But the wonderful and disordered imagination of the artist and poet now embodied itself in a strange group of writings for which no parallel exists. To realize them, one must imagine the most transcendent notions of Swedenborg mingled with the rant of a superior kind of Mucklewrath. Such poems as 'The Book of Thel,' in spite of beautiful allegoric passages; 'The Gates of Paradise'; 'Tiriel,' an extended narrative-fantasy in irregular unrhymed verses; even the striking 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell,'--may be reckoned as mere prologues to such productions as 'Jerusalem,' 'The Emanation of the Giant Albion.' 'Milton,' and the "prophecies" embodied in the completed 'Urizen,' the 'Europe,' 'Ahania,' and 'The Book of Los.' Such oracular works Blake put forth as dictated to him by departed spirits of supreme influence and intellectuality, or by angelic intelligences, quite apart from his own volition; indeed, only with his "grateful obedience." Such claims are not out of place in the instance of one who "saw God"; who often "conversed familiarly with Jesus Christ"; who "was" Socrates; who argued conclusions for hours at a time with Moses, with Milton, with Dante, with the Biblical prophets, with Voltaire; who could "see Satan" almost at will--all in vivid conceptions that sprang up in his mind with such force as to set seemingly substantial and even speaking beings before him. In his assumption of the seer, Blake was not a charlatan: he believed fully in his supernatural privileges. To him his modest London lodging held great company, manifest in the spirit. Blake's greater "prophetic" writings ended, he busied himself with painting and illustration. He was incessant in industry; indeed, his ordinary recreation at any time was only a change of work from one design to another. So were wrought out the (incomplete) series of plates for Young's 'Night Thoughts'; the drawings for Hayley's 'Life of Cowper,' and for the same feeble author's 'Ballads on Anecdotes relating to Animals'; the 'Dante' designs: the 'Job' series of prints; a vast store of aquarelle and distemper paintings and plates, and a whole gallery of "portraits" derived from sitters of distinction in past universal history. These sitters, it is needless to say, were wholly invisible to other eyes than Blake's. The subjects vary from likenesses of Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary to those of Mahomet and Shakespeare. Sundry of the old masters, Titian included, reviewed his efforts and guided his brush! Such assertions do not ill accord with the description of his once seeing a fairy's funeral, or that he first beheld God when four years old.