In the interval Cromek, calling upon Blake, had seen a pencil sketch of a design for the procession of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. Failing to obtain a finished drawing from the artist, who resented his previous treatment, he proposed the subject to Stothard, withholding as apart from all questions of Stothard's "frigid and exemplary" character would be most natural for him to do, all mention of Blake's drawing. Stothard accepted the commission; his elaborate oil picture was exhibited in 1807 with great success, but at the cost of a breach with Blake, who went so far in his denunciation, not only of Cromek's underhand dealing but of the defects which he found in Stothard's work, that when he afterwards sought a reconciliation Stothard remained impervious. Determined to vindicate his superiority, Blake completed, exhibited, and engraved his own fresco. The exhibition, accompanied by a remarkable "descriptive catalogue," to which we shall return—was not the success it might have been in the hands of the shrewd Cromek. The exhibition room was watched by Blake's brother James, whom Crabb Robinson asked whether he should be allowed to come again free in consideration of having bought four copies of the descriptive catalogue. "As long as you live," answered the overjoyed custodian. The success of the engraving was proportionate to that of the exhibition; though it might have been otherwise if the roughness of the original design had been smoothed down by the deft Schiavonetti. "Blake's production," says Mr. Rossetti, "is as unattractive as Stothard's is facile; as hard and strong as Stothard's is limp; one face in Blake's design means as much on the part of the artist, and takes as much scrutiny and turning over of thought on the part of the spectator, as all the pretty fantoccini and their sprightly little horses in Stothard's work." The engraving of the Pilgrimage in Gilchrist's biography evinces the justice of this criticism; though Ellis and Yeats rightly add that Blake has given all his personages the eyes of visionaries. "A work of wonderful power and spirit, hard and dry, yet with grace," says Charles Lamb. The original fresco was purchased by Elijah's raven, the ever-ready Butts.
We must now return to the illustrations to Blair's Grave, which are not only the most popular of Blake's works, but among his greatest. He showed in general more vigour in dealing with the conceptions of another than with his own, the latter imbibing an element of fanciful grace from the gentle spirit which produced them. Hence The Soul
