Mr. Blake, who was not only a celebrated engraver, but known also for his original designs, distributed this year (1805) a prospectus for publishing an edition of the poem of "The Grave" of William Blair, to be illustrated with fifteen plates designed and engraved by himself. This work was patronized by the names of the principal artists of the day; but before he entered upon its publication, he submitted his drawings to the judgment of the then President of the Royal Academy (Mr. West), and also to Fuseli. The latter, in particular, being pleased with the wildness of the invention, wrote his opinion thereon in the following words: "The moral series here submitted to the public, from its object and method of execution, has a double claim on general attention. "In an age of equal refinement and corruption of manners, when systems of education and seduction go hand in hand; when Religion itself compounds with fashion; when, in the pursuit of present enjoyment, all consideration of futurity vanishes, and the real object of life is lost--in such an age, every exertion confers a benefit on society which tends to impress Man with his destiny, to hold the mirror up to life, less indeed to discriminate its characters, than those situations which shew what all are born for, what all ought to act for, and what all must inevitably come to. "The importance of this object has been so well understood at every period of time, from the earliest and most innocent to the latest and most depraved, that reason and fancy have exhausted their stores of argument and imagery, to impress it on the mind: animate and inanimate Nature, the seasons, the forest and the field, the bee and ant, the larva, chrysalis and moth, have lent their real or supposed analogies with the origin, pursuits, and end, of the human race, so often to emblematical purposes, that instruction is become stale, and attention callous. The Serpent with its tail in its mouth, from a type of Eternity, is become an infant's bauble; even the nobler idea of Hercules pausing between virtue and vice, and the varied imagery of Death leading his patients to the Grave, owe their effect upon us more to technic excellence than allegoric utility. "Aware of this, but conscious that affectation of originality and trite repetition would equally impede his success, the Author of the moral series before us has endeavoured to wake sensibility by touching our sympathies with nearer, less ambiguous, and less ludicrous imagery, than what mythology, Gothic superstition, or symbols as far-fetched as inadequate could supply. His invention has been chiefly employed to spread a familiar and domestic atmosphere round the most important of all subjects, to connect the visible and the invisible World, without provoking probability, and to lead the eye from the milder light of time to the radiations of Eternity.