In 1806 Blake wrote a generous and vigorous letter to the editor of the Monthly Review (July 1, 1806) in reply to a criticism which had appeared in Bell's Weekly Messenger on Fuseli's picture of Count Ugolino in the Royal Academy. In 1808 he had himself, and for the fifth and last time, two pictures in the Academy, and in that year he wrote the letter to Ozias Humphrey, describing one of his many 'Last Judgments,' which is given, with a few verbal errors, by J. T. Smith. In December he wrote to George Cumberland, who had written to order for a friend 'a complete set of all you have published in the way of books colored as mine are,' that 'new varieties, or rather new pleasures, occupy my thoughts; new profits seem to arise before me so tempting that I have already involved myself in engagements that preclude all possibility of promising anything.' Does this refer to the success of Blair's Grave, which had just been published? He goes on: 'I have, however, the satisfaction to inform you that I have myself begun to print an account of my various inventions in Art, for which I have procured a publisher, and am determined to pursue the plan of publishing, that I may get printed without disarranging my time, which in future must alone be designing and painting.' To this project, which was never carried out, he refers again in the prospectus printed in anticipation of his exhibition, a copy of which, given to Ozias Humphreys, exists with the date May 15, 1809. A second prospectus is given by Gilchrist as follows:—
'Blake's Chaucer, the Canterbury Pilgrims. This Fresco Picture, representing Chaucer's Characters, painted by William Blake, as it is now submitted to the public.
'The designer proposes to engrave in a correct and finished line manner of engraving, similar to those original copper-plates of Albert Dürer, Lucas Van Leyden, Aldegrave, and the old original engravers, who were great masters in painting and designing; whose methods alone can delineate Character as it is in this Picture, where all the lineaments are distinct.
'It is hoped that the Painter will be allowed by the public (notwithstanding artfully disseminated insinuations to the contrary) to be better able than any other to keep his own characters and expressions; having had sufficient evidence in the works of our own Hogarth, that no other artist can reach the original spirit so well as the Painter himself, especially as Mr. B. is an old, well-known, and acknowledged graver.
'The size of the engraving will be three feet one inch long by one foot high. The artist engages to deliver it, finished, in one year from September next. No work of art can take longer than a year: it may be worked backwards and forwards without end, and last a man's whole life; but he will, at length, only be forced to bring it back to what it was, and it will be worse than it was at the end of the first twelve months. The value of this artist's year is the criterion of Society; and as it is valued, so does Society flourish or decay.
'The price to Subscribers, Four Guineas; two to be paid at the time of subscribing, the other two, on delivery of the print.
'Subscriptions received at No. 28, corner of Broad Street, Golden Square, where the Picture is now exhibiting, among other works, by the same artist.
'The price will be considerably raised to non-subscribers.'
The exhibition thus announced was held at the house of James Blake, and contained sixteen pictures, of which the first nine are described as 'Frescoes' or 'experiment pictures,' and the remaining seven as drawings,' that is, drawings in water-color. The Catalogue (which was included in the entrance fee of half a crown) is Blake's most coherent work in prose, and can be read in Gilchrist, ii. 139-163. It is called 'A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures, Poetical and Historical Inventions, painted by William Blake, in Water-Colors, being the ancient Method of Fresco Painting Restored; and Drawings, for Public Inspection, and for Sale by Private Contract.' Crabb Robinson, from whom we have the only detailed account of the exhibition, says that the pictures filled 'several rooms of an ordinary dwelling-house' (see p. "From Crabb Robinson's Reminiscences," below.) He mentions Lamb's delight in the Catalogue,[5] and his declaring 'that Blake's description was the finest criticism he had ever read of Chaucer's poem.' In that letter to Bernard Barton (May 15, 1824), which is full of vivid admiration for Blake ('I must look on him as one of the most extraordinary persons of the age'), Lamb speaks of the criticism as 'most spirited, but mystical and full of vision,' and says: 'His pictures—one in particular, the "Canterbury Pilgrims," (far above Stothard's)—have great merit, but hard, dry, yet with grace.' Southey, we know from a sneer in The Doctor at 'that painter of great but insane genius, William Blake,' also went to the exhibition, and found, he tells us, the picture of 'The Ancient Britons,' 'one of the worst pictures, which is saying much.' A note to Mr. Swinburne's William Blake tells us that in the competent opinion of Mr. Seymour Kirkup this picture was 'the very noblest of all Blake's works.' It is now lost; it was probably Blake's largest work, the figures, Blake asserts, being 'full as large as life.' Of the other pictures the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and sixteenth are lost; the ninth exists in a replica in 'fresco,' and the sixteenth in what is probably a first sketch.
Blake's reason for giving this exhibition was undoubtedly indignation at what he took to be Stothard's treachery in the matter of the 'Canterbury Pilgrims.' This picture (now in the National Gallery, No. 1163) had been exhibited by Cromek throughout the kingdom, and he had announced effusively, in a seven page advertisement at the end of Blair's Grave, the issue of 'a print executed in the line manner of engraving, and in the same excellent style as the portrait of Mr. William Blake, prefixed to this work, by Louis Schiavonetti, Esq., V. A., the gentleman who has etched 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 complete set down.'