His brother gone, though not so far away that he did not often revisit the old home,—­friendly Flaxman in Italy, but more inaccessible there than Robert in the heaven which lay above this man in his perpetual infancy,—­the bas-bleus reinclosed in the charmed circle in which Blake had so riotously disported himself, a small attempt at partnership, shop-keeping, and money-making, wellnigh “dead before it was born,”—­the poet began to think of publishing.  The verses of which we have spoken had been seen but by few people, and the store was constantly increasing.  Influence with the publishers, and money to defray expenses, were alike wanting.  A copy of Lavater’s “Aphorisms,” translated by his fellow-countryman, Fuseli, had received upon its margins various annotations which reveal the man in his moods.  “The great art to love your enemy consists in never losing sight of man in him,” says Lavater.  “None can see the man in the enemy,” pencils Blake.  “If he is ignorantly so, he is not truly an enemy; if maliciously so, not a man.  I cannot love my enemy; for my enemy is not a man, but a beast.  And if I have any, I can love him as a beast, and wish to beat him.”  No equivocation here, surely.  On superstition he comments,—­“It has been long a bugbear, by reason of its having been united with hypocrisy.  But let them be fairly separated, and then superstition will be honest feeling, and God, who loves all honest men, will lead the poor enthusiast in the path of holiness.”  Herein lies the germ of a truth.  Again, Lavater says,—­“A great woman not imperious, a fair woman not vain, a woman of common talents not jealous, an accomplished woman who scorns to shine, are four wonders just great enough to be divided among the four corners of the globe.”  Whereupon Blake adds,—­“Let the men do their duty, and the women will be such wonders; the female life lives from the life of the male.  See a great many female dependents, and you know the man.”  If this be madness, would that the madman might have bitten all mankind before he died!  To the advice, “Take here the grand secret, if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none:  court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion,” he appends, with an evident reminiscence of Rathbone Place, “And go to hell.”

But this private effervescence was not enough; and long thinking anxiously as to ways and means, suddenly, in the night, Robert stood before him, and revealed to him a secret by which a facsimile of poetry and design could be produced.  On rising in the morning, Mrs. Blake was sent out with a half-crown to buy the necessary materials, and with that he began an experiment which resulted in furnishing his principal means of support through life.  It consisted in a species of engraving in relief both of the words and the designs of his poems, by a process peculiar and original.  From his plates he printed off in any tint he chose, afterwards coloring up his designs by hand.  Joseph,