126 Josiah Wedgwood CHAP. 



turned from Newport Street, London, and said that 

 there was " no getting to the door of the showroom for 

 coaches nor into the rooms for ladies. Vases are still 

 the cry." We add another part of Wedgwood's letter : 

 " Be so good as let us know what is going forward in 

 the great world ; how many Lords and Dukes visit your 

 rooms, praise your beauties, thin your shelves, and fill 

 your purses ; and if you will take the trouble to ac- 

 quaint us with the daily ravages in your stores, we will 

 endeavour to replenish them." 



But still worse than Wedgwood's pin leg were the 

 attacks of blindness, with which he was threatened 

 towards the end of 1769. He had an inflammation in his 

 eyes, which partly blinded him. Spectra and atoms 

 shut out the light. " My eyes," he wrote to Bentley in 

 December, "continue the same. It is just dark, and I 

 am absolutely forbidden to write or read by candle-light. 

 Clouds and atoms are before me. I fear, indeed, about 

 my brain becoming affected. I intend to go to London 

 for advice. I am advised to have a perpetual seton 

 placed behind my neck." 



To save his eyes, Mrs. Wedgwood, his faithful wife, 

 wrote a long letter to Bentley : " The complaint in Mr. 

 Wedgwood's eyes," she begins, " which he mentioned to 

 you in London, is growing worse. He has consulted 

 Mr. Bent, who advises him to use them as little as 

 possible, and not to write by candle-light at all, for 

 which reason he knows you will excuse him for not 

 writing. Mr. Bent has ordered him to take some pukes 



