The furious raging, the vital majesty of the water-colour called "Fire," the delicate and curious imagination in "Satan watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve," with many others must have contributed to this effect; but the final strangeness and most curious beauty were to be found in "The Nativity," "The River of Life," and "The Bard." In these, Blake's highest and most mystic qualities are manifest, and his divergence from all preconceived ideas startlingly apparent. "The Nativity" is a small tempera picture painted on copper without the usual foundation of gesso that Blake first laid on the plate. Small patches of tempera have been dislodged, showing little gleaming bits of copper, but happily this has occurred mainly at the top part of the picture in the gloom of the roof of the stable. All the long succession of Nativities from Giotto to Correggio ("the soft and effeminate and consequently most cruel demon," as Blake termed him) seem not to have touched his imagination. Most artists carry an "infused remembrance" of great pictures in their mind, and can seldom divest themselves of the subtle influence emanating therefrom. But Blake's picture is not in any sense a composition which even unconsciously has been built up with the aid of memory. Imagination has here become vision, the uncovering of the veritable image; and Blake has faithfully copied what his entranced consciousness beheld. Mary, white as the lilies of her annunciation, has fallen back fainting into the arms of Joseph, while above her prostrate body, "a mist of the colour of fire" would seem to have gradually taken form and become incarnate in the exquisite beauty of the infant Jesus. Light as thistledown and shining like a star, so that the whole chamber--with the terrified Joseph, the white mother, the oxen feeding--are all illuminated by its intense radiance--this apotheosis of divinity in childhood takes flight to the outstretched arms of St. Elizabeth, who sits on the floor with a quaint little St. John praying in her lap. The open window through which is discerned the star in the East, takes the imagination out into the night of limitless mystery. [Illustration: THE NATIVITY Tempera painting on copper. This reproduction is taken from W. B. Scott's etching from the original picture. It is undated] The technique is superior to most of Blake's work in tempera, and is adequate, the rendering of light in the picture containing qualities nothing short of marvellous.