Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/53

 Rh called into question. I have even heard it said that he was in the habit of forging Blake's signature upon drawings of his own manufacture. This I am in a position to deny absolutely. His act of destruction is indeed greatly to be deplored; but weakness and narrow-mindedness are the worst things that he can be accused of on that account. There can be no doubt of the genuineness of his love and admiration of Blake, and I can see no reason to question his sincerity in other matters. His Life, if it is somewhat lacking in both scholarly exactness and literary grace, is on the whole a valuable and trustworthy document; and if it is often marred by the false sentiment belonging to the time at which it was written, it is also full of fine appreciation, and contains some passages of real feeling and beauty. The copy of Jerusalem with which the Life is bound up, is a magnificent one, illuminated with extreme beauty by Blake himself; it is the only copy which he ever lived to finish in colours. It is printed in orange, and measures 13⅜ x 10¾ inches. The portrait of Mrs. Blake, by George Richmond, here reproduced, is also contained in it; and it has for frontispiece two rather uninteresting likenesses of Blake, at the ages of twenty-eight and sixty-nine years, both drawn by Tatham himself, the former after a sketch from life by Mrs. Blake.