The letters to Hayley are courteous and almost affectionate in tone. Hayley was occupied with his _Life of Romney_, Blake was hard at work on a _Head of Romney_ and an engraving of the _Shipwreck_, after Romney. Hence there are many references to the artist from which we learn how genuine was Blake's admiration for the classic simplicity and the skilful massing of the lights and shades of Sir Joshua's great rival. Mr and Mrs Blake regularly send their love to Hayley and solicitations for his health till the correspondence gradually lessens, and Hayley, having no further use for Blake, gently closes it, and takes himself away out of his sight for ever. The severance was inevitable, and Blake could not be surprised. He jotted in his note-book:
"I write the rascal thanks till he and I With thanks and compliments are both drawn dry."
And so the patron passes. The artist who has faced poverty is tasting its bitterness, stirred with the faint hope that he may find another patron who will be a corporeal friend and not a spiritual enemy. The patron in due time appeared. Robert Hartley Cromek was his name, print-jobber, book-maker, publisher, also an engraver who had studied under Bartolozzi.
This last fact was not auspicious. Blake, we know, had no regard for Bartolozzi's work, and a pupil of his might prove as little understanding of Blake's severe art as the Bard of Sussex. Still, there was hope. Cromek had an admirable business capacity. He understood how to advertise, to puff, to work the artist, and, what is still more materially important, to work the public. He had, in a word, all the practical qualities that Blake lacked. Blake with his love for uniting contraries believed that his art married to Cromek's practice might produce fame and money, and he was sorely in need of both.
At this time Blake was making designs for Blair's _Grave_, which he intended himself to engrave and publish. These were seen by Cromek, who admired them, and whose business instinct detected money in them. Immediately he proposed to publish a new edition of _The Grave_, and made a verbal agreement with Blake that he should contribute twelve engravings from his own designs. But, inspired by the same business instinct, it occurred to him that Blake's designs would sell much better if they were engraved by one who was known to be able to meet the popular taste. Accordingly he went off to Schiavonetti, who had been a fellow-pupil of Bartolozzi, and proposed to him to do the engravings.