purity and innocence. But he works at ease only within the limits
of his special powers; he is happier in the pastoral and domestic
than the heroic and supernatural, and his style is better fitted to
the formal salutations of "Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison,"
than the rough horse-play of "Peregrine Pickle." Where Rowlandson
would have revelled, Stothard would be awkward and constrained;
where Blake would give us a new sensation, Stothard would be poor
and mechanical. Nevertheless the gifts he possessed were thoroughly
recognised in his own day, and brought him, if not riches, at least
competence and honour. It is said that more than three thousand of
his drawings have been engraved, and they are scattered through a
hundred publications. Those to the "Pilgrim's Progress" and the
poems of Rogers are commonly spoken of as his best, though he never
excelled some of the old-fashioned plates (with their pretty borders
in the style of Gravelot and the Frenchmen) to Richardson's novels,
and such forgotten "classics" as "Joe Thompson", "Jessamy," "Betsy
Thoughtless," and one or two others in Harrison's very miscellaneous
collection.

Stothard was fortunate in his engravers. Besides James Heath, his
best interpreter, Schiavonetti, Sharp, Finden, the Cookes,
Bartolozzi, most of the fashionable translators into copper were
busily employed upon his inventions. Among the rest was an artist
of powers far greater than his own, although scarcely so happy in
turning them to profitable account. The genius of William Blake was
not a marketable commodity in the same way as Stothard's talent.
The one caught the trick of the time with his facile elegance; the
other scorned to make any concessions, either in conception or
execution, to the mere popularity of prettiness.