brothers and sisters. He therefore himself proposed engraving as being less expensive, and sufficiently eligible for his future avocations. Of Basire, therefore, for a premium of fifty guineas, he learnt the art of engraving.' We are told that he was apprenticed, at his own request, to Basire rather than to the more famous Ryland, the engraver to the king, because, on being taken by his father to Ryland's studio, he said: 'I do not like the man's face: it looks as if he will live to be hanged.' Twelve years later Byland was hanged for forgery.
Blake was with Basire for seven years, and for the last five years much of his time was spent in making drawings of Gothic monuments, chiefly in Westminster Abbey, until he came, says Malkin, to be 'himself almost a Gothic monument.' Tatham tells us that the reason of his being 'sent out drawing,' as he fortunately was, instead of being kept at engraving, was 'for the circumstance of his having frequent quarrels with his fellow-apprentices concerning matters of intellectual argument.'
It was in the Abbey that he had a vision of Christ and the Apostles, and in the
