature to her laws, to get into freedom from all law of the numbers, into the mind, in which every one is king and priest in his own house. God send it so on earth, as it is in heaven.'

Blake died on August 12, 1827, and the ecstasy of his death has been recorded by many witnesses. Tatham tells us how, as he put the finishing touches to a design of 'The Ancient of Days' which he had been colouring for him, he 'threw it down suddenly and said: "Kate, you have been a good wife; I will draw your portrait." She sat near his bed, and he made a drawing which, though not a likeness, is finely touched and expressed. He then threw that down, after having drawn for an hour, and began to sing Hallelujahs and songs of joy and triumph which Mrs. Blake described as being truly sublime in music and in verse.' Smith tells us that he said to his wife, as she stood to hear him, 'My beloved, they are not mine, no, they are not mine.' And a friend quoted by Gilchrist says: 'He