Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/274

 to supply its deficiency or to new create it according to your wish:—

'The public ought to be informed that these Ballads were the effusions of friendship to countenance what their author is kindly pleased to call talents for designing and to relieve my more laborious engagement of engraving those portraits which accompany the Life of Cowper. Out of a number of designs, I have selected five, and hope that the public will approve of my rather giving fever highly laboured plates than a greater number and less finished. If I have succeeded in these, more may be added at pleasure.'

It was, no doubt, an irksome task to be continually expressing thanks for work that was in the main little congenial, and admiration for Hayley's own performances, which though the warmth of Blake's friendly and grateful feelings enabled him to utter with sincerity at the time, his cooler judgment must have declined to ratify. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the MS. Note-book before alluded to, which in his spleenful as well as in his elevated moods appears to have generally lain at the artist's elbow, we find such a couplet as the following:—

The next letter, last of the series, June 4th, 1805, refers to the Advertisement again: a matter in which Mr. Phillips showed excellent discernment.

June 4th, 1805.

I have fortunately, I ought to say providentially, discovered that I have engraved one of the plates for that ballad of The Horse which is omitted in the new edition; time enough to save the extreme loss and disappointment which I should have suffered had the work been completed without that ballad's insertion. I write to entreat that you would contrive so as that my plate may come into the work, as its omission would be to me a loss that I could not now sustain