PUBLIC ADDRESS
Intended to accompany Blake's Engraving of the Canterbury Pilgrimage.
The originality of this production makes it necessary to say a few words.
In this plate Mr. Blake has resumed the style with which he set out in life, of which Heath and Stothard were the awkward imitators at that time. It is the style of Albert Dürer and the old engravers, which cannot be imitated by any one who does not understand drawing, and which, according to Heath, and Stothard, Flaxman, and even Romney, spoils an engraver; for each of these men has repeatedly asserted this absurdity to me, in condemnation of my work, and approbation of Heath's lame imitation; Stothard being such a fool as to suppose that his blundering blurs can be made out and delineated by any engraver who knows how to cut dots and lozenges, equally well with those little prints which I engraved after him four-and-twenty years ago, and by which he got his reputation as a draughtsman.
If men of weak capacities have alone the power of execution in art, Mr. Blake has now put to the test. If to invent and to draw well hinders the executive power in art, and his strokes are still to be condemned because they are unlike those of artists who are unacquainted with drawing, is now to be decided by the public. Mr. Blake's inventive powers, and his scientific knowledge of drawing, are on all hands
