Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/52

 xlvi, etc., which still remained unsold, as well as a good many copper plates, passed into Tatham's hands. He also came in for a considerable quantity of MS. material, the greater part of which he unhappily destroyed on conscientious grounds, having been told by certain members of the Catholic Apostolic Church, to which he belonged, that many dangerous and pernicious doctrines were contained in them. He furnished an explanation for Gilchrist's Life of the method in which Blake's printed drawings were executed. The accuracy of this account was disputed by Linnell, and has been generally doubted. My own investigations have led me to believe it to be substantially correct; and as Linnell seems to have had a particular dislike for Tatham, and was at the same time either unwilling or unable to provide a more exact description, it may be concluded that it was its incompleteness rather than its inaccuracy which led him to a vehement denial of its veracity. Some experiments made by my friend Mr. Graham Robertson, based upon a somewhat fuller account of the process given to him by myself, have been remarkably successful, and certainly reproduce very closely the quality of Blake's own productions. Owing to the very intelligible indignation aroused among Blake-lovers by his destruction of the MSS., Tatham's honesty has also been unjustly