Crabb Robinson was a most excellent man--well accoutred, steady on his legs, with well-set head, without superstition, and just enough prejudice to starch his mind.
He knew Blake at the time that he was learning Italian for the sake of Dante that he might execute Dante designs for Linnell. From Robinson's reminiscences, we do just get a glimpse of Blake struggling with Dante, and delighting to mystify his respectable friend. Unfortunately, the reported references in their conversations to Dante are few, though enough perhaps to indicate Blake's attitude. He was not one of Dante's elect. But with closer study he was beginning to fall under his spell, and we may safely surmise that if Dante had come into Blake's life in his youth, instead of Swedenborg, Blake would have become the greatest catholic mystic artist of the age.
Blake in great pain of body--stomach trouble and shivering fits--was driven to his bed. When he knew the end was near, he said to his wife: "I have no grief but in leaving you, Catherine. We have lived happy, we have lived long, we have been ever together, but we shall be divided soon. Why should I fear death? Nor do I fear it. I have endeavoured to live as Christ commanded, and I have sought to worship God truly in my own home, when I was not seen of men."
While the wife ministered to him he exclaimed suddenly, "You have ever been an angel to me, I will draw you." And he did. In answer to her, he expressed a wish to be buried at Bunhill Fields by the Church of England.
At midday on August 12th, 1827, he burst into strong joyous song, and then corrected his previous word about parting by assuring Catherine that he would always be there to take care of her. Then he remained quite quiet till his spirit passed away.
Life is a voyage of discovery or rediscovery. Those, like Blake, born in a Christian land make the same voyage. The Christian tradition is handed on to us in our tender infancy, and most people take what their immediate teachers tell them, and live on that dry stock for the rest of their days. But the sinner and the genius, like Blake, early throw their inheritance overboard, and driven by native energy go in adventurous quest of new lands. The first half of Blake's life was spent thus. He would rebel at all costs, he would above all protest against what he hated--the religion of repression.