I have a thousand and ten thousand things to say to you. My heart is full of futurity. I perceive that the sore travail which has been given me these three years leads to glory and honour. I rejoice and tremble: ' I am fearfully and wonderfully made.' I had been reading the CXXXIX. Psalm a little before your letter arrived. I take your advice. I see the face of my Heavenly Father: He lays His hand upon my head, and gives a blessing to all my work. Why should I be troubled? Why should my heart and flesh cry out? I will go on in the strength of the Lord; through Hell will I sing forth His praises: that the dragons of the deep may praise Him, and that those who dwell in darkness, and in the sea coasts may be gathered into His kingdom. Excuse my, perhaps, too great enthusiasm. Please to accept of and give our loves to Mrs. Butts and your amiable family, and believe me
Dear Sir,
I send you the Riposo, which I hope you will think my best picture, in many respects. It represents the Holy Family in Egypt, guarded in their repose from those fiends, the Egyptian gods. And though not directly taken from a Poem of Milton's (for till I had designed it Milton's Poem did not come into my thoughts), yet it is very similar to his Hymn on the Nativity, which you will find among his smaller Poems, and will read with great delight. I have given, in the background, a building, which may be supposed the ruin of a part of Nimrod's Tower, which I conjecture to have spread over many countries; for he ought to be reckoned of the Giant brood.
I have now on the stocks the following drawings for you:—1. Jephthah sacrificing his Daughter; 2. Ruth and her Mother-in-law and Sister; 3. The Three Maries at the Sepulchre; 4. The Death of Joseph; 5. The Death of the Virgin Mary; 6. St. Paul Preaching; and 7. The Angel of the Divine Presence clothing Adam and Eve with Coats of Skin.
These are all in great forwardness, and I am satisfied that I improve very much, and shall continue to do so while I live, which is a blessing I can never be too thankful for both to God and man.
We look forward every day with pleasure toward our meeting again in London with those whom we have learned to value by absence no less perhaps than we did by presence; for recollection often surpasses
