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ED; E756| 51
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[To William Hayley]
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[23 October 1804]
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Dear Sir
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I received your kind letter with the note to Mr. Payne, and
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have had the cash from him, I should have returned my thanks
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immediately on receipt of it, but hoped to be able to send,
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before now, proofs of the two plates, the Head of
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R[omney] and the Shipwreck, which you shall soon see in
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a much more perfect state. I write immediately because you wish
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I should do so, to satisfy you that I have received your kind
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favour.
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I take the extreme pleasure of expressing my joy at our good
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Lady of Lavant's continued recovery: but with a mixture of
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sincere sorrow on account of the beloved Councillor. My wife
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returns her heartfelt thanks for your kind inquiry concerning her
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health. She is surprisingly recovered. Electricity is the
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wonderful cause; the swelling of her legs and knees is entirely
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reduced. She is very near as free from rheumatism as she was
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five years ago, and we have the greatest confidence in her
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perfect recovery.
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The pleasure of seeing another poem from your hands has
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truly set me longing (my wife say I ought to have said us) with
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desire and curiosity; but, however, "Christmas is a-coming."
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Our good and kind friend Hawkins is not yet in town--hope
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soon to have the pleasure of seeing him, with the courage of
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conscious industry, worthy of his former kindness to me. For
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now! O lory! and O Delight! I have entirely reduced that
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spectrous Fiend to his station, whose annoyance has been the ruin
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of my labours for the last passed twenty years of my life. He is
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the enemy of conjugal love and is the Jupiter of the Greeks, an
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iron-hearted tyrant, the ruiner of ancient Greece. I speak with
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perfect confidence and certainty of the fact which has passed
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upon me. Nebuchadnezzar had seven times passed over him; I have
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had twenty; thank God I was not altogether a beast as he was; but
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I was a slave bound in a mill among beasts and devils; these
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beasts and these devils are now, together with myself, become
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children of light and liberty, and my feet and my wife's feet are
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free from fetters. O lovely Felpham, parent of Immortal
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Friendship, to thee I am eternally indebted for my three years'
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rest from perturbation and the strength I now enjoy. Suddenly,
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on the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of pictures, I
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was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in my youth, and
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which has for exactly twenty years been closed from me as by a
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door and by window-shutters. Consequently I can, with
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confidence, promise you ocular demonstration of my altered state
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on the plates I am now engraving after Romney, whose spiritual
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aid has not a little conduced to my restoration to the light of
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Art. O the distress I have undergone, and my poor wife with me.
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Incessantly labouring and incessantly spoiling what I had done
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well. Every one of my friends was astonished at my faults, and
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could no assign a reason;
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they knew my industry and abstinence from every pleasure for the
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sake of study, and yet--and yet--and yet there wanted the proofs
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of industry in my works. I thank God with entire confidence that
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it shall be so no longer--he is become my servant who domineered
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over me, he is even as a brother who was my enemy. Dear Sir,
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excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk
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with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into
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my hand, even as I used to be in my youth, and as I have not been
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for twenty dark, but very profitable years. I thank God that I
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courageously pursued my course through darkness. In a short time
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I shall make my assertion good that I am become suddenly as I was
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at first, by producing the Head of Romney and the
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Shipwreck quite another thing from what you or I ever
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expected them to be. In short, I am now satisfied and proud of
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my work, which I have not been for the above long period.
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If our excellent and manly friend Meyer is yet with you,
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please to make my wife's and my own most respectful and
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affectionate compliments to him, also to our kind friend at
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Lavant.
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I remain, with my wife's joint affection,
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Your sincere and obliged servant,
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WILL BLAKE
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[From the Gilchrist Life]
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