The Royal Academy is a British Institution which we all patronize once a year, and then abuse that we may keep our self-respect. We go, impelled by a sense of high duty; but we presently relax and take our pleasure in Bond Street. In 1778 Bond Street did not lay itself out to encourage revolutionary artists, and Burlington House was not yet finished. The Royal Academy was turned out of Somerset Palace and was still waiting to turn into its new quarters. Blake, on leaving Basire, immediately joined the Academy and studied in the Antique School under Mr Moser. This was not an auspicious beginning. Moser had scant respect for Michael Angelo and Raphael, while he extolled to the skies the more fleshly works of Le Brun and Rubens. Some of us may wish that Moser had taught Blake to admire Rubens. But an angel from Heaven could not have done that. Clear outline was a necessity to keep him sane; blurred outline always gave him nightmare. Only the mystic who loves the flesh can rejoice in the roly-poly curves and tints of Rubens' fat Venuses. Moser did his best, and being an old man of seventy-three, felt he might advise a young man in his art studies. But Blake had now known for some years what he really liked, and his impetuosity led him to speak to Moser as if their positions were reversed. Blake drew at the Academy not only from the antique but from living models. This was distasteful to him, because it was never his aim to reproduce exact portraits of outward things. Always his imagination must pierce through and illumine the object before him, and he found the posed model baffled him in this attempt, and made him scent death rather than life. These were crowded days for Blake. He could not continue to live under his father's roof in Broad Street without contributing towards the household expenses, and therefore he must do work of marketable value. To this end he received orders for engraving from Johnson and other booksellers. It was drudging work, and Blake was not without his full share of drudgery. To engrave after Stothard was to set a lion to speak in a monstrous little voice. But Stothard had his uses for Blake. Through a fellow-engraver Blake was introduced to Stothard, who, still young, was making a guinea a piece for his contributions to the _Novelist's Magazine_. Broad Street was in the thick of the Artists and Royal Academicians. Once Blake had pierced the magic circle and could meet them on equal terms, instead of merely watching their exits and their entrances through the doors of Broad Street, Poland Street, and Golden Square, they might prove of value to him, not by teaching him to paint as they painted, but by helping him to get customers for his own productions. Stothard had lately made the acquaintance of Flaxman, who had sought him out, and he introduced Blake to Flaxman, who in 1781 took a house at 27 Wardour Street and became Blake's close friend and neighbour.