This year, Mr. Flaxman, who then lived in Wardour Street, introduced me to one of his early patrons, the Rev. Henry Mathew, of Percy Chapel, Charlotte Street, which was built for him;[177] he was also afternoon preacher at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. At that gentleman’s house, in Rathbone Place, I became acquainted with Mrs. Mathew and her son, the late John Hunter’s favourite pupil. With that gentleman, in his youthful days, I had many an innocent frolic. I was obliged to him in several instances, and can safely say no one could excel him as an amiable friend, a dutiful son, or excellent husband. At Mrs. Mathew’s most agreeable conversaziones I first met the late William Blake,[178] the artist, to whom she and Mr. Flaxman had been truly kind. There I have often heard him read and sing several of his poems. He was listened to by the company with profound silence, and allowed by most of the visitors to possess original and extraordinary merit. A time will come when the numerous, though now very rare, works of Blake (in consequence of his taking very few impressions from the plates before they were rubbed out to enable him to use them for other subjects) will be sought after with the most intense avidity.[179] He was considered by Stothard and Flaxman (and will be by those of congenial minds, if we can reasonably expect such again) with the highest admiration. These artists allowed him their most unqualified praise, and were ever anxious to recommend him and his productions to the patrons of the Arts; but alas! they were not so sufficiently appreciated as to enable Blake, as every one could wish, to provide an independence for his surviving partner Kate, who adored his memory. The late Sir Thomas Lawrence has been heard to declare that England would be for ever immortalized by the productions of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Flaxman, and Stothard. Mrs. Mathew was not only a great encourager of musical composers, particularly the Italians, but truly kind to young artists. She patronized Oram, Loutherbourg’s assistant: he was the son of _Old_ Oram, of the Board of Works, an artist whose topographical pictures possess considerable merit, and whose name is usually introduced in picture catalogues under the appellation of “_Old_ Oram.”[180] Mr. Flaxman, in return for the favours he had received from the Mathew family, decorated the back parlour of their house, which was their library, with models (I think they were in putty and sand) of figures in niches, in the Gothic manner; and Oram painted the window in imitation of stained glass; the bookcases, tables, and chairs were also ornamented to accord with the appearance of those of antiquity.