I am not speaking of illustrations such as those he executed as mere task-work to gain a living, like the engravings to Mary Wollstonecraft's Stories, or those for Hayley's Ballads. For these subjects had not enough matter, depth or scope to attract his thoughts or engage his sympathies. As illustrator to Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Virgil and the Book of Job, Blake worked with all his best and most characteristic powers under his command, and the more effective, vital and original for being concentrated. In the same year in which he produced the last of the "London Books of Prophecy," 1795, we find him illustrating a so-called translation of Buerger's "Lenore." In spite of the weakness and wilful inaccuracy of the English version, Blake seized with power on the spirit of the Teutonic legend, and gave the edition, a copy of which is in the Print Room (a quarto), three fine designs, of which the first is the most forceful. We cannot linger over the designs which Hayley commissioned Blake to execute for his "Ballads on Animals." From the engraver's point of view they are specially fine, as the execution is very delicate, and reaches a state of high finish seldom attempted by Blake. Perhaps he wished to atone for paucity of inspiration by elaborate labour. Certain it is that he worked in bonds and trammels. The subjects were not interesting to him. Hayley might well say, in his lumberingly playful way, that "our good Blake was in labour with a young lion," when he was engaged on the plate representing that animal. The labour was immense, for the conception had no vitality. Blake scourged his imagination into a degree of liveliness sufficient to make "the Horse" and "the Eagle" arresting and uncommon work, but the shackles were on his hands, because on his spirit, and he knew it.