One of the two or three works for which Blake was most generally known during his lifetime, Night Thoughts is by one of the widely admired Graveyard poets. Blake painted 537 watercolors for the poem, of which he engraved forty-three for this first, and only, volume. The volume was so expensive to produce that no more were published. It is open to Night the Second on Time, Death, and Friendship, where Time, reaching high, tries to divert the arrow of Death from the two friends. On the left, the soul struggles upward for immortality while confined to the earth by a chain. Mrs. Blake was her husband's assistant for some illuminated works, but for this large project he may have set a pattern for professional colorists to follow.
Edward Young (1683-1765), The Complaint, and the Consolation; or Night Thoughts, Copy K, 1973; PML 63943