company formally and in strict privacy opened the tomb of Edward the First, and found the embalmed body 'in perfect preservation and sumptuously attired,' in 'robes of royalty, his crown on his head, and two sceptres in his hands.' The antiquaries saw face to face the 'dead conqueror of Scotland;' had even a fleeting glimpse-for it was straightway re-inclosed in its cere-cloths-of his very visage a recognisable likeness of what it must have been in life. I cannot help hoping that Blake may (unseen) have assisted at the ceremony.

:

In winter the youth helped to engrave selections from these Abbey Studies, in some cases executing the engraving single-handed. During the evenings and at over hours, he made drawings from his already teeming Fancy, and from English History. 'A great number,' it is said, were thrown off in such spare hours. There is a scarce engraving of his, dated so early as 1773, the second year of his apprenticeship, remarkable as already to some extent evincing in style-as yet, however, heavy rather than majestic-still more in choice of subject, the characteristics of later years. In one corner

at top we have the inscription (which sufficiently describes the design), 'Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion; and at bottom, 'engraved by W. Blake, 1773, from an old Italian drawing;' 'Michael Angelo, Pinxit.' Between these two lines, according to a custom frequent with Blake, is engraved the following characteristic effusion, which reads like an addition of later years:-'This' (he is venturing a wild theory as to Joseph) 'is One of the Gothic 'Artists who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark 'Ages, wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins; of 'whom the World was not worthy. Such were the Christians ' in all ages.'

The 'prentice work as assistant to Basire of these years. (1773-78) may be traced under Basire's name in the Archaologia, in some of the engravings of coins, &c., to the Memoirs of Hollis (1780), and in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, not

published till 1786 and 1796. The Antiquaries were alive and stirring then; and enthusiastic John Carter was laying the foundations in English Archæology on which betterknown men have since built. In the Sepulchral Monuments, vol. 1, pt. 2 (1796), occurs a capital engraving as to drawing and feeling, 'Portrait of Queen Philippa from her Monument,' with the inscription Basire delineavit et sculpsit; for which, as in many other cases, we may safely read W. Blake.' In fact, Stothard often used to mention this drawing as Blake's, and with praise. The engraving is in Blake's forcible manner of decisively contrasted light and shade, but simple and monotonous manipulation. It is to a large scale, and gives the head and shoulders merely. Another plate, with a perspective view of the whole monument and a separate one of the effigy, accompanies it. In Part I. (1786), are similar Portraits' of Queen Philippa, of Edward III. &c.

From Basire, Blake could only acquire the mechanical part of Art, even of the engraver's art; for Basire had little more to communicate. But that part he learned thoroughly and well. Basire's acquirements as an engraver were of a solid though not a fascinating kind. The scholar always retained a loyal feeling towards his old master; and would stoutly defend him and his style against that of more attractive and famous hands,-Strange, Woollett, Bartolozzi. Their ascendency, indeed, led to no little public injustice being done throughout, to Blake's own sterling style of engraving a circumstance which intensified the artist's aversion to the men. In a MS. descriptive Advertisement (1810) printed in VOL. II. with the title Public Address, relating to the engraving of his own Canterbury Pilgrimage, Blake expresses his contempt for them very candidly-and intemperately perhaps. There too, he records the impression made on him personally, when as a boy he used to see some of them in Basire's studio. 'Woollett,' he writes, "I knew 'very intimately by his intimacy with Basire, and knew 'him to be one of the most ignorant fellows I ever met.

A machine is not a man, nor a work of art: it is destructive 'of humanity and of art. Woollett, I know, did not know 'how to grind his graver. I know this. I know this. He has often proved 'his ignorance before me at Basire's by laughing at Basire's 'knife-tools, and ridiculing the forms of Basire's other gravers, 'till Basire was quite dashed and out of conceit with what 'he himself knew. But his impudence had a contrary effect 'on me.'-West, for whose reputation Woollett's graver did so much, asserted' continues Blake, 'that Woollett's prints 'were superior to Basire's, because they had more labour and 'care. Now this is contrary to the truth. Woollett did not 'know how to put so much labour into a hand or a foot as 'Basire did; he did not know how to draw the leaf of a tree. 'All his study was clean strokes and mossy tints. . . . Wool'lett's best works were etched by Jack Brown; Woollett 'etched very ill himself. The Cottagers, and Focund Peasants, 'the Views in Kew Gardens, Foot's Cray, and Diana and 'Acteon, and, in short, all that are called Woollett's were 'etched by Jack Brown. And in Woollett's works the 'etching is all; though even in these a single leaf of a tree 'is never correct. Strange's prints were, when I knew him, 'all done by Aliamet and his French journeymen, whose 'names I forget. I also knew something of John Cooke, 'who engraved after Hogarth. Cooke wished to give 'Hogarth what he could take from Raffaelle; that is, out'line, and mass, and colour; but he could not.' Again, in the same one-sided, trenchant strain:What is called the 'English style of engraving, such as proceeded from the 'toilettes of Woollett and Strange (for theirs were Fribble's 'toilettes) can never produce character and expression. Drawing firm, determinate outline'-is in Blake's eyes, all in all-Engraving is drawing on copper and nothing ' else. But, as Gravelot once said to my master, Basire "De English may be very clever in deir own opinions, but 'day do not draw."'

Before taking leave of Basire we will have a look at the

house in Great Queen Street, in which Blake passed seven years of his youth; whither Gough, Tyson, and many another enthusiastic dignified antiquary, in knee-breeches and powdered wig, so often bent their steps to have a chat with their favourite engraver. Its door has opened to good company in its time, to engravers, painters, men of letters, celebrated men of all kinds. Just now we saw Goldsmith enter. When Blake was an apprentice, the neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn Fields, though already antique, was a stately and decorous one, through which the tide of fashionable life still swayed on daily errands of pleasure or business. The house can yet be identified as No. 31, one of two occupied by Messrs. Corben and Son, the coach-builders, which firm, or rather their predecessors, in Basire's time occupied only No. 30. It stands on the northern side of the street, opposite-to the west or Drury Lane-ward of-Freemasons' Tavern; almost exactly opposite New Yard and the noticeable ancient house at one side of that yard, with the stately Corinthian pilasters in well wrought brick. Basire's is itself a seventeenth century house refaced early in the Georgian era, the parapet then put up half hiding the old dormer windows of the third story. Originally, it must either have been part of a larger mansion, or one of a uniformlybuilt series, having continuous horizontal brick mouldings; as remnants of the same on its neighbours testify. Outside, it remains pretty much as it must have looked in Blake's time; old-fashioned people having (Heaven be praised!) tenanted it ever since the first James Basire and after him his widow ended their days there. With its green paint, old casements quiet old-fashioned shop-window, and freedom from the abomination of desolation (stucco), it retains an old-world genuine aspect, rare in London's oldest neighbourhoods, and not at war with the memories which cling around the place.

CHAPTER IV.

A BOY'S POEMS. 1768-77. [ÆT. 11-20.]

THE poetical essays of the years of youth and apprenticeship are preserved in the thin octavo, Poetical Sketches by W. B., printed by help of friends in 1783, and now so rare, that after some years' vain attempt, I am forced to abandon the idea of myself owning the book. I have had to use a copy In such borrowed from one of Blake's surviving friends. hands alone, linger, I fancy, the dozen copies or so still extant. There is (of course) none where, at any rate, there should be one-in the British Museum.

'Tis hard to believe these poems were written in the author's teens, harder still to realize how some of them, in their unforced simplicity, their bold and careless freedom of sentiment and expression, came to be written at all in the third quarter of the eighteenth century: the age 'of polished phraseology and subdued thought,'-subdued with a vengeance. It was the generation of Shenstone, Langhorne, Mason, Whitehead, the Wartons; of obscurer Cunningham, Lloyd, Carter. Volumes of concentrated Beauties of English Poetry, volumes as fugitive often as those of original verse, are literary straws which indicate the set of the popular taste. If we glance into one of this date,—say into that compiled towards the close of the century, by one Mr. Thomas Tompkins, which purports to be a collection (expressly compiled 'to enforce the practice of Virtue') of 'Such poems as have been universally esteemed the first