Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/197

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LETTERS OF WILLIAM BLAKE.
131

Romneys[1] pictures that remained after the sale at Hampstead; I saw "Milton and his Daughters,"[2] and "Twas where the Seas were Roaring,"[3] 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, so far as his recollection will serve. The picture of "Christ in the Desert" he supposes to be one of those which he has rolled on large rollers. He will take them down and unroll them, but cannot do it easily, as they are so large as to occupy the whole length of his workshop, and are laid across beams at the top.

Mr. Flaxman is now out of town. When he returns I will lose no time in setting him to work on the same object.

I have got to work after Fuseli for a little Shakespeare.[4] Mr. Johnson, the bookseller, tells

  1. The inquiries in regard to Romney, upon which Blake was engaged about this time, have to do with The Life of Romney, published by Hayley in 1809.
  2. A picture representing Milton—blind—dictating to his daughters. Canvas square, 6 ft. 9 in. each way. At Southhill (S. H. Whitbread, Esq.) (see Romney, by Humphry Ward and W. Roberts, 1904, vol. ii. p. 163).
  3. Susan, a scene from the ballad When the Seas were Roaring: a despondent female, seated on a rock, overpowered with grief, unfinished (see Ward and Roberts' Romney, vol. ii. p. 202).
  4. Blake engraved two plates after Fuseli for Alexander Chalmers's Shakespeare, 1805; they are—"Queen Katherine's Dream" (vol. 7, facing p. 235), and "Romeo and the Apothecary" (vol. 10, facing p. 107).