baptiser at a font, as it were in a church. There are several other figures. The colour is pale and sweet. The account printed at p. 278 seems to show that more than usual pains were bestowed upon this water-colour.
59. 1805.—Moses striking the rock. [Butts.]
Not very impressive at first sight, yet powerful in expression of the subject in the group of thirsting Israelites, some dozen or less in number. The principal male figure is taking measures for helping an infant first.
60. Circa 1805.—Fire. [Butts.]
Blake, the supreme painter of fire, in this his typical picture of fire, is at his greatest; perhaps it is not in the power of art to transcend this treatment of the subject in its essential features. The water-colour is unusually complete in execution. The conflagration, horrid in glare, horrid in gloom, fills the background; its javelin-like cones surge up amid conical forms of buildings ('Langham Church steeples,' they may be called, as in No. 175). In front, an old man receives from two youths a box and a bundle which they have recovered; two mothers and several children crouch and shudder, overwhelmed; other figures behind are running about, bewildered what to do next.
61. 1805.—*Plague. [Butts.] Water-colour with pen outline.
The admirable design engraved to face p. 55, Vol. I.: slight in colour.
62. 1805.—Pestilence—The Death of the First-born. [Butts.] Water-colour with pen outline.
A vast scaled demon, green and many-tinted, pours deadly influence from his outstretched arms. The figures rushing together scared, by pale torch-light, to find themselves each bereaved, are powerfully rendered. In the centre, between the demon's legs, is seen a small Israelitish house, with an Angel in the doorway. Dark effect.
63. 1805.—*Famine. [Butts.]
Very terrible and grimly quiet, though not remarkable in executive respects; the colour laid-in pale. A child seeks the breast of its dead mother; a young woman paces about objectless and desolate; a man strips with his teeth the flesh off the arm of a naked corpse, while a woman, with famine-wrung features, turns away in horror. For scenery, a gaunt, leafless tree; the entrance to a savagely bare building like a sepulchre; and unclad hills, under an ordinary sky.
64. 1805.—The Whirlwind—Ezekiel's vision of the Cherubim and Eyed Wheels. [Butts.]
Not sightly in execution, but the Eyed Wheels very curious and living. The Deity is above; Ezekiel, very small comparatively to the other figures, lies below.
65. 1805.—*Samson bursting his bonds. [Butts.]
Samson has too much of an operatic aspect, yet the essentials of the subject are fully rendered. Dalilah, behind him, stares in
