Hired to Depress: A Digital Scholarly Edition of William Blake's Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' DiscoursesMain MenuWho is William Blake?Just who is William Blake? And why does his scribbling in a book matter?Who is Sir Joshua Reynolds?Important FiguresTitle PageContents of The First VolumeDedication and To the KingSome Account of the Life and Writings of Sir Joshua ReynoldsWritten by Edmond Malone, Esq.The First DiscourseBibliographyElizabeth Pottera6e9fb7ea6eda3e5063e2aee73ca5f372e99b8f3
12015-12-12T22:37:34-08:00Some Account xiii5Some Account of the Life and Writings of Sir Joshua Reynoldsplain2017-01-15T23:32:59-08:00 to have had it in contemplation to compose and deliver to the Academy, and which he seems to have intended as a history of his mind, so far as concerned his art, and of his progress, studies, and practice ; toge- ther with a view of the advantages which he had enjoyed, and the disadvantages he had laboured under, in the course that he had run : a scheme from which, however liable it might be to the ridicule of Wits and Scoffers, (a circumstance of which, he says, he was perfectly aware,) he con- ceived the Students might derive some useful documents for the regulation of their own conduct and practice. It is much to be regretted that he did not live to com- pose such a Discourse ; for, from the hand of so great and candid an Artist, it could not but have been highly curious and in- structive. One of these fragments relating to his feelings when he first went to Italy, every reader will, I am confident, be pleased with its insertion.