SATAN POURING THE PLAGUE OF BOILS ON JOB
Water-colour drawing. Reproduced by kind permission of Sir Charles Dilke
CHAPTER IV
DECLINING YEARS
Seventeen years of quiet productiveness and unceasing work, marked by the increasing neglect of the world, were passed by Blake at 17, South Molton Street.
When finally abandoned by the public to the deep solitude which he created for himself in the midst of the roar of the city, the years are a record of much peaceful labour, of beautiful and strange work, produced as the result of his spiritual meditations and visions.
“That he should do great things for small wages,” writes Mr. Swinburne, “was a condition of his life,” and the poverty which had knocked at his door for almost half a century, now raised the latch and came in, to live with the Blakes as accustomed house-mate to the end. Mrs. Blake had often to remind him of the bare larder and purse by setting an empty plate before him, when he turned to his task-work of engraving to earn the needful money whereby they might live.
In the last years of his life Blake said significantly to Crabb Robinson, “I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has, is so much taken from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy.” And so indeed he was.