We who stand far apart from Blake's day can see that this was the best thing that could have happened. Had his father been a rich man, able to pay a heavy premium that his son might be taught by one of the popular engravers of the day, we should have had the distressing picture of Blake moulded different and moulded wrong by a Woollett, a Bartolozzi, or an Angelica Kaufmann, and his whole soul in rebellious and ineffectual protest. As it was, Basire was master of the technical part of his craft, he believed in accurate, definite outline, and not being a man of genius, did not think it necessary that his pupils should turn out servile copies of himself. Blake learnt to handle his tools, to lay a good foundation, and technical proficiency. In after years, when engraving was to be a chief means of expressing his own original vision, he was saved from the painful necessity of having to unlearn much or all of his master's teaching. After two quiet years with Basire a providential thing happened. Two more apprentices were taken on by him. These were wholly products of the time, and Blake found himself in violent collision with them in aims, methods, and tastes. To keep the peace, Blake was separated from them and sent to draw in Westminster Abbey. Gothic architecture was as intoxicating a revelation to Blake as the discovery of Michael Angelo and Albert Dürer in the sale-rooms of Christie and Langford. The Chapel of Edward the Confessor, recently piled up with sand-bags to protect it from the desecration of German bombs, became to Blake a little sanctuary. Here his thoughts travelled without fatigue many hundred years back, and the dim background of the Chapel became a fit setting for his bright visions of the past. He copied with silent intensity the monuments of the Confessor, Henry III, Queen Elinor, Philippa, and the beautiful work of Aymer de Valence. These days were decisive for his lifetime. Gothic architecture was germane to his own soul. Its spirit sank inwards and appeared again and again in the architectural fragments of his own designs. There remained for him one more great formative heritage from the past, and then, with his roots well set, he was to reach forward to the future and prophesy in rhythmic words that are meat and drink to us in the twentieth century. Blake remained with Basire for seven years. During these years he had glimpses of a world different from the one in which his family moved. Oliver Goldsmith, with his fine head, came as a shining messenger, and actually walked into Basire's. Oh! that he might grow up to have such a head! Woollett was a visitor, and a sufficiently frequent one to cease to be dazzling even to an overtrustful and enthusiastic apprentice. "One of the most ignorant fellows I ever met," he wrote of him who never at any time could have been congenial to his spirit. Many others appeared there also--silently marked and measured in a way that would have astonished them had they been worthy to know.