uare; and from the scanty
education which the young artist received, it may be judged that the
circumstances of the family were not very prosperous. For the facts of
William Blake's early life the world is indebted to a little book,
called _A Father's Memoirs on a Child_, written by Dr Malkin in 1806.
Here we learn that young Blake quickly developed a taste for design,
which his father appears to have had sufficient intelligence to
recognize and assist by every means in his power. At the age of ten the
boy was sent to a drawing school kept by Henry Pars in the Strand, and
at the same time he was already cultivating his own taste by constant
attendance at the different art sale rooms, where he was known as the
"little connoisseur." Here he began to collect prints after
Michelangelo, and Raphael, Durer and Heemskerk, while at the school in
the Strand he had the opportunity of drawing from the antique. After
four years of this preliminary instruction Blake entered upon another
branch of art study. In 1777 he was apprenticed to James Basire, an
engraver of repute, and with him he remained seven years. His
apprenticeship had an important bearing on Blake's artistic education,
and marks the department of art in which he was made technically
proficient. In 1778, at the end of his apprenticeship, he proceeded to
the school of the Royal Academy, where he continued his early study from
the antique, and had for the first time an opportunity of drawing from
the living model.

This is in brief all that is known of Blake's artistic education. That
he ever, at the academy or elsewhere, systematically studied painting we
do not know; but that he had already begun the practice of water colour
for himself is ascertained. So far, however, the course of his training
in art schools, and under Basire, was calculated to render him
proficient only as a draughtsman and an engraver. He had learned how to
draw, and he had mastered besides the practical difficulties of
engraving, and with these qualifications he entered upon his career. In
1780 he exhibited a picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition, conjectured
to have been executed in water colours, and he continued to contribute
to the annual exhibitions up to the year 1808. In 1782 he married
Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a market-gardener at Battersea, with
whom he lived always on affectionate terms, and the young couple after
their marriage established themselves in Green Street, Leicest