Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/358

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LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE.
[1807—1812.

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.