bar, practising with fair success on the home circuit. Prospects of a brilliant future were only dashed by wavering health,—a constitution unequal to the strain of his profession. On that sunken rock, how many struggling in the same arduous career,—often those of brightest promise, of finest nature,—have been wrecked, almost at the outset; not great and famous, but nameless and unremembered.
Meanwhile, as the trial was not to come off till the following January, and all the arrangements for Blake's return to London had been completed, he quitted Felpham at the end of September, carrying with him Hayley's unabated goodwill and esteem; some unfinished work for the Lives of Romney and of Cowper; and charged also with instructions to glean all the particulars he could respecting Romney's works. These instructions Blake zealously fulfilled, as letters written to Hayley during the next two years show. He left the literary hermit producing his daily occasional poem, epitaph, or song, on waking in the morning; extempore sonnet while shaving; and facile labours during the day, at an extensive composition on the Triumphs of Music, 'with devotional sonnets and hymns interspersed.' Two days sufficed for a whole canto. This composition the English public has hitherto declined to trouble its head about, despite the confident prediction of an amiable female friend, 'that it would gradually become a favourite with readers' of a turn 'for simplicity and tenderness.'
A week or two after his return, Blake writes from South Molton Street:—
Dear Sir,
I hasten to write to you by the favour of Mr. Edwards. I have been with Mr. Saunders who has now in his possession all Mr. Romney's pictures that remained after the sale at Hampstead; I saw Milton and his Daughters, and 'Twas where the Seas were Roaring, and a beautiful Female Head. He has promised to write a list of all that he has in his possession, and of all that he remembers of Mr. Romney's paintings, with notices where they now are, as far as his recollection will serve. The picture of Christ in the Desert lie supposes
