Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/341

 CHAPTER XXV.

APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC. 1808—10. [ 51—53.]

was, by 1808, engaged on the plate from Stothard's Canterbury Pilgrimage. At the end of the Blair, published, as we saw, in the autumn of 1808, appeared, to indignant Blake's unspeakable disgust doubtless, a floweryProspectus of Cromek's, for publishing by subscription and under the immediate patronage of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, a line engraving after' the now 'well-known Cabinet Picture; which, in fact, Cromek had exhibited throughout the three kingdoms at a shilling a head.

It was now that Blake finished his 'fresco' of the Canterbury Pilgrimage, with the view of 'appealing to the public,'—the wrong kind of tribunal for him. To this end, also, he painted or finished some other 'frescos' and drawings. The completion of the Pilgrimage was attended by adverse influences of the supernatural kind—as Blake construed them. He had hung his original design over a door in his sitting-room, where, for a year perhaps it remained. When, on the appearance of Stothard's picture, he went to take down his drawing, he found it nearly effaced: the result of some malignant spell of Stothard's, he would, in telling the story, assure his friends. But as one of them (Flaxman) mildly expostulated, 'Why! my dear sir! as if, after having left a pencil drawing so long exposed to air and dust, you could have expected otherwise!' The fresco was ultimately bought by a customer who seldom failed—Mr. Butts; and was afterwards in the possession of