AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY VOLUME 25 NUMBER 3 WINTER 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1992/92
AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Volume 25 Number 3 Winter 1991/92
CONTENTS ARTICLES
104 "Sunclad Chastity" and Blake's "Maiden Queens": Comus, Thel, and "The Angel" by Eugenie R. Freed
117 A Relief Etching of Blake's Virgil Illustrations by Robert N. Essick
127 The Chamber of Prophecy: Blake's "A Vision" (Butlin #756) Interpreted by Christopher Heppner
MINUTE PARTICULARS
133 Blake and the Edinburgh Literary Gazette—with a Note on Thomas De Quincey David Groves
135 Six Illustrations by Stothard Alexander S. Gourlay
136 A Reprinting of Blake's Portrait of Thomas Alphonso Hayley Jenijoy La Belle
137 Blake and Bonasone Alexander S. Gourlay
Cover: Illustrations to Thornton's Virgil, executed as a relief etching. Essick collection.
© 1992 Copyright Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y
Subscriptions are $40 for institutions, CONTRIBUTORS EDITORS $20 for individuals. All subscriptions are by the volume (1 year, 4 issues) and begin with the summer issue. Sub- ROBERT N. ESSICK, Professor of Editors: Morris Eaves, University of scription payments received after the English at the University of California, Rochester, and Morton D. Paley, Uni- summer issue will be applied to the 4 Riverside, is now co-editing, with Mor- versity of California, Berkeley. issues of the current volume. Foreign ris Eaves and Joseph Viscomi, a volume Bibliographer: Detlef W. Dorrbecker, addresses (except Canada and Mexico) in the new Blake Trust series of repro- Universitat Trier, West Germany. require a $6 per volume postal sur- ductions of Blake's illuminated books. charge for surface mail, a $15 per Review Editor: Nelson Hilton, Uni- EUGENIE R. FREED is a Senior Lec- volume surcharge for air mail delivery. versity of Georgia, Athens. turer in English at the University of the U.S. currency or international money Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Associate Editor for Great Britain: order necessary. Make checks payable Africa. The present article emanated David Worrall, St. Mary's College. to Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. Ad- from a book-length project, recently dress all subscription orders and re- Production Office: Morris Eaves, completed, on Blake's "Miltonic lated communications to Patricia Neill, Department of English, University of vision" of women Blake, Department of English, Univer- Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627. sity of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627. ALEXANDER S. GOURLAY is an Assis- Telephone: 716/275-3820. tant Professor of English at the Rhode Many back issues are available at a Fax: 716/442-5769- Island School of Design. reduced price. Address Patricia Neill Morton D. Paley, Department of Eng- for a list of issues and prices. DAVID GROVES' latest book is an lish, University of California, Berkeley, edition of James Hogg's 1824 novel, Manuscripts are welcome. Send two CA 94720. The Private Memoirs and Confessions copies, typed and documented accor- of a fustified Sinner (Edinburgh: Detlef W. Dorrbecker, Universitat Trier, ding to the forms suggested in The Canongate, 199D. FB III Kunstgeschichte, Postfach 3825, MIA Style Manual, to either of the 5500 Trier, West Germany. editors: Morris Eaves, Dept. of English, CHRISTOPHER HEPPNER teaches University of Rochester, Rochester, English at McGill University and writes Nelson Hilton, Department of English, NY 14627; Morton D. Paley, Dept. of about Blake's art, and, sometimes, University of Georgia, Athens, GA English, University of California, other things. 30602. Berkeley, CA 94720. Only one copy JENHOY LA BELLE is Professor of David Worrall, St. Mary's College, Straw- will be returned to authors. Literature at California Institute of berry Hill, Waldegrave Road, Twick- International Standard Serial Technology. enham TW1 4SX, England. Number: 0l60-628x. Blake/An Illus- trated Quarterly is indexed in the Modern Language Association's Inter- national Bibliography, the Modern INFORMATION Humanities Research Association's Annual Bibliography of English Lan- Managing Editor: Patricia Neill guage and Literature, The Romantic Movement: A Selective and Critical Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly is Bibliography(ed. David V. Erdman et published under the sponsorship of al.), American Humanities Index, the the Department of English, University Arts and Humanities Citation Index, of Rochester. and Current Contents. 104 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92
"Sun-Clad Chastity" and Blake's "Maiden Queens": Comus, Tbel, and "The Angel" by Eugenie R. Freed
... To him that dares contemplate a sketch of his own (illus. The pencil sketch shows two nude Arm his profane tongue with 1) which had been suggested by a figures, seen full-frontal, walking hand contemptuous words Against the sun-clad power of chastity; passage from Book 4 of Paradise Lost in hand toward, and looking directly Fain would I something say, yet to what .. . into their inmost bower at, the viewer: a long-haired Eve, and end? Handed they went; and eased the a curly-haired Adam, much as they (Milton, A Masque Presented at Ludlow putting off appear in Blake's earliest extant Milton Castle, 1634 [Comus] 779-82) These troublesome disguises which we illustrations.4 wear, Blake covered the page facing this Straight side by side were laid, nor drawing (Notebook 103) with drafts of n her discussion of Blake's illustra- turned I ween Itions to Milton's Comus, Pamela Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the poems (illus. 2). Three poems that ap- Dunbar comments: rites pear here were to be etched as Songs Mysterious of connubial love refused. .. . of Experience: "The Chimney Sweep- Blake was a tireless critic of the "double (PL 4.738-43) er," "Holy T h u r s d a y ," and "The Angel." standard" of sexual morality and of the repression of "natural desire." It is there- fore not surprising that he should have transformed Milton's "sage/ And serious doctrine of virginity" (785-86) into a sterile and destructive dogma, and his virtuous Lady into a coy, deluded and self-denying miss.. .. (10) The work in which this "sage / And serious doctrine" was mounted was the subject of the earliest of Blake's commissioned series of Milton illustra- tions. Blake executed them for the Re- verend Joseph Thomas in c. 1801;' but he had long reflected on the theme of Milton's masque, with wit and subtlety arming his "profane [read: 'icono- clastic'] tongue with contemptuous words" against it in the poems I discuss in this essay (to mention only two), years before he made Comus the sub- ject of a series of paintings. Comuswzs demonstrably one of the works on Blake's mind while he was sketching motifs for The Gates of Paradisein his Notebook during 1790- 93, for he jotted down quotations from it on pages 30 and 36 of the Notebook.2 Characteristically, it was Milton's vir- tuous Lady who came contrarily into his mind when, while copying and drafting poems into the Notebook at some time during this period,3 Blake 1. "Adam and Eve," from Blake's Notebook, page 102. By permission of the British Library. opened it at page 102, and paused to Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 105
The first two of these arise from "Songs that "Opposition is true Friendship,"5 I dreamt a dream what can it mean of Innocence" having the same tides. the principal Miltonic influence in this And that I was a maiden queen Guarded by an angel mild The third, "The Angel," was inspired in poem emanates not so much from the Witless woe was ne'er beguiled part by the design that presented itself vindication—with which Blake con to his eye on the opposite page of the curred—of sexual love in Paradise And I wept both night & day Notebook. Blake obviously recalled the Lost, as from the defence in Comus of And he wiped my tears away context in Paradise Lost of the lines he chastity, which he opposed. Having And I wept both day & night And hid from him my hearts delight had illustrated, and affirmed for him deliberately enrolled himself in the self Milton's indignant condemnation Devil's party, Blake in effect seconds So he took his wings & fled there of "hypocrites" who "austerely the urging of Comus: "List Lady be not Then the morn blushd rosy red I dried my tears & armd my fears talk / Of purity . . . and innocence, / coy, and be not cozened / With that With ten thousand shields and spears Defaming as impure what God de same vaunted name virginity . . ." clares / Pure . . ." {PL 4.74447). How {Comus 73637), and in "The Angel" Soon my angel came again ever, in the spirit of his own dictum ironically dramatizes such "cozening": I was armd he came in vain [But del] For the time of youth was fled And grey hairs were on my head (Notebook 103. The version engraved for *+*< £**. is*>A the Songs of Experience differs only in , c punctuation.) '*rt?ri^i^vni*w*^ •stp^* **n**H '.:?*.Jkf*, Ww The speaker of "The Angel," in her s dreamlife a "maiden queen," rebuffs her angellover because of her own ■ fears and inhibitions, keeping him in a ■ state of tantalized frustration both in her subconscious and her waking life. 14* V/'+*'< '"* ' Soon it is too late to recant: ~\ '. a5 u*6 -~ * /I '• ! I was arm'd, he came in vain, fl£± foe*-**- • *«• Tfffo tv ,/<<•-< ' ^ For the time of youth was fled, And grey hairs were on my head. tfitS At* y~. '/» /£***t* .y~-+-l^.- *&*$ Z A/ ■ (1416, E 24)6 \* + This petrified virgin inhabits a fallen and timebound world in which her imagination, corrupted by the "de uU ir*tir*t /..^/.v..:^>> <*,•'iy * ?"♦:."•'*?"."•'*'' famation" of sexuality perpetrated by ^truA- c*^Tuf
4. Blake, illustration to Milton's Comus: 3. Falsa ad Coelum Mittunt Insomnia Manes, engraving attributed to Blake (after "The Magic Banquet with the Lady Fuseli), 1790. By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. Spellbound," c. 1815. Gift of Mrs. John L. Gardner and George N. Black. Cour- tesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. tions on the subject of female erotic ing her face on one hand while with fantasies and fears around the time of the other, in an absurd gesture of re- his composition of "The Angel" and pulsion, she pushes away the angel, eer" (420-21, 425-26). Blake had tumed Visions of the Daughters of Albion, as who seems to be trying to impart to her to the same passage for the image of well as, possibly, Thel.9 "things that no gross ear can hear" female scorn that terrifies Thel, of"... The "maiden queen" of "The Angel" (illus. 5-7). Her expression betrays "wit- eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn, is evidently derived from the classical less woe" and preoccupation with her / Where a thousand fighting men in virgin goddess of the moon, Diana. inner conflict; his reflects distress at the ambush lie . . ." {Thel 6.13-14, E 6), Blake may have been influenced by rejection, while his arms reach out to perhaps intermingled in both poems Milton's description of the nocturnal her, attempting vainly to persuade her with his satirical response to Edmund 13 scene as Adam and Eve enter their to "turn away no more." In the line Burke's exclamation of horror at the nuptial bower, when the moon "rising "Then the morn blush'd rosy red. . . " fate of the beautiful Queen of France, in clouded majesty, at length / Appar- Blake recollects Adam's description of Marie Antoinette: ent queen unveiled her peerless light" the maiden modesty of Eve on the first {PL 4.607-08). But his image owes night of their marriage: "... To the Little did I dream that I should have lived nuptial bower / I led her blushing like to see disasters fallen upon her in a nation more to "Dian the huntress . . . fair of gallant men. . . I thought ten thousand silver-shafted Queen forever chaste" the mom..." {PL8.510-11). But, Blake swords must have leaped from their scab- (440_4l) from Milton's Comus.10 The implies, in the fallen world, Eve's bards to avenge even a look that 15 angel of Blake's poem also emerges, in "sweet reluctant amorous delay"(PZ threatened her with insult. (76) an ironically modified form, from pas- 4.311) is perverted to a "hypocrite mo- The charming Book of Thel, Blake's sages of Comus11 together with the desty," such that "When thou awakest earliest prophetic book, probably com- maiden's dream: . . . Then com'st thou forth a modest posed some time before "The Angel,"16 virgin, knowing to dissemble. . . "u is also both inspired by Milton's Comus So dear to heaven is saintly chastity, The hysterical defence of her chastity and opposed in principle to it.17 The That when a soul is found sincerely so, with "ten thousand shields and spears" virgin Thel, w h o s e name means "wish" A thousand liveried angels lackey her, by the protagonist of "The Angel" is a Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, or "will" (from the Greek verb mean- parody of the simile in Milton's Comus, And in clear dream and solemn vision ing "to desire"), is the only one of in which the chaste virgin is compared Tell her of things that no gross ear can Blake's personages who is given the hear. ... (452-57) to "a quivered nymph with arrows option of accepting or rejecting the keen," whose "virgin purity" encases fallen condition of mortality. Thel The plate of "The Angel" in the Songs her in "complete steel," proof against 12 avails herself of this privilege, choos- of Experience shows the recumbent "savage fierce, bandit, or mountain- ing, when she has previewed this "land maiden, clothed in a long gown, lean- Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY
of sorrows & of tears" (Thel 6.5, E 6), tion Thel enters only hesitantly, fear- recovering from the wound given him to flee "back . .. into the vales of Har" fully, and briefly.21 by a boar. Milton's passage—and the (6.22, E 6).18 The poem makes it clear The Book of Thel shares its pastoral opening lines of The Book of Thel as that the "daughter of beauty" will in- setting with both Comus and the Songs well—stem at least partially from deed, as she foresees, "fade away" of Innocence.22 "The secret air" Thel Spenser's account of Venus lovingly (Thell3, 3.21 and 5.12, E 3, 5, and 6). seeks out "down by the river of sustaining Adonis in the "Garden of As Spenser put it in a passage that Adona" (1.2,4, E 3) was inspired by the Adonis" in The Faerie Queene.2* Both Blake certainly had in mind,"... that "regions mild of calm and serene air" Spenser and Milton associate Adonis faire flowre of beauty fades away, / As {Comus 4) from which the Attendant with fertility in the fallen world25—the doth the lilly fresh before the sunny Spirit descends, the "broad fields of the combating of death and decay by means ray."19 She will leave behind no trace sky" (978) to which he returns again in of earthly generation. Time, in Spen- or useful legacy of her existence—"And the closing lines of Comus. Here ser's Garden, "beats down both leaves 23 all shall say, 'Without a use this shining Adonis appears: and buds without regard" (FQ 3.6.39.8). womanliv'd...'" (Thel 5.22, E 5)—be- Though Venus weeps for their loss, cause she refuses to commit herself to Iris there with humid bow, she has no remedy, for "All things de- earthly generation, fearing the pains of Waters the odorous banks that blow cay in time, and to their end do draw" Flowers of more mingled hue Experience that inevitably accompany Than her purfled scarf can shew, (40.9). Adonis embodies the principle sexuality in the fallen world. The Book And drenches with Elysian dew . .. of plenitude, which continually re- of Thel affirms that sexuality, and the Beds of hyacinth and roses, dresses the ravages of Time: giving of oneself in love to procrea- Where young Adonis oft reposes, tion, is good, and a necessary commit- Waxing well of his deep wound All be he subiect to mortalitie In slumber soft, and on the ground Yet is eterne in mutabilitie ment to life on earth. For the most part Sadly sits the Assyrian queen.. .. it does so within a gentle, almost child- And by succession made perpetuall. .. . (.Comus 991-1001) (47.4-6) like ambience that sets this poem apart from the intensity of the Songs of Ex- Milton's rainbow "drenches" and 20 Thel, lamenting by the river of Adona, perience and the later prophecies, and nourishes "beds of hyacinth and compares herself to a "watry bow" (Thel places it between "Innocence" and roses," symbolic of regeneration and 1.8)—Milton's "humid bow." Through "Experience," into which latter condi- love, w h e r e the youth Adonis, beloved a series of parallel similes ("shadows of "the Assyrian queen" Venus, lies in the water," "a smile upon an infants
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6. Draft sketch of emblem, "I found him 7. Draft sketch of "The Angel," Blake's beneath a Tree," Blake's Notebook, Notebook, page 65. By permission of page 63. By permission of the British the British Library. Library. 5. "The Angel," from Blake's Songs of In- nocence and Experience. By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. 108 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92
8. The Book ofThel, plate 2. By permis- 9. The Book of Thel, plate 4. By permis- sion of the Trustees of the British Museum. sion of the Trustees of the British Museum. face," "transient day" [1.9-11, E 3DThel "Lilly" is one of self-sacrifice and self- 10. "The Little Black Boy" (1) from emphasizes the evanescence of the less caring for other living creatures; Songs of Innocence and Experience. By rainbow, where Milton's passage stres- she gives of her own material being to permission of the Trustees of the British ses its functional continuityvj'whm the "nourish the innocent lamb" and "re- Museum. cycle of regeneration. vive the milked cow" (2.5,10), scatters Thel encounters four symbolic fig- her perfume "on every little blade of ses of Luvah," here virtually identified ures. The first, the "Lilly of the valley," grass" (2.9) and goes, after speaking with the fiery horses of the classical is a "gentle maid of silent valleys and with Thel, "to mind her numerous sun-god Phoebus Apollo.27 Luvah is a of modest brooks" (1.16, 22) who re- charge among the verdant grass" (2.18). symbol of sexuality, wherever he ap- tires after speaking with Thel to a "sil- Thel's second dialogue is with a pears in Blake's later work,28 and the ver shrine" (2.2) (illus. 8). Blake's "Lilly" Cloud (illus. 9) which "shewd his gold- Cloud is likewise portrayed, both vi- is primarily Spenser's "faire flowre of en head . . . / Hovering and glittering sually and in the text, as a figure of beauty [that] fades away," but this ap- on the air..." (Thel3.5-6, E 4). Blake's young and virile sexuality. 29 Blake may pealing little "watry weed" is also re- Cloud takes his "bright form" from the have associated the "golden springs / lated—through the "twisted braids of "hovering angel girt with golden wings" Where Luvah doth renew his horses" lilies" knitted into the "loose train of (Comus 213) who accompanies Faith, with the "orient liquor" which Comus, [her] amber-dropping hair" (861-62)— Hope, and Chastity in the Lady's solilo- descendant of the Sun,30 offers to weary to Milton's Sabrina, "a gentle nymph quy in Comus (and is there perhaps to travelers "to quench the drought of . . . that with moist curb sways the be identified with Hope). He also resem- Phoebus" (Comus 64-66). That magic smooth Severn stream" (.Comus 823- bles the "glistering guardian" whom potion "flames, and dances in his crys- 24). Sabrina, sitting "under the glassy the Lady trusts to keep her "life and tal bounds" (672) as Comus presses it cool translucent wave" (860), is "God- honour unassailed" (218-19) (and upon the obdurate Lady, urging dess of the silver lake" (864) and a whose semblance Blake was to bor- ... see, here be all the pleasures patron of maidenhood. She is invoked row for the equivocal guardian of maid- That fancy can beget on youthful by the Attendant Spirit to free the Lady enhood in "The Angel"). The Cloud thoughts, held fast by Comus's magic spell. declares to Thel: "O virgin, know'st When the fresh blood grows lively, and Blake's "Lilly," a self-effacing "little vir- thou not. our steeds drink of the gold- returns Brisk as the April buds in primrose gin of the peaceful valley" (Thel 2.3), en springs / Where Luvah doth renew season (667-70) contrasts with the regal Sabrina, whose his horses?" (3.7-8). "Our steeds," those narcissistic adorning of herself sug- upon which clouds are mounted in These wonderful images of the fires of gests an immature self-involvement moving about the sky, "renew" their lust, spring, morning, and regenera- rather like Thel's own.26 The life of the vitality at the same source as the "hor- tion are tinged in the Miltonic context Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 109
with the evil of Comus's nature, but * - v Blake was obviously determined that X jfc* Ln«6- ** Ai//»*'t << **+4. the devil should not have the best tunes or the finest poetry. Blake chose to associate Milton's phrase from Co mus, "the sunclad power of chastity" (Comus 781), with the lines from Paradise Lost describing the "apostate" Satan "exalted as a god ... in his sun bright chariot... Idol of majesty divine" (PL 6.99101). In Blake's reading of Comus, Chastity is the "apostate," the "idol of majesty divine," for the divinity
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12. Blake, illustration to Milton's Comus, "Comus with his Revellers," c. 1801. Courtesy of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. 110 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92
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$$ft 13. "What is Man!" frontispiece of For Children: The Gates of Paradise (1793). By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. 11 ? h ■ Ski fsV Jl - S\ s* w ^
^) t .a++j s' i 14. Draft sketch of emblem, "What is Man . . ." from Blake's Notebook, page 68. By permission of the British Library. *% ' 't~^j ^\, '' ? t „ 15. The Book ofThel, plate 5. By permis sion of the Trustees of the British Museum. 1 16. (right) Detail. Sketch in Blake's 7^*. /> 4 Notebook, upper left corner of page 58. '*^ix By permission of the British Library. UtUth &<*•>* **«■ ^ 0^^ ^ ^ ■•,■„, ^ ^, Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 111 Like the "humid bow" of Milton's What is Man that thou shouldst suring her "Tis given thee to enter / Iris, the Cloud is a vital link in the cycle magnify him & that thou shouldst set And to return: fear nothing . . ." (5.16- thine heart upon him. (Job 7.17)42 of earthly generation. Comus describes 17). And Thel accepts the invitation. to the Lady his first sight of her two Three of Thel's four visitants—the What does she find in the under- young brothers as Cloud, the Worm, and the Clod of ground realm of Clay? "Couches of the ... a faery vision, Clay—emerge from the context of this dead" (6.3); tombs such as the grand Of some gay creatures of the element verse of Job: monuments Blake had sketched fif- That in the colours of the rainbow live teen years earlier, as a young appren- And play i' the plighted clouds. .. . 44 36 My flesh is clothed with worms and clods tice, in Westminster Abbey. In this (297-300) of dust. ... As the cloud is consumed and "land of sorrows & of tears" Thel sees Blake's Cloud is, like those of Milton in vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to "Vegetated bodies" like that of Daph- the grave shall come up no more. (Job 7.5, this passage, "plighted"—but with a 9) ne, for there "the fibrous roots / Of shift of semantic emphasis.37 The Cloud every heart on earth infixes deep its of the Book of Thel is "plighted" in Thel knows that she too will be "con- restless twists" (6.3-5). Like the Lady in being betrothed to his "partner in the sumed," to become "at death the food Comus, who finds no shelter "from the vale" (3.31, E 5), w h o m he goes to join of worms" (3.23, 25). The Cloud offers chill dew, amongst rude burs and thist- when he takes leave of Thel. The Thel the wise counsel of acceptance. les" {Comus 351), Thel strays, unpro- Cloud's "partner" is "the fair-eyed Though he will "vanish and [be] seen tected and unguided, about the thorny 38 4 5 dew," who "kneels before the risen no more" he assures her that when he undergrowth of the fallen world sun" (3.14), surrendering herself—like passes away he goes "to tenfold life." (illus. 16). She enters a region (de- Spenser's "Morning dew" Chryso- If worms should consume her flesh, scribed by the Elder Brother in Comus) 39 gone —to that divine source of life the Cloud exclaims, "How great thy where "thick and gloomy shadows just as obviously as Thel hides away use, how great thy blessing!" (3.26). damp" are "oft seen in charnel-vaults, from it when she seeks out "the secret For, he tells her, "Every thing that lives and sepulchres / Lingering, and sitting air" (1.2, my emphasis). The "plighted" / Lives not alone nor for itself' (3.26- by a new-made grave, / As loth to couple are "link'd in a golden band 27). The emblem "What is Man!" shows leave the body that it loved . . ." and never part, / But walk united bear- two worms (illus. 13): one realistic, {Comus 469-72). Blake depicts Thel ing food to all our tender flow- crawling in an arc down an oak-leaf, wandering ers'^. 12-16, E 5). Like the "Lilly of the the other with the face of a sleeping valley," they give selflessly of them- ... in the land of clouds thro' valleys child, lying face upwards on an adjoin- dark, list'ning selves, both to one another and to ing leaf, chrysalis-like in swaddling Dolours and lamentations; waiting oft others in the fullfilment of social re- bands. In the Book ofThelthe helpless beside a dewy grave sponsibilities. Like her, also, they have Worm appears to Thel "like an infant She stood in silence, list'ning to the voices of the ground. .. . an oblique, complex, and significant, wrapped in the Lilly's leaf (4.3), and relationship with Milton's argument and {Thel6.6-8, E 6) is shown in just this way on plate 4. It imagery in Comus. cannot speak, but cries like a baby. At last she comes to her own grave-plot, The Cloud brings to Thel the Worm, Thel expresses compassion at its help- where a "voice of sorrow breathed from one of the "numerous charge" (2.18) lessness—"[There is] none to cherish the hollow pit" (6.10). The voice Thel of the "Lilly." The visual image of the thee with mother's smiles" (4.6)—and hears is potentially her own, moaning 40 Worm on plate 4 of the Book of Thel indeed the cries of the infant do raise from the depths of the grave after the (illus. 9) confirms that Blake either had the "pitying head" of the motherly Clod ending of a life-in-possibility to which in mind, or had already sketched, "What of Clay (illus. 15). the maiden has not yet committed her- is Man!" the emblem-design he chose The Clod of Clay "bow'd over the self. This potential self laments the 4 to place first in The Gates of Paradise * weeping infant and her life exhal'd / painful intensity of the experiences of (illus. 13). Blake's introduction of the In milky fondness..." (4.8-9). This last each of the senses in earthly life: Worm confirms an association stem- personage of the poem attains the ul- ming from the caption he wrote in the Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready timate degree of selflessness, willingly drawn, Notebook beneath his rough sketch of giving her life as well as her substance Where a thousand fighting men in the emblem (illus. 14)—the passage for the Worm.43 She echoes the Cloud's ambush lie?. .. from the Book of Job from which he teaching : "O beauty of the vales of Why a Tongue impress'd with honey took its title, Har! w e live not for ourselves" (4.10, E from every wind? Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw 5). In response to Thel's "pitying tears" creations in? (5.7) the "matron Clay" invites Thel to Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror survey her subterraneous "house," as- trembling & affright? {Thel6.13-18) 112 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92 At its climax the agonized murmur ar- may be gained respectively by the -jt CT^_. ticulates the anguish of the sexual sense Eagle and the Mole from their dia- of touch: the pangs of desire frustrated, metrically opposed perspectives and the greater torment of desire satisfied "contrary" ways of life. And they ques- —the agony of self-realization in tion the validity of a distinction be- earthly life that awaits the virgin whose tween Love and Wisdom: "... love name means "desire": indeed is Esse and wisdom is Existere for love has nothing except in wisdom, Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy! nor has wisdom anything except from Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of love. Therefore when love is in wis- our desire? ( Thel 6.19-20) dom, then it exists."48 Blake commented on this passage of At this, Thel rushes "with a shriek" Swedenborg's Divine Love and Wis- back to the "vales of Har." She flees the dom. "Thought without affection makes precepts of teachers who affirm that a distinction between Love & Wisdom, commitment to earthly life demands a as it does between body & Spirit" (E k-Q. continual sacrifice of selfhood. Experi- 603). His annotation indicates that he ential existence in the fallen world is a regards the division between Love and course to inevitable destruction, marked Wisdom in the same light as he does 17. The Book of Thel, plate 6. By permis- by the fierce suffering and terror her sion of the Trustees of the British Museum. that "between body & Spirit"—as a own disembodied voice describes. notion "to be expunged."49 Rather than face that, Thel —who The illumination with which Blake prayed that she might live in "gentle- not yet lost—but only apparently, for concludes the Book of Thel depicts ness"—chooses not to enter into it at the pastoral landscape of that country Thel's choice quite clearly, and inci- all.46 is a false Paradise of arrested develop- dentally suggests the source of his in- Thel's "Motto," in most copies a kind ment. As Blake clearly shows, the con- spiration in Milton's work. Plate 6 shows sequences of the fall of man are of postscript to the poem, suggests that three children—a girl and two young- Thel might have learned more from ineluctable. er boys—riding a dragon-headed ser- In a fallen Paradise continually laid her brief sojourn in the "house of Clay" pent who coils across the width of the than she allowed herself to do: waste by the depredations of Time, page over the legend "The End" (illus. Thel laments that she and every form 17). They cannot be identified from the Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? of living beauty about her must yield text of Thel (or from that of America, 51 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? to this "Great enimy." She longs to Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? where Blake was to use the same motif hear "the voice / Of him that walketh Or Love in a golden bowl? (i.1-4, E 3) again [illus. 18]); and indeed, in their in the garden in the evening time" first appearance, on the final plate of The Mole, the earth-dweller, knows (1.13-14), not in wrath, but "gentlly]."52 The Book of Thel, they may represent "what is in the pit," and may also be a The "Lilly of the valley," herself a "gen- the Lady and the Elder and Younger symbol of the regenerative potential de maid," assures Thel that, litde and Brothers of Milton's Comus, shown al- within experience.47 The Eagle, inhab- weak and ephemeral though she is, most in babyhood. Perhaps, in one of iting the sky and aspiring always in "Yet am I visited from heaven, and he the several possible meanings of the Blake's work to the visionary realm, that smiles on all. / Walks in the valley configuration, these figures embody knows nothing of the realm of Clay. and each morn over me spreads his the desire of both Thel and Milton's The "rod" and "bowl" may at one level Lady to retreat towards the security of hand. . ."(1.19-20). be reminders of the charming-rod and infancy—reversing the natural process When her brief life in time is over the the cup of Comus (illus. 4); a rod may of growth through adolescent sexu- "Lilly" is blessed with the certainty that be a symbol of authority or of the ality into maturity. With the girl astride she will "flourish in eternal vales." The phallus, a bowl may represent the Holy and holding the reins, the three child- Cloud direcdy addresses Thel's fear Grail or be a symbol of the womb. ren ride the seemingly tractable ser- that "like a faint cloud kindled at the Blake obviously intends no simple an- pent—symbol of man's fall—without rising sun / I vanish from my pearly swers to the four rhetorical questions fear.50 Back they gallop, in a leftward throne..." (2.11-12). Although, he says, in "Thel's Motto." All Thel can do is or "sinister" direction, to "the vales of "I vanish and am seen no more," yet look in the direction these questions Har," where the phallic serpent has no "when I pass away / It is to tenfold life, point. They direct her (and the reader) visible sting, in a paradise apparently to love, to peace and raptures holy..." to the indisputable value of such ex- (3.10-11). Thel knows that the Worm perience of the skies and the earth as Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 113 IVJ . 'v ULC i tut: Works Cited Bateson, F. W., ed. Selected Poems of William Blake. London: 1957. Bindman, David, comp. and annot. The Complete Graphic Works of Wil- ^J&up&tel Lot, £, . j^^.jrJFZ,^ liam Blake. London: Thames and Wj w Hudson, 1978. Blake, William. The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Ed. David V. Erdman. New rev. ed. Garden City: Anchor-Doubleday, 1982. (Cited throughout as E, followed by the page numbers.) . The Notebook of William Blake: A Photographic and Typographic Fac- simile. Ed. David V. Erdman with the assistance of Donald K. Moore. Ox- ford: Clarendon, 1973. . Complete Writings. Ed. Geoffrey Keynes. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966. Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Cambridge: 18. America, a Prophecy, plate 11. By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. Cambridge UP, 1929. is loved by God, and that whoever Yet all are vehicles for the divine" force Butlin, Martin. The Paintings and injures it will be punished; but more of life emanating from "[him] that Drawings of William Blake. 2 vols., than that, she learns, the Worm is "cher- smiles on all" and "loves the lowly," New Haven: Yale UP, 1981. ish'd . . . with milk and oil" (5.9-10)— who has linked them all, together with Damon, S. Foster. "Blake and Milton." for, as Blake repeatedly declares, the Worm, in a "golden band" of earth- The Divine Vision: Studies in the "every thing that lives is Holy."53 And ly generation. Thel, inspired by Poetry and Art of William Blake. Ed. the "matron Clay" assures Thel that Blake's complex response to Milton's Vivian de Sola Pinto. London: Victor though she herself is "the meanest treatment of obdurate chastity in Gollancz, 1957. thing," and though her bosom is cold Comus, deplores the loss of Paradise. and dark, "he, that loves the lowly, And she rejects the only alternative — . A Blake Dictionary. London: pours his oil u p o n my head, / And offered to man: coming to terms with Thames and Hudson, 1965. kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands experience, which includes procrea- around my breast . . ." (4.11-12). The tion and generation, in the fallen Dunbar, Pamela. William Blake's Il- divine visitant who "spreads his hand" world. Thel—"desire"—is Blake's first lustrations to the Poetry of Milton. Ox- in benediction over the humble Lilly embodiment of the "female Will," and ford: Clarendon, 1980. and "binds his nuptial bands" about Milton's Comus one of his primary Erdman, David V. Blake: Prophet the breast of the "matron Clay" is also sources for the concept. Against Empire. 3rd e d . Princeton: the force who charges with life the Princeton UP, 1977. "golden springs" where the Cloud's existence is r e n e w e d. Blake typically Erdman, David V., annot. The Illu- makes the female personages passive minated Blake. London: Oxford UP, and acquiescent, and the male per- 1975. sonage, the Cloud, an active agent— an inseminator, while the Lilly and the Gleckner, Robert F. Blake and Spen- "matron Clay" are receptacles for seed. ser. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985. 114 BLAKE/ANILLUSTRA TED QUARTER! Y Winter 1991/92 The Holy Bible, Authorized Version 1 Butlin 1: 373-74. The "Thomas" set of fourth Comus illustration (in both series, (l6ll). New York, American Bible Comwsillustrations is now in the collection the Attendant Spirit addressing the Society, 1967. of the Huntington Library in San Marino, Brothers) by identifying her with the CA. Blake executed a second set for moon-goddess Diana, "represented as a Keynes, Geoffrey, comp. and annot. Thomas Butts c. 1815; this series is in the severe and uncompromising guardian of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. Engravings by William Blake: The Se- chastity" (3D. 2 Butlin 1: 90-91. 11 Compare as well the Lady's soliloquy: parate Plates. Dublin: 1956. 3 Erdman suggests "a beginning date of — . Drawings of William Blake. New 1791 or later, for the inscribing of the O welcome pure-eyed Faith, Songs" and a terminal date of late October white-handed Hope, York: Dover, 1970. 1792. (The Notebook of William Blake, Thou hovering angel girt with golden page 7 of the editorial preface). wings, Milton, John. The Poems of John Mil- 4 The sketch on page 102 of the And thou unblemished form of Chastity ton. Ed. John Carey and Alistair Fow- Notebook was not used by Blake in this ler. London: Longmans, Green, 1968. form in any other extant composition. It is ... [I] now believe part of a series of illustrations of Paradise That he, the Supreme Good ... Pinto, Vivian de Sola, ed. Studies in the Lost interspersed among designs for the Would send a glistering guardian if need Poetry and Art of William Blake. Lon- emblem book The Gates of Paradise. were don: Victor Gollancz, 1957. Blake's so-called "Milton Gallery" is dated To keep my life and honour unassailed. by F. W. Bateson (105) c 1790-91. See Comus 212-18 Raine, Kathleen. Blake and Tradition. Erdman, Blake: Prophet Against Empire 2 vols. Bollingen Series Princeton: (437-39). (Butlin 1: 104; compare with the See my discussion below of the Cloud in Princeton UP, 1968. earliest representation of Adam and Eve, 2: The Book of Thel pi. Ill, 1: 40). The drawing in the 12 Blake first sketched this design as one Shakespeare, William. The Complete Notebook is reproduced as no. 14 in ofhis "Emblem" series, numbering it 42, on Works. Ed. Peter Alexander. London: Keynes (1970). page 65 of the Notebook (illus. 7). In the 5 Collins, 1951. The Marriage of Heaven andHelllQ, E original the "angel" has no wings and is 42. obviously an importunate infant, possibly 6 Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. The last two lines of "The Angel" were the same who is being lifted up by the hair Ed. A. C. Hamilton. London: Longman taken up by Blake from the ending he had from what looks like a cabbage-patch in devised to the long first draft of "Infant the emblem-design on an earlier page of Group, 1977. Sorrow," already written into the the Notebook (illus. 6). The latter eventual- Notebook some pages earlier (E 794, 797- Swedenborg, Emmanuel. Angelic Wis- ly became pi. 1 of the 1793 series For 99). They there conclude a poem, intended Children: The Gates of Paradise, entitled "I dom concerning the Divine Love and to encompass human life from birth to old found him beneath a Tree" (E 32). Blake Wisdom. Trans. Clifford and Doris H. age, which also emphasizes the self- evidently perceived a different application Harley. London: Swedenborg Society, defeating consequences of society's for "Emblem 42," although the themes of 1987. hypocritically repressive attitudes towards the two Notebook designs are related. "I sexuality. found him beneath a Tree" refers to the Tarr, Rodger L. "'The Eagle'versus 'The 7 Visions of the Daughters of Albion 7.11, prudish fiction that mothers found their Mole': The Wisdom of Virginity in Co- E 50. Sketches for the designs finally babies in cabbage-patches, an answer sup- etched with the text of this work appear in plied to children in the eighteenth and mus and The Book of Thel." Blake various parts of Blake's Notebook, sug- nineteenth centuries when they asked Studies 3 (1971): 187-94. gesting that this illuminated book (dated where babies came from. The "witless woe," frigidity and fear of the "maiden Tayler, Irene. "Blake's Comus De- 1793 on its title page) was in the making during the same period as the Songs of queen" of "The Angel" seem a likely signs." Blake Studies 4 (1972): 45-80. Experience. (See page 49 of Erdman's development from an upbringing of this kind. Wagenknecht, David. Blake's Night. preface to the facsimile.) 8 This engraving, executed after Fuseli's 13 Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of "Introduction." Songs of Experience design entitled Falsa ad Coelum mittunt 1.16, E 18. (The plate of "The Angel" is Harvard UP, 1973. Insomnia Manes, is reproduced as pi. reproduced in Erdman, Illuminated Blake XXXV in Keynes [19561; and in Bindman as Werner, BetteCharlotte. Blake's Vision 83.) pi. 80. The banquet scene in the later 14 Visions of the Daughters of Albion of the Poetry of Milton. Lewisburg, PA: Comus series is reproduced by Butlin in 2: 6.8-10, 16, E 49. Bucknell UP, 1986. pi. 628. (My reading of the significance of »5 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the the elephant-headed figure in the Comus Revolution in France (1790). Erdman series does not preclude Pamela Dunbar's points out that Blake's poem "Let the suggestion [241 that it represents the vice of Brothels of Paris be opened . . .," started Gluttony.) on page 99 of his Notebook, satirizes the 9 See note 16 below regarding the dating same passage (Prophet Against Empire of The Book of'Thel 184). 10 Bette Charlotte Werner explains the 16 Blake began to etch The Book of Thel, presence of a mysterious female driving a the earliest of his "prophetic books," in team of serpents in the sky in Blake's 1789 (according to the title page). Erdman Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 115 notes that pi. 6, carrying the final section Thel may have been an allegorized narra- 27 This is the first appearance in Blake's of the poem, and the plate bearing "Thel's tive woven about a miscarriage, or the writings of the Zoa of the passions called Motto," "are later than other plates of Tbel premature birth and death of an infant, "Luvah" (the name is a version of "lover"); in style of lettering... Hence [plate 6] may perhaps Blake's own child. probably the earliest mention of any of the be a revised version of the poem's con- 21 David Wagenknecht comments on Zoas. Blake seems here to attribute to clusion" (Illuminated Blake 40). Kathleen Thel's flight back "unhinderd till she came Luvah the properties of a sun-god, al- Raine (72-75) believes that there are "un- into the vales of Har" that "of course this though in The Four Zoas Luvah's ap- mistakeable allusions" in The Book ofThel last line of the poem represents a failure," propriation to himself of the "Steeds of to Porphyry's Neoplatonic symbolism in but adds that Blake may mean by it "that Light" is treated as a usurpation of the his treatise on Homer's Cave of the Thel can return, at will, to however rights of Urizen, Zoa of the Reason, who Nymphs, which Blake may have derived uninspired a condition ... in short, that has charge of them in the Eternal condition from Thomas Taylor's translation publish- she is still a virgin ([though there are] in- of Man CFZ5.65.5-8, E 344). Kathleen Raine ed in 1788; and also that Blake drew in the dications that she will not remain one derives this passage of Thel from the final section of the poem on Taylor's A forever), but a wiser one than when she "aubade" of Act II of Shakespeare's Cym- Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bac- began" (162). beline. chic Mysteries, published in 1790. 22 Concerning Blake's "idea of pastoral," 17 S. Foster Damon was the first modern Wagenknecht writes that "in terms of the Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings critic to recognize the link between Comus Songs [of Innocence and Experience] the And Phoebus 'gins arise and The Book of Thel, in his 1957 article idea of the pastoral had emerged as the His steeds to water at those springs "Blake and Milton." Rodger L. Tarr per- vehicle for conveying Blake's ambiguous On chalic'd flow'rs that lies . . . ceives Thel as a kind of "negation" of and agonized approach to the problem of (Raine, 1: 169) Milton's doctrine concerning the wisdom 'Generation'" (5). This view is congenial to of virginity. my own approach to The Book of Thel, 28 18 See, for instance, The Four Zoas "The vales of Har" (from Blake's ear- about which Wagenknecht adds that its 7.83.12-16, E 358. lier poem TiriellA, E 277) offer scenes of nature is best appreciated "via the pastoral 29 In Blake's illumination on pi. 4, the pastoral serenity. Though apparently as- ironies and ambiguities of the Songs" Cloud has the form of a young man, almost sociated with primal innocence, they (148). naked but with floating drapery flying 23 prove ultimately to be a setting for the Wagenknecht describes the story of from his body (Erdman, Illuminated Blake condition of senility, or a form of arrested Venus and Adonis as "a primary myth for 38). Blake's figure of Antamon in Europe emotional development. However, see pastoralists" (2). Raine points out an al- 14.15-20 (E 65-66) seems to be a develop- note 52 for a different critical view. lusion to Adonis concealed in the title page ment of Thel's Cloud. J 9 The Faerie Queene 3.4.38.8-9. See the emblem of The Book ofThel 30 The mother of Comus is Circe, discussion below of the significance of the "daughter of the Sun" (Comus 46-57). "sunny" flocks tended by Thel's sisters. The flowers, from whose centers spring 31 Compare the teaching of the Mother Although my own reading of the poem little lovers in amorous pursuit and flight, in "The Little Black Boy" 9-12: takes a somewhat different line from hers, are pasqueflowers, anemone Pulsatilla... I do agree with Kathleen Raine's emphasis The anemone is the flower of Adonis, into Look on the rising sun: there God does (1:106) on this and other parallels between which he was, according to tradition, live, Blake's poem and Spenser's "Garden of metamorphosed.... (1: 105) And gives his light and gives his heat Adonis," and with her assertion that "Muta- away; bility is Thel's theme, as it was Spenser's" She describes these flowers on the title (1: 100). page as an allusion to the theme of And flowers and trees and beasts and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, adding men recieve Further Spenserian sources for The Book Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday ofThel, employed by Blake in a "contrary" that "the association of the flower with (Songs of Innocence, E 9) spirit, are explored by Robert F. Gleckner Easter (pasque) is itself significant" (1: 105). (31-45 and 287-302). Gleckner demon- 32 Blake inscribed and illustrated these 24 trates persuasively that in Thel Blake The Faerie Queene 3.6.43-49. lines on page 36 of the Notebook, and 25 parodies Spenserian and Petrarchan "sub- In Paradise Lost 1.446-52, a river called experimented with another version of the limations of the senses and desire" (32), "Adonis" is named with reference to the same emblem on page 12. His water color both in the Amoretti and in the figure of annual rites of the fertility god Thammuz. illustrations to Comus actually show the Alma in Book 2 of The Faerie Queene. In a gesture appropriate to his conception Lady "root-bound," seated in the knotty Gleckner also relates Thel's wish "to die of Thel, Blake has feminized the name to root of an oak-tree, both at the time when because she is of no 'use'" (293) especially "Adona." Comus finds her (illus. 12) and after the to the encounter between Spenser's 26 Irene Tayler notes Blake's emphasis incursion of her two brothers has set Redcrosse Knight and Despaire in Book 1, on the theme of "narcissicism" in his first Comus and his train to flight. Butlin showing that "Thelis a severe attack upon series of Comus illustrations. See especially reproduces the relevant paintings in 2: pis. the underpinnings ofSpenser's Book I and 71-78 of her essay. Bene Charlotte Werner 616, 622, 624, 626, and 630. Tayler com- the language in which it is couched" (288). differentiates between Milton's perception ments on the Lady's "rooty chair" on page 20 S. Foster Damon (1965), noting that of Sabrina as an agent of grace, and Blake's 53 of her essay. Thel does not reappear in any other of reading of Milton's imagery in Comus 837- 33 "This world of Imagination is the Blake's writings, commented disarmingly 39. Blake, Werner says, perceives that "Sa- world of Eternity; it is the divine bosom that she is "far too nice a girl to fit in brina's restoration, her sea-change, to into which we shall all go after the death amongst Blake's furious elementals" (401). immortality has been accomplished, not of the Vegetated body" (A Vision of the Last Damon speculated that Blake's account of through the paralysis of virginity but fudgment, c. 1810, E 555). through the opening of her senses" (35). 116 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92 34 See note 19 above for this reference to With so sweet sence and secret power Now was the sun in western cadence low Spenser's "Garden of Adonis." vnspide, From noon, and gentle airs due at their 35 Raine's interpretation of the theme of That in her pregnant flesh they shortly hour Thelas "a debate between the Neoplatonic fructifide. (3.6.7.5-9) To fan the earth now waked, and usher in and alchemical philosophies" (1: 99), of The evening cool when he from wrath Plotinus and Porphyry on the one hand 40 Erdman, IlluminatedBlake 38. more cool and Paracelsus on the other, dwells espe- 41 Erdman, Illuminated Blake 268. Came the mild judge and intercessor both cially upon its "watry" imagery, which is 42 This sketch appears on page 68 of the To sentence man: the voice of God they "appropriate to the 'watery' world of Notebook; see Butlin 1: 97. heard generation of the naiads and their ever- 43 Compare "The Clod and the Pebble": Now walking in the garden, by soft flowing streams, to the 'moist' souls who "Love seeketh not Itself to please, / Nor for winds attract to themselves the hylic envelope" itself hath any care, / But for another gives Brought to their ears, while day (1:108) ("... the moist envelope of the soul, its ease ... So sang a little Clod of Clay / declined. ... the generated body, [which is] called a Trodden with the cattle's feet..." (Songs 'grave' because in it the soul is dead from of Experience, E 19). Wagenknecht, while citing the evidence eternity, or a 'bed,' as the place of the soul's 44 The sketches of royal tombs done in from Tiriel for "the usual view that Thel sleep" [1: 1091). Westminster Abbey during the period unambiguously retreats from life at the end 36 Blake wrote out the first three lines of 1774-77 are among Blake's earliest extant of her poem" (151), argues that "Thel's this passage beneath a sketch of an emblem drawings. Butlin 1: 1-14, 2: pis. 1-47. 45 return to the Vales of Har' from the grave on page 30 of the Notebook. See Butlin 1: On page 58 of the Notebook, Blake which the matron Clay has shown her in a 90 ("Emblem 12"). (The design was used made a sketch which may be an illustration moment of vision cannot be construed as in a slightly modified form on the title page to Comus 350-54. a return to an unreal Beulah, but only as a of his Visions of the Daughters of Albion.} 46 Wagenknecht relates Thel's concern 37 Milton's primary sense was "folded," about transiency to her "sexual anxiety," return to ordinary fallen existence, an am- which gives the current English word commenting that "She wants to sleep 'the biguous retreat, perhaps, from both the "pleated." He also offers the undercurrent sleep of death' (so long as it comes gently), horror of the grave and from the passionate of meaning that relates the rainbow to the and her sexual misgivings are deflected intensity of her response to that horror" "plighting" of God's covenant with Noah. into concern for the fading of other in- (150). Wagenknecht's suggestion, which is 38 The "Antamon" of Europe is likewise nocents and into the imagery of God walk- consonant with his reading of Thel, implies "prince of the pearly dew" (Europe 14.15, ing in his Garden in the evening time" that Thel's longing for "gentle" experience E65). (155). (1.12-14, E 3) may be a rejection of the 39 Chrysogone (in Tlje Faerie Queene 47 Rodger L. Tarr proposes this view commitment to romantic "intensity" urged, 3.6.3ff) was the mother of Belphoebe and (193). for instance, in Blake's poem "Day," in Amoret, twin daughters born "of the 48 Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wis- which the sun of creativity arises with wombe of Morning dew" (3-6.3.1), mira- dom 14: 7. "wrath increast . . . Crownd with warlike 49 culously begotten "through influence of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 14, fires & raging desires" (3-5, E 473)—an th'heauens fruitfull ray" (6.2). Chrysogone E49- obvious "contrary" to the "judge and inter- is said to have conceived them while sleep- so Wagenknecht (121) discusses this cessor" who comes as the sun sets, without ing in the sun: motif as it appears in both the last plate of wrath "to sentence man" to a life depleted 7/be/and in pi. 11 of America, relating it to of visionary experience in a fallen world. The sunne-beames bright vpon her body similar motifs in the "Lyca" poems of the 53 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 27, playd, Songs. He restates the questions it raises Being through former bathing mollifide, (158-59), but finds no final answers. E 45; Visions of the Daughters of Albion And pierst into her wombe, where they 5i The Faerie Queene 3.6.39-1. 8.10, E 51; The Four Zoas 2.34.80, E 324. embayd 52 Cf. Paradise Lost 10.92-99: Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 111 A Relief Etching of Blake's Virgil Illustrations by Robert N. Essick he discovery of what purports to Tbe a previously unknown work by a major poet or artist provides a variety of pleasures. Something akin to the sublime can strike the devotee on first hearing or seeing—surprise, wonder, fascination. Pronouncements based on instinctual connoisseurship soon fol- low. Doubters take equal relish in a dismissive sneer and a Shakespearean comment on those taken in ("What fools these mortals be"). If the now controversial object is o n the market— and particularly if it enters that last refuge of unabashed capitalism, the auction room—the true believers are challenged to put their money where their opinions are. Next the scholars, if allowed access, take command. Those who think they have convincing argu- ments for an attribution proceed rapidly into print, ever fearful that the de- bunkers will respond with even more compelling arguments. A recently dis- covered print (illus. 1), immediately identifiable as a version of four of Blake's illustrations to Ambrose Philips' "Imitation of Eclogue I" in Robert John Thornton's school Virgil of 1821, has already proceeded through much of the process outlined above. What follows is an attempt to carry the print into the penultimate stage and argue for its authenticity as a work designed, executed, printed, and hand-corrected by William Blake. In the late summer or early fall of 1990, a member of a Venezuelan fami- ly brought to Sotheby's New York a copy of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, 1863. Although still in the original publisher's binding, the copy was extra-illustrated with the Vir- gil print and several of Blake's rarest graphic works, "The Chaining of Ore," "The Man Sweeping the Interpreter's Parlour," and well-printed impressions 1. Illustrations to Thornton's Virgil, designs 2-5, executed as a relief etching. Image 14.3 x 8.5 cm., plate mark 14.6 x 9 cm., printed on unwatermarked wove sheet 15.9 x 9.9 cm. Size of each vignette, top to bottom: 3-6 x 8.1 cm., 2.9 x 8.3 cm., 3.4 x 8.5 cm., 3.8 x 8.5 cm. Printed in black ink with hand tinting in black. Essick collection. 118 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92 of ten plates from For the Sexes: The ILLUSTRATIONS OF IMITATION OF ECLOGUE I. Gates of Paradise} The vendor indi- cated that the volumes had been ac- quired in their extra-illustrated state from a British diplomat after World War II, but the presence of "The Chain- ing of Ore" hints at an American origin. Previous to this recent discovery, there were only two recorded impressions of the "Ore" print, one now in the LessingJ. Rosenwald Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and an untraced impression exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1880 (no. 84 in the catalogue, from the collection of Mrs. Alexander Gilchrist) and again at the same institution in 1891 (no. 10 in the catalogue, from the collection of E. W. Hooper).2 The su- spicion that the new impression might be the same as the one exhibited in Boston is buttressed by the presence, in volume two of the extra-illustrated Gilchrist, of Horace E. Scudder's essay, "William Blake Painter and Poet," clipped from the New York magazine, Scribner's Monthly 20 (1880): 225-40. The article begins with a reference to the 1880 Boston exhibition and was apparently prompted by it. Yet even if these speculations on provenance are wrong, the very fact that the Virgil print was accompanied by genuine Blake prints of great rarity places it in good company. Whoever had access to what is now only the second extant impres- sion of "The Chaining of Ore" to add ( oi.iM.r and IHK.NOT to his copy of Gilchrist is more likely to have also acquired a unique work by Blake than someone without such demonstrated abilities as a collector. If the Virgil print had arrived singly, it would be a slightly more suspicious object. Nancy Bialler of Sotheby's Print De- partment, an expen in the graphic arts in her own right, immediately sought out professional opinions concerning the authenticity of the Virgil print. One British Blake expert was sent a pho- COI.IM l. tograph of the work and quickly pronounced it a fake. Several others, 2. Illustrations to Thornton's Virgil, designs 2-5, as published in the 1821 including G. E. Bentley, Jr., Donald edition. Wood engravings printed in black. Size of each vignette, top to bot- tom: 3.7 x 7.5 cm., 3.2 x 7.5 cm., 3.2 x 7.4 cm., 35 x 7.5 cm. Essick collection. Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 119 Heald, J u s t i n G. Schiller, J e n i j o y La Belle, Thomas V. Lange, and myself, all ten- ded to believe in the print's authen- ticity u p o n first inspection of the object itself. In her essay on the extra-illus- trated Gilchrist, "William Blake Dis- coveries," Sotheby s Preview (April/May 1991): 16-17, Bialler reproduced the Virgil print, noted that "expert opinion is divided" as to its attribution, that "it is difficult to fit the . . . print into the sequence of other works related to the Virgil project," but that its "innovative technique [on which more later] strongly suggests the hand of Blake." To sell the prints, Sotheby's disbound all but the Gates of Paradise plates (plus an inconsequential impression of Blake's plate after Thomas Stothard illustrating Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, 1783) and offered them in four lots in their 9-11 May 1991 sale of "Old Master, 19th and 20th Century and Contem- porary Prints." The Virgil appeared as lot 9, accompanied by a reproduction in the catalogue. Because of the differing views about the print's authenticity, Sotheby's found it prudent to describe the work as "Attributed to William Blake" and noted that, "although ex- pert opinion is divided, we believe this print should be attributed to Blake." Fortunately, the "Attributed" label held down the bidding that sent its com- panions to record levels and I was able to acquire the print through the agency of Donald Heald. By comparing the newly-discovered print to the well-known wood engrav- ings of the same basic Virgil illustrations (illus. 2), one can quickly perceive many small, and several large, differences in design. All the new vignettes show more image on their sides, much as in proofs of the wood blocks before they were cut down for publication in Thornton's volumes (illus. 3). Yet, the new print does not follow the proofs in every respect, for the latter show a bit more image on the left sides of all 3. Illustrations to Thornton's Virgil, designs 2-5, proof of the wood engravings before four vignettes and a bit less on the right separation and trimming for publication. Size of each vignette, top to bottom: 4.1 x 8.6 side of the bottom vignette. Similarly, cm., 3-5 x 8.6 cm, 3.5 x 8.6 cm., 3.8 x 8.6 cm. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees the width of each vignette in the new of the British Museum. 120 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92 print lies between those of published and proof impressions of the wood en- gravings (see measurements in captions for illus. 1-3). Other design variations are listed for each vignette below: Top vignette. Left arm and hand posi- tion of the figure on the left (the older shepherd, Thenot) differs from the wood engraving. The younger shep- herd, Colinet, wears a transparent body stocking, not the high waisted, knee- length gown of the wood engraving. Indeed, we might think him nude ex- cept for the lines indicating mid-calf cuffs and a sleeve on his left arm. There are a great many more rays of sunlight and more foliage on the tree in the new print; a vine (ivy?) wraps itself about the lower reaches of the tree trunk (no vine in the wood engraving). A w e d g e - shaped cloud extends from behind Colinet's head toward Thenot only in 4. Songs ofInnocence (1789), copy B, 5. Songs of Innocence and of Experience the new version. The left-most sheep frontispiece. Relief etching with hand (1794), copy BB, "The Shepherd." Relief is more clearly a ram in the new print, coloring, 11x7 cm. Rosenwald Collec- etching, hand tinting in black and gray tion, Library of Congress. wash, 11.1 x 6.9 cm. European private but the single sheep clearly pictured collection; photo courtesy of Christie's between Colinet and the tree in the New York. wood engraving is not present, or at most only hinted at, in the new print. The background landscape is divided into two hills in both versions, but the right hill is forward of the left in the wood engraving and just the reverse in the new print. As in the other three vignettes, Thenot's gown is more di- aphanous than in the wood engravings and we consequendy see more of his lineaments. Second vignette from top. The new print lacks the cottage roof in the back- ground, center right, of the wood en- graving. The lines that could be easily mistaken for part of the earthen bank, lower right in the wood engraving, clearly delineate a dog, curled up and apparendy sleeping, as in the preli- minary drawing (illus. 13, middle). Branches of the tree on the left extend over the sun in the new print, which again shows many minor differences in vegetation and the outline of the 6. Songs of Innocence and of Experience 7. Songs of Innocence (1789), copy B, distant hills. Colinet wears his body "The Lamb." Relief etching with hand (1794), copy Z, frontispiece to Experience. stocking, as in the top design, but the Relief etching with hand coloring, 11x7 coloring, 11.9 x 7.7 cm. Rosenwald Col- cm. Rosenwald Collection, Library of lection, Library of Congress. most dramatic difference in the entire Congress. Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 121 group is in the posture of Thenot. In the wood engraving, we see the lower half of his body from the side; in the new print, his whole body is turned toward us with right knee raised to his waist and his unnaturally elongated left leg extended far to the right. His right hand is lower than in the wood engraving and his left arm reaches to the right rather than bending upward at the elbow. The sheep closest to The- not has her head turned to the right (to the left in the wood engraving); the sheep seen in profile above Colinet's right leg is not present, or only hinted at, in the wood engraving. Both tree trunks are of much larger diameter in the new print (compare to the proof of the wood engraving, illus. 3). 8. Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826), Second vignette from bottom. pi. 1. Line engraving, 18.3 x 15 cm., pre- I Colinet again wears his body stocking publication proof state 5. Essick collec- and his crook rests against his left side tion. 10. The Prophet Isaiah Foretelling the and shoulder (more vertical, and Crucifixion and the Ascension. Verso separated from his body, in the wood pencil sketch, approx. 12.5 x 7.5 cm., c. 1821. Reproduced by permission of engraving). The few, easily overlooked, the Trustees of the British Museum. lines below his left hand in the wood engraving clearly delineate his Pan- pipe in the new print. The sheep near- est Colinet holds his head higher and is more intently looking at the man than in the wood engraving. Thenot holds no crook and the tree against which he leans is more dramatically twisted in the new print. The sheep on the hill are less organized than the group marching along in almost mili- tary order in the wood engraving. Bottom vignette. The outlines of clouds and diagonal dotted lines around the tree, perhaps representing rain, ap- pear only in the new print. Both may be responses to the "low'ring sky" and "storms" mentioned in the passage il- lustrated. Colinet's jump-suit now sports a V neckline with a rolled collar, a fashion touch perhaps hinted at by a few lines in the previous design. He lacks the shepherd's crook, so pro- minently displayed in the wood engrav- ing, thereby freeing his left hand for a pointing gesture with index finger ex- tended. The blasted tree to which he points lacks the fissure ("thunder-scar" 9. America (1793), copy I, pi. 10. Relief and white-line etching, detail of top design, approx. 12 x 16 cm. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 122 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92 attentively at Colinet in the second vig- earlier for the illustration of his own nette from the bottom is very similar to pastoral poems. Blake was probably his predecessor responding to the child printing copy V of Songs of Innocence in "The Lamb" of Songs of Innocence for James Vine in 1820, and America (illus. 7). The variant disposition of the copy O for John Linnell in this same sheep in the bottom vignette re- period, and thus the precursor designs sembles the flocks in the first (illus. 8) for the Virgil illustrations would have and last of the Job engravings, first been recently before Blake's attention. executed as water colors c. 1805-06.3 We see much the same sort of borrow- The powerful figure of Thenot in the ings—for instance, the old man enter- second Virgil vignette from the top has ing a tomb from America pi. 14—in a long and distinguished history in Blake's illustrations for Robert Blair's Blake's works. The basic arrangement The Grave(\\\us. 11), executed quickly of his legs, and in particular the pro- for a commercial project in 1805. None minent right knee, first appears in a of the variant motifs in the Virgil print small and crude form on pi. 3 of All are copied mechanically from known Religions are One (c. 1788).4 In 1793, Blake designs; rather, they show an this figure became the threatening but evolution within basic compositional majestic Urizen on pi. 10 of America paradigms of the sort produced by an (illus. 9). The closest parallel with The- original artist. The many minor vari- not is contemporary with the Virgil ants without clear iconographic sig- illustrations, The Prophet Isaiah Fore- nificance also evince the spontaneous 11. "Deaths Door." White-line etching telling the Destruction of Jerusalem proliferation of difference within the with hand-tinting in black and gray work of an artist for whom every act of washes, 18.6 x 11.7 cm. Etched in 1805 (Butlin 773), designed for a wood as an illustration to Robert Blair, The engraving never executed. In a variant execution was a chance for re-con- Grave. Essick collection. preliminary pencil sketch (Butlin 772, ceptualization. It would take a very illus. 10), Blake presents virtually the clever forger indeed to capture not same leg posture as in the newly dis- only Blake's style, but also his sen- in the text) of the wood engraving. The covered Virgil illustration. Although the sibility and typical working habits, with sheep sit rather than stand, with a ram arm and hand gestures differ, both such success. on the right. In the text illustrated by figures express a sense of patriarchal The analysis of design variants leaves the previous vignette, the lambs "re- wisdom and visionary capabilities at least some lingering doubts. For me, quire their absent dams." In the bottom barely suggested by the much weaker these are stilled by a consideration of wood engraving, they are rejoined, with figure of Thenot in the wood- the newly-discovered print's material one lamb on its knees to suckle from engraved Virgil design (illus. 2-3). The and technical features. Blank sheets of its mother. The new print lacks this major design variants in the new Virgil early nineteenth-century paper are still sentimental motif, not called for by print—Thenot in the second vignette to be had, particularly if one is willing Colinet's speech illustrated by the bot- from the top, the sheep in the bottom to cut the flyleaves from old books, but tom vignette. vignette, and the clothing of Colinet in at least we should expect the right sort The major design variants all have all four designs—are more typically of paper in any impression from Blake's precedents in Blake's work of the same Blakean than their very different own hand. He very rarely used any- and earlier periods. Colinet's see- renderings in the wood engravings. thing other than wove paper for his through body stocking was first worn A skeptic might argue that the prints. As Sotheby's auction catalogue by his fellow shepherd in the Songs of variants in the new print are the sign points out, the new Virgil print is on a Innocence (illus. 4-5). In the Ex- of a pastiche manufactured by a clever '"Whatman-type' wove paper" very si- periencefrontispiece (illus. 6), we find forger who has produced designs that milar, perhaps even identical, to the V neckline and rolled collar of the look more like some of Blake's best several of Blake's works of the early bottom vignette, as well as an ivy-like known work than do the wood en- 1820s. Its texture—smooth and fairly vine similar to the one also climbing a gravings. Yet I do not think that such hard—and thickness of 0.19 mm. match tree trunk in the top vignette. Colinet's an argument is persuasive. When given what we find in The Ghost of Abel, both pointing arm and finger remind one of the commission to design illustrations copy C in the Huntington Library and the same gesture used by the adult for an "imitation" of Virgil's pastorals, the impression of pi. 1 in my collection, male in the second plate of "The Ec- Blake is likely to have returned to the and the first title page to the Genesis choing Green." The sheep looking so pictorial repertoire developed years illuminated manuscript, showing a Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 123 Whatman 1821 watermark, also in the the inventor of relief etching handling Huntington. In contrast, Whatman pa- the process with such consummate pers of 1825 (the J o b engravings), 1826 skill. If the new Virgil print is the work (the second Genesis title page), 1831, of a forger, he has surpassed all but a and 1832 (posthumous copy h of Songs few of Blake's own relief etchings in of Innocence and of Experience) are technical excellence. all slightly thicker, at 0.21 mm. The characteristics of the specific The technique used to create the impression at issue indicate that Blake new Virgil print is the most convincing was its printer. The thick and somewhat single piece of evidence for its attribu- grainy ink with reticulated patches is tion to Blake. It is unmistakably a relief typical of his work and distinguishes etching, executed with great skill.5 Some this print from Frederick Tatham's post- of the smaller relief plateaus, when humous impressions of Blake's relief viewed under low-power magnifica- plates. Lithographs and zincographs, tion, are indented slightly into the paper used to facsimile Blake's illuminated —a sure sign of relief printing. The books in the nineteenth century, are slight platemark, a shadow line of the more thinly inked and have smoother outer edge of the relief etching border, surfaces. Their slight reticulations visi- wiped almost clean of ink in this im- ble under magnification are much more pression, is typical of Blake's technique evenly distributed and consistent than 12. The Ghost of Abel (1822), copy A, pi. what we find in the Virgil relief etch- 2. Relief etching, 16.7 x 12.4 cm. Rosen- and also reveals that all four vignettes wald Collection, Library of Congress. were etched on a single piece of metal ing. The wiped etching border also —very probably copper, since a softer suggests Blake's hand, forTatham inked metal such as pewter would not be and printed the borders. But it is the A necessary step in a successful ar- suitable for such delicate work. The subtle handwork on the new Virgil gument for attribution is to fit the new necessity for this border in relief etch- print that speaks most eloquently for discovery into the compositional se- ing, created by the wall of wax con- an attribution to Blake. Several areas quence of the project to which it sup- taining the acid, may have forced the in the print have been touched with a posedly belongs. As Bialler points out, vignettes to present less image on their black wash almost indistinguishable this would seem a difficult task in the left sides than what we see in proofs of from the printed image and perhaps case of the Virgil relief etching. The the wood engravings (illus. 3). The executed in the same pigment, su- major stumbling block is that Blake's plate shows no evidence of white-line spended in diluted glue, used for the preliminary drawings (Butlin 769) for etching or e n g r a v i n g , for e v e n t h e stipple- ink. All six trees bear slight touches, the series generally accord with the like effects on the sheep and landscape with a large patch just above Thenot's wood engravings, not the relief etch- background were created through the raised right hand in the second vig- ing (see illus. 13).6 There is no vine in positive, black-line process of relief nette from the top which might even the drawing for the top vignette and etching alone. We see a similar refine- be visible in the accompanying repro- Colinet holds his crook away from his ment on Blake's basic technique in the duction. We can find a similar use of body in the drawing for the vignette concluding vignette to The Ghost of hand-tinting in black to improve on second from the bottom. Colinet wears Abel (illus. 12)—compare, for exam- the relief etchings in copy BB of Songs his knee-length gown, and Thenot his ple, the stippling on the lower figure's of Innocence and of Experience (see less revealing costume, in all three back with the sheep in the top vig- illus. 5) and on the unique impression drawings. The older shepherd and the nette. This technique, combined with of the white-line etching of "Deaths sheep in the drawing for the second what are for a relief etching extremely Door" (illus. 11). In the latter case, the vignette from the top are arranged as thin lines, permitted the artist to create handwork may have been added to in the w o o d engraving (illus. 2-3). Two a work more delicate than the wood compensate for slight weaknesses in lines in the drawing hint at the cottage engravings and give to faces and ges- the printed image and make it more roof in the middle distance, as in the tures more detailed expressiveness. I acceptable to a commercial publisher. wood engraving. However, the posi- know of no forgeries or facsimiles of A similar motive may lie behind the tion of Thenot's left arm and hand in Blake's relief etchings that even ap- tinting on the Virgil relief etching, so the drawing for the top vignette is mid- proach the artistry of this work. One typical of Blake's own hand and not to way between the relief etching and the can still prefer the wood engravings be found in either posthumous im- wood engraving, while the absence of for their brooding intensity, but it is pressions of the illuminated books or Thenot's crook in the drawing for the hard to conceive of anyone other than forgeries of them. second vignette from the bottom 124 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92 or semi-mechanical means such as casion.8 We do not know when Thorn- counterproofing or caulking, to the ton commissioned Blake to illustrate metal plate. Blake's method of relief the 1821 edition of his Virgil, but Blake etching allows for—indeed, promotes must have been well along on the pro- —initial composition directly on the ject by 15 Sept. 1820 since on that day metal. The drawing surface and the Thornton sent Linnell a proof of "Blake's printing surface are one. All that is Augustus" (Bentley, Blake Records required is a loose pencil sketch like 266), one of the intaglio prints of por- those for some of Blake's illuminated trait busts Blake executed for the Virgil books in his Notebook (Budin 201) or volumes. Whenever Blake was given the alternative drawing for two pages the task of composing some new illus- from TheBookofThel(Budin2l8, now trations for Philips' version of the first in the British Museum). The present eclogue, he was in a position to know absence of detailed preliminary draw- the required format of his designs. The ings or mock-ups for the illuminated 1821 Virgil is the "Third Edition," as its books cannot prove that Blake never title page announces. The first edition made any, but surely he realized that of 1812 was published without illustra- one of the great advantages of relief tions, but two years later Thornton pro- etching was its direct and autographic duced a companion volume of designs, nature, one that unites the early stages Illustrations of the School-Virgil, in of composition and the final stages of Copper-Plates, and Wood-cuts (Lon- 13. Virgil preliminary drawings (Butlin graphic execution.7 Thus, as odd as it don: Rivington et al., 1814). These illus- 769.1-3). Top: Thenot Remonstrates with may seem from the perspective of con- trations were repeated in the second Colinet. Pencil, pen, and gray wash, 4 x 9 cm., for the second cut (top vignette in ventional graphics, the Virgil relief edition of 1819. For the third edition, the relief etching). Keynes Collection, etching may very well be the first ex- some of the earlier blocks were re- Fitzwilliam Museum. Middle: Thenot tant composition in the series, preced- printed, including a group of four cuts and Colinet Converse Seated Beneath ing both the carefully executed pen (vol. 1, facing p. 55, in the third edition) Two Trees. Pencil, pen, and sepia wash, and wash drawings as well as the wood arranged one above the other just as in 3.5 x 9.5 cm., for the third cut (vignette second from the top in the relief etch- engravings. Blake probably did some Blake's relief etching and wood en- ing). Untraced since 1939. Bottom: pencil sketching on paper before turn- gravings. The overall size of these four Colinet and Thenot, with Shepherds' ing to the relief etching, but no evi- designs, 12.7 x 7.9 cm., is only a little Crooks, Leaning against Trees. Pencil, dence of such first-steps has survived. smaller than Blake's relief etching. A pen, and sepia wash, 3.6 x 9.3 cm., for This absence of rough preliminaries is group of five cuts in the 1814 volume, the fourth cut (vignette second from the also true of the vast majority of the with an overall height of 15 cm., is bottom in the relief etching). Collection of Arthur Vershbow. relief-etched designs in the illumi- slightly larger than Blake's work. Those nated books. involved in the production of the third Once one accepts the new Virgil edition probably knew well in advance matches the relief-etched version. A print as authentic and places it first in its intended leaf size, for at 17.6 x 10.3 basic assumption in determining de- the sequence of Virgil designs, other cm. the 1821 leaves are the same width sign sequences is that drawings pre- stages in the composing process and as, and only half a centimeter taller cede all etched or engraved versions. 9 early accounts of responses to the than, the 1814 volume of illustrations. Yet the extant Virgil drawings would designs can be seen in a new light. Thus, Blake could easily have known appear to be transitional between the What follows is a retelling of the his- the size and unusual format required relief etching and the wood engravings, tory of Blake's Virgil compositions that of his illustrations well in advance of and in major design variants closer to takes into account the existence of the any composition and could have pro- the latter. How could the relief etching relief etching. duced the relief etching straight away be the first composition in the series? Robert John Thornton was the phy- without prior use of a more conven- The special properties of relief etching sician to the family of John Linnell, tional arrangement of his vignettes. offer an explanation. Blake's great patron for his graphic Blake may have thought that Thorn- Conventional intaglio etching and works in the final nine years of his life. ton's commission offered a good op- engraving require the preparation of According to Linnell's journal, Thorn- portunity to incorporate his innovative the design in a different medium, usu- ton and Blake called at his home on graphics into a commercial project, ally a drawing on paper. The image is the same day, 19 Sept. 1818, and the much as he had tried to do in 1805 with then transferred, often by mechanical two men may have met on that oc- the white-line etching of "Deaths Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 125 Door" (illus. 11) for R. H. Cromek's and thus may have taken responses to unfamiliar medium. The aesthetic ob- letterpress edition of Blair's Grave. it as statements about the later cuts or jections one can readily imagine—too Like wood engravings, Blake's relief conflated a sequence of two separate crude, too unconventional—may have etchings were printed from their raised events into a single tale.12 As was the been accompanied by moral qualms surfaces with pressure much lighter case with Cromek, Thornton, his "agent" centering on Colinet's near-nudity in than that required of intaglio plates. It William Harrison,13 or his publishers all four vignettes and Thenot's but- is technically possible—and Blake may may have proclaimed that the relief tocks in the top design. Such views are have believed it was commercially vi- etching "will never do." This was not likely to have arisen since the book able—to lock a relief etching into a literally and finally the case with the was intended for use by "Youtm [sic]" chase with type for letterpress print- wood engravings, for they were in- in "Schools" (title page). The re-costu- ing, just as with a wood engraving. deed printed in the 1821 volume. ming in the drawings and wood en- Blake may have also believed that There were probably both technical gravings may not have been Blake's Thornton was amenable to the use of and aesthetic reasons for the evident decision, but Thornton's or his pub- innovative graphics in his book. rejection of the Virgil relief etching. lishers'. Thornton experimented with lithog- The copperplate would have to be cut Unlike his precursor, Cromek, raphy, still a new medium for book into its four sections to accommodate Thornton did not immediately turn to illustration in England, for some of the the letterpress text printed below each another craftsman to execute Blake's designs and included in volume 1 two wood-engraved vignette (illus. 2), a designs. One vignette present in the maps "On Stone by J . Wyld" printed at format established by the 1814 volume relief etching was re-cut in reverse on "The Lithographic Press 6 Dartmouth of designs. The resulting four plates wood by a journeyman (illus. 14), but St. West."10 The title page of the 1821 would have to be mounted type-high it follows Blake's drawing (illus. 13, Virgil indicates that it is a "Stereo- for printing in a typographic press. middle) and wood engraving in the typed" edition. If Blake had known Blake's shallow etching would have position of the sheep and the presence this in advance, he may have thought been difficult to ink rapidly without of the cottage while adding its own it a likely context for his own "Stereo- fouling the whites, a problem that may unique variants (e.g., the positions of type," the word he uses to refer to his have motivated the conversion of some Colinet's head and Thenot's arms). This relief etchings on the second plate of of Blake's Innocence and Experience anonymous cut was probably copied The Ghost ofAbelQWus. 12, lower right copperplates into electrotypes with after Blake's own wood engraving, for corner). higher relief for printing in Gilchrist's the journeyman has left out the dog, When Blake presented the white- 1863 Life of Blake. None of this would clearly visible in the drawing but easily line "Deaths Door" to Cromek, it was have been impossible, perhaps with overlooked in Blake's cut. Blake was almost immediately rejected and the the exception of acceptable printing evidently given a second chance to publisher turned to Louis Schiavonetti quality, but it would have required participate in the project, probably after to execute Blake's designs as conven- journeymen printers to wrestle with an firm orders that he execute wood en- tional intaglio etchings/engravings. The relief etching of the four Virgil vig- nettes—perhaps executed (again, like "Deaths Door") as a sample of Blake's intentions for the entire series of twen- ty designs—was probably met with a similar initial response from their in- tended publisher. According to Alex- ander Gilchrist, when the "publishers" saw Blake's prints they declared that "this man [Blake] must do no more" and that all the designs should be "re- cut by one of their regular hands. The very engravers received them with deri- sion, crying out in the words of the critic, 'This will never do."'11 Gilchrist indi- 14. Blake's Virgil illustrations, third vignette, re-cut by an anonymous journeyman. cates that these opinions refer to the Wood engraving, 2.9 x 7.4 cm., executed c. 1820 and published by Henry Cole in The wood engravings, but he did not know Athenamm (21 Jan. 1843): 65. Essick collection. Cole does not mention any other such re-engravings; but a woodblock of the second vignette, probably cut by the same of the existence of the relief etching hand that executed the example reproduced here, is in the Huntington Library. 126 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92 gravings to match the medium of most in the tradition of Thomas Bewick, I am grateful to Nancy Bialler, Martin of the other illustrations and clothe his whereas Blake's integrations of black Butlin, Thomas V. Lange, and Joseph Vis- comi for their assistance with this essay. characters in a more decorous fashion. and white lines grew from his own In contrast to relief etchings, wood deployment of white lines in relief 1 For details on these works and their engravings require reasonably etchings and the technique of "Wood- sale, see Robert N. Essick, "Blake in the detailed preliminary drawings, either cut on Copper" Blake described in his Marketplace, 1991," forthcoming in this journal. on paper for subsequent transfer to the Notebook and used for plates such as 2 "Deaths Door" (illus. 11). Thornton must For descriptions of these impressions, blocks or drawn directly on them. For see Robert N. Essick, The Separate Plates the Virgil designs, Blake followed the have found himself even worse off of William Blake: A Catalogue (Princeton: first alternative, a decision that may than he began, for Blake had presen- Princeton UP, 1983) 90-92. have been prompted by the desire—or ted him with prints even darker and 3 See Martin Butlin, The Paintings and a request from Thornton—to have the more primitive than the relief etching. Drawings of William Blake (New Haven: It must have been at this point that he Yale UP, 1981) #550.1 and 550.21 (pis. 697 drawings approved before investing and 717). Hereafter referred to as "Butlin" all the time and labor required of wood turned to journeymen to re-cut Blake's followed by catalogue entry number. engraving. The drawings are far less designs, but was finally persuaded, ac- 4 Plate numbers and copy designations challenging to conventional sensi- cording to Gilchrist's familiar story, by for Blake's illuminated books follow G. E. bilities than either the relief etching or several distinguished artists to use se- Bentley, Jr., Blake Books (Oxford: Claren- venteen of Blake's wood engravings. don P, 1977). the wood engravings. One can well 5 "Relief etching" is the term generally imagine a journeyman wood engraver The vignettes were cut down on their used to name the graphic medium Blake turning these drawings into cuts not sides so that they would fit the width used for most of his illuminated books. For very different from others planned for of the book's leaves and cut apart so descriptions of the basic process and the the Virgil volumes, as was indeed the that letterpress text could be placed characteristics of t h e prints it produces, see below each. Either Blake or someone Robert N. Essick, William Blake case with the re-cut design reproduced Printmaker (Princeton: Princeton UP, here (illus. 14) and three vignettes pubr else may have taken these final steps, 1980) 85-120, and J o s e p h Viscomi, The Art lished in the book. As Geoffrey Keynes but in either case the work was very of William Blake's Illuminated Prints has pointed out, Blake's "preliminary probably done as a requirement of the ([Manchester]: Manchester Etching 15 Workshop, 1983). designs gave no hint of what the final publishers or printers. 6 result would be."14 The drawing for the fifth cut (bottom In spite of apparent impediments, vignette in the group at issue) is untraced Blake's next step was to transfer the the newly-discovered relief etching can and unrecorded. drawings to the wood. This he probably be situated into the production pro- 7 For more on the autographic nature of accomplished by making pencil trac- cess of the Virgil illustrations in a way relief etching, see Viscomi, The Art of Wil- liam Blake's Illuminated Prints 4-8. ings of the pen and wash drawings and that complicates, but does not con- 8 counterproofing or caulking them from tradict, the previously known record. See G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1969) 258. the back onto the face of the wood This compatibility, combined with the 9 The size given here for the 1821 leaves blocks. Both these processes will re- design variants and the medium itself, is based on three copies in original sheep, verse the images so that impressions comprises an excellent case for ascrib- the binding in which the volumes appear from the blocks will have right and left ing the work, including its printing and to have been issued. I have never seen an as in the drawings. Except for the first hand tinting, to Blake. This attribution uncut copy. 10 For the documentary records indicat- and largest design, given its own forces some readjustments in our sense ing that Thornton planned to convert block, the vignettes were transferred of the role of innovative graphics in Blake's portrait busts into lithographs, see four to a block, as we can see in proof Blake's career. The Grave project had Bentley, Blake Records 266-67, and Robert impressions (illus. 3). If Thornton, his heretofore been considered as Blake's N. Essick, William Blake's Commercial agent or publishers, had approved of last attempt to use his relief processes Book Illustrations (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1991)112-13. the drawings, they were no doubt dis- for a commercial project. We now know 11 Gilchrist, Life of William Blake (Lon- appointed, perhaps even angered, by that Blake persisted in such efforts into don: Macmillan, 1863) 1: 273. At least parts the engravings. Unlike the Virgil relief the last decade of his life. Sadly, the of Gilchrist's account of the Virgil project etching, in which the image is defined publisher's evident reaction was much may have been based on information sup- by black lines alone, the wood engrav- the same. Fortunately, Blake was gi- plied by Henry Cole, who wrote about Blake's wood engravings in a review of an ings are combinations of white and ven the chance to try his hand at wood edition of Goldsmith's The Vicar of black lines. Other illustrations in Thorn- engraving. Thanks to the remarkable Wakefield, TheAthenceum (21 Jan. 1843): ton's volumes are technically similar, survival of the relief etching, we can 65. Cole quotes "this will never do," also but Blake's w a y of handling the medium now enjoy four of the Virgil designs in cited by Gilchrist. is highly unconventional. The journey- two graphic media in which Blake's 12 Mrs. Gilchrist's possible ownership of men wood engravers were following genius excelled. the Virgil relief etching (see earlier speculations on provenance) is not incon- Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 111 sistent with her husband not knowing of the print. She continued to collect Blake after her husband's death in 1861. The Chamber of Prophecy: 13 Harrison (active 1821-26) is named as Thornton's agent on the 1821 Virgil title Blake's "A Vision" (Butlin #756) page. The book was registered at Stationer's Hall on 12 Feb. 1821, the "Property of Willm. Harrison" (Bentley, Interpreted Blake Books 628). Harrison may have played an important, but completely un- recorded, role in the initial rejection and by Christopher Heppner eventual acceptance of Blake's Virgil il- lustrations. 14 Keynes, introduction to The Illustra- rederick Tatham has long been re- 21 cm.) makes it impossible that it tions of William Blake for Thornton s Virgil Fgarded as an unreliable witness to could have come from the now dis- with the First Eclogue and the Imitation by Blake's intentions, but his comments membered small sketchbook, which Ambrose Philips (London: Nonesuch P, on the drawings that passed through consisted of sheets of approximately 1937) 9, rpt. in Keynes, Blake Studies, 2nd his hands are difficult to ignore simply ed. (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1971) 137. 20.5 x 15.5 cm. There were also a good 15 Michael J. Tolley has recently argued because they often represent the only many drawings done on separate that Thornton welcomed Blake's wood information that we possess. Thus his sheets ofvarious sizes, and the present engravings and included them in his book inscriptions on the drawing known as drawing could conceivably be one of quite willingly; see Tolley, "Thornton's A Vision: The Inspiration of the Poetx them. As if to counter that possibility, Blake Edition," University of Adelaide (illus. 1) have been taken as appro- Library News 10 (1988): 4-11. Following however, Geoffrey Keynes notes that Tolley's lead, Ted Gott has claimed that priate guides to its subject, and what "most of the drawings remained in the Blake trimmed the cuts himself to achieve little commentary there has been has collections of Varley and Linnell."4 their "further rusticizing" and make some focused on the odd spatial sense car- Butlin's catalogue confirms that state- of the vignettes "tighter and more dramati- ried by the perspective of the drawing ment by showing that in virtually every cally charged." See Gott, "'Eternity in an rather than on its subject.2 Hour': The Prints of William Blake," in case the Visionary Heads either have a Martin Butlin and Gott, William Blake in But Tatham's inscriptions need note by Varley, or come from the col- the Collection of the National Gallery of fuller consideration in the light of his lections of Varley or Linnell; many de- Victoria (Melbourne: National Gallery of known unreliability. In the case of this monstrate both forms of connection. Victoria, 1989) 136. These are challenging drawing they read "William Blake./ I The only exceptions noted by Butlin, and interesting views, but I do not find them convincing. As Joseph Viscomi has suppose it to be a Vision/ Frederick other than the drawing under consi- pointed out to me in correspondence, cut- Tatham" and "Indeed I remember a/ deration here, are Visionary Head of a ting an end-grain wood block is exacting conversation with Mrs. Blake/ about Bearded Man, Perhaps Christ (#758), work requiring a special saw. It is unlikely it." I have taken the texts from Butlin's which has a note by Tatham reading that a publisher would allow an amateur, Tate Gallery catalogue, since this gives "one of the Heads Wm. Blake saw in such as Blake, to tackle the job since the k blocks could be damaged by a single false a useful indication of the fact, evident Vision & drew this, attested Fred . Ta- move. in the photograph, and noted by But- tham," and A Visionary Head (#759r), lin, that the two inscriptions are indeed which has a note by Tatham that reads separate. The note about the conver- "one of the heads of Personages Blake sation with Mrs. Blake was obviously used to call up & see & sketch, sup- written in later as an afterthought, posed rapidly drawn from his Vision. being placed under and to the side of Frederick Tatham." Both of these came the original inscription, which records through the collections of Mrs. Blake simply the vaguest of guesses at the and Tatham. In addition, there is the subject. The conversation may indeed dubious case of #764, untraced since have taken place, but it clearly did not 1862, which Butlin suggests may in help a great deal. We are pretty much fact be identical with either #766 or on our own if we want to make an #765, the former untraced since 1876, effort to understand the drawing. and the latter bearing an inscription The drawing is associated by Butlin that is probably by Varley. It seems that with the Visionary Heads drawn by on the very rare occasions when Ta- Blake for, and it seems usually in the tham got hold of one of the Visionary presence of, John Varley.3 The size of Heads, he was anxious to advertise the fact, doubtless in the belief that this the paper used for the drawing (24.3 x 128 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92 would raise the value of the drawing. people, mostly from either British or on the wall; and let us set for him there His identification of the drawing dis- biblical history, which means that the a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a cussed here with the simple statement subjects were not very different from candlestick: and it shall be, when he "I suppose it to be a Vision" is a good those of the rest of Blake's drawings, cometh to us, that he shall turn in thi- deal less confident and specific than though obviously their physiognomic ther" (4.10). In return, Elisha, through the notes added to the two drawings focus gives many of them a close-up his servant Gehazi, called the woman described above, and could well be quality not found to the same extent in to him and promised her a son, in spite read as implying considerable doubt on Blake's other work. We can indeed of the age of her husband (4.12-16). I his part as to whether the drawing was find a very likely candidate for the think it highly probable that the draw- in fact associated with the Varley series. subject of the present drawing in an ing represents Elisha seated in his In addition to the unusual vagueness appropriately Blakean source, the Bible. "chamber ... on the wall"; the odd of Tatham's note, the drawing comes In 2 Kings is an account of how the phrase "on the wall" expresses exactly from the collections of Mrs. Blake, and prophet Elisha used to be invited to eat the relationship between the two then Tatham, and these contain very bread at the house of a woman of spaces in the drawing, making it im- few of the Visionary Heads. Shunem. Perceiving that he was a man mediately intelligible. The situation has now been compli- of God, she said to her husband: "Let Butlin interprets the standing figure cated a little by the rediscovery of the us make a little chamber, I pray thee, as representing "an angel. . . dictating larger Blake-Varley sketchbook, with leaves of 25.4 x 20.3 cm., bearing signs that several leaves were removed early in its history.5 This is closer to the size of the present drawing, but several facts make it unlikely that the drawing comes from this sketchbook. One is that the paper size, though close, does not quite match: our drawing seems just a little too wide (21 cm.) to fit. Another is the evidence of the water- marks; Essick records that some of the leaves of the sketchbook bear an 1804 mark, while Butlin records that the drawing is on undated paper marked "RUSE & TURNERS," and gives evi- dence from G. E. Bentley, Jr., that paper made by that company bore dates of 1810, 1812, and 1815.6 Finally, the drawing we are considering here bears no trace of the interest in physiognomy that was the starting point of the Blake- Varley sketchbook. In short, despite Butlin's association of A Vision: The Inspiration of the Poet with, the Vision- ary Heads, the evidence, including that of his own meticulous catalogues, makes that association questionable. We need not, however, attempt a final answer to the question of the drawing's origin before venturing a hypothesis about its subject. As a peru- sal of Butlin's entries for the Visionary Heads will demonstrate, virtually all of even these apparently free-form designs were illustrations of particular William Blake, A Vision: The Inspiration of the Poet, Tate Gallery, London. Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 129 to a seated figure writing," but the pho- drawing can therefore be identified as torical movement which, in inventing tograph suggests strongly that what the initiating moment of an act of the notion of a cultural history with Butlin has taken to be the wing of an prophetic creation, the calling of life discrete stylistic 'periods,' gathered all angel is in fact the shadow cast by the into being. The hitherto accepted title the possible artistic styles to its bosom standing figure, who comes between of this drawing, The Inspiration of the in an eclectic stylchaos."9 From this the overhead lamp and the wall. There Poet, was not entirely incorrect. stance Mitchell, with the help of fur- is no trace of a wing on the other side This newly focused interpretation of ther insights from Meyer Schapiro and of the figure, and angels with only one the subject of the drawing also makes E. H. Gombrich, develops the idea that wing are fortunately rare.7 If we look possible at least a partial explanation a style is a "cognitive structure" (149), again at the drawing with this of its curious spatial organization. and that Blake's particular forms of hypothesis in mind, we can see a right Rosenblum cites the drawing in the linear abstraction should be read as a angled line on the floor to the right of context of a discussion of the radical kind of code, that style is indeed a part the table, which seems to mark off a "dissolution of postmedieval perspec- of the specific content or "statement" space that could be interpreted as the tive traditions" that occurred around of a design (156), or, as Blake put it, kind of sleeping mat Blake sometimes 1800 as part of the quest for "an artistic "Ideas cannot be Given but in their shows, often in biblical contexts.8 The tabula rasa" (189). Rosenblum's ap- minutely Appropriate Words nor Can visual evidence is slender, but the line proach to the whole question of style a Design be made without its minutely must represent something, and the in- in the late eighteenth century is Appropriate Execution . . . Execution terpretation I offer seems highly founded on the idea that the most vital is only the result of Invention" (PA, E plausible. If this is accepted, we have currents in the changes taking place in 576).10 all the elements mentioned in the the arts of the period "seem motivated More recently Norman Bryson has woman's account—the little chamber, by that late eighteenth century spirit of suggested, in the course of a discussion a bed, a table, a stool (Elisha has to be drastic reform which found its most of eighteenth-century French painting, sitting on something), and the candle- radical culmination in the political re- that we need a history of painting as stick. The fit between story and picture volutions of America and France" (146). sign as well as the more conventional is a good one. This is described as leading to a variety history of such painting as style. The The moment depicted in the draw- of "regressions to what was imagined reason he gives is that "in France the ing is most probably that described in to be the pellucid dawn of pictorial visual arts react not only towards and 4.15-16, when the woman has been art. . . ." (188), in an attempt to return against specific visual styles, but to- summoned and appears "in the door." to a kind of pre-Renaissance innocence. wards and against the Academie and Given the basic arrangement of the Since Rosenblum's influential book was the high-discursive painting promoted design, it w o u l d be impossible for Blake written, several writers moving over by the Academie at different moments to have shown her actually "in the from the field of literature to that of the of its history."11 I would suggest that door," for that would have required a visual arts have taken his ideas about this reason can be generalized; Blake, view into an interior space that would the art of this period further, and two for instance, is in an analogous situa- have been very difficult to convey with- in particular have given close thought tion, seeing himself as one of the brave out fine detail and an elaborate per- to the relationships between style and minority defending "high-discursive spectival scheme, neither of which was meaning. Both begin from Rosenblum's painting" against an environment that a favorite device of Blake's. It would point that there are "many comple- he interprets as supporting "bad (that also have been a space at variance mentary and even contradictory cur- is blotting and blurring) Art" (E 528). with the implications of the phrase "on rents" (146) available during this Bryson, like Mitchell, wants us to see the wall," to which Blake appears to period, and develop from that percep- style during the romantic period as have given priority. It seems likely that tion the further idea that the choice of governed by communicative desire, and Blake would have chosen the key mo- one style from the many potentially chosen from among the "unpreceden- ment of the story, and that is clearly the available is governed by the desire to ted array of styles" available to the announcement by Elisha to the wo- communicate a particular kind of painter at this time (240). Both critics, man that she will "embrace a son"; meaning. using Rosenblum's original insights as though this son dies, he is subse- One of these writers is W. J. T. part of the ground of their argument, quently brought back to life by Elisha Mitchell, who in an essay significantly end by asking us to read style as part (2 Kings 4.32-37). Elisha is the in- titled "Style as Epistemology" uses of the process of meaning production heritor of the mantle of Elijah, "the Rosenblum's insights to develop the rather than as an independent factor Spirit of Prophecy the ever present suggestion that romanticism should operating within its o w n closed system Elias" (.Milton 24.71); the subject of the perhaps be defined as "simply that his- of historical transformation. 130 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92 Detail of A Vision: The Inspiration of the Poet, Tate Gallery, London. I shall use a brief account of what image into two separable areas, "one and directs information towards us, Bryson means by "high-discursive" as which declares its loyalty to the text modifying it in the process. the path through which to resume dis- outside the image, and another which The first thing that needs explana- cussion of the handling of space in asserts the autonomy of the image. ..." tion is the obvious anomaly in the Blake's drawing, reading it this time as Under these conditions, "the image may perspectival structure of the drawing. sign rather than style. Bryson begins risk appearing to be the disconnected Rosenblum comments: his book by distinguishing what he base for a detachable superstructure" At first g l a n c e , the convergent perspective calls the "discursive" elements of an (13). In Blake's language, Execution lines of the outer and inner sanctum seem image from the "figural" elements, de- separated from Invention is in clanger to create two Renaissance box spaces of fining the terms thus: "By the 'discur- of producing an image characterized rudimentary clarity; yet... this simplicity is sive' aspect of an image, I mean those by "unorganized Blots & Blurs" (PA, E more apparent than real. Thus, the shading features which show the influence of the web-like component planes obeys 576). no natural laws, but is manipulated in such over the image of language. ... By the Looking at the drawing again from a way that the would-be effects of reces- 'figural' aspect of an image, I mean this vantage point, we can try to find sion are constantly contradicted, producing those features which belong to the more than stylistic meaning in the odd instead a series of simultaneously convex image as a visual experience indepen- handling of space that drew Rosen- and concave planes whose shifting loca- tions are matched in the history of art only dent of language—its 'being-as-image'" blum's attention. The key lies in re- by the comparable spatial and luminary (6). Out of this discussion comes an membering that it is this space—both ambiguities of early Analytic Cubism. (190) account of perspective as a structure the space that relates the small cham- This offers a fascinating historical leap, which greatly expands the figural as- ber to the surrounding room, and the and places the spatial handling of the pect of an image, ensuring that "the apparent space that mediates between image will always retain features the chamber and the viewer—that drawing in a rich field of comment by which cannot be recuperated semanti- visually determines the relationship isolating it from the other aspects of cally" (12-13). In doing this, however, between Elisha and the world around the work. But for the purposes of this perspective and the semantically neu- him, including ourselves. The handling essay I want to stay with the specific tral excess of information that it en- of space in a design, in other words, is question of the handling of perspec- courages risks the division of the a form of visual rhetoric that shapes tive a while longer, looking at it again Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 131 in the light of the now identified sub- the spectators of the drama, as if to 1 Martin Butlin, The Paintings and ject and basic meaning of the drawing. create a path connecting Elisha and the Drawings of William Blake, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1981) #756. The informa- The vanishing point implied by the viewer. The light brightens the side tion found there must now be supple- junction lines between the side walls walls, though it fades towards the cor- mented with that in Martin Butlin, William and ceiling of the small chamber is in- ners of the room, which are darkened Blake 1757-1827 (London: The Tate Gal- commensurable with that implied by the as if to frame the whole design. But lery, 1990) 251. The Tate Gallery's pur- corresponding junction of the enclos- there is a curious but symmetrical im- chase of the drawing was recorded in a note by Robyn Hamlyn in Blake2$ (1990): ing room; even Blake, with his ability balance in this darkening—if we let 213. to be careless about such things, must our eye travel round the frame in a 2 See Robert Rosenblum, Transforma- have been aware of the discrepancy.12 counter-clockwise direction, we find tions in Late Eighteenth Century Art (Prin- The angle formed by the junction in that the leading edge of each surface ceton: Princeton UP, 1969) 189-91. the outer rooms is so steep that it is is light toned, while each trailing edge 3 Butlin places the drawing among the unclear w h e t h e r w e are looking through is comparatively dark, as if the shading Visionary Heads in The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, but is some- a room with a deeply angled roof or at is designed to suggest a rotational ef- what more cautious in his recent Tate Gal- a strangely marked out planar surface; fect, almost the beginning of a vortical lery catalogue, where he writes: "Although it is therefore also unclear whether the movement. The result is a dynamic different in character from the other figures we see are small and close to emphasis on the centrality and power Visionary Heads this drawing probably dates from about the same time." us, or large and at some distance: our of Elisha's chamber. 4 Geoffrey Keynes, Blake Studies, 2nd usual depth clues do not work proper- Rosenblum's analysis is a very inter- ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971) 130. ly under these conditions. The hand- esting one, and his comments on the 5 I take my information on this sketc- ling of perspective in the drawing primitivist and anti- or unillusionist hbook from Robert N. Essick, "Blake in the contradicts the "would-be effects of trends of Blake's art are well taken, as Marketplace, 1989, Including a Report on recession," as Rosenblum points out, are those on Blake's "technical regres- the Recently Discovered Blake-Varley Sketchbook" BlakelA (1990): 221-24. and thereby makes the apparent space sion to the linear and planar origins of 6 Butlin, William Blake 1757-1827, 251. virtually indecipherable as space. There art" (154-56,187-89). But such commen- 7 I should make it clear that I have not is also a conspicuous lack of the ex- tary leaves unanswered the question seen the original drawing, but am working pected excess of figural information why such trends find their strongest from a very good photograph sent by the associated with perspectival structures exposition in just this drawing, and Tate Gallery which is not very much smaller (12 x 12.3 cm.) than the original (17 in post-Renaissance western painting. indeed the larger question of why x 18 cm.). Blake seems deliberately to have sub- Blake is so attracted to this particular 8 For examples, see Butlin, Paintings verted the conventional functions of style among the many open to him at and Drawings #259, 320, 498, 550.11. perspective, and has thereby almost this moment. The interpretation offered 9 W.J. T. Mitchell, "Style as Epistemology: forced us to read the spaces of the above grounds the stylistic peculi- Blake and the Movement toward Abstrac- tion in Romantic Art" SiR 16 (1977): 146. drawing as discourse rather than fig- arities of this drawing in its specific 10 ure, in Bryson's terms. Read in that content, as part of the meaning of the On this whole issue in Blake, see Morris Eaves, William Blake's Theory of Art way, the handling of space interprets drawing as a whole. A style can be (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982) 79-169. and makes visible the relationship be- understood as not so much the central 11 Norman Bryson, Word and Image tween the state of ordinary experience determinant of a picture as one of se- (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981) 239. 12 and that of prophetic inspiration; the veral possibilities waiting in die wings I appreciate the force of Butlin's re- two are closely related and in com- to be called into action by an appro- mark that Blake was a "very uneven artist and many of his earlier works and scrap- munication with each other, indeed priate subject, and used for the seman- pier drawings are almost totally lacking in one is in a sense inside the other, but tic possibilities inherent within it. technical merit," but the discrepancy here they are also separated by the pro- Any reading of a design by Blake is very obvious, and Mitchell and Bryson give us a new way of conceptualizing such found shift of gears necessary to move which has no accompanying title or between them. That shift has been vi- matters. Martin Butlin, "Cataloguing Wil- text deriving from Blake himself must liam Blake," in Blake in his Time, ed. sually coded in the false perspective of nearly always have a status a little be- Robert N. Essick and Donald Pearce the drawing. low that of total certainty. Neverthe- (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978) 81. The odd shading that Rosenblum less, the reading oudined above seems comments on can also be read as dis- extremely probable to me, and I would course rather than figure. It suggests like to propose "Elisha in the Chamber that while the light emanating from the on the Wall" as a new and appropriate little chamber cannot illuminate the title for this interesting drawing, that is wall that surrounds it, it has the power now happily accessible in the public to project far into the room towards us, space of the Tate Gallery. 132 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92 The Illuminated Books of W i l l i a m Blake David Bindman, General Editor Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion Edited with introduction and commentaries by Morton D. Paley Songs of Innocence and of Experience Edited with introduction and commentaries by Andrew Lincoln These two volumes are being published, at last, in finely crafted editions that provide the opportunity to experience fully the range and intricate interdependency of William Blake's visual and verbal art. The 100 color plates of Jerusalem have been meticulously photographed for this book from the unique original, elaborately hand-colored by Blake himself. Songs of Innocence and of Experience is now reproduced for the first time from the King's College. Cambridge copy— sometimes known as "Blake's own copy"—with 54 stunning color plates. Published in association with the William Blake Tmst Jerusalem Cloth: $75.00 ISBN 0-691-06935-2 Songs Cloth: $59.50 ISBN 0-691-06936-0 Published by the Tate Gallery in the United Kingdom Available from Princeton only in the U.S. and Canada Princeton University Press 41 WILLIAM ST. • PRINCETON, NJ 08540 • (609) 258-4900 ORDERS: 800-PRS-ISBN (777-4726) • OR FROM YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/ANILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 133 ham's work attracted much interest in ignorant: but from Mr. Cunningham's ac- Edinburgh, partly as a result of Cun- count it is evident that his mind was char- MINUTE acterised as much by singularity as ningham's fame as a Scottish poet and originality. It is a dangerous thing for a man essayist. The first volume of the Lives PARTICULARS in this matter-of-fact age of the world, "to had received an anonymous critique see visions and dream dreams:"9 especially (almost certainly written by Reverend as (if we take the case of Haydon for an 3 Blake and the Crichton) in the Gazette of July 1829. instance) the public taste seems scarcely Crichton quit the Gazette in anger in yet to have arisen from portrait to historical Edinburgh Literary 10 early December: he cannot have writ- painting. Gazette—with a ten the two succeeding reviews of Cun- We are thus induced to make a few Note on Thomas De ningham's Lives, which appeared in the extracts from the biography of Blake, not Quincey Gazette in the following year.4 Unlike only as we regard it as the most singular in the first notice of Cunningham's Lives the volume, but as it is likely to be the newest to our readers. He appears to have (which had contained Scottish words, been a poet as well as a painter. David Groves phrases, and place-names), the second review is almost entirely English (ra- Though Blake lost himself a little in ther than Scottish), with its references the enchanted region of song, he he Edinburgh Literary Gazette of seems not to have neglected to make to William Hazlitt, Henry Fuseli, and himself master of the graver, or to 1829-30 was "edited by the Rev. T several other literary or artistic figures have forgotten his love of designs Andrew Crichton: and the literary de- in contemporary London. The second and sketches .... u partment . . . principally entrusted to review has never been reprinted, or The account of his drawing portraits from Mr [Thomas] De Quincey and myself," mentioned in print, since it first ap- 1 imagination, under the impression that they wrote the poet David Moir in 1838. peared on 13 February 1830: stood meantime visibly revealed, is very This weekly periodical has received strange, and somewhat unaccountable: as virtually no attention from scholars. FAMILY LIBRARY, NO. X— also of his holding converse with the spirits One cause of its neglect is probably the CUNNINGHAM'S LIVES OF BRITISH of the departed great on the sea-shore at PAINTERS.5 Gazette's policy of withholding the twilight.12 There is something wildly im- names of the authors of its articles. The Family Library, No. X. The Lives of the pressive in this enthusiasm, awakening at Some of its better-known contributors, most eminent British Painters, Sculptors, once our pity and our admiration. As was and Architects. By Allan Cunningham. Vol. including De Quincey (the "English to have been expected, this waywardness II. London: J. Murray. 1830. of disposition led to an old age of poverty Opium-Eater"), the Scottish novelist and neglect, sweetened alone by the com- John Gait, and the poets Thomas Hood ALTHOUGH sufficiently alive to the panionship of his admirable wife. We have and Allan Cunningham, probably merits of Lockhart's Napoleon, and Milman's Jewish History,6 we are free to given their courtship: let us conclude with feared that they might jeopardize their confess that none of the volumes of the Blake's death-bed:— positions with more lucrative journals Family Library have hitherto delighted us such as Blackwood's Magazine, if their more than the Lives of the Painters and He had now reached his seventy-first pieces in the fledgling Gazetteappezsed year, and the strength of nature was Sculptors by Allan Cunningham. 13 2 fast yielding. .. . with their names attached. Many of At first we had doubts as to whether the Gazette's regular contributors may Allan was exactly the best calculated per- It is delightful to trace to progress of a have read the remarks about William son for the task, and we thought that a man of true genius. No earthly impedi- Blake in that journal in 1830. Although formidable competitor might be found in 7 ments can resist his progress: on he goes, the authorship of this review remains Hazlitt, by any other periodical caterer, in conquering and to conquer:14 soaring and monthly volumes, to the public taste. We a mystery, some evidence seems to ascending over the clouds that at first hid have, however, been most agreeably dis- suggest that Thomas De Quincey may him from sight, or obstructed his early appointed. In the collection of facts and aspirations. Such is Allan Cunningham, to have played a role in its publication. In materials, the imagination of the poet has any event, the article is interesting for whom we shortly intend dedicating a lead- been kept in subjection. His biographies ing article.15 He has written a multitude of its discussion of Blake as both poet are well digested, and are written with that good things: but, excepting his inimitable and painter, and for bringing Blake's feeling which never fails to raise a corre- imitations of the old ballad,16 his "Lives of work to the attention of readers out- sponding interest in the heart of the reader. the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects," is side England. In the former volume we were par- his best. ticularly pleased with the life of Gains- The occasion of these remarks about borough: although in Hogarth he had an William Blake was the publication of The reference to Cunningham by his ampler fund of materials to draw from. The the second volume of Allan Cun- volume before us takes in West, Opie, first name alone, in the second sen- ningham's Lives of the Most Eminent Bird, Morland, Fuseli, and Blake.8 Of the tence of this review, is v e r y striking. Of British Painters, in London. Cunning- latter, we confess, we were comparatively all the known regular contributors to 134 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92 the Edinburgh Literary Gazette in 1830, was obliged to produce, for economic were said to contribute included William only Thomas De Quincey and Thomas reasons, at about that time.22 But in the Jerdan and James Fraser (the editors, Hood knew Allan Cunningham: all absence of external evidence, the most respectively, of London's Literary Gazette and Eraser's Magazine). John Parker Law- three men had worked extensively for that can safely be claimed is that De son, and the Edinburgh drama critic Chris- the London Magazine during 1821-23. Quincey probably saw the article about topher Tonop (see anon., "Literature: The On the surface, an article in the 1830 Blake in the Gazette. Edinburgh Literary Gazette," Glasgow Gazette which refers to Cunningham Whoever wrote the remarks on Blake Courier [newspaper] 5 Nov 1829 [21]). Robert Macnish (known to readers of simply as "Allan" might be suspected in the Edinburgh Literary Gazette, it Blackwood's Magazine as "The Modern as having been written by either De seems likely that the piece attracted Pythagorean") was also advertised as a Quincey or Hood. Yet the statements some interest, not only among readers contributor (see Edinburgh Evening Post about Blake seem too matter-of-fact to in Scotland, but more especially among [newspaper] 16 Jan. 1830 [23]). For further be plausibly attributed to either of those those contributors to the Gazette-who information on the Gazette, please see my articles "Thomas Hood, London, and the authors. The article also contains more had been acquainted with Allan Cun- Edinburgh Literary Gazette" in English biblical allusions than would perhaps ningham. The Gazette enjoyed a rela- Language Notes, 27 (March 1990): 34-39, be expected in a short piece by Hood tively high reputation during its fourteen and "John Gait, the Edinburgh Literary or De Quincey. Since the same review months of existence, with an appeal Gazette, and 'The Black Ferry'" in Scotia.- also refers to "Mr. Cunningham," it may that was mainly "confined to the sound American-Canadian Journal of Scottish Studies 12 (1988): 44-54. have been the product of more than reasoner, and philosophical enquirer."23 3 Anon, rev., "Cunningham's Lives of one pen. David Moir, who was the Although the Gazette seemed "emi- British Painters," Edinburgh Literary most frequent reviewer for the 1830 nently fitted to succeed,"24 its circula- Gazette: Devoted Exclusively to Literature, Gazette, makes no mention of the tion unfortunately never exceeded Criticism, Science, and the Arts. 1 (1829): three notices of Cunningham's Lives, in 300.25 169-70. This initial review of his voluminous surviving papers.17 Cunningham's work may reasonably be A grant from the Social Sciences and attributed to Andrew Crichton. (Crichton A third review, concerning the third Humanities Research Council of Canada, was born in Kirkmahoe, Scotland, where volume of Cunningham's Lives, ap- for the purpose of researching Scottish pe- he knew Cunningham slightly as a youth: peared in the Gazette of 12 J u n e 1830. riodicals, allowed me to live in Scotland the reviewer claims Cunningham as "an Although this final piece does not men- while writing the present article. early acquaintance," and refers fondly to tion Blake, it seems to have been writ- "Kirkmahoe" [169]. For information on Crichton, see the Dictionary of National 1 ten by the same critic who wrote the David M. Moir, "Life of Dr Macnish," in Biography.) 18 second review. The third review re- 4 his edition of The Modern Pythagorean: a Crichton "resigned the editorship" on fers to Cunningham by his first name, Series of Tales, Essays and Sketches, by the 12 December 1829, and subsequently had and even as "our friend Allan." The late Robert Macnish, LL.D., 2 vols. (Edin- "no further connexion" with the Gazette burgh: Blackwood, 1838) 1: 153. Moir (see anon., "Literary Chit-Chat and evidence of a possible connection (1798-1851) was a popular Scottish poet, with De Quincey comes in the form of Varieties," Edinburgh Literary Journal 3 known to readers of Blackwood's Edin- [1830]: 28). a private letter, from the owner of the burgh Magazine through his pseudonym "Delta" (or, "A"); he is mainly remembered 5 Anon. rev. in Edinburgh Literary Gazette to David Moir, dated five days Gazette 2 (1830): 103-04. The only other today as the friend and biographer of John before the publication of the third re- mention of Blake was a brief an- Gait. view: the letter simply states enigmati- nouncement, in the "Literary Intelligence" 2 The Gazette promised to identify the cally (after discussing Moir's own column of 28 Nov. 1829, that "The next contributors of its various articles, but was number of the Family Library" would be work for the Gazette), "De Quincey is prevented from doing so by the sudden "the second volume of the Lives of British in town & at Wilson's as you will see bankruptcy of its owner David Blackie in Painters, including West, Fuseli, Barry, from the inclosed."19 Whether "the in- 1830, followed by his sudden death from Blake, Opie, and Morland" (Gazette 1 closed" was an article of De Quincey's, cholera in 1832 (see Moir, "Life of Dr Mac- [18291: 463). nish," [153n]). The Gazette's four "valued 6 John Gibson Lockhart's History of an article by someone else which De correspondents" in London were "Miss Quincey was merely conveying to the Napoleon Buonaparte, and Henry H. Landon" (known to readers as the poetess Milman's History of the Jews, were both Gazette, a book intended for review, "L. E. L."), and "Messrs. T. Hood, Alaric published in 1829, in the same "Family or something quite different, is un- Watts, and Allan Cunningham" (anon., "To Library" series (published by the firm of clear. Since De Quincey undoubtedly Correspondents," Edinburgh Literary John Murray) in which Cunningham's Lives 20 Gazette, 1 [18291: 192). By 1830, con- appeared. knew about William Blake, and had tributors included the poets Maria 21 7 a high opinion of Allan Cunningham, Jewsbury, William Howitt, and Thomas The reference is perhaps to William it is conceivable that the two reviews Pringle, and miscellaneous Scottish writers Hazlitt's conversational portrait of the painter James Northcote, entitled Boswell of Cunningham's Lives'm the 1830 Ga- Andrew Laing, William MacGillivray, John Malcolm, Andrew Picken, Leitch Ritchie, Redivivus (1827). zettemight have been among the rapid 8 and David Vedder (all of whom are named The quotation is from the New Testa- pieces of journalism which De Quincey in the two special Anniversary Numbers of ment: "Your sons and your daughters shall 15 May and 22 May 1830). Others who prophesy, and your young men shall see Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 135 visions and your old men shall dream ham, the promised "leading article" never W David Blackie, letter to Moir, 7 June dreams" (Acts 2.17). materialized. 1830 (National Library of Scotland MS Ace. 9 The artists mentioned by the reviewer 16 Cunningham wrote many "imitations 9856, no. 37). By "Wilson's," Blackie refers are Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88), Wil- of the old ballad" for R. H. Cromek's to John Wilson, the editor of Blackwood's liam Hogarth (1697-1764), Benjamin West Remains o/Nithsdale and Galloway Song Edinburgh Magazine, who was a close (1738-1820), John Opie (1761-1807), Ed- (1810). Cromek (who also published the friend of De Quincey. Manuscripts in the ward Bird (1772-1819), George Morland 1808 edition of Blair's Grave, with designs National Library of Scotland are quoted with the permission of its Trustees. (1763-1804), Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), by Blake) would perhaps have been the 20 and Blake. The reviewer has neglected to best-known link between Cunningham De Quincey mentions "that fine mys- mention James Barry (1741-1806), who and Blake, in Scotland in 1830, where tic, Blake the artist," before quoting from also merits a chapter in Cunningham's Cromek was still renowned for his Reliques Blake's poetic dedication to the 1808 edi- second volume. ofBurns(1808). For further information on tion of The Grave, in his "Society of the 10 The historical painter Benjamin Cunningham's association with Cromek, Lakes" (1840; rpt. Collected Writings 2: Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was im- see David Hogg, The Life of Allan Cunnin- 400). Although this is the sole reference to prisoned for debt during 1822-23. gham (London: Hodder and Stoughton, Blake in De Quincey's known writings, it 11 The review quotes three paragraphs 1875), and De Quincey, "London Reminis- suggests a fair degree of interest and familiarity with some of Blake's work. (beginning with this sentence), dealing cences" (1840: rpt. Collected Writings of 21 with Blake's "intertwin[ing] of poetry and Thomas De Quincey, ed. D. Masson, 14 De Quincey describes Cunningham as painting," and his relationship with his vols. [Edinburgh: Black, 1889-90] 3: 146). "a man of so much original genius" in his wife Catherine, from Cunningham's 17 None of the three reviews was men- "London Reminiscences" (1840; rpt. Col- volume (147-49). The three paragraphs are tioned by Moir, either in the formal list of lected Writings 3: 146). It is perhaps sig- printed as a single paragraph, and contain his own contributions to the Gazette nificant that, in a letter of 7 July 1829, numerous other minor alterations, in the (which he left at the time of his death in his Cunningham wrote to an unknown cor- review. private papers), or in his almost weekly respondent, concerning De Quincey and 12 Cunningham describes Blake's letters to William Blackwood (in which he the Edinburgh Literary Gazette. "I see you "friendships with Homer and Moses: with regularly informed Blackwood of his latest are united with my friend Mr De Quincey Pindar and Virgil: with Dante and Milton," publications). Moir's correspondence and in this Critical undertaking of yours. ... I during his three years at Felpham, begin- private papers survive at the National beg you will name my name to him" (Na- ning in 1800: "These great men, [Blake] Library of Scotland (see the Blackwood tional Library of Scotland MS Ace. 15973, f. asserted, appeared to him in visions, and 32). collection, and Accession 9856) and the 22 even entered into conversation" Hives 2: Thomas Fisher Rare Book Room (Univer- For a listing of many of De Quincey's anonymous articles, "written with the left 159). sity of Toronto Library). 18 hand" from 1829 to 1846, see R. H. Byrns, 13 The review quotes three paragraphs The reviewer displays a familiarity with the previous volumes, and recalls "Some Unrepublished Articles of De Quin- (beginning with this sentence), dealing cey in Blackwood's Magazine" {Bulletin of with Blake's last days and death, from "[hlaving in our former notices had oc- casion to dwell on our friend Allan's Research in the Humanities 85 [1982]: 344- Cunningham's volume (179-80). As with 51). the preceding quotation, the three para- qualifications for the office of an historian" » H., "Edinburgh Chit-Chat," Kelso Mail graphs appear as one, and contain several (anon, rev., "Family Library," Edinburgh Literary Gazette 2 [1830]: 374-76). The (newspaper), 15 Oct. 1829 (1). minor alterations, in the review. 24 14 The reviewer alludes to the New Tes- second and third reviews are similar in "Literature: The Edinburgh Literary style and in their "English" perspective: but tament: "And I saw, and behold a white Gazette," Glasgow Courier (cited in n2, both are extremely unlike the initial review horse: and he that sat on him had a bow: above). of the Lives, in spite of this reference to "our 25 and a crown was given unto him: and he David Blackie, letter to Moir, 14 July former notices," the second and third went forth conquering, and to conquer" 1830 (NLS MS Ace 9856, no. 37). reviews were almost certainly written by (Revelation 6.2). someone other than the author of the first W Although the Gazette carried many review. notices and reviews concerning Cunning- Bennett's list of Stothard illustrations. is marked at the top of the plate. The Six Illustrations by An edition of The Tatler: with Illustra- book itself was published in London Stothard tions and Notes contains what are in 1786 by a long list of parties, begin- probably the six illustrations for an ning with "C. Bathhurst" and including Alexander S. Gourlay "unknown author and title . . . For Ri- both Rivington and Joseph Johnson vington" in Bennett's list under the along with 23 others. Robert N. Essick year 1785 (67). The six plates, one in notes in a private letter that the sub- n his thorough review of Shelley M. each of six volumes, are inscribed jects of these plates are described in A. IBennett's Thomas Stothard: The Me- "Publish'd Deer. 1st 1785 by J C. Coxhead's Thomas Stothard, R. A. chanisms of Art Patronage in England Rivington & Son's St. Pauls Church (London: A. H. Bullen, [19061172-73); circa 1800(Blake23 [1989]: 205-09) G. Yard London, for the Proprietor's," he suggests that Coxhead was working E. Bentley, Jr. invited readers to send and were engraved by Heath, Collyer, from extracted plates in the Balmanno in any addenda to his addenda to and Cook. The place of each in the text Collection, British Museum. 136 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92 A Reprinting of Blake's Cadell and W. Davies, 1800). In its original context, the plate illustrates Follies & Fashions Portrait of Thomas Hayley's "Epistle VI" on his grief over Alphonso Hayley the death of his natural son, a student of Flaxman's in the art of sculpture. In grandfathers Tuer, the image faces p. [237], one of Jenijoy La Belle (1807) the prefatory descriptions of the "Em bellishments" bound at the beginning e have long known that a few of of each chapter containing reprints of essays all from the same month in 1807.2 WBlake's copperplates for his *•»*■'/*»«.'•.»»»■» •/&«•>»».*» commercial book illustrations were re These prefaces are not themselves re printed many years after his death. The prints, but appear to have been written Hesiod and Iliad outlines based on by Tuer as brief descriptions of his John Flaxman's compositions were re miscellaneous illustrations for each published by Bell and Daldy in 1870. chapter. The paragraph on Blake's plate, Blake's large engraving of Hogarth's p. [237138, headed "Mr. Hayley the "Beggar's Opera" painting was reprint Sculptor" in the "September" chapter, briefly outlines Thomas Hayley's ac ed by Bernard Quaritch Ltd. c. 1880 F„U if Tmtr. Tkt U*4,nl*U "Prnt. t C. and by the university presses of Har complishments, his death at the age of S,mfhn, Mtnl.,11 if Co lltmullu,. <*. notes that "in the major part" his il- bility that Blake's work was repro- bookmark ribbon, also in drab canvas lustrations "are printed direct from the duced by some form of photogravure, with the title again in needlepoint. Tu- original copperplates" (emphasis mine, but the context in which the print ap- er's efforts to costume his production p. ii). "Many" and "major" are exag- pears makes this improbable. There is in a way compatible with the fashion- gerations, but Tuer and his Leadenhall no textual rationale for the inclusion of able ladies in his illustrations have pro- Press did specialize in acquiring old Hayley's portrait; the only references duced an amusing failure. coppers and reprinting them. Several to it appear in what is in effect a cap- In all three copies inspected, Blake's of the plates in the first edition of Tu- tion written specifically for the print. plate is printed on a cream wove paper, er's Bartolozzi and His Works (1881) Thus, the inclusion of the portrait 0.16 mm. thick. Essick, in his recent are indeed printed from Francesco Bar- seems to have been motivated by the catalogue of Blake's commercial book tolozzi's o w n intaglio plates. The wood availability of a useable copperplate illustrations (see nl), locates in his col- engravings in Tuer's 1,000 Quaint Cuts that more or less suited Tuer's highly lection an impression on laid paper. from Books of Other Days (1886) and miscellaneous volume. No such op- This is in the same state as the plate in his Pages and Pictures from Forgotten portunity would have presented itself Tuer's book and printed in the same Children'sBooks(1888-89) are printed if Tuer had to go to the trouble of brick red. The paper is the same cream from the original blocks. Is the portrait making a photogravure plate from a color and has chain lines the same of Thomas Hayley another of Tuer's print in an obscure book picturing a distance apart (2.5 cm.) as the stock restrikes from the original plate? virtually unknown would-be sculptor. used for Tuer's letterpress, but at 0.22 Tuer's print is clearly an impression Thus, there is every reason to believe mm. is slightly thicker than the text from an intaglio plate. The best evi- that the portrait of Thomas Hayley jus- paper (0.12 mm.). Certainly the Essick dence for this is not the prominent tifies Tuer's claims about using the ori- impression is to be associated with plate mark, which could have been ginal copperplates for some of his Tuer's project and not, as Essick specu- made from a blank copper impressed illustrations. lates, with "separate impressions" over an image produced in a different As the second leaf after the title page printed by William Hayley "as me- medium, but the slight relief of the ink in The Follies & Fashions explains, the morials of his son."4 The sheet size of that can be felt with the finger. This volume was published in three for- Essick's print, 21.4x13.5 cm., is smal- effect is caused when the paper is forced mats. Only three "Special copies, Large ler than either format of the book. It into etched or engraved lines to draw Paper, crown quarto, the text printed may be a proof of some sort, although up the ink residing in them. If the on Brown Paper" were issued. I have it could have been issued in some copies original plate w a s used, however, Tuer not seen a copy of this format, created in any format, including those few has converted it into a new state. The by Tuer as a lark, priced at the ridic- with the "text" (but not the plates?) "on copper was cut down on all sides from ulous sum of "Ten Guineas." The next Brown Paper." Bentley (see nl) lists a a plate mark (in An Essay on Sculp- most sumptuous issue, represented by "proof printed in Red" of the plate from ture) of 22.5 x 16.3 cm. to 14.5 x 11.3 the copy now in my collection and one the Essay on Sculpture picturing "The cm., thereby conveniently eliminating at the Huntington Library, San Marino, Death of Demosthenes," then in the the facing page number for the 1800 California, is "Large Paper . . ., crown collection of "Mr. Walter Fancutt" (575), volume and the original imprint (Pub- quarto [25.4 x 19-2 cm.], with earliest but Essick has "been unable to locate lishdjune 14. 1800 by Cadell & Davis impressions of the plates; .. . two hun- this impression" (81). It is of course Strand). Careful comparison, using both dred and fifty only, signed and num- possible that Bentley made an error, low and high power magnification, bered, at Three Guineas." Last and least particularly if he had to rely on repor- has revealed no further differences in is "Demy octavo [22 x 14.2 cm.], . . . ted information or if he were recording either the design or the remaining in- Twenty-five Shillings." A copy of this only plate numbers in his notes and scriptions that cannot be accounted for third format is in the Doheny Library, mislabeled an impression of pi. 3 by slight differences in inking.3 The University of Southern California, Los (Thomas Hayley) as pi. 2 (Death of delicate halo effect in the stippling along Angeles. Both quarto copies I have Demosthenes). If however Bentley is the top and sides of the medallion's inspected and the single octavo copy correct, then it a p p e a rs that at least one background is exactly as in the impres- are bound in the same decidedly unat- more of the three plates by Blake in the sions of 1800. Even the smallest fea- tractive quarter drab (a sort of dirty Essay on Sculpture survived into the tures of Blake's engraved signature— medium brown) felt over drab paper 1880s and was reprinted by Tuer. for example, the gaps between the two boards. The front cover and spine la- It is tempting, although perhaps futile, strokes forming the "a"—and the ends bels are drab canvas with the title (black) to speculate on how Tuer managed to of the hatching lines that extend slight- and decorations (gold) stitched in acquire Blake's plate of Tom Hayley. ly below the medallion are identical. needlepoint. The most bizarre element, In most circumstances, the publisher One must allow for the slight possi- however, is the enormous attached (Cadell and Davies) or the printer (A. 138 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92 Strahan) of the 1800 volume would and happenstance, Tuer created a minor ly numbers," but that is simply a mis- addition to the bibliography of works understanding of Tuer's attempts to make have retained the copperplate. Perhaps, it look as though each chapter is a journal in his searches for plates by Bartolozzi containing Blake's engravings. issue with its own combination title page or miscellaneous wood blocks for old and table of contents. children's books, Tuer simply came 1 For this and other basic information 3 I am grateful to Robert Essick and upon the portrait plate by accident and about Blake's copy engravings noted in Thomas Lange for assistance with this in- this essay, see G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake decided that it would contribute to the spection and technical details. Books (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 4 William Blake's Commercial Book Il- period charm he was assembling for and Robert N. Essick, William Blake's lustrations 81. Essick does allow for the his Follies & Fashions. If he noticed the Commercial Book Illustrations (Oxford: possibility that his impression "could have "Blake" signature at all, it was probab- Clarendon Press, 1991). been created many years later by someone 2 ly of no consequence to him. By luck The National Union Catalogue claims else," as we now know to be the case. that Tuer's book was "published in month- The women on the left in the engrav- imagination in Blake's hands, and he Blake and Bonasone ing are presumably Cloelia's fellow extensively adapted the riders to the hostages, those on the right may rep- context of Burger's poem. Cloelia was Alexander S. Gourlay resent by prolepsis the Romans who replaced by the young masculine form sent the escapees back to Porsenna, of Death (in the guise of Leonora's and the unhappy-looking woman cling- lover William), who hails the approach- n intriguing instance of pictorial ing to the horse's neck is probably ing specters rather than clinging to the Aborrowing in a Blake design is his Cloelia; the woman seeming to float horse's neck, while the blithe young appropriation and modification of the along behind her may be the aristo- woman conducted by Cloelia became central figures from an engraving cratic Valeria. the frightened Leonora, her flowing (illus. 1) by Giulio Bonasone (1531- Blake could have owned a copy of drapery replaced by a modern night- 74), derived from a fresco by Polidoro the engraving or seen it by some other gown. No other elements of Blake's (Caldara) da Caravaggio (1495?-1543). means, but it seems most likely that he complex design seem closely related From Bonasone Blake drew inspira- knew of it through his friend George to the Bonasone engraving, though tion for elements of his frontispiece Cumberland, who wrote a treatise and certain stylistic features may have in- picture depicting Leonora's dream in fluenced Blake's works as late as the catalogue on Bonasone that includes a 1 the third "New" edition in 1796 of the brief account of the print: engraved Dante illustrations. Stanley translation and revision of Bur- Blake could have been borrowing ger's Leonora. The Blake picture is Two young Females, mounted on a horse, galloping across a river; in the back ground without much thought, perhaps even known only through the published stip- [sic], tents and trees; on the left side of the unconsciously. But he might have be- ple engraving by "Perry," here shown plate, seven other women loaded with lieved that he was redeeming an an- in a unique proof from the collection children and baggage; on the right, six cient pictorial subject that, like the of Robert N. Essick (illus. 2). women and two children, with their arms Laocoon, had been appropriated by extended, one of whom sits: 17 V\ inches The Bonasone engraving (Bartsch by 11 ¥4. Ju Bonaso imitando pinsit & classical culture and applied to "Na- No. 83) mirrors Polidoro's fresco with celavit. This is generally called Clelia es- tural Fact" (E 273). If he agreed with some elaboration (see Massari 1: 67- caping from the camp of Porsenna, but Cumberland that the subject was mis- 68; Marabottini 1:78,355-56). Polidoro improperly. G. C. (83) named—and anyone who read Pliny's and Bonasone's subject is "Cloelia Cumberland's initials at the end of the Natural History rather than the Plu- Crossing the Tiber" and depicts the entry signify that he owned a copy of tarch text might well think so—Blake may have supposed that the subject Roman heroine leading an escape of the print. called "the Cloelia," like Cloelia her- hostages from the camp of Porsenna. In illustrating Burger as translated by self, was a hostage to the slaves of the The primary verbal source was pro- Stanley, Blake borrowed only the es- sword. Certainly the Burger desig n stands bably Plutarch's Moralia (Mulierum sential composition rather than the in a curious knot of adaptive, redemp- Virtutes) or a commentary upon it, for exact forms of Bonasone's horse and tive and transumptive activity, what I believe that text to be the only one of its riders. Blake's lost design was pro- with Stanley translating and transmuting the many possible sources that spe- bably reversed when Perry copied it; Burger's poem to save Leonora from cifies that the escaping women wrapped its figures would have been oriented the consequences of her impetuous their clothing on their heads; most as in Bonasone. The stocky animal in wish to die, William/Death transporting others say little more than that Cloelia the Italian print became an impossibly Leonora beyond virginal obliviousness, bravely swam the Tiber, with or with- attenuated fire-breathing horse of the out a horse, or received a horse later. Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 139 2. Perry after William Blake, frontispiece to Leonora. Proof engraving with pencil. 1. Giulio Bonasone after Polidoro da Caravaggio, Cloelia Crossing the Tiber. Courtesy of Robert N. Essick. Engraving, second state. Courtesy of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund. Cloelia conducting the hostages over Easson, Roger, and Robert N. Essick. (8 Feb. 1796) edition of Stanley's translation. 2 the Tiber, and somebody—probably William Blake: Book Illustrator. 2 vols. The verses "Alter'd from Young" are Blake, but conceivably Stanley or some- not present in Essick's proof; see Easson Normal IL and Memphis TN: American and Essick (2:107): one else—cobbling together verses Blake Foundation, 1972-79. from five different passages in Young's O! how I dreamt of things impossible, Emerson, Oliver Farrar. The Earliest Of Death affecting Forms least like Night Thoughts to supply eight apt- English Translations of Burger's himself; sounding but drastically "alter'd" en- Lenore: A Study in English and Ger- I've seen, or dreamt I saw the Tyrant graved lines below the frontispiece.2 It dress, man Romanticism. Cleveland: may not be a coincidence that a very Lay by his Horrors, and put on his Smiles; Western Reserve UP, 1915. similar leaping horse also figures in Treacherous he came an unexpected guest, Blake's imaginative response to the Erdman, David V., ed. The Complete Nay, though invited by the loudest Calls description of Hal in Henry IV, Part Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Of blind Imprudence, unexpected still; One, the pictures of A Spirit Vaulting Berkeley: U of California P, 1982. And then, he dropt his Mask. from a Cloud to Turn and Wind a Grant, John E., Edward J. Rose, and Here are the original lines, cited by Night Fiery Pegasus (also an altered quota- Michael J. Tolley, with David V. and line from Cornford's edition (these tion; see Budin #547.6 and 658). There also correspond to the text and lineation in Erdman, eds. William Blake's Designs too a martial subject from someone Blake's Night Thoughts illustrations in for Edward Young's Night Thoughts. 2 else's work is re-envisioned as an alle- Grant, et al.): "Souls . . . wander wild, vols. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1980. gory about the leap of the imagination. through Things impossible!" (6.470-71); Marabottini, Alessandro. Polidoro da "He most affects the Forms least like him- Caravaggio. 2 vols. Rome: Edizioni self (5.827); "I've seen, or dreamt I saw, WORKS CITED the Tyrant dress; / Lay by his Horrors, and dell'Elefante, 1969. Burger, Gottfried Augustus. Leonora: put on his Smiles" (5.841-42); "(Come A Tale. Trans. J. T. Stanley. "A New Massari, Stefania. Giulio Bonasone. 2 when he will) an unexpected Guest? / Nay, Ed." London: William Miller, 1796. vols. Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1983. tho' invited by the loudest Calls / Of blind Imprudence, unexpected still?" (5.386- Butlin, Martin. The Paintings and Young, Edward. Night Thoughts. Ed. 88);". . . He drops his Mask" (5.877). Drawings of William Blake. 2 vols. Stephen Cornford. Cambridge: Emerson's suggestion (19) that Blake was New Haven: Yale UP, 1981. Cambridge UP 1989. the adapter is more than plausible, given Blake's involvement in illustrating the Cumberland, George. Some Anecdotes Night Thoughtsin 1795-96; who else would of the Life offulio Bonasone, A Bolog- 1 Certain other details of Blake's picture have been so steeped in Young as to he nese Artist. London: G. G. J. and J. may have been suggested by Chodowiecki's able to recall these far-flung lines, and frontispiece for the German edition, which would have had the nerve to create such a Robinson, 1793. had been included in some copies of t h e first ransom note in verse? William Blake called himself a "sublime Artist" and acknowledged his own power to create "the Most Sublime Poetry." Words of Eternity reveals the fundamental importance of the term "sublime" in a defining of Blake's poetic achievement. This first full-length study of Blake and the sublime demonstrates that a sophisticated theory of sublimity permeates his writings, serving him as a personal poetics. "With the context that this book supplies, we take a quantum leap in the sense we can make of Blake's project De Luca opens our eyes to a Blake, and a sublime, that will never again be the same for us."—Nelson Hilton, University of Georgia Cloth: $3° 50 ISBN 0-691-06874-7 Princeton University Press 41 WILLIAM ST. • PRINCETON, NJ 08540 • (609) 258-4900 ORDERS: 800-PRS-ISBN (777-4726) • OR FROM YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE