chaos.  Almost his last strokes were on the hundred water-colors for the ‘Divina Commedia,’ the ‘Job’ cycle, the ‘Ancient of Days’ drawing, or a “frenzied sketch” of his wife which he made, exclaiming in beginning it, “Stay!  Keep as you are!  You have ever been an angel to me.  I will draw you.”  Natural decay and painful chronic ailments increased.  He seldom left his rooms in Fountain Court, Strand, except in a visit to the Linnells, at Hampstead.  He died gently in 1827, “singing of the things he saw in Heaven.”  His grave, to-day unknown, was a common one in Bunhill Fields Cemetery.  Many friends mourned him.  With all his eccentricities and the extravagances of his “visions” and “inspirations,” he was loved.  His ardor of temperament was balanced by meekness, his aggressiveness by true politeness.  He was frank, abstemious, a lover of children,—­who loved him,—­devout in prayer, devoid of vice.  Yet whenever he was in contact with his fellow-men, he was one living and walking apart.  As an influence in literature he is less considerable than in painting.  In the latter art, a whole group of contemporary notables, intellectualists, and rhapsodists of greater or less individuality have to do with him, among whom Dante Gabriel Rossetti was in much his literary child, still more his child in art.

A brief and early ‘Life’ of Blake, prepared by his intimate friend Allan Cunningham, appeared in 1829.  In 1839, for the first time, his works were really given to the public.  Mr. Gilchrist’s invaluable biography and study appeared in 1863; revised and enlarged in an edition of 1880.  Mr. Swinburne’s critical essay on him is a notable aid to the student.  The artist-poet’s complete works were edited by Mr. William Michael Rossetti in 1874, with a complete and discriminating memoir.  More recent contributions to Blake literature are the Ellis and Yeats edition of his works, also with a Memoir and an Interpretation; and Mr. Alfred J. Story’s volume on ‘The Life, Character, and Genius of William Blake.’  Some of the rarest of his literary productions, as well as the scarcest among his drawings, are owned in America, chiefly by two private collectors in the Eastern States.

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     My silks and fine array,
       My smiles and languished air,
     By love are driven away,
       And mournful lean Despair
     Brings me yew to deck my grave: 
     Such end true lovers have.

     His face is fair as heaven
       When springing buds unfold;
     Oh, why to him was ’t given,
       Whose heart is wintry cold? 
     His breast is Love’s all-worshiped tomb,
     Where all Love’s pilgrims come.

     Bring me an axe and spade,
       Bring me a winding-sheet;
     When I my grave have made,
       Let winds and tempests beat: 
     Then down I’ll lie, as cold as clay: 
     True love doth never pass away.

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