We find this doggerel in his Note-book: O dear Mother Outline, of wisdom most sage, What's the first part of painting? she said, Patronage. And what is the second, to please and engage, She frowned like a fury and said, "Patronage." Of patronage during his life Blake had but little, save from Mr. Butts, who, however, had nothing of the conventional patron about him. He merely bought with reverent appreciation whatever Blake pleased to paint, never suggesting alterations or improvements, never blaming or criticising, but merely receiving in faith and love. For which Blake, as we know, "never ceased to honour him." But let no man think that poverty did not hamper Blake, though he chose it rather than the slavery that would have been the price he would have had to pay for even a moderate income. He himself writes in the Descriptive Catalogue: "Some people and not a few artists have asserted that the painter of this picture would not have done so well if he had been properly encouraged. Let those who think so reflect on the state of nations under poverty, and their incapability of art. Though art is above either, the argument is better for affluence than poverty _and though he would not have been a greater artist, yet he would have produced greater works of art in proportion to his means_." Well, then: it was Blake's poverty and independence that caused him to work mainly on a small scale, and it was the fact that he was poet as well as artist--his poetry springing from the same creative impulse as his plastic art--that led him to merge the two gifts into a perfect union in the creation of his beautiful and unique books. The process by which they were executed is thus described by Gilchrist: "The verse was written and the designs and marginal embellishments outlined on the copper with an impervious liquid, probably the ordinary stopping-out varnish of engravers. Then all the white parts or lights, the remainder of the plate that is, were eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the outline of letter and design was left prominent, as in stereotype. From these plates he printed off in any tint, yellow, brown, blue, required to be the prevailing or ground colour in his fac-similes; red he used for the letterpress. The page was then coloured up by hand in imitation of the original drawing, with more or less variety of detail in the local hues." To read this account when one has seen the product is like pondering the receipt for a miracle. Gilchrist goes on to say, "He taught Mrs. Blake to take off the impressions with care and delicacy." After, they were done up in boards by her neat hands, "so that the poet and his wife did everything in making the book--writing, designing, printing, engraving--everything except manufacturing the paper: the very ink, or colour rather, they did make. Never before, surely, was a man so literally the author of his own book."