Since the production of Blair's "Grave," he had been held up to public ridicule as an artist, in a paper called the "Examiner," edited by Leigh Hunt, and the occasion of this exhibition called forth another article in its columns full of crass misunderstanding of his aims and the superior sneers of a self-satisfied and material-minded writer. In it he was termed "an unfortunate lunatic whose personal unoffensiveness secures him from confinement." But the "most unkindest cut of all" had been Cromek's, in making his own friend of thirty years' standing the supplanter of his work, the thief of his idea. All these things had inflamed his tremulous and excitable nerves to a point beyond self-control. Material disagreements of the kind I have related had a sad effect on him, and drove him to an expression of bitterness very difficult to reconcile with the benign, gentle and courteous nature to which all his friends and acquaintances have affectionately testified. There is no doubt that during the period of middle life he developed a hard and violent strain which did not mix with, diminish, or distemper the fine and beautiful qualities of his heart and spirit, but shot through them like a barbed wire among a tangle of honeysuckle. In great part, it was the irritation of capricious and highly-strung nerves, the tension of an overheated and excitable brain, and not a quality of the mind or character at all. The expression of this condition of Blake's must, therefore, be taken as an undisciplined and wilfully exaggerated statement of his intellectual convictions, with a deep note of truth at the bottom. It seems strange that in the matter of the "Pilgrimage" he did not go straight to Stothard and invite him to clear himself of the suspicions with which he regarded him. But like all guileless people, and perhaps especially those of the artistic temperament, when once they have been deceived they find it easy to believe that all the world is in league against them. Before people who were not intimate, who were, in fact, antipathetic to him, Blake would abuse Stothard roundly and criticise him wantonly. But to the immediate circle of his personal friends or sympathisers--those who, knowing how he had suffered, and how black the case looked for Stothard, would have understood anything he might have said,--he maintained complete silence on the subject of the "Pilgrimage," and the name of the popular artist was mentioned without comment and listened to in grave silence by him. Once, many years after, he met Stothard at a dinner, and went up to him impulsively with outstretched hand. It was refused with coldness. Another time, hearing that Stothard was ill, Blake's heart softened and warmed to the old friend, and he rushed off impetuously to call and make up the quarrel in which he ever believed Stothard to have been the aggressor. But Stothard would not receive him, desired no reconciliation.