died on Sunday night, at six o'clock, in a most glorious manner. He said he was going to that country he had all his life wished to see, and expressed himself happy, hoping for salvation through Jesus Christ. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened, and he burst out into singing of the things he saw in heaven.' 'Perhaps,' he had written not long before, 'and I verily believe it, every death is an improvement of the state of the departed.'
Blake was buried in Bunhill Fields, where all his family had been buried before him, but with the rites of the Church of England, and on August 17 his body was followed to the grave by Calvert, Richmond, Tatham, and Tatham's brother, a clergyman. The burial register reads: 'Aug. 17, 1827. William Blake. Age, 69 years. Brought from Fountain Court, Strand. Grave, 9 feet; E. & W. 77: N. & S. 32. 19/.' The grave, being a 'common grave,' was used again, and the bones scattered; and this was the world's last indignity against William Blake.
Tatham tells us that, during a marriage of forty-five years, Mrs. Blake had never been separated from her husband 'save for
