The lingering subtle and most musical sweetness of such lines as those quoted above, "Let thy west wind sleep on the lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes, and wash the dusk with silver," can be surpassed by none of the great masters of melody. So unaccustomed were the ears of the time to such perfectly natural bursts of song, that the Rev. Henry Mathew considered it necessary to apologize to the refined and fastidious for calling attention to them, "hoping their poetic originality merits some respite from oblivion." Blake might well seem strange to these _borne_ people, for he was no other than the herald and forerunner of the poetic renaissance of the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the Mathew's drawing-room, surrounded by a wondering group of dilettanti, above whom he towered head and shoulders intellectually, he was encouraged to sing his "Songs of Innocence," which he had already written, though not produced, to his own music. Blake had then a mode of musical expression as well as an artistic and a literary one, though no record of it has been preserved. With these three keys he unlocked the doors of materialism outwards, on to the vistas of God-thrilled Eternity. In 1784 Blake exhibited two drawings in the Royal Academy, "War, unchained by an Angel--Fire, Pestilence and Famine following," and "A Breach in the City--the Morning after a Battle." It is obvious from these that his style was already formed in all its strength and almost terrifying individuality. During this year Blake's father died, and William and Catherine returned to Broad Street and took up their abode next to the paternal dwelling now occupied by the elder brother James. James, though a Swedenborgian and accounting himself a godly person, was also a busy seeker after this world's good things, and seems to have had little in common with William, though for some years friendly relations were maintained between them. Blake set up a shop as printseller and engraver in Broad Street in company with a man named Parker, whose acquaintance he had made in the old Basire days, but it was a short-lived affair, and soon came to an end. It was in this year that William's younger brother Robert became his pupil. Nothing much can be discovered about the personality of Robert, but from Blake's own writings and designs we are able to see how close a tie of affection existed between these two brothers.