Design XX.—Job, with memories engraven on the chambers of his imagery, stretching forth his hands over his new family of beautiful daughters.
Design XXI.—A return to the first scene. But the sun is rising, and Job and his family, taking their instruments of art, are worshipping God in the beauty of holiness.
Blake completed his engravings for Job in March 1825, and they were published March 1826.
They might well have been the crowning work of his life, and followed by his Nunc dimittis, but there was boundless mental energy in the old man, though his body was failing.
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FROM THE DANTE SERIES.
It was in 1825 that Blake met Crabb Robinson at the house of Mr Aders, where Mrs Aders, daughter of Raphael Smith, was in the habit of entertaining many interesting people.
Crabb Robinson was a most excellent man—well accoutred, steady on his legs, with well-set head, without superstition, and just enough prejudice to starch his mind.
He knew Blake at the time that he was learning Italian for the sake of Dante that he might execute Dante designs for Linnell. From Robinson’s reminiscences, we do just get a glimpse of Blake struggling with Dante, and delighting to mystify his respectable friend. Unfortunately, the reported references in their conversations to Dante are few, though enough perhaps to indicate Blake’s attitude. He was not one of Dante’s elect. But with closer study he was beginning to fall under his spell, and we may safely surmise that if Dante had come into Blake’s life in his youth, instead of Swedenborg, Blake would have become the greatest catholic mystic artist of the age.