Hired to Depress: A Digital Scholarly Edition of William Blake's Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses Main Menu Who is William Blake? Just who is William Blake? And why does his scribbling in a book matter? Who is Sir Joshua Reynolds? Important Figures Title Page Contents of The First Volume Dedication and To the King Some Account of the Life and Writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds Written by Edmond Malone, Esq. The First Discourse Bibliography

Some Account xiii

7054

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. 

This page references: