 In his 1791 book, "Life of Samuel Johnson", James Boswell called "Night-Thoughts" "the grandest and richest poetry that human genius has ever produced".William Blake was commissioned in 1795 to illustrate "Night-Thoughts" for a major new edition of the poem to be published by Richard Edwards.Blake began by making a series of 537 watercolour illustrations from which he planned to engrave about 200 for publication.