Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache.
Do be my enemy for friendship’s sake.

The letters, too, to Mr. Butts give direct insight into his state of mind, and the points of sharp disagreement and intellectual misunderstanding between the two men are easily traced.

It appears that “Hayley was as much averse to a page of Blake’s poetry as to a chapter in the Bible.”

Blake the creator and artist was unintelligible and foreign to Hayley, who, always satisfied with his own judgement, sought to turn Blake from designing and to chain him to the hack work of engraving.

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LOS, ENITHARMON AND ORC

Colour-print from “Urizen,” 1794

By degrees the visions that had so often and radiantly appeared to Blake on his first coming to Felpham seemed to forsake him. As he became involved in Hayley’s pursuits, and sought to work out Hayley’s plans for him, the visions even appeared to be angry with him. Then, indeed, it seemed that he was in danger of “bartering his birthright for a mess of pottage.” He writes to Mr. Butts:

“My unhappiness has arisen from a source which, if explored too narrowly, might hurt my pecuniary circumstances, as my dependence is on engraving at present, and particularly the engravings I have in hand for Mr. H., and I find on all hands great objections to my doing anything but the mere drudgery of business, and intimations that if I do not confine myself to this, I shall not live. This has always pursued me.... This from Johnson and Fuseli brought me down here, and this from Mr. H. will bring me back again. For that I cannot live without doing my duty to lay up treasures in heaven, is certain and determined, and to this I have long made up my mind.... But,” he goes on to say, “if we fear to do the dictates of our angels, and tremble at the tasks set before us; if we refuse to do spiritual acts because of natural fears and natural desires, who can describe the dismal torments of such a state? I too well remember the threats I heard” (i.e., in vision). “If you, who are organized by Divine Providence for spiritual commission, refuse and bury your talents in the earth, even though you should want natural bread—sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after death shame and confusion of face to eternity. Everyone in eternity will leave you, aghast at the man who was crowned with glory and honour by his brethren and betrayed their cause to their enemies. You will be called the base Judas who betrayed his friend.”