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168 into a land of abstraction where spectres of the dead wander. This I endeavour to prevent; I, with my whole might, chain my feet to the world of duty and reality. But in vain! the faster I bind, the better is the ballast; for I, so far from being bound down, take the world with me in my flights, and often it seems lighter than a ball of wool rolled by the wind. Bacon and Newton would prescribe ways of making the world heavier to me, and Pitt would prescribe distress for a medicinal potion. But as none on earth can give me mental distress, and I know that all distress inflicted by Heaven is a mercy, a fig for all corporeal! Such distress is my mock and scorn. Alas! wretched, happy, ineffectual labourer of Time's moments that I am! who shall deliver me from this spirit of abstraction and improvidence? Such, my dear Sir, is the truth of my state, and I tell it you in palliation of my seeming neglect of your most pleasant orders. But I have not neglected them; and yet a year is rolled over, and only now I approach the prospect of sending you some, which you may expect soon. I should have sent them by my sister; but, as the coach goes three times a week to London, and they will arrive as safe as with her, I shall have an opportunity of enclosing several together which are not yet completed. I thank you again and again for your generous forbearance, of which I have need; and now I must express my wishes to see you at Felpham, and to show you Mr. Hayley's library, which is still unfinished, but is in a finishing way and looks well. I ought also to mention my extreme disappointment at Mr. Johnson's forgetfulness, who appointed to call on you but did not. He is also a happy abstract, known by all his friends as the most innocent forgetter of his own interests. He is nephew to the late Mr. Cowper, the poet. You would like him much, I continue painting miniatures, and I improve more and more, as all my friends tell me. But my principal labour at this time is engraving plates for Cowper's Life, a work of magnitude, which Mr. Hayley is now labouring at with all his matchless industry, and which will be a most valuable acquisition to literature, not only on account of Mr. Hayley's composition, but also as it will contain letters of Cowper to his friends—perhaps, or rather certainly, the very best letters that ever were published.

My wife joins with me in love to you and Mrs. Butts, hoping that her joy is now increased, and yours also, in an increase of family and of health and happiness.

I remain, dear Sir, Ever yours sincerely, William Blake.