He planned to commission 100 paintings illustrating famous English poems, which he would publish monthly as engravings between 1790 and 1795.

However, the war with France cut into his profits, as prints could not be traded across the channel, and his partner, Edward Rogers, died.

[3] Just two years after beginning the Poet's Gallery, Macklin undertook to publish an illustrated folio Bible in multiple volumes to promote "'the glory of the English school' of painting and engraving and 'the interest of our HOLY RELIGION'".

Macklin's Bible project was expensive to produce: he paid Reynolds £500 for his Holy Family, for example, and the total cost was estimated at £30,000.

According to the Dictionary of National Biography, "[t]he Macklin Bible endures as the most ambitious edition produced in Britain, often pirated but never rivalled.