While Blake was looking forward with "anxious delight" to the engraving of his designs, Cromek had other schemes afoot. He called often at South Molton Street, hoping to pounce on some other work of genius which he could turn into money for himself. He was arrested one day before a pencil sketch of a new and hitherto untreated subject--the Procession of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. He tried to get Blake to make a finished drawing of it, with a view of course to getting it out of the artist's hands, and then having it engraved by someone else. Negotiations on this basis failing, he gave Blake a commission (verbal again) to execute the design in a finished picture and an engraving from it. On the strength of this, Blake's friends circulated a subscription paper for the engraving, and he himself set to work on the picture. Cromek, however, had not done. He was in love with the subject. Sure of Blake's conception being thoughtful and strong, but probably wishful that it might be invested with a more earthly grace and interest than he would put upon it, he went to Stothard and suggested the subject to him, suppressing all mention of Blake. Probably he assisted the suggestion by hints as to its treatment derived from what he had actually appreciated in Blake's conception. He commissioned him to paint the picture for sixty guineas, an engraving from which was to be done by Bromley, though Schiavonetti was eventually substituted for him. [Illustration: PILGRIMAGE TO CANTERBURY Engraving after Stothard's Canterbury Pilgrimage. Published October, 1817] [Illustration: CHAUCER'S CANTERBURY PILGRIMS Engraved by Blake in 1810 after his own "fresco" of the Canterbury Pilgrimage] When Blake learned that Cromek denied having given him a commission, and came to know that Stothard, his old friend, was to paint a picture on his stolen idea, to supersede his own, his rage and indignation knew no bounds, and he became bitterly estranged from Stothard, believing in his haste "that all men are liars," and that this man had been a party to the whole mean transaction. Gilchrist is almost sure that Stothard knew nothing of Cromek's previous deal with Blake on the subject of the Canterbury Pilgrimage. During 1806 Blake was moved to make some designs to Shakespeare which were neither commissioned nor engraved. Judging from the one reproduced in the Life,--"Hamlet and the Ghost of his Father,"--they must have been wild and powerful indeed. He had always a profound reverence for, and joy in, Shakespeare, whose works were among his favourite books.