Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/232

166 LETTERS OF WILLIAM BLAKE her. My wife continues to get better, and joins me in my warmest love and acknowledgments to you, as do my brother and sister.—I am, dear Sir, yours sincerely,

William Blake.

40.

To William Hayley.

20th September 1804.

Dear Sir,—I hope you will excuse my delay in sending the books which I have had some time, but kept them back till I could send a proof of "The Shipwreck,"^[1] which I hope will please. It yet wants all its last and finishing touches, but I hope you will be enabled by it to judge of the pathos of the picture. I send Washington's second volume, five numbers of Fuseli's Shakespeare^[2] and two volumes with a letter from Mr. Spilsbury,^[3] with whom I accidentally met in the Strand. He says that he relinquished painting as a profession, for which I think he is to be applauded: but I conceive that he may be a much better painter if he practises secretly and for amusement, than he could ever be if employed in the drudgery of fashionable daubing

1. See note 2, iv. p. 164.
2. See note 4, p. 131.
3. Probably this is Jonathan Spilsbury (brother of John Spilsbury, the engraver), who exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy from 1776-1807.