the prints that at once illustrate and embellish the present volume.' The Descriptive Catalogue is full of angry scorn of 'my rival,' as Blake calls Stothard, and of the 'dumb dollies' whom he has 'jumbled together' in his design, and of Hoppner for praising them in the letter quoted in the advertisement. 'If Mr. B.'s "Canterbury Pilgrims" had been done by any other power than that of the poetic visionary, it would have been as dull as his adversary's,' Blake assures us, and, no doubt, justly. The general feeling of Blake's friends, I doubt not, is summed up in an ill-spelled letter from young George Cumberland to his father, written from the Pay Office, Whitehall, October 14, 1809, which I copy in all its literal slovenliness from the letter preserved in the Cumberland Papers: 'Blakes has published a Catalogue of Pictures being the ancient method of Frescoe Painting Restored, you should tell Mr. Barry to get it, it may be the means of serving your friend. It sells for 2/6 and may be had of J. Blake, 28 Broad St., Golden Square, at his Brothers—the Book is a great curiosity. He as given Stothard a compleet set down.'
