earnestly as I have done for you, your reputation as an artist wd not only have been enviable, but it would have put it out of the power of an individual as obscure as myself either to add to or take from it. I also imposed on myself, when I believed what you so often have told me, that your works were equal, nay superior, to a Raphael, or to a Michael Angelo! Unfortunately for me as a publisher, the public awoke me from this state of stupor, this mental delusion. That public is willing to give you credit for what real talent is to be found in your productions, and for no more.
I have imposed on myself yet more grossly in believing you to be one altogether abstracted from this world, holding converse with the world of spirits! simple, unoffending., a combination of the serpent and the dove. I really blush when I reflect how I have been cheated in this respect. The most effectual way of benefiting a designer whose aim is general patronage, is to bring his designs before the public, through the medium of engraving. Your drawings have had the good fortune to be engraved by one of the first artists in Europe, and the specimens already shown have already produced you orders that I verily believe you otherwise wd not have recd. Herein I have been gratified; for I was determined to bring you food as well as reputation, though, from your late conduct, I have some reason to embrace your wild opinion, that to manage genius, and to cause it to produce good things, it is absolutely necessary to starve it; indeed, this opinion is considerably heightened by the recollection that your best work, the illustrations of The Grave, was produced when you and Mrs. Blake were reduced so low as to be obliged to live on half a guinea a week!
Before I conclude this letter, it will be necessary to remark, when I gave you the order for the drawings from the poem of The Grave, I paid you for them more than I could then afford; more in proportion than you were in the habit of receiving, and what you were perfectly satisfied with; though, I must do you the justice to confess, much less than I think is their real value. Perhaps you have friends and admirers who can appreciate their merit and worth as much as I do. I am decidedly of opinion that the twelve for The Grave should sell at the least for sixty guineas. If you can meet with any gentleman who will ^ive you this sum for them, I will deliver them into his hands on the publication of the poem. I will deduct the twenty guineas 1 have paid you from that sum, and the remainder forty ditto shall be at your disposal.
I will not detain you more than one minute. Why did you so
