Flaxman-1-14

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1796 or -97 [added in pencil]

Dear Bard !

I come — not in Person with all my Faults about me, but in a select Portion My Gratitude attend you for all past favors, & my good wishes for success & happiness in all your Undertakings

My thanks are also here enclosed for your kind present of Grapes, as also for your very friendly Invitation to the Delights of Eartham — "Indulgent Memory wakes, and lo! they live" I am content they should live with me in Memory alone untill [sic] My Hero can give them their true Gusto by his presence also — I hope Dame Fortune will bestow on me that Satisfaction at some future Period, Minerva at present forbids it – and he has made her of so Commanding & beautiful a Countenance, so like herself! It would be worse than

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Sin to disobey her —

I am very happy to hear so good an account of Mobius health & studies from our good friend Romney – to him & to your own dear Self Flaxman unites in every Cordial Wish —

With your affectionate
Titania

Pray remember me kindly to M^rs Mary —
I forgot to Say we think Apelles is all the better for Eartham's Air – and looks at least ten years younger than he did ten weeks ago —

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I take the Liberty of Sending you a Print, as yet unpublished said to be the Portrait of your favorite Milton. – that it is a fine Head & full of Sentiment your will see; and as it is very like Hollis's Bust by Simons, it May probably be the portrait of that Venerable Bard but whether it is for certain Romney & yourself are well qualified to determine –

Perhaps his dress with the Calabash fasten'd to the Pilgrims [sic] Staff may related to his Italian Journey, the vision \of our Lord/in the back Ground to his Paradise regain'd ———

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M^r Hayley