"You say the subject is _low_ and _contemptibly treated_. For his excellent mode of treating the subject the poet has been admired for the last four hundred years; the poor painter has not yet the advantage of antiquity on his side, therefore with some people an apology may be necessary for him. The conclusion of one of Squire Simpkins' letters to his mother in the 'Bath Guide' will afford one. He speaks greatly to the purpose: I very well know Both my subject and verse is exceedingly low, But if any _great critic_ finds fault with my letter, _He has nothing to do but to send you a better_. "With much respect for your talents, "I remain, Sir, "Your real friend and well-wisher, "R. H. CROMEK." Perhaps it was that last jeering taunt which determined Blake to show _his_ "Canterbury Pilgrimage" to the public, and make it the occasion of a little exhibition of his own. It was opened in May, 1809. Poor unworldly Blake, enraged and baffled, was the last man to organize an undertaking of this sort. Cromek could afford to laugh at the modest show on the first floor of James Blake's shop at the corner of Broad Street, all unadvertised and unpatronized as it was. The exhibition comprised, besides the "Pilgrimage," sixteen "Poetical and Historical Inventions," ten "frescoes," and seven drawings--"a collection," as Gilchrist remarks, "singularly remote from ordinary sympathies or even ordinary apprehension." Few of the general public penetrated here, but Blake's friends, his few buyers, and many contemporary artists probably went through the rooms with no little curiosity. Seymour Kirkup--the discoverer of Giotto's portrait of Dante in the Bargello,--and Henry Crabb Robinson were among the number of those who went and purchased catalogues. With the catalogue were issued subscription papers for the engraving of the "Canterbury Pilgrimage," which, in spite of Cromek and Stothard, Blake intended to execute. Blake drew up a Descriptive Catalogue to interpret his pictures, and in it gave free rein, unfortunately, to his personal antipathy to Stothard, but he also expressed at some length, and with characteristic fire and intemperance, his views on art. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was intensely sympathetic with his artistic forerunner, says that the Descriptive Catalogue, and the "Address to the Public," "abound in critical passages, on painting and poetry, which must be ranked without reserve among the very best things ever said on either subject."