Page:Life of William Blake, Pictor ignotus (Volume 1).djvu/324

 friend Dr. Tobias Ruddicombe, M.D. is, at my earnest entreaty, casting a tremendous piece of ordnance, an eighty-eight pounder! which he proposeth to fire off in your next. It is an account of an ancient, newly discovered, illuminated manuscript, which has to name !!! It contains a good deal anent one "Los" who, it appears, is now, and hath been from the Creation, the sole and four-fold dominator of the celebrated city of Golgonooza! The doctor assures me that the redemption of mankind hangs on the universal diffusion of the doctrines broached in this MS. But, however, that isn't the subject of this scrinium, scroll, or scrawl, or whatever you may call it.'

This was probably a feeler of Wainwright's, to try Editor Scott's pulse as to a paper on Blake; which, however, if written never appeared. Scott, who had originally encouraged Wainwright to use the pen, was rather discomposed by his systematic impertinences and flightiness, and now began 'rapping him over the knuckles,' cutting his articles down, and even refusing them admission; as is related in a subsequent contribution, one of Wainwright's last (Jan. 1823). After Scott's tragic end, in a preposterous duel with one of the rancorous Blackwood set, Wainwright had been put on the staff again, at the urgent representations of Lamb and Procter. The paper in question, entitled Janus Weatherbound, contains some singularly interesting reminiscences — when we call to mind the man's subsequent history—of the writer's own previous career; of John Scott himself and his sudden death-bed, of Lamb and his sister, and of other fellow-contributors to The London.

Talfourd, in his Final Memorials of Lamb, has told the after story of Wainwright's life; Bulwer, in his Lucretia, has worked it up into fiction; and De Ouincey, in his Autobiographic Sketches, has thrown over it a gleam from the fitful torchlight of his vivifying imagination. From them we learn how expensive tastes for fine prints, rare books, articles of virtù, on the one hand; for mere elegant