ss of the place. Yet I do not
repent of coming on a thousand accounts; and Mr. Hayley, I doubt not,
will do ultimately all that both he and I wish--that is, to lift me
out of difficulty. But this is no easy matter to a man who, having
spiritual enemies of such formidable magnitude, cannot expect to want
natural hidden ones.

Your approbation of my pictures is a multitude to me, and I doubt not
that all your kind wishes in my behalf shall in due time be fulfilled.
Your kind offer of pecuniary assistance I can only thank you for at
present, because I have enough to serve my present purpose here. Our
expenses are small, and our income, from our incessant labour, fully
adequate to these at present. I am now engaged in engraving six small
plates for a new edition of Mr. Hayley's _Triumphs of Temper_, from
drawings by Maria Flaxman, sister to my friend the sculptor. And it
seems that other things will follow in course, if I do but copy these
well. But patience! If great things do not turn out, it is because
such things depend on the spiritual and not on the natural world; and
if it was fit for me, I doubt not that I should be employed in greater
things; and when it is proper, my talents shall be properly exercised
in public, as I hope they are now in private. For till then I leave no
stone unturned, and no path unexplored that leads to improvement in
my beloved arts. One thing of real consequence I have accomplished by
coming into the country, which is to me consolation enough: namely,
I have re-collected all my scattered thoughts on art, and resumed
my primitive and original ways of execution in both painting and
engraving, which in the confusion of London I had very much lost and
obliterated from my mind. But whatever becomes of my labours, I would
rather that they should be preserved in your greenhouse (not, as you
mistakenly call it, dunghill) than in the cold gallery of fashion. The
sun may yet shine, and then they will be brought into open air.

But you have so generously and openly desired that I will divide my
griefs with you that I cannot hide what it has now become my duty to
explain. My unhappiness has arisen from a source which, if explored
too narrowly, might hurt my pecuniary circumstances; as my dependence
is on engraving at present, and particularly on the engravings I have
in hand for Mr. Hayley, and I find on all hands great objections to
my doing anything but the mere drudgery of business, and intimations