146 Josiah Wedgwood CHAP. 



ance. He studied chemistry with a view to the improve- 

 ment of his manufactures. He tried experiments on 

 clays of all sorts, mixing them with earths of different 

 colours. And yet during this period he was labouring 

 under illness which might have depressed his spirits. 

 But he bore up against everything. He employed new 

 artists, and arranged new models of Greek statues 

 and medallions from ancient gems. 



At the beginning of 1770, he was building new 

 ovens. He had thirty men employed in making vases, 

 and they had to be constantly superintended. There 

 was also the modelling of Day as a Companion to Night, 

 and the finishing of Apollo and Daphne, of which 

 works Bacon was the modeller. While giving instruc- 

 tions to his many artists and workmen, Wedgwood 

 himself was suffering from the complaint in his eyes. 

 " It is just dark," he once said, " and I am absolutely 

 forbidden to write or read by candle-light." He began 

 to fear continual darkness, he was even afraid of his 

 brain becoming affected. Still he held on his way, and 

 " steered right onward." 



In case of his worst fears being realised, he wrote to 

 Bentley, stating that he wished him to learn the art 

 of potmaking under him, so that in the event of his 

 death the Art might not die with him. When he 

 ought to have gone to London for an oculist's advice 

 about his eyes, he had to postpone the journey on 

 account of his workmen. "I have 150 hands at 

 Etruria as well as others at Burslem, and how to leave 



