He also admired Hamilton. In the violent alternations of his mood we have seen how submissive and meek he could be. In such a mood he allowed Mortimer and Hamilton to influence him to such a degree that he actually distrusted the genius in himself which could inspire _Glad Day_, and produced such lifeless imitations of Mortimer's historical style as the _Penance of Jane Shore_ (1778), _King Edward and Queen Elinor_ (1780), and _Earl Godwin_ (1780). Blake's deferences were not always thus unfortunate. He appreciated Hogarth for his intrinsic value at a time when respectable people patronized him for pictured moralities. We cannot imagine a greater contrast than Blake the frugal seer and Hogarth "the typical carnivorous Englishman." Outline was their meeting-ground. Hogarth saw, we may say detected, in the scenes that marked the progresses of the Rake and the Harlot, a full pulsing life and an unexpected beauty. When he would express what he saw, with a mighty stretch he shook off all foreign influences and set about to express himself naturally and in his own way. His hand appropriated to its use the power of the line, more particularly the vitality of the curved line, with the amazing result that the moment we forget his "moralities," we see in him an exuberant artist of the beautiful. Blake was wholly with him in all this. We rejoice for the seeing eye that Blake and Hogarth cast on the shady side of life, but our wonder and amazement pass into worship when we perceive that this was included in the vision of Him who was called in derision the Friend of Publicans and Sinners, but was contented to speak of Himself as the Son of Man. Blake affirmed that Hogarth's execution could not be copied or improved. He borrowed from his _Satan, Sin and Death at Hell's Gate_, which is hardly one of Hogarth's masterpieces, for a water-colour of the same subject, and he engraved, after Hogarth, _When my Hero in Court Appears_ in the Beggar's Opera (1790). Blake produced two water-colours in 1784 which show that his thoughts on war were already undergoing a change. These are _War unchained by an Angel--Fire, Pestilence and Famine following_, and _A Breach in a City--the Morning after a Battle_. Blake had been watching closely the course of affairs on the other side of the Atlantic. While men's minds were becoming more and more inflamed with the thought of war, he was criticizing it with the searching rays of his spiritual vision and finding himself compelled to revise his ideas, which he had taken without question from Shakespeare, and had expressed in the _Poetical Sketches_. Then, in spite of seas of blood, he glorified war; now, as he began to consider the abominations that it lets loose on overburdened mankind--Fire, Pestilence and Famine--he included it in the abominations as a thing altogether useless and despicable. He felt a peculiar joy when peace was this year signed with the North American States.