Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/241

 At the latter end of 1803, Hayley, prompted by the unexpected success of Cowper's Life, began preparing a third volume of Additional Letters, with 'desultory' remarks of his own on letter-writing. The volume was finished and published by the spring of 1804, Blake executing for it two tame engravings of tame subjects. One is from a drawing by a Francis Stone, of the chancel of East Dereham Church,—Cowper's burial-place; the other an etching of the mural tablet in the same chancel, as designed by Flaxman and Hayley.

Among other journeywork at this date, I may mention engravings finished May 1803, after six original designs by Maria Flaxman (the sculptor's sister), to the Triumphs of Temper,—the thirteenth edition, not published until 1807. These amateur designs, aiming at an idealized domesticity, are expressive and beautiful in the Flaxman-Stothard manner; abound in grace of line, elegance of composition, and other artist-like virtues of a now obsolete sort. The engravings are interesting to admirers of Blake, though monotonous and devoid of ordinary charms, smoothness and finish.

Uncommissioned work was also, as we have seen, in course of production now. I mean the illustrated 'prophecies' in the old class which will next year issue from Blake's private press: Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion, very grandly designed, if very mistily written; also Milton, a Poem in two Books. Of these, more hereafter.