In 1780 he began to exhibit, his first picture being 'The Death of Earl Godwin.' After exhibiting five others, however, ending with 'Jacob's Dream,' he withdrew altogether from public advertisement. Several devoted patrons--especially Mr. Linnell, and a certain Mr. Thomas Butts, who bought incessantly, anything and everything,--seized upon all he drew and painted. In his literary undertakings he was for the most part his own editor and printer and publisher. His career in verse and prose began early. In 1783 came forth the charming collection 'Poetical Sketches,' juvenile as the fancies of his boyish days, but full of a sensitive appreciation of nature worthy of a mature heart, and expressed with a diction often exquisite. The volume was not really public nor published, but printed by the kindly liberality of two friends, one of them Flaxman. In 1787, "under the direction of the spirit of his dead brother," Robert, he decided on publishing a new group of lyrics and fancies, 'Songs of Innocence,' by engraving the text of the poems and its marginal embellishments on copper--printing the pages in various tints, coloring or recoloring them by hand, and even binding them, with his wife's assistance. The medium for mixing his tints, by the by, was "revealed to him by Saint Joseph."
With this volume--now a rarity for the bibliophile--began Blake's system of giving his literary works and many of his extraordinary artistic productions their form and being. Like a poet-printer of our own day, Mr. William Morris, Blake insisted that each page of text, all his delicate illustrations, every cover even, should pass through his own fingers, or through those of his careful and submissive helpmeet. The expense of their paper was the chief one to the light purse of the queerly assorted, thrifty pair.
In 1789 appeared another little volume of verses, 'Songs of Innocence.' This also was ushered into existence as a dual book of pictures and of poetry. In 1794 came the 'Songs of Experience,' completing that brief lyrical trio on which rests Blake's poetical reputation and his claim on coming generations of sympathetic readers. To these early and exquisite fruits of Blake's feeling succeeded a little book 'For Children,' the mystic volume 'The Gates of Paradise,' 'The Visions of the Daughters of Albion,' 'America, a Prophecy,' Part First of his 'Book of Urizen,' and a collection of designs without text, treated in the methods usual with him, besides other labors with pencil and pen.