are often sitting by our cottage fire, and often we think we hear your voice calling at the gate. Surely these things are real and eternal in our eternal mind, and can never pass away. My wife continues well, thanks to Mr. Birch's Electrical Magic, which she has discontinued these three months.
A few days' later died Councillor Rose, whom Blake ever regarded with grateful affection and admiration. Thus characteristically he writes:—"Farewell, sweet Rose, thou hast got before me into the Celestial City. I also have but a few more mountains to pass, for I hear the bells ring and the trumpets sound to welcome thy arrival among Cowper's glorified band of spirits of just men made perfect."
The four remaining letters to Hayley are chiefly occupied with plans for bringing out the duodecimo edition of the Ballads already alluded to.
Dear Sir,
I hope this letter will outstrip Mr. Phillips', as I sit down to write immediately on returning from his house. He says he is agreeable to every proposal you have made, and will himself immediately reply to you. I should have supposed him mad if he had not, for such clear and generous proposals as yours to him he will not easily meet from any one else. He will, of course, inform you what his sentiments are of the proposal concerning the three dramas. I found it unnecessary to mention anything relating to the purposed application of the profits, as he, on reading your letter, expressed his wish that you should yourself set a price, and that he would, in his letter to you, explain his reasons for wishing it. The idea of publishing one volume a year he considers as impolitic, and that a handsome general edition of your works would be more productive. He likewise objects to any periodical mode of publishing any of your works, as he thinks it somewhat derogatory as well as unprofitable. I must now express my thanks for your generous manner of proposing the Ballads to him on my account, and inform you of his advice concerning them; and he thinks that they should be published all together in a volume the size of the small edition of the Triumphs of Temper, with six or seven plates. That one thousand copies should be the first edition, and if we choose, we might add to the number of plates in a second