relate several anecdotes of his goodness, with which I have been favoured by his pupil Baily, the Royal Academician, a native of Bristol, who now stands so eminently conspicuous in the Art of Sculpture.
In the early part of Flaxman's career, when at Rome, he was much noticed by an English nobleman, who employed him to execute a group of the Fury of Athamas, for which he was to receive a very small recompense. The artist, after working upon the marble for a considerable time, in conjunction with De Vere, whom he paid liberally for his assistance, often complained of the severe task which his inexperience had induced him to undertake for so small a sum of money; but at the same time declaring, that instead of giving it up, and returning to England, he would persevere with all his powers to accomplish it, even though he were to die by the block.
Modest as Flaxman in many instances certainly was, particularly in his later days, when he would listen to the opinions of others, few persons would believe that when he was a young man, he was the most conceited artist of his day; which, however, he acknowledged to his friend Baily to have been correctly the fact. He said, that when he presented his model for the
