Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/96

 72 and sickly looks, and taught for nothing and looked after till he died. Blake had other pupils too, among 'families of high rank,' but being 'aghast' at the prospect of 'an appointment to teach drawing to the Royal Family,' he gave up all his pupils, with his invariably exquisite sense of manners, on refusing the royal offer.

It was in 1799 that Blake found his first patron, and one of his best friends, in Thomas Butts, 'that remarkable man—that great patron of British genius,' as Samuel Palmer calls him, who, for nearly thirty years, with but few intervals, continued to buy whatever Blake liked to do for him, paying him a small but steady price, and taking at times a drawing a week. A story which, as Palmer says, had 'grown in the memory,' connects him with Blake at this time, and may be once more repeated, if only to be discredited. There was a back-garden at the house in Hercules Buildings, and there were vines in it, which Blake would never allow to be pruned, so that they grew luxuriant in leaf and small and harsh in fruit. Mr. Butts, according to Gilchrist, is supposed to have come one day into 'Blake's Arcadian