220 Josiah Wedgwood CHAP. 



will be attended with no more difficulty than the two 

 last wax models I sent, the casts from which were 

 made at your factory. I am going on with the other 

 bas - relief and the chimneypiece. I return my 

 grateful thanks for the kind inquiries after Mrs. 

 Flaxman, who desires her respectful compliments to 

 Mrs. and Miss Wedgwood and yourself, together with, 

 sir, your most obliged servant, J. FLAXMAN." 



This is the last letter I possess, from Flaxman to 

 Wedgwood, before the former left London for Eorne. 

 I find that Wedgwood paid Flaxman, between July 

 1773 and August 1787, 196 : 15 : 8 at different times. 

 These sums included Flaxman's drawings and models, 

 together with mason's charges, packing-cases, bookings, 

 and such like. After Flaxman, with the help of his 

 economical wife, had accumulated sufficient means to 

 enable them to set out on their journey, they left 

 London in the autumn of 1787. Flaxman could now 

 look back upon the time when he showed his drawing 

 of a human eye to Mortimer, who asked, " Is that an 

 oyster ? " ; to the refusal of Sir Joshua Eeynolds to 

 award him the gold medal, because he preferred his 

 inglorious opponent Engleheart ; and also to Sir 

 Joshua's still more recent censure upon Flaxman that 

 he was " ruined for an artist," because he had married 

 Ann Denham. And now Flaxman was setting out 

 for Eome, accompanied by his wife, to show, in the 

 sculptor's own words, " that wedlock is for a man's 

 good rather than for his harm." 



