Mr. Hayley's Triumphs of Temper,[1] from drawings by Maria Flaxman, sister to my friend the sculptor. And it seems that other things will follow in course, if I do but copy these well. But patience! If great things do not turn out, it is because such things depend on the spiritual and not on the natural world; and if it was fit for me, I doubt not that I should be employed in greater things; and when it is proper, my talents shall be properly exercised in public, and hope they are now in private. For, till then, I leave no stone unturned, and no path unexplored that leads to improvement in my beloved arts. One thing of real consequence I have accomplished by coming into the country, which is to me consolation enough: namely, I have recollected all my scattered thoughts on art, and resumed my primitive and original ways of execution,[2] in both painting and engraving, which in the confusion of London I had very much lost and obliterated from my mind. But whatever
- ↑ The Triumphs of Temper. A Poem: In Six Cantos. By William Hayley, Esq. The Twelfth Edition, Corrected. With New Original Designs, by Maria Flaxman, 1803. 12mo, with six plates, engraved by Blake.
- ↑ For some time past Blake had been endeavouring to incorporate into his work all the graces of Venice and Flanders as well as the linear austerity of the Florentines. There is about this date a distinct return to those principles of technique which are latent in his youthful pieces and precede this attempt at eclecticism; that is to say, to that uniformity of colour and long continuation of lines to which he alludes in Letter 23.
