Who will Dare to Say that Polite

Art is Encouraged or Either Wished

or Tolerated in a Nation where

The Society for the Encouragement 

of Art Suffered Barry to give

them his Labour for Nothing

A Society composed of the

Flower of the English Nobility

& Gentry ________ Suffering

an Artist to Starve while he

Supported Really what They 

under pretence of Encouraging were

Endeavoring to Depress.-- Barry

told me that while he Did that 

Work he Lived on Bread & Apples

Probably the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (founded in 17470. It is more often referred to simply as the Royal Society of Arts and still exists in London today. "The Progress of Human Knowledge Culture" which hangs in the Great Room of the Royal Society of Arts. It seems that he was not paid or was paid little for this epic work. This suggests, in Blake's mind, the society only supported the ideas rather than the realities behind artists and the production of art.