Engleheart, who worked on it from the 20th of September to the end of December, receiving some £44. But heavier troubles now involved both print and proprietor. On Cromek, too, consumption laid its hand, arresting all his ingenious and innocent schemes, or, as Smith calls it, the long endeavour to live by speculating on the talents of others.' Lengthened visits to native Yorkshire failed to stay the inevitable course of his malady, and he returned to Newman Street, there to linger another year of forced inaction, during which poor Cromek and family,-comprising a wife, two young children, and a dependent sister,—were reduced to great straits. Doubtless, many a valuable autograph and Design had then to be changed into cash. So that we have to pity the predacious Yorkshireman after all. On the 12th March 1812, at the age of forty-two, he went where he could jockey no more men nor artists.

The widow had her fresh difficulties in realizing the property her husband's scheming brain had created; had first to raise money for the engraver to proceed with the Pilgrimage. The engraver then in view was Lewis Schiavonetti's brother, Niccolò, who had worked in Lewis's studio, and caught his manner. To finish the plate, he wanted three hundred and thirty guineas, in three instalments, and fifteen months' time. To raise the first instalment, Mrs. Cromek parted with a good property,-sold the remainder and copyright of Blake's Blair, for £120, to the Ackermanns, who re-issued the book in 1813, with biographic notices of Blair, Cromek, and Schiavonetti. Then Niccolò followed in his brother's steps to an early grave. This last in the chain of sorrowful casualties caused further delays. The plate,-Mrs. Cromek borrowing the necessary money with difficulty from her father, was at last, after having passed under the hands of three distinct engravers, finished by James Heath, or in his manufactory rather. Thence it eventually issued, a very much worse one for all these changes than when poor Lewis Schiavonetti's failing hand had left it a brilliant, masterly etching. It had an extraordinary

sale, as everybody knows, and proved exceedingly profitable to the widow. The long-cherished venture turned out no despicable dower for a needy man, living by his wits, to leave her. As for the producer of the picture, who, artist-like, had forborne to press the adventurer in his straits, or the widow in hers, his share in this great success was a certain number of copies of the print (commercially useless to him), as an equivalent for the long deferred £40. Such I gather from Mrs. Bray's Life of Stothard, and other sources, to have been the fluctuating fortunes of the most popular of modern prints; of an enterprise which, thanks to Cromek's indirect courses, excited, first and last, so much bitterness in the mind of Blake.

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CHAPTER XXVII.

YEARS OF DEEPENING NEGLECT. 1810-17. [ET. 53-60.]

I HAVE mentioned that Blake's Canterbury Pilgrimage (the fresco) was bought by Mr. Butts. Among the drawings executed, at this period, for the same constant patron, was a grandly-conceived scene from the apocalyptic vision, the Whore of Babylon :-a colossal, sitting figure, around whose head a wreath of figures issues from the golden cup of Abominations; below, is gathered a group of kings and other arch offenders. This drawing (dated 1809) formed one in the numerous collection of Blake's works sold at Sotheby's by Mr. Butts' son, in 1852, and is now in the British Museum Print-room. There, also, a few other drawings and a large, though not complete, collection of Blake's illustrated books, are now accessible to the public; thanks to the well-directed zeal of the present Keeper, Mr. Carpenter.

In these years, more than one of Blake's old friends had dropped away. In December 1809 died, of asthma, Fuseli's ancient crony, Johnson, who had more than once extended to Blake what little countenance his hampered position, as a bookseller who must live to please, allowed. In March 1810 the friendly miniature painter, Ozias Humphrey, died. Hayley, as we foretold, lost sight of Blake. Mr. Butts, steady customer as he was, had already a house-full of his works.

December 26, 1811, is the engraver's date affixed to a small reduction, by Blake, of a portion of the Canterbury Pilgrimage,including eight of the principal figures in the left-hand corner,—

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which forms the frontispiece to a duodecimo volume, published at Newberry's famous shop in St. Paul's Churchyard. The little book, with its small specimen or taste, as it were, of the original composition, was evidently intended to spread a knowledge of the larger engraving. The title runs thus: 'The Prologue and Characters of 'Chaucer's Pilgrims, selected from the Canterbury Tales, intended to 'illustrate a particular design of Mr. William Blake, which is engraved by himself, and may be seen at Mr. Colnaghi's, Cockspur Street; at Mr. [James] Blake's, No. 28, Broad Street, Golden Square; and at the publisher's, Mr. Harris, Bookseller, St. Paul's Churchyard. Price two shillings and sixpence. 1812.' 1812.' The brief introductory preface is not from Blake's hand; possibly from that of the friendly pedagogue, Malkin. To the genius and fancy of that celebrated man, Mr. Blake,' writes the editor, after a notice of Southwark and the Tabard Inn, it occurred, that though the names and 'habits of men altered by time, yet their characters remained the same; and as Chaucer had drawn them four hundred years past, 'he might as justly delineate them at the present period, and, by a 'pleasant picture, bring to our imagination the merry company setting out upon their journey. As the Canterbury Tales may be too long a story for modern amusement, I have selected the Prologue and the characters' (the whole Introduction, in short) 'that the heads as represented by Mr. Blake may be compared with the lineaments drawn by Chaucer, and I think the merit of the artist will be acknowledged.' A double text is given on opposite pages the original from Speght's edition of 1687, and a modernized version, or free translation, from Mr. Ogle's edition of 1741. The frontispiece is well engraved in Blake's style, with necessary and skilful variations from the large engraving; the distribution of light being different, and some of the details improved, -the towers and spires in the background, for example. Towards the end of the volume, a pretty and characteristic, but very generalised little etching

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by Blake occurs, of a Gothic cathedral, among trees, meant probably for that of Canterbury.

Few new patrons arose to fill the gaps I have recapitulated in the chosen circle of the old. All, it may be observed, were in the middle rank of life. There was nothing in William Blake's high and spiritual genius to command sympathy from a fastidious, pococurante aristocracy, still less from Majesty, in those days. Take them away! take them away!' was the testy mandate of disquieted Royalty, on some drawings of Blake's being once shown to George the Third.

Among present friends may be mentioned Mr. George Cumberland of Bristol. This gentleman did an important service to Blake, when he introduced him, about 1813, to a young artist named John Linnell, who was to become the kindest friend and stay of the neglected man's declining years, and afterwards to be famous as one of our great landscape-painters. He was then, and till many a year later, industriously toiling at Portrait, as a bread profession; at miniatures, engraving-whatever, in short, he could get to do; while he painted Landscape as an unremunerative luxury. The present brisk, not to say eager, demand for good modern pictures was not, in those years, even beginning. The intimacy between the two arose from the younger artist applying to the elder to help him over engravings then in hand, from portraits of his own. Such as were jointly undertaken in this way, Blake commenced, Linnell finished.

Of the half-dozen years of Blake's life succeeding the exhibition in Broad Street, and the engraving of his Pilgrimage, I find little or no remaining trace, except that he was still living in South Molton Street, in his accustomed poverty, and, if possible, more than accustomed neglect.

He was no longer at the pains or trivial cost, to him not trivial, of being even his own publisher; of throwing off from his copper-plate