Blake was less free and happy illustrating Young than Bürger. Young has since been slain by George Eliot, but even if she had not killed him, his popularity must have waned in another generation or two. For there was very little healthy human blood in his veins. He was other-worldly, and so was Blake; but whereas Blake saw in the other world a world of transcendent beauty of which this world was the vegetable mirror, Young saw in it only a reflection of his own particular world. Hence Blake was a mystic, and Young an egotist. Blake forgot himself in the magnificence of eternity, Young's religion was "egotism turned heavenwards." This is probably the reason why Blake's designs for Young were among the least powerful and interesting things that he did. Give him the Book of Job, or Dante, and he transcends himself, but with Young or Blair to work upon, though he does remarkable work, yet it somehow falls short of his best. Mr Frederick Shields, who covered the walls of the Chapel of the Ascension with strange pinks and ten thousand hands, has analysed all the more important of Blake's designs, which amounted to five hundred and thirty-seven. Of these only forty-three were published. _The Night Thoughts_ was to appear in parts: only one part was published, and Young was handed over to Stothard in 1802 before he was to be, in an elaborate dress, a complete success. The following year (1797) Blake was at work on _The Four Zoas, or The Death and Judgment of the Ancient Man_. He revised this work a few years later at the time he was planning the _Milton_ and _Jerusalem_. I shall have something to say about it when dealing with _Jerusalem_. I will only say just now that the minor prophetic books were preliminary trials to his big flights, and when here, as in _Jerusalem_, a big flight is made, it is found that Blake's mythology has received its completion, and that all the things fermenting in him and striving for utterance do, in these long poems, come to the surface. Anyone who would know him intimately must not be discouraged by their extraordinary appearance, but struggle with them, as with a foreign language, until they yield the last secrets of their mystic author. CHAPTER VIII WILLIAM HAYLEY William Hayley, "the poet," as he delighted to call himself, enjoyed a wide reputation as the author of _The Triumphs of Temper_, which appeared in 1780 and was intended as a poetical and pleasing guide to young ladies how to behave under the provocation of testy fathers and sour aunts, with the promise of a peerless husband if their tempers were triumphant.