Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/80

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56
WILLIAM BLAKE

of personal irritations and spiritual indignations.

In An Island in the Moon we see Blake casting off the dust of the drawing-rooms, finally, so far as any mental obstruction was concerned; but he does not seem to have broken wholly with the Matthews, who, no doubt, were people of genuinely good intentions; and it is through their help that we find him, in 1784, on the death of his father, setting up as a print-seller, with his former fellow-apprentice, James Parker, at No. 27 Broad Street, next door to the house and shop which had been his father's, and which were now taken on by his brother James. Smith says that he took a shop and a first-floor; and here his brother Robert came to live with him as his pupil, and remained with him till his death in February 1787.