For a while all went very well indeed, and the first part of his sojourn at Felpham was a sort of charmed circle in his life. "Mr. Hayley acts like a prince," "Felpham is the sweetest spot on earth," "work will go on here with God-speed," "Find that I can work with greater pleasure than ever," are phrases which occur in the enthusiastic letters of the period. But gradually Hayley's constant companionship, his amiable but fatuous and gushing friendship, acted like the hated chain of slavery on Blake's electric and expansive temperament. Hayley's mind was set on little things, trivial business and futile undertakings, and his vanity and self-satisfaction about all his doings came at last to be exasperating to Blake. In spite of his generosity, his lavish but undiscerning praise, and the commissions for engraving and designs with which he supplied our artist, Blake little by little found himself goaded to madness by the ever-flowing stream of Hayley's conventionality and watery enthusiasms. Hayley attempted to enlarge Blake's education by reading to him Klopstock and translating as he went along--a proceeding that must have bored our fiery genius to tears. He also, with the kindest intentions in the world, obtained commissions for Blake to paint miniatures--hardly, one would think, a congenial form of art to him, but one which at the beginning appears to have interested him nevertheless. A couplet he wrote in the Note-book at the time evidences the irritated nerves that Hayley's unspiritual contact set on edge: Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache. Do be my enemy for friendship's sake. The letters, too, to Mr. Butts give direct insight into his state of mind, and the points of sharp disagreement and intellectual misunderstanding between the two men are easily traced. It appears that "Hayley was as much averse to a page of Blake's poetry as to a chapter in the Bible." Blake the creator and artist was unintelligible and foreign to Hayley, who, always satisfied with his own judgement, sought to turn Blake from designing and to chain him to the hack work of engraving. [Illustration: LOS, ENITHARMON AND ORC Colour-print from "Urizen," 1794] By degrees the visions that had so often and radiantly appeared to Blake on his first coming to Felpham seemed to forsake him. As he became involved in Hayley's pursuits, and sought to work out Hayley's plans for him, the visions even appeared to be angry with him. Then, indeed, it seemed that he was in danger of "bartering his birthright for a mess of pottage." He writes to Mr. Butts: