them for a projected edition of The Grave.' This, involving a far more considerable remuneration, would have made the total payment for the designs tolerably adequate.
Robert Hartley Cromek, a native of Hull, now a man of five and thirty, had been a pupil of Bartolozzi, and, during the past ten years, had engraved, with credit, many bookplates after Stothard. He was one in the numerous band whom that graceful artist's active fingers kept employed; for, as may well be believed, it is vastly quicker work the making of designs than the engraving them. Among Cromek's doing are some of the plates to an edition of The Spectator (1803), to Du Roveray's edition of Pope (1804), and one in an early edition of Rogers' Pleasures of Memory. With a nervous temperament and an indifferent constitution the painful confinement of his original profession ill agreed. An active, scheming disposition, combined with some taste for literature and superficial acquaintance with it, tempted him to exchange, as many second-rate engravers have done, the steady drudgery of engraving for the more profitable, though speculative, trade of print-publisher and dealer, or farmer of the talents of others. He had little or no capital. This edition of Blair's Grave, with illustrations by Blake, was his first venture. And twenty guineas for twelve of the most original designs of the century, and not unintelligible designs, though from Blake's mystic hand, was no bad beginning. Even in this safe investment, however, the tasteful Yorkshireman showed bolder discernment of unvalued genius than the stolid trade ever hazarded.
In 1805 the Prospectus was issued; from which it appears, it was then intended for Blake to engrave the illustrations. The Prospectus was helped by an elaborate opinion in favour of the Designs from Fuseli's friendly pen, whose word then carried almost judicial weight. As collateral guarantee was added an authorized statement of their cordial approval by President West, and ten other academicians; among them Cosway, Flaxman, Lawrence, Nollekens, Stothard. These
