"Rich in more grace than fancy ever won.
To thy most tender mind this hook will be,
For it belonged to my departed son;
So from an angel it descends to thee.
"W. H.
July 1800"[1]
Upon his return from Felpham, he addressed the public, in page 3 of his Book of Jerusalem, in these words: "After my three years' slumber on the banks of the ocean, I again display my giant-forms to the public," &c.
Some of the "giant-forms," as he calls them, are mighty and grand, and if I were to compare them to the style of any preceding artist, Michel Angelo, Sir Joshua's favourite, would be the one; and were I to select a specimen as a corroboration of this opinion, I should instance the figure personifying the "Ancient of Days," the frontispiece to his "Europe, a Prophecy." In my mind, his knowledge of drawing, as well as design, displayed in this figure, must at once convince the informed reader of his extraordinary abilities.
I am now under the painful necessity of relating an event promulgated in two different ways by two different parties; and as I enter-
- ↑ I copied the above from the book, now in the possession of Mrs. Blake.
