Blake took kindly and without question to the new task. "Miniature," he says, "has become a goddess in my eyes.... I have a great many orders, and they multiply." Hayley was glowing with satisfaction. But Blake, in one little month, after repeated efforts of self-deception, could no longer hide from himself that he saw Hayley as he really was. He was learned, of course, and genteel, and kind, and admired with gush what it was correct to admire. But of insight there was none. He was born under a watery sign and not a fiery. He was really a crab ambling around his enclosed garden with his lame leg, and getting his claws into the tender skin of those who, he had been told, were really men of fire. Blake's disappointment was bitter. His patron was blind to his real genius, to which he must at all costs be faithful. Hayley was, and continued to be, very much a corporeal friend, but he was a spiritual enemy. Blake's fond hopes were dashed. He tottered on the verge of a horror of great darkness, and escaped the darkness only by falling into a mild and pleasant slumber, lulled by Hayley's amazing amiability, mildness, and crooning serenity. From this slumber he might--who knows?--never have awakened, but for the discernment of his real friends--Flaxman and Butts--whose faith finally aroused him and drew him away from the enchanted ground. But though he saw, he said nothing. His spiritual friends (on the other side) commanded him "to bear all and be silent, and to go through all without murmuring, and, in fine, hope, till his three years shall be accomplished." When Hayley was more than usually exasperating, Blake vented himself in an epigram, and, much relieved, went on quietly. Thus, when Blake was convinced that Providence did not mean him to paint miniatures, he wrote: "When Hayley finds out what you cannot do, That is the very thing he'll set you to do." Again, Blake discovered that Hayley's virtues and faults were both of the feminine order. It was a feminine instinct that had prompted him to write _The Triumphs of Temper_ and the _Essay on Old Maids_. A brilliant epigram of Blake's accounts for this odd psychic twist, and flashes Hayley before us: "Of Hayley's birth this was the happy lot: His mother on his father him begot." That was the true state of affairs. But Blake obeyed his spiritual friends, and for a long time no sign appeared in his letters that there was anything the matter. Hayley was also anxious to teach Blake Greek. Like most men of his times, he believed that no man could attain to the highest degree of excellence who had not mastered Greek and Latin. He probably thought that a knowledge of Greek would at least correct some of Blake's vagaries. Blake was quick at languages, and soon Hayley was able to write to Johnson: "Blake is just become a Grecian, and literally learning the language.... The new Grecian greets you affectionately."