Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/333



,

been influenced by several motives, in prefixing your name to the following pages. My pen seems destined to owe its employment, in some shape or other, to Hafod. . ..

You may perhaps recollect, that while I was staying with you last summer, our conversations were nearly as rambling and as various, as our rides over your new mountain-farms, or as the subject matter of these preliminary remarks seems likely to be. . ..

It would have been unnatural, to have concealed the mark of an afflicting dispensation, in society so capable of consoling the survivor, and appreciating the merit of the departed. In the interchange of our thoughts on this subject, the task of furnishing the public with the following facts was urged upon me, at once as a tribute to the latter, and a relief to the feelings