sistency of attainment; above all, in his inborn grace and elegance. He could make the refined Domestic groups he so readily conceived, whether all his own or in part borrowed, far more palatable to the many, the cultivated many-cultivated Rogers for example, his life-long patron-than Blake could ever make his Dantesque sublimity, wild Titanic play of fancy, and spiritually imaginative dreams. I think the latter, as we shall see when we come to the Songs of Innocence and Experience, was at this period of his life influenced to his advantage as a designer by contact with Stothard's graceful mind; but that any capability of grander qualities occasionally shown by Stothard was derived, and perhaps as unconsciously, from Blake. And Stothard's earlier style is far purer and more 'matterful,' to use an expression of Charles Lamb's, than the sugarplum manner of his latter years. In Stothard as in Blake, however nominally various the subject, there is the tyrannous predominance of certain ruling ideas of the designer's. Stothard's tether was always shorter than Blake's; but within the prescribed limits, his performance was the more (superficially) perfect, as well as soft, and rounded.

In 1784 I find Blake engraving after Stothard and others in the Wit's Magazine. The Wit's Magazine was a 'Monthly Repository for the Parlour Window '-not designed (as the title in those free-speaking days might warrant a suspicion) to raise a blush on Lady's cheek:-a miscellany of innocently entertaining rather than strictly witty gleanings, and original contributions mostly amateur. A periodical curious to look back upon in days of a weekly Punch! It would be difficult now to find a literary parallel to Mr. Harrison's plan of 'creating a spirit of emulation, and rewarding genius' by awarding 'one silver medal' per month to the 'best witty tale, essay, or poem,' another to the best answer' to the munificent proprietor's 'prize enigmas.' A full list of the names and addresses of successful candidates for Fame is appended to each

of the two octavo volumes to which the Magazine ran. A graceful grotesque, the Temple of Mirth, of Stothard's design, is the frontispiece to the first number: a folding sheet forcibly engraved by Blake in his characteristic manner of distributing strongly contrasted light and shade and tone. To it succeeded, month by month, four similar engravings by him after a noted caricaturist of the day, now forgotten, S. Collings on broad-grin themes, such as The Tithe in Kind, or the Son's Revenge, The Discomfited Duellists, The Blind Beggar's Hats, and May Day in London. After which, an engraver of lower grade, one Smith, (quare, our friend Nollekens Smith?) executes the engravings; and after him a nameless one. The engraving caricatures, of the earth earthy, for this 'Library of Momus' was truly a singular task for a spiritual poet!

Some slight clue to the original Design of this period in a somewhat different key is given by the Exhibition-Catalogues, which report Blake as making a second appearance at the Academy in 1784. In that year, the year of Reynolds's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, and Fortune-Teller,-hung in the 'Drawing and Sculpture Room,' two designs of Blake's: one, War unchained by an Angel—Fire, Pestilence and Famine following; the other, a Breach in a City-The Morning after a Battle. Companion-subjects, their tacit moral-the supreme despicableness of War-was one of which the artist, in all his tenets thorough-going, was a fervent propagandist in days when War was tyrannously in the ascendant. This, by the way, was the year of Peace with the tardily recognised North American States. I have not seen those two drawings. The same theme gave birth about twenty years later to four very fine watercolour drawings,-for Dantesque intensity, imaginative directness, and power of the terrible: illustrations of the doings of the Destroying Angels that War lets loose-Fire, Plague, Pestilence, and Famine. Of the second-named we give here a reduced version. Another very grand and awe-inspiring illustration of still later date,

of the same suggestive theme, is Let loose the Dogs of War-a Demon cheering on blood-hounds who seize a man by the throat; of which Mr. Ruskin possesses the original pencil sketch, Mr. Linnell the water-colour drawing.

During the summer of 1784, died Blake's father, an honest shopkeeper of the old school, and a devout man-a dissenter. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, on the fourth of July (a Sunday) says the Register. The eldest son, James, a year and a half William's senior, continued to live with the widow Catherine, and succeeded to the hosier's business in Broad Street, still a highly respectable street, and a good one for trade, as it and the whole neighbourhood continued until the era of Nash and the 'first gentleman in Europe.' Golden Square was still the 'town residence' of some half-dozen M.P.'s-for county or rotten borough; Poland Street and Great Marlborough Street of others. Between this brother and the artist no strong sympathy existed, little community of sentiment or common ground (mentally) of any kind; although indeed, James for the most part an humble matter-of-fact man-had his spiritual and visionary side too; would at times talk Swedenborg, talk of seeing Abraham and Moses, and to outsiders seem like his gifted brother a bit mad'—a mild madman instead of a wild and stormy. On his father's death, Blake, who found Design yield no income, Engraving but a scanty one, returned from Green Street, Leicester Fields, to familiar Broad Street. At No. 27, next door to his brother's, he set up shop as printseller and engraver, in partnership with a former fellow-apprentice at Basire's: James Parker, a man some six or seven years his senior. An engraving by Blake after Stothard, Zephyrus and Flora (a long oval), was published by the firm 'Parker and Blake' this same year (1784). Mrs. Mathew, still friendly and patronizing, though one day to be less eager for the poet's services as Lion in Rathbone Place, countenanced, nay perhaps first set the scheme going-in an ill-advised philanthropic hour; favouring it,