AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY VOLUME 24 NUMBERS WINTER 1990/91 BLAKE/ANILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1990/91 £%Ue AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY VOLUME 24 NUMBER 3 WINTER 1990/91

CONTENTS

ARTICLES 102 Steven Blakemore, Burke and the Fall of Language: The French 80 The Printings of Blake's Dante Revolution as Linguistic Event, Engravings reviewed by Lisa Plummer Crafton by Robert N. Essick 103 Jerome J. McGann, Towards a MINUTE PARTICULARS Literature of Knowledge, reviewed by Michael Fischer 90 A New Voice on Blake Bruce E. Graver 106 Historicizing Blake: A Conference at St. Mary's College, Strawberry 94 John Clerk, Esq. Hill, 5-7 September 1990, David Groves reviewed by Jon Mee

REVIEWS NEWSLETTER

96 David Fu Her, Blake's Heroic 108 Blake's Fax, Blake And The ISSN, Argument, reviewed by Reproductions Of Blake's Faerie Brian Wilkie Queene, Trianon Press Archive Exhibition 99 Martin Bidney, Blake and Goethe: Psychology, Ontology, Imagination, reviewed by Stuart Atkins

101 David Lindsay, ed., Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience, and Robert F. Gleckner and Mark L. Greenberg, eds., Approaches to Cover: William Blake, Dante engravings Teaching Blake's Songs of plate 6, "The Pit of Disease: The Falsifiers." Innocence and of Experience, Courtesy of the British Museum, Depart• reviewed by Edward Larrissy ment of Prints and Drawings.

©1991 Copyright Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY

issues of the current volume. Foreign CONTRIBUTORS EDITORS addresses (except Canada and Mex• ico) require a $6 per volume postal surcharge for surface mail, a $15 per Editors: Morris Eaves, University of volume surcharge for air mail delivery. STUART ATKINS is Professor of Ger• Rochester, and Morton D. Paley, U.S. currency or international money man Emeritus at the University of University of California, Berkeley. order necessary. Make checks payable California at Santa Barbara. to Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. Ad• Bibliographer: Detlef W. Dorrbecker, dress all subscription orders and re• USA PLUMMER CRAFTON, an In• Universitat Trier, West Germany. structor of English at West Georgia lated communications to Patricia Neill, College, is finishing a dissertation on Review Editor: Nelson Hilton, Blake, Department of English, Univer• Blake's Songs and Wordsworth's Lyri• University of Georgia, Athens. sity of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627. cal Ballads for the University of Ten• Associate Editor for Great Britain: Many back issues are available at a nessee. David Worrall, St. Mary's College. reduced price. Address Patricia Neill for a list of issues and prices. ROBERT N. ESSICK is Professor of Production Office: Morris Eaves, English at the University of California, Department of English, University of Manuscripts are welcome. Send two Riverside. Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627. copies, typed and documented accor• ding to the forms suggested in The BRUCE E. GRAVER, Associate Profes• Telephone: 716/275-3820. MLA Style Manual, to either of the sor of English at Providence College, Fax: 716/442-5769. editors: Morris Eaves, Dept. of English, is editing Wordsworth's Aeneid trans• University of Rochester, Rochester, lation and Chaucer modernizations for Morton D. Paley, Department of NY 14627; Morton D. Paley, Dept. of the Cornell Wordsworth. English, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720. English, University of California, DAVID GROVES, a Canadian univer• Berkeley, CA 94720. Only one copy Detlef W. Dorrbecker, Universitat sity lecturer, is the author of six books will be returned to authors. Please send Trier, FB III Kunstgeschichte, Postfach on the poet and novelist James Hogg disks if your manuscript was typed on 3825, 5500 Trier, West Germany. (1770-1835). a computer; note the name of the com• Nelson Hilton, Department of English, puter, the word processing system used, MICHAEL FISCHER is Professor of University of Georgia, Athens, GA and the file name of your article. If English at the University of New Mexico 30602. possible, have your disk converted to and the author of Stanley Cavell and WordPerfect 5.0. Literary Skepticism (U of Chicago Press, David Worrall, St. Mary's College, Straw• International Standard Serial 1989). berry Hill, Waldegrave Road, Twick• enham TW1 4SX, England. Number: 0l60-628x. Blake/An Illus• EDWARD LARRISSY is author of Wil• trated Quarterly is indexed in the liam Blake(.1985), and Reading Twenti• Modern Language Association's Inter• eth-Century Poetry: The Language of national Bibliography, the Modern Gender and Object (Blackwell, 1990). Humanities Research Association's INFORMATION Annual Bibliography of English Lan• JOHN MEE, Lecturer in English at the guage and Literature, The Romantic Australian National University, is the Movement: A Selective and Critical author of Dangerous Enthusiasm: Wil• Managing Editor: Patricia Neill Bibliography(ed. David V. Erdman et liam Blake and the Culture of Radical• Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly is al.), American Humanities Index, the ism in the 1790s (forthcoming, Oxford published under the sponsorship of Arts and Humanities Citation Index, University Press, 1992). the Department of English, University and Current Contents. of Rochester. BRIAN WILKIE, Professor of English at the University of Arkansas, Fayette- Subscriptions are $40 for institutions, ville, is the author of Blake's Thel and $20 for individuals. All subscriptions Oothoon (English Literary Studies, are by the volume (1 year, 4 issues) 1990) and (with Mary Lynn Johnson) and begin with the summer issue. Sub• Blake's "FourZoas": The Design of a scription payments received after the Dream (Harvard UP, 1978). summer issue will be applied to the 4 80 BLAKE/ANILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

The Printings of Blake's Dante Engravings By Robert N. Essick

s readers of the annual sales reports after J. Ls death 0- L- jnr)—had 50 Ltd. The references to both the Job and Ain this journal may have noticed, copies (india on drawing paper) Dante engravings make this previ• complete sets of Blake's engraved illus• printed by Holdgate."1 This statement ously unrecorded letter worth printing trations to Dante's Inferno have consis• provides crucial information: there in full: tently fetched over $30,000 at auctions were only two printings, laid India th during the last few years. As a conse• paper (or chine applique) was used May 18 . 92 The Avenue 76 Fulham Road quence of this high value, dealers have for both, and Holdgate Bros, printed SW the second issue of 50 impressions become increasingly interested in ways r of ascribing a particular set of the seven "soon" after Linnell's death in 1882. Dear M Quaritch plates to a specific press run since the We are not informed, however, about I waited a few days before sending you earliest impressions would command the date, printer, and press run of the the five sets of Job you ordered—thinking the highest prices. In response to re• first printing.2 Fortunately, other I might send the Dante same time—but my quests for information on this matter, records in the Ivimy collection fill in brother James whom I saw yesterday tells as well as a desire to demonstrate how these gaps. Two receipts from the plate me that there is a hitch in getting the Dante printed because the man whom my father economic imperatives influence the printers Dixon & Ross, No. 4 St. James's employed & whom we wish to do it now Place, indicate that £2.15s. was paid by study of printed images as much as is ill, though he is expected soon to their making, I began to study various Linnell on 26 September 1838 for "25 recover— I told my brother that I would sets of the Dante plates to correlate of each of 7 Plates Dante India," and a undertake to get it done safely & as well by their physical characteristics with the further £1.10s. on 2 October 1838 for some others—but in the country they are I known dates of printing. Since there "95 Imp", of 7 Pits. Dante India."3 think too conservative & slow coach— are records of only three print runs in These receipts make it clear that there however I will have my man bring up the the nineteenth century, the problem were actually two early press runs. That 10 sets of Job either tomorrow or Friday— seemed easily solvable. But the situa• they were paid for only a week apart, I was about writing fathers to bring me 5 tion is far more complicated than I had and may have been performed even sets tomorrow but if they cannot look out the 10 in time he will bring them up Friday. anticipated, as the following report closer in time, accounts for the younger With regard to the printing of the Dante it Linnell's reference to nineteenth-cen• will demonstrate. occurs to me that perhaps you might know The documentary record of print• tury printings at only "two dates," a who is the best copperplate printer in Lon• ings is less complete, and its inter• habit continued by modern scholars don and if you know that he is also pretation by scholars less accurate, but one that I will abandon here. As for thoroughly trustworthy (supposing we left than one would wish. The first to offer the third printing, a draft of a letter the plates in his hand for a time) I think we any information on the subject were from John Linnell, Jr., to the London might save time. —of course I should give Bentley and Nurmi, who in their 1964 book dealer Bernard Quaritch, dated 6 the printer precise instructions as to the Blake Bibliography quote from per• May 1892 states that the Dante "proofs" style of printing, etc. With regard to the Papers which you tinent documents in the Joan Linnell (i.e., impressions from the 1838 print• ings) had been "disposed of and that alluded to in a previous letter—have you Ivimy collection. Since John Linnell any suggestions to make as to the par• the family was "about to obtain a few had commissioned the Dante illustra• ticular kind? tions from Blake in 1824, and since the more copies of proofs—similar to the I rather think that Whatmans drawing copperplates remained in the Linnell former ones." Bentley and Nurmi paper is the nearest in quality and ap• family's possession until their sale to reasonably conclude that "the second pearance to the old prints. I mean India on Lessing J. Rosenwald in 1937, these [i.e., third] commercial printing of the Whatman. So at present I cannot say any records have considerable authority. Dante plates was therefore about definite time when the Dante will be ready— In a "List of John Linnell Senior's Let• 1892" (89). but I will endeavour to get on as fast as I can make my brother James move on—he ters and Papers," John Linnell, Jr., The letter actually sent by the being Co Trustee we must go together. wrote that the Dante plates "have been younger John Linnell to Quaritch has printed at two dates, after a few proofs never been located, but in October scn Yours dearly and very truly by Blake—Jlohnl. L[innell] . in 1 1989 Arthur Freeman discovered a let• William Linnell S[eries]—(at Bayswateii)] had India ter from another Linnell son, William, proofs taken (all disposed of)[.l soon in the archives of Bernard Quaritch, Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 81

Several details in this letter are sig• on 2 October, leaves the precise num• Bentley provides answers to the nificant. Since the elder Linnell died in ber in doubt. Did Dixon & Ross pull 95 questions surrounding the 1838 press 1882, "writing father[']s" for more Job impressions of each of the seven plates, runs in his Blake Books of 1977. He impressions must refer to his home at thereby producing 95 complete sets, or prints therein the following transcrip• Redstone Wood, Redhill, Surrey, which a totalof 95, thereby yielding 13 Dante tion made by Iain Bain from the day• John Linnell, Jr., probably inherited as sets plus four extra prints? The former books (i.e., business records) of Dixon the eldest son. Surprisingly, there is no might seem the more likely, in spite of & Ross: direct reference to John Jr. (born 1821), the absence of the word "each," since for the letter is written as though Wil• the first receipt records the number of Wednesday 26 September 1838 sets rather than the total number of Mr Linnell 25 of each of 7 pits Dante Ind[ta] liam (born 1826) and James (born 1823) 87 1/2 Sh[a2its. of th[*dk. pl[a]$e] had sole responsibility for the reprint• impressions. At least this would ap• Coliombier] [i.e. 2 pulls per sheeA ing of the Dante plates.4 William's re• pear to be the reasoning behind Sir 25 [sheets] of India [7 pulls per sheeft quest for advice on finding a printer for Geoffrey Keynes's statement, in his re• Saturday Septr 29th 1838 5 the plates opens up the possibility that vised Blake Studies of 1971 and again Mr Linnell 95 Imp" of 7 pits Dante India in the Blake Trust facsimile of the Dante [i.e. 13 4/7sets] Holdgate was chosen on Quaritch's 47 Shts of Pit. Col. [2pulls per sheets recommendation. In his draft letter of engravings (1978), that a total of 120 13 4/7 [sheets] of India [7'pulls per 6 May, John Jr. notes that the restrikes sets were printed in 1838 (i.e., the 25 sheet\6 should be "similar" to the 1838 impres• paid for on 26 September plus 95 paid sions. William's letter stresses this desire 2 October).5 This figure has been fre• This daybook apparendy records the to imitate the earlier printings and quently repeated by dealers and auction actual printing, as distinct from the bill• alerts us to the possibility that impres• houses and seems to have been widely ing dates, and thus the two press runs sions on Whatman paper are from the accepted as an indisputable fact. But occurred only three days apart. As c. 1892 printing. one detail in the 1838 receipts should Bendey's bracketed interjections indi• The 1838 receipts, quoted above, are give us pause. If 25 sets cost £2.15s. on cate, these two printings yielded 38 unambiguous as to the number of im• 26 September, why would 95 cost only sets (and four additional impressions), pressions (25) taken from "each of 7 slightly more than half that amount six not the proverbial 120. His accurate Plates" in the first printing; but the days later? figure is crucial in shaping expecta• record of the second printing, paid for tions about extant suites of the engrav• ings. If the larger number had been produced, then we could expect that most extant sets were printed in 1838 since only 50 were produced c. 1892. But we now know that well over half of the 88 documented nineteenth-cen• tury impressions on laid India were printed c. 1892. Given the additional 54 years in which the 1838 impressions could have been destroyed or lost, we can expect most extant suites to con• sist of c. 1892 impressions. Both 1838 press runs recorded in the Dixon & Ross daybook used "Col[ora- bier]" paper. This apparent reference to the venerable French papermaker was probably the basis for Keynes's assertion that all 1838 impressions are on "French Colombier paper."7 How• ever, by the late eighteenth century, "Colombier" was regularly used in ref• erence to a sheet size, not a specific manufacturer or country of origin.8 The Colombier produced by Whatman, 1. Dante engravings plate 6, "The Pit of Disease: The Falsifiers." Image 24.1 x 34 cm., whose paper Blake used for many of plate-mark 27.7 x 35.6 cm. Pre-publication proof, probably printed by Blake. British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings. 82 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

his illuminated books and the Job en• gravings, measures 34 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches (87.6 x 59.7 cm.).9 Further, the Dixon & Ross daybooks show that the firm acquired five quires of Colombier- size paper in 1835 from S. Tipper & Co., agents for Whatman.10 Thus, there is no reason to assume that any 1838 impressions were printed on a paper of French manufacture. A French paper may have been used, but I have yet to find a Dante set, or any record of a set, definitely printed on such a paper. Armed with the documentary record surveyed above, we can now turn to extant suites of the Dante engravings. Our concern should focus on the quality of the impressions, particularly as this shows various amounts of wear in• dicative of printing sequences, and the paper on which they are printed. Hand• written inscriptions and provenance information can also supplement the 2. Dante engravings plate 3, "The Baffled Devils Fighting." India paper laid on wove, primary physical evidence. image 24.1 x 33.4 cm., plate-mark 27.9 x 35.6 cm. Formerly Essick collection. We can begin by setting aside the easily-identifiable impressions pulled version of the pencil inscription. The one set on "German copper-plate" in this century. In 1953-55, Rosenwald dates following the signature appar)par-• (Todd 5). The Kochi paper (or "Koji," had sets printed on heavy, dead-white ently record the time of inscriptionlan and the name of a papermaking district, wove paper with a surprisingly bold, presentation, not printing. Keynes, Blake not a specific manufacturer) is fairly pebble-grain surface. The plates had Studies, notes that "twenty sets, with thick but soft, with a much smoother to be printed with considerable pres• three extra prints of the first platedate" surface than the pebble-grain paper sure in order to smooth the paper suf• (229) were produced in this reprintingiting. used c. 1954. In a letter dated 29 July ficiently to register fine lines. In a He records the same number of sets, 1968 to Ruthven Todd, Rosenwald complete suite of these restrikes in the without reference to the extra pulllis of stated that he inscribed each impres- Huntington Library, San Marino, Cali• plate 1, in Blake's Illustrations of Dante~>ante sion in pencil, "Printed by Harry Hoehn fornia, each sheet measures 35.5 x 50.5 (131). Todd, Blake's Dante Plates (see 7/68 . . . Restrike from a plate in my cm. and is inscribed in pencil, lower note 13), states that Rosenwald wrotvrote collection . . . Lessing J. Rosenwald" right, "Impression taken from the cop• him, "on August 22 [1968?], that to0 the (Todd 6). A 1968 suite on thick wove per plate in my collection 1953-41.1 best of his recollection, 25 sets were paper (apparently the "German cop- Lessing J Rosenwald 4/19/55." One pulled in 1955" (4). Fortunately,, the per-plate") in the Rosenwald Collection, sheet shows a watermark ("MADE IN differing statements about the date1 anandd National Gallery of Art, Washington, ENGLAND [space of approx. 15 cm.] number printed do not hinder the recog2cog•- lacks the reference to Hoehn but is LINEN FIBRE"); another bears a few nition of the c. 1954 impressions onnth thee inscribed on each plate, lower right fragments of these letters. A set in the basis of the pencil inscriptions and just beneath the image, "A restrike from National Gallery of Victoria, Melboume, paper. Some plates yielded fairly decenecent the copperplate in my collection August has the watermark on four sheets, plus impressions in this printing, but otherthers 1968U Lessing J Rosenwald" (see illus. a countermark ("UNBLEACHED AR• are weak and flat. Plate 3, "The Baffleiffledd 5). This set, with a sheet size approx- NOLD") on the remaining three, and Devils Fighting," is little better thalan a imately 36.5 x 45 cm., also bears a light 12 is inscribed on each plate, "Impression pale ghost in the Huntington set.12 pencil inscription lower in the right taken from the plate in my collection Rosenwald commissioned a furtheirther corner on all but plate 4, "printer's in 19551.1 Lessing J. Rosenwald printing of 25 sets in 1968.13 ThesTiese proof 7/68," written by Ruth Fine, Cura- 1/20/60."" I suspect, but cannot con• were pulled by Harry Hoehn, who thor-• tor of the Rosenwald Collection. Accord- firm, that all these restrikes bear some oughly cleaned the copperplatess,, oon ing to Gott (see note 11), the 1968 set Japanese "Kochi," a laid paper, with in the National Gallery of Victoria Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 83

of them represent states earlier than those found in the 1838 and all sub• sequent printings. The identification of these earliest extant Dante prints rests simply on their states. I describe below the few proof-state impressions I have been able to locate. Pi. 1, "The Circle ofthe Lustful: Francesca da Rimini (The Whirlwind of Lovers')." Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey. Lacking many lines of shading and radiance, the dry point inscription in reverse letters lower right ("The Whirlwind of Lovers from Dantes Inferno Canto V"), the hands ofthe couple in the sphere upper right, and the inverted head between the whirlwind and the waves just left of the peninsula on which Dante lies. The heads of the two figures in the top left corner are re-cut in slightly different positions in the published state. Darkly but crudely inked. Reproduced Keynes, Blake's Illustrations of Dante. Laurence Binyon, The Engraved Designs of William Blake (London: Ernest Benn, 1926), lists an even earlier state in which the "forms of the lovers are hardly 3. Detail of illus. 2. more than outlines" and "there is a white patch in the river-bank under Virgil's fig• bears Rosenwald's inscription plus a and 4) and a 1968 print (illus. 5) repro• ure" (76). This was probably one of the separate pencil note: "21/25 [i.e., im• duced here will indicate, the heavy unstated number of "proofs in early states" Binyon notes as then belonging "to Mrs. pression 21 of a total of 25] Hoehn imp inking was only partially successful in Sydney Morse" (76), but I have not been [19168." Another such set, described as bringing out the fine lines, such as able to locate an impression of it. The other printed on "Koji" paper, was offered at those defining the mountain ridges and Morse proofs were probably those for pis. clouds top right, and had the unfor• 2, 6-7 (described below), accessioned 13 Sotheby's New York on 22 June 1977, 14 lot 43A, but brought only $400. Other tunate consequence of obscuring the July 1929 by the British Museum. There were no Dante plates in the auction of the 1968 sets on Kochi paper are in the distinctions between individual lines Sydney Morse collection, Christie's, 26 July National Gallery of Art, Washington in densely engraved areas on the fight• 1929. (sheets 38.1 x 45.7 cm.), the British ing devils and in the fiery lake lower Museum, Department of Prints and left. This latter effect violates the line- PI. 2, "Ciampolo the Barrator Tormented Drawings, the Tate Gallery, and the arist aesthetic implicit in the engraving by the Devils." British Museum, Depart• ment of Prints and Drawings, accession no. collection of G. E. Bentley, Jr. style Blake deployed in his Dante plates. 1929.7.13.273. Some of the spiky wings In his essays, Todd is forthrightly In my view, the 1968 restrikes are around the devils on the right lack hatch• critical of the c. 1954 impressions but greatly inferior to all the nineteenth- ing strokes. A little more hatching appears praises the 1968 restrikes. He states century impressions I have seen. But on the upper thigh ofthe front-most seated no matter what one's opinions may be figure on the right. This work appears to that the latter are "more brilliant and have been burnished away in the publish• show far more detail than any" others about the two twentieth-century print• ed state to create a highlight. he had ever seen (6). Keynes is far ings, they offer no problems in iden• more restrained, pointing out that tification. Pi. 4, "The Six-Footed Serpent Attacking "whether the result obtained [in 1968] The very earliest impressions of the Agnolo Brunelleschi." Fitzwilliam Museum, Dante plates can also be recognized Cambridge, bequeathed by T. H. Riches in with rather heavy inking (on dead- 1935 and accessioned 1950. Printed in dark white Chinese [sic] paper) compares easily. In his memorandum quoted sepia and lacking hatching strokes on the favourably with the first printing ... is earlier, John Linnell, Jr., mentions that serpent's wings, the chest, stomach, and a matter of individual taste and judge• "a few proofs" were pulled "by Blake" left hip of the man (Brunelleschi) in the ment" (Blake's Illustrations of Dante [3D- himself. In this context, the word serpent's grasp, on the upper left thigh of the man on the right and on the stomach As a comparison between the nineteenth- "proofs" might mean nothing more of his companion (second figure from the than "impressions," but at least some century impressions of plate 3 (illus. 2 right), on the robe worn by Dante (left• most figure), on the ground beneath his 84 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

feet, lower left, and in the landscape back• ground to the left of Dante's right upper arm and to the right of Virgil's hands. Bru- nelleschi's left thigh bears some hatching that was burnished away in the published state to create a highlight. The spiky vege• tation below and to the left of Brunell- eschi's right foot has been burnished away on its left side in the published state. The lower reaches of the rock above and to the left of this vegetation have also been re• moved. Reproduced Keynes, Blake's Illus• trations of Dante. PI. 6, "The Pit of Disease: The Falsifiers." British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, accession no. 1929.7.13.276 (illus. 1). Three figures in the lower left corner are incomplete; two are only scratched in outline. The figure on all fours just to the right and the supine figure above lack some shading strokes. The densely packed lines in the sky, just to the right of the arch of stony figures on the left, lack a few strokes. The faces of Dante and Virgil, upper left, are incomplete. This proof state may also lack some cloud lines top right, but the abraded surface of the print in this area 4. Dante engravings plate 3. India paper laid on wove. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collec• leaves the matter indeterminable. tion, National Gallery of Art, Washington. PI. 7, "Dante Striking Against Bocca degli Abati." Houghton Library, Harvard Univer• sity, Cambridge, Massachusetts, bequeathed whereas all the nineteenth-century im• effect. They can never go wrong with by Philip Hofer in 1984. Virgil's left hand is pressions recorded in the Linnell fami• this assertion about India-paper im• raised to his face rather than to his chest ly papers and the Dixon & Ross pressions, for all originally belonged (published state). Lacking many shading daybook are. Even in their final states, to the Linnells. lines on the standing figures, particularly The next impressions to be pulled Virgil, the crosshatching on Abati's right none of the plates bears any letters shoulder and a few lines around his (signature, imprint, title below the after Blake's own working proofs are mouth, and the tears on the cheeks of the image), except for the easily-over• probably those printed directly on laid old man on the left side of the column of looked scratched inscription in reverse paper (not to be confused with India figures on the right. Reproduced Keynes, within the design on plate 1. The next paper laid on wove) showing clear Blake's Illustrations of Dante. A later proof wire and chain lines, the latter approx• state in the British Museum, Department of lot (180) is described as "Five Similar Prints and Drawings, lacks only the finish• Sets" (£22.Is. to Maggs, a price per• imately 3-7 cm. apart. Such a set was ing strokes defining the hands of the stand• haps influenced by the condition of sold from the Doheny Memorial Li• ing figures and a few lines on their clothing the prints), and the next lot is also brary at Christie's New York, 21 (accession no. 19297.13.277). called "Five Similar Sets" (£31.10s. to February 1989, lot 1713, plate 2 illus• In Blake Studies, Keynes states that Riches). Thus, nothing in the trated in the auction catalogue (sold to lot 179 in the Linnell sale at Christie's, catalogue clearly separates the "Proof the New York dealer Donald Heald for 15 March 1918, contained a "set of Impressions" from those which were $60,500). Part of a watermark, or coun• early proofs, probably those made by almost certainly in final states. In this termark, "A & D," is present in plate 3- Blake himself" (229). Although context, "Proof' probably means noth• The heavy foxing of most impressions Keynes may have inspected this lot ing more than "early." The mere fact that in this set cannot mask the fact that (sold to Colnaghi for£26.5s.), he offers all these lots were sold by the Linnell these are superb impressions that jus• no evidence for this claim, which on family is of no significance in determin• tify the record price. All major en• the face of it seems unlikely. The auc• ing states or printing dates in the graved lines are dark, rich, and precise, tion catalogue describes this lot as nineteenth century. In recent years, while the drypoint sketching lines yet "India Proof Impressions, before all dealers and auction houses have some• to be cut with the graver are delicately letters, loosely inserted in an oblong times trumpeted the claim that a Dante yet fully printed. Each plate in this folio vol., boards." None of the traced set on laid India paper is "from the suite reveals its superiority over all working proofs are on laid India, Linnell Family," or something to mat India-paper impressions I have seen. Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 85

Much of this excellence is the result of "proof" issue of the Job illustrations in by photos) are hindered by the wide expert inking and wiping of the plates' 1826. The documentary record of Dante dispersal of the Dante sets. The largest surfaces, but the quality of these im• printings makes no mention of laid- group I have found in one place is in pressions also indicates that the cop• paper impressions. Indeed, that record the Huntington Library, but its four perplates had not begun to show any would seem to exclude them, for all complete copies, plus one set in my effects of wear. The clarity with which the press runs noted by John Linnell, collection, provide only a small sam• each line is printed, even in densely- Jr., and the Dixon & Ross daybook pling of the whole number extant. engraved passages, without any blur• specify India paper. The laid-paper im• Visual memory, propped up by ring of the boundaries between lines, pressions suggest an unrecorded press photos, must serve in such circumstan• suggests that the edges of each in• run early in the history of the Dante ces, in spite of their obvious limita• cision were still sharp and had not yet plates. And if there was one such print• tions. The dimensions and thicknesses rounded to a gradual slope. This round• ing, might there have been others? I of backing papers can also be useful, ing can begin to occur after as few as have no clear evidence of any further but these too have their limits. Only ten impressions have been pulled printings, but the mere possibility gives untrimmed sheets can tell us what the from a copperplate. This initial wear is one pause before making bold state• original (and presumably uniform) probably caused both by running the ments about the total number of Dante sheet size was. The thickness of the plates through the rolling press and by impressions and their dates. same hand-made stock, even when the inking process, for the craftsman The quality of the laid-paper impres• produced in the same mold, can vary by must wipe the surface of an intaglio sions indicates a printing date before measurable amounts. Even a single copperplate with dozens of strokes of the first India paper pulls of 26 Sep• sheet can yield measurements that his hand in preparation for taking a tember 1838. It is unlikely that they vary as much as 25%, depending on single impression. were printed by Blake himself. He left where one places the micrometer or As Thomas Lange has reminded me, all seven Dante plates unfinished at his paper gauge. All that follows should another fine set on laid paper, also death in 1827, and there would have be understood in light of these caveats. nastily foxed, is in the Pierpont Morgan been no reason to print fine sets of the Among the dozen or more India- Library, New York. A mixed group, with plates while there was any hope of paper suites I have seen over the years, plate 1 on India laid on wove, lacking developing them to a more complete I have found a surprising uniformity in plate 4, and plates 2-3, 5-7 on laid state. Blake's own working proofs, listed the quality of the impressions. The Lin• paper, was sold in London at above, show areas of careless inking, nell family was too successful, as far as Christie's, 29 June 1989, lot 13, plate 2 as is often the case when a printmaker my research is concerned, in replicat• illustrated in the auction catalogue is taking impressions merely to check ing the 1838 impressions in 1892. (£24,200 to the London print dealer his progress. Perhaps the laid-paper There are of course small differences, William Weston). From this group I impressions were taken by Dixon & but these can be accounted for by dif• have seen only plate 3; but the auction Ross, or some other plate printer, just ferences in inking of the sort that can catalogue reports that plates 6 and 7, prior to the first recorded printing as a occur within a single press run. For• both on the laid stock, show "part of a way of showing Linnell how expertly tunately, one plate escapes this frustrat• watermark [or countermark?] A & D."15 they could perform the task. This spec• ing uniformity. Its special qualities Weston tells me that these impressions ulation, however, does not explain require some background explanation. were foxed badly enough to require why at least two full sets, plus at least Blake executed the Dante plates in careful cleaning; clearly, this laid a third impression of plates 2-3, 5-7, a combination of drypoint, used mostly paper has an inherent tendency to be• were printed. The mysteries surround• for preliminary sketching of outlines, come stained in this way. Yet, in my ing these beautiful laid-paper impres• and pure engraving without etching. view, they are the most desirable im• sions only enhance their desirability. In the latter technique, the tool is pushed pressions of the published states. We are now left with a variety of through the metal to create V-shaped The existence of the laid-paper prints India-paper impressions, printed in two incisions. The metal removed takes the is more than a little disconcerting. Blake press runs in 1838 and one c. 1892—if form of thin, curling wires. These are used wove paper for almost all his il• we can still trust the completeness of removed from each line as the engraver luminated books and original separate the documentary record. How can these works over the plate. A drypoint needle plates he printed himself.16 Linnell con• be sorted out and ascribed to the print• creates a very different by-product. As sistently favored India paper laid on ing in which each was produced? De• the craftsman drags the needle across wove and probably influenced Blake's tailed comparisons of printing quality the metal surface, it leaves behind a choice of those papers for some of his (never fully captured by photographs) "burr" on one or both sides of the late intaglio graphics, including the and paper types (at best only hinted at furrow, much like the wake behind a 86 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

speedboat. This burr will catch and shallow lines could be removed easily. and Virgil. Thus, slight variations in the - hold ink, even after the printer has If not erased, they would slowly wear amount of bun serve as a poor index wiped the surface of the metal clean, off the plate during inking. Impres• of printing chronology. Only large-scale and its presence will register in impres• sions without burr, and with only the differences, such as those indicated by sions from the plate as a slight fuzzi- slightest evidence of the scratched lines illus. 2 and 4, are very useful, and even ness or striations along the margins of left of Virgil and Dante (illus. 4), are then we must allow for the possibility drypoint lines. The burr, however, probably later than those showing both that a few early pulls show no burr and wears off the plate very quickly, and these features (illus. 2). The alterations a few later ones reveal its continued thus can serve as a useful (albeit ap• over time in the condition of plate 3 are presence. We can have the most con• proximate) index of the relative print• confirmed by the twentieth-century im• fidence in chronologies suggested by ing dates of two impressions if at least pressions, all of which show no evi• burr when supported by other types of one shows some burr. That is, an im• dence of either burr or the scratched evidence. pression with rich burr will probably lines (illus. 5), and by the present ap• The Heald impression of plate 3 be earlier than one with only a little, pearance of the copperplate (illus. 6). printed directly on laid paper shows and this second impression earlier The burr on plate 3 can serve as a the richest burr I have seen. But India- than one with none at all. rough indication of the relative chron• paper impressions laid on to a wove, All the Dante plates show evidence ology of impressions from that plate hard surface, card-like paper, .46 mm. of drypoint sketching, but only one and, by extension, the chronology of thick and without a watermark, show shows any clear evidence of burr even its companions in the same suite—as• almost as much burr and reveal the test in the early laid-paper impressions. suming that the suite is uniform as to marks left of Dante and Virgil just as Blake's friend George Cumberland held paper, ink color, etc. Before applying clearly. One such impression—the only that "the very early impressions of an• this rule of thumb to the India-paper one I have been able to compare cient [meaning early Italian] Prints in impressions, a cautionary note must directly with others—is in a complete general" are not "the best, as they par• be sounded. Burr records wear that set, with all plates on the same backing take of the remainders of the Burrs, ... occurs during inking and printing, not paper, in the Huntington Library (call 19 but the best are those clear impressions the gaps between print runs. All bun- no. 57438). This paper is so dense which came early afterwards, when the can be eliminated, gradually but com• and thick that, when held to a backing Printer's hand had entirely destroyed pletely, in the course of a single print• light, it is completely opaque. In the that Burr, and well polished the plate ing or retained through the early pulls Huntington set, bound in late nine• at the same time."17 The graphic style of the next, no matter how many years teenth- or early twentieth-century full of the Dante plates owes much to Italian pass between the two operations. It is leather by Riviere & Son, the backing Renaissance prints, particularly those highly unlikely for the very last frag• sheets measure 40.5 x 57.5 cm. (i.e., a by Andrea Mantegna and his circle.18 If ments of burr to appear in the last little less than a half-sheet of Colom- Blake shared Cumberland's opinions impression of a press run, and thus for bier) with all edges gilt. Another such about such prints and made them a the first impression without burr to set, formerly in the collection of Sir 20 part of his own linearist, anti-chiaros• correspond precisely with the first pull Geoffrey Keynes, is beautifully repro• curo aesthetic, then he may have pur• of the next printing. Further, the wiping duced full-size in his Blake's Illustra• posely removed burr as he worked. of the plate during the inking process tions of Dante. Its backing sheets The one exception is plate 3, arguably will affect the amount of burr indicated measure 40.2 x 56.1 cm. Approximately the least developed in the series. Some in an impression. For example, the the same dimensions are found in the impressions, including Heald's on laid Weston impression of plate 3 on laid only other thick-paper set I have lo• paper, show rich burr in the swirling paper shows considerably less burr cated, now in the Kerrison Preston Blake lines lower right (illus. 2), on Dante than the Heald impression on the same Library, Westminster City Library, Lon• 21 and Virgil, in the landscape to the right, paper, even though both were very don. Both the Keynes and Preston and on the seated figures center right probably pulled in the same early press sets are bound in green cloth with (illus. 3). Just to the left of Dante and run. The direction in which the crafts• "BLAKE'S DANTE" stamped in gilt on Virgil is a cluster of drypoint scratches man moves his hand for the final time the front cover and the letterpress Dante that barely penetrated the copper ex• over the burr areas will influence the label, printed by Linnell for the 1838 cept at their upper terminations. These amount of ink they retain. And we issue, pasted to the inside front cover. are unrelated to the composition and cannot assume that commercial plate This is probably the original binding in 22 are probably an unavoidable conse• printers of the last century took con• which such suites were issued. quence of Blake having tested his dry- scious measures to preserve evidence The conclusion, based on the pres• point needle. Like the burr, these of burr or the test marks left of Dante ence of the burr, that these thick-paper Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 87

sets are early impressions can be refined further by documentary evi• dence that such prints were pulled in the first press run of 26 September 1838. One easily-overlooked detail in the Dixon & Ross daybook, quoted earlier, is particularly significant. The backing paper of the first printing is listed as "th[/c]k," whereas no such ad• jective modifies the same Mpl[fl]t[eJ Col- [ombier]" used for the second printing (29 September). Keynes reports that the Dante set sold from the collection of the Marquis of Crewe at Sotheby's, 8 May 1943, lot 312 (£68 to the London dealer Francis Edwards), was "similar" to his thick-paper suite {Blake's Illus• trations of Dante [2]) and was bound in the same green cloth stamped in gilt {Blake Studies 228). This Crewe copy, now untraced, bore an inscription on a flyleaf: "A few copies may be had of Mr. Chance, 28 London Street, Fitzroy 5. Dante engravings plate 3, restrike of 1968. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Nation• Square, W, Artists Proofs £3.13.6. only 25 al Gallery of Art, Washington. copies printed" (Bentley, Blake Books 545). The Preston set contains a clip• ping, pasted to the inside front cover, from an unidentified dealer's cata• logue that similarly claims that the im• pressions are "Artist's Proofs, only 25 copies printed." These statements fur• ther associate the prints on India paper laid on thick wove with the first press run. To call them "Artist's Proofs" is certainly misleading, particularly since the artist had been dead for eleven years when they were printed, but the casual and self-serving use of the word "proof is hardly unique in the annals of print selling (see my earlier com• ments on the 1918 Linnell sale). In this context, the term means, if it means anything at all, that these impressions are from the first press run. The connec• tion with "Mr. Chance" and the number of "copies printed" are even more sig• nificant. In a letter dated 30 December 1856 (Ivimy collection), James H. Chance wrote as follows to his uncle, John Linnell: "I received the case quite safe with the 2[F] setslfl of Dante & Two proofs of Emmaus[.?] which are 6. Dante engravings plate 3, Blake's original copperplate. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collec• very beautiful (yesterday), and possib• tion, National Gallery of Art, Washington. ly I may be able to do something with them amongst my connexion. The Dante cS

& Blake I have entirely on my own pliable, and has a smoother and softer of a Member of the Linnell Family" speculation being partial to them and surface texture than all others listed here. (£38,500, untraced). Some of these may be A complete and uniform set is in the Hun• resales of the same set, but it seems unlike• if I can do any thing with them I shall tington Library (call no. 57437), pi. 3 with ly that they all represent only a single set. be happy to enter into some agree• the watermark fragment of letters, pis. 1, ments for 25 Copies. . . ."23 Whether 3-7 with the date, and pis. 1, 4-7 with the The information recorded above al• Chance carried out these plans is not countermark fragment. Sheets 44.5 x 59 lows us to draw a few conclusions. known, but the inscription in the Crewe cm., deckle edges right and bottom, minor More than one backing paper must foxing. A mixed group of nine impressions set indicates that he sold at least one of have been used in the second printing of the seven Dante plates in the Rosenwald of 1838 and/or in the c. 1892 press the so-called "Artist's Proofs" printed Collection, National Gallery of Art, Wash• on India laid on thick wove in the 26 ington, shows the "1822" watermark in run—assuming that there was no un• September press run of 25 sets. Per• pi. 2 only. PI. 3 in the Huntington set shows recorded printing in addition to the haps the Crewe and Preston sets are considerable burr, roughly equivalent to fine early pulls on laid paper (described that found in the impression reproduced earlier). It seems unlikely that the 1822 the two Chance notes he had already here as illus. 2. received. paper (no. 1, above) would have been It would be most convenient if we 2. Fragment of an italic capital "N," the used c. 1892, and even a little surpris• remainder trimmed off. Found in pis. 1 and were now left with India-paper im• ing that it would have been available 3 of a complete (and apparently uniform) in any quantity in 1838 (although the pressions on only two types of backing set in the Huntington Library (call no. papers that could be ascribed confi- 283403). Sheets 39.5 x 54.4 cm., one or two papermaker may have retained the dendy to the second (29 September edges with deckle, the India paper (but not 1822 mark in later years). Perhaps the 1838) and third (c. 1892) printings of the backing paper) evenly browned on pi. uneconomical size of the second re• 2. Pi. 3 shows no burr lower right and only the Dante plates. But the life of a chal- corded printing of 1838—only 13 sets very slight burr on Dante and Virgil. Only —and the four extra pulls (what com• cographer is rarely that simple, and ghosts of Blake's test scratches remain. The what I have found instead is a be• same amounts of burr and the scratches left mercial use would they have had?) wildering variety of just off-white wove of Dante and Virgil appear in a uniform set were dictated by a limited amount of backing papers. All measure between in my collection, sheets 39 x 54 cm., one this 1822 paper. Of course this hypo• or two deckle edges, the India paper of pis. .25 and .34 mm. in thickness and are thesis assumes, rather rashly, that no 2 and 5 evenly browned, showing frag• other backing paper was used in the only semi-opaque when held to a ments of the UN" watermark on pis. 1, 5, backing light. These characteristics are and 6. A fragment of this watermark is 1838 second printing. The presence of useful in distinguishing such prints from reported to be in a set offered by Seren• burr on the only impression located of the thick-paper (.46 mm.) impressions, dipity Books, Berkeley, California, plate 3 printed on this paper buttresses December 1979, catalogue 39, item P 128, the conclusion that it was used in 1838. but the range of only .09 mm. in thick• for $13,000 (untraced). The dealer's ness is insufficient for making clear catalogue claims that there is more burr on All other backing papers listed here, discriminations among India-paper this set than in the set owned by Mrs. nos. 2-4, are remarkably similar, at least impressions on the thinner backing Landon K. Thorne (now in the Pierpont to my eyes and fingers, as to color, papers. Sheet sizes are of no help in Morgan Library), which also contains frag• texture, and density. William LinneU's ments of the "N" watermark. separating out 1838 and c. 1892 im• statement, in his recently discovered pressions since no India-paper print I 3. Letters, perhaps three or four, so poorly letter to Quaritch quoted earlier, that have measured is larger than the half- formed and densely packed together that he preferred Whatman paper for the c. sheets (about 48 x 597 cm.) into which they are illegible. Found in pis. 1 and 3 of 1892 impressions does not insure that the Colombier-size paper was cut for a complete (and apparently uniform) set it was actually used; but this letter does sold from the collection of The Garden both 1838 press runs. Here again, the Ltd., formed by Haven O'More, Sotheby's lend support to the evidence of the success the Linnells had in matching the New York, 10 November 1989, lot 168 burr (or lack thereoD on at least one earlier prints in their c. 1892 restrikes ($41,250 to Donald Heald). Sheets 39.7 x impression of plate 3 indicating that thwarts the modern investigator. 54 cm., no burr on pi. 3. sets on Whatman were pulled c. 1892. Fortunately, some of the India-paper 4. "/ Whatman Turkey Mills." Variously Circumstantial evidence, cited and in• sets on the thinner backing papers can reported in the following auction cata• terpreted (probably by Richard Godfrey) be identified on the basis of water• logues as present in complete sets: in Sotheby's 27 June 1986 catalogue, Sotheby's London, 7 March 1985, lot 200, marks. I list below those I know of, further tips the scales toward 1892. with a reproduction of pi. 3 showing no The set sold in lot 747, with one back• with a few other particulars added. burr lower right but with fragments of the ing sheet showing part of the Whatman scratches left of Dante and Virgil as in illus. 1. "1822" followed at a considerable dis• 4 (£23,100, untraced); Sotheby's London, watermark, was the suite Keynes ac• tance by "II [followed by an illegible letter 27 June 1986, lot 747 (£24,200, untraced); quired from "the last [nineteenth-cen• fragment cut off]," with a countermark of Sotheby's London, 27 June 1988, lot 168 tury] printing of the plates" during a visit "S & [cut off]." This paper is at the lower (£24,200, untraced); Sotheby's London, 27 to the Linnell family home at Redhill.24 end of the range of thicknesses, is more June 1989, lot 226, sold from the "Property Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 89

] Only two backing papers remain, G. E. Bentley, Jr., and Martin K. Nurmi, sheets for the laid India "(French) Colom- A Blake Bibliography (Minneapolis: Univ. bier plate paper" (228). nos. 2 and 3 above. The rule of thumb 8 of Minnesota Press, 1964) 89- The inter• See E. J. Labarre, A Dictionary of Paper based on the amount of burr in plate polations in brackets are from Bentley and and Paper-Making Terms (Amsterdam: 3, combined with the weight of num• Nurmi. Swets & Zeitlinger, 1937) 54. bers (only 13 complete sets produced 2The senior Linnell lived at 38 Por- s>See Whatman's mold sizes recorded in in the second printing of 1838, but 50 chester Terrace, Bayswater, from 1828 to Thomas Balston, James Whatman Father & Son (London: Methuen, 1957) 6l. La• in c. 1892), leads me to conclude that 1851, and thus his son's comment that the Dante plates were printed "at Bayswater" barre 54 gives the same dimensions as the both types of paper signify the c. 1892 (i.e., while the family lived there) is not standard for Colombier. 10 printing. However, the impression of very helpful in fixing a date. Bain 7. 1 plate 3 reproduced here, illus. 2-3, 3Bentley and Nurmi 89- For information 'According to Ted Gott, "'Eternity in an showing almost as much burr as the on Dixon & Ross (founded 1833) and its Hour': The Prints of William Blake," in Martin Butlin and Gott, William Blake in thick-paper pulls of the first printing, successor firm, see Iain Bain, "Thomas Ross & Son, Copper- and Steel-plate the Collection of the National Gallery of is on a backing sheet of unwatermarked Printers since 1833," Journal of the Print• Victoria (Melbourne: National Gallery of paper which I cannot distinguish from Victoria, 1989) 187-88. ing Historical Society no. 2 (1966): 3-22, 12 my set with the "N" watermark.251 can and Tony Dyson, "The Ross Records: 1833 I take the titles for each plate from only conclude from this that either a to 1900," Journal of the Printing Historical those given the corresponding water colors in Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Draw• paper in addition to the "1822" variety Society no. 12 (1977-78): 52-67. 4A11 information about the Linnell family ings of William Blake (New Haven: Yale was used in the second printing of is taken from Alfred T. Story, The Life of UP, 1981). 1838, or the copperplate of plate 3 re• John Linnell, 2 vols. (London: Bentley and ^Information about the 1968 printing is tained considerable burr after 1838 and Son, 1892), based in large part on the elder taken from Ruthven Todd, "Blake's Dante this shows up in the first few pulls of Linnell's manuscript autobiography, and Plates," Times Literary Supplement (29 August 1968): 928, and its two revisions: c. 1892. If the latter is the case, as seems Katharine Crouan,/o£n Linnell: A Centen• nial Exhibition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, "Blake's Dante Plates—Revised Version," the more likely of the two possibilities, 1982). I have not been able to find the Book Collecting & Library Monthly no. 6 then the rule of burr cannot be used to death dates of any of the Linnell brothers. (October 1968): 164-71, and Blake's Dante discriminate in all cases between the Presumably John Jr. was still alive in 1892, Plates, Reprinted, with Additions, from the second and third press runs. if Bentley and Nurmi and Keynes (see note October 1968 Issue o/Book Collecting & 5) are correct in ascribing the draft letter in Library Monthly (n.p., n.d.). All references the Ivimy collection to his hand. to Todd are to the final version. The com• In spite of its length, the foregoing is 5Keynes, "A Note on the Later History of plete 1968 set in the National Gallery of little better than an interim report. It the Dante Engravings," Blake Studies: Es• Victoria is reproduced in Gott, figs. 50a-g. concludes with the spectacle of a Blake says on His Life and Work, 2nd ed. (Ox• "Bentley, Blake Books 546, records nut imitating plate 10 of The Gates of ford: Clarendon Press, 1971) 228-29 (the "proofs of each [Dante plate] in the BMPR," but I have been able to locate only the Paradise ("Help! Help!"). It would be first publication of this "Note"); Blake's Illustrations of Dante (London: Trianon three described here. The handlist of the good to find more sets with the 1822 Press for the Blake Trust, 1978) [2]. In the British Museum collection in Blake News• watermark, and more impressions of 1978 volume, Keynes states that "one letter 5 (1972): 236, lists "Five Dante trial plate 3 with burr on any sort of backing hundred sets" were printed c. 1892 ([21), proofs" of pis. 2 (two impressions), 4, 6-7, paper. An impression on Whatman but gives no documentary evidence for accession nos. 1929.7.13-273-77, but two of these (pi. 2, no. 274, and pi. 4, no. 275) paper showing rich burr would force this number, twice as large as the figure recorded by John Linnell, Jr. I assume that are in their published states. major revisions in the history concoc• 15 Keynes is simply mistaken on this point. I am unable to identify this watermark, ted here. So let me offer my services as Todd, in his essay on the twentieth-century but it may have been produced by John a Dante Clearinghouse and invite in• restrikes (see note 13), repeats Keynes's Dickinson at the Apsley Mill he acquired terested readers to send me informa• figure for the c. 1892 printing and claims in 180S>—see W. A. Churchill, Watermarks in Paper (Amsterdam: Hertzberger & Co., tion about Dante engravings they have that "170 sets" were printed in 1838 (p. 4 in the last version of Todd's essay). Todd 1925) 48. inspected. Working together, we l6 cites Bentley and Nurmi (88-89) as the The only exceptions known to me are should at least be able to complicate authority for this latter number, but they copy L of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell matters further. say nothing about the number of impres• ("A Song of Liberty" only, printed as a sions pulled in 1838 other than quoting the pamphlet of two leaves), the unique first- state impression of "Joseph of Arimathea I am indebted to Ruth Fine and Greg receipts. I take Todd's "170" to be another error. Among the Rocks of Albion" (Fitzwilliam Jecmen of the National Gallery of Art, 6G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books (Oxford: Museum), perhaps printed in the 1770s Washington, Arthur Freeman, and Thomas Clarendon Press, 1977) 545. Except for when Blake as still an apprentice, and the V. Lange for their help with the research "[sheets]", used here in the place of ditto unique impression of "Charity" (British reported in this essay. marks in the original, the bracketed inter• Museum). polations are Bentley's. 17Cumberland, An Essay on the Utility of 1Blake's Illustrations of Dante [2]. In Collecting the Best Works of the Ancient Blake Studies, Keynes calls the backing 90 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1990/91

21 Engravers of the Italian School (London: Very well reproduced, with enlarged in the imprint. "Dante & Blake" is a bit odd; Payne and Foss et al., 1827) 20. details from each plate, in David Bindman, perhaps Chance meant "Dante by Blake." 24 18See Robert N. Essick, William Blake assisted by Deirdre Toomey, The Complete Keynes, Blake's Illustrations of Dante Printmaker(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980) Graphic Works of William Blake ([London]: [2]. I cannot confirm the claim in Sotheby's 250-54. Cumberland showed Blake the Thames and Hudson, 1978) pis. 647-53. catalogue that this visit was in 1912, but in manuscript of his Essay in November 1823 This may be the same as the set which The Gates of Memory (Oxford: Clarendon (G. E. Bentley.Jr., Blake Records[Oxford: Keynes describes as similar to his own and Press, 1981) 103, Keynes notes that he Clarendon Press, 19691 279). "until recently, in the possession of the acquired a Dante set during one of his two 19 Linnell family" iBlake's Illustrations of visits to Redhill "before 1914." This suite is wrongly described as 25 "probably the restrikes of ca. 1892" in Dante[2]). A Dante set on laid India with very Robert N. Essick, The Works of William 22 This is also the conclusion stated inde• similar amounts of burr in pi. 3, now in a Blake in the Huntington Collections (San pendently about each of these copies in British private collection, was sold the onn Marino: Huntington Library, 1985) 209. All Kerrison Preston, Notes for a Catalogue of property of D. R. Bollard (J Linnell's such sets are similarly (and wrongly) char• the Blake Library at the Georgian House great-grandson) at Sotheby's London, 14 acterized in Sotheby's New York auction Merstham (Cambridge: Golden Head Press, November 1980, lot 295, in poor Oaut prob• catalogue of 9-10 November 1989, lot 168. I960) 10, and [Keynes], Bibliotheca Biblio- ably repairable) condition (£5100). I have 20 This set was not part of Keynes's be• grapbici: A Catalogue of the Library Formed no information about its backing paper, quest to the Fitzwilliam Museum. Accord• by Geoffrey KeynesiLondon: Trianon Press, but all seven plates are reproduced in The ing to J. J. Hall, Under-Librarian in the Rare 1964) 65. Print in England 1790-1930: Catalogue of Book Department, Cambridge University 23Bentley, Blake Books 545. "Emmaus" an Exhibition First Shown at the Fitzwil• Library, the set cannot be located in the very probably refers to Linnell's line and liam Museum 12 March to 5 May 1985 Keynes Collection there. mezzotint print of his own painting, "The (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, 1985) Journey to Emmaus," dated 17 June 1839 54-60.

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The Romantic Body Love and Sexuality in Keats, Wordsworth, and Blake The University Jean H. Hagstrum of Tennessee Press 196 pages, illustrations, ISBN 0-87049-482-1, $19.95 Knoxville 37996-0325 Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 91

old poetry, still less paraphrase it."1 ends with this remark: "Poor William MINUTE And he considers Powell even less com• Blake! He was certainly a man of a petent. For Wordsworth's contributions, genius kindred to that of Chaucer." PARTICULARS he has the highest praise. He urges him This passage is remarkable not so to complete his version of Troilus-. "It much for the information it conveys— will be an amusement to his honored most of that is derived from Allan Cun• New Voice on Blake age, feeble only in eyesight, to dictate ningham's biography of Blake—as for his translation to his amiable lady." the reviewer's lively interest in Blake And of "The Cuckoo and the Nightin• and rare appreciation of his critical Bruce E. Graver gale," he writes: "We bow to the Master! acumen. Although he accepts the usual We only wish he had reserved it for his characterization of Blake as a "mad own next volume of Poems, and not n editing Wordsworth's Chaucer artist," he is not interested in per• buried it in this dunghill." Imodernizations for the Cornell Word• petuating what Bentley calls "titillating sworth, I came across a manuscript At the very end of the review, after rumors of the mad painter's visions," containing a significant piece of Blake discussing each contributor's efforts, as was the rule among contemporary the reviewer turns, as if out of the blue, 2 criticism. The manuscript is a fair copy literary journalists. Rather, he expresses to the subject of William Blake. review of Chaucer Modernized, 20 admiration for Blake's understanding and champions his interpretation of pages long, clearly ready for publica• Have any of our readers ever seen the print tion but apparently never published; it Chaucer. In quoting at tremendous of the Canterbury pilgrims by William length from the Descriptive Catalogue is preserved in the Wordsworth Library, Blake, the mad artist, whose biography boxed with Wordsworth's other papers may be read in Mr. Allan Cunningham's (which, along with a copy of Blake's having to do with Thomas Powell and Lives? He painted it, he says, before Mr. "Canterbury Pilgrims," he apparently Stothard's picture on the same subject, and owned), he effectively sets Blake up as the Chaucer Modernized volume. nearly thirty years ago he exhibited it Chaucer Modernizeditself, published the interpreter of Chaucer that Home publicly, in opposition to that elegant com• was not. Also noteworthy is the anal• late in 1840, was a volume of modern• position. Mr. Stothard's picture is Chaucer izations of Chaucer's verse organized Modernized—ihe horses all barbs, from ogy he draws between the roughness and edited by Powell and R. H. Home, the Elgin Marbles, and the riders, refined of Blake's drawing and the roughness and softened, in stage-dresses. Mr. Blake's and containing contributions from of Wordsworth's deliberately archaic picture is Chaucer in the old rough verse— such authors as Leigh Hunt and Eliza• modernizations. He considers their "in his habit as he lived"—bad in drawing, rough crudeness truer to the genius of beth Barrett. It included two works of but true and vivid in expression. His horses Wordsworth: his version of the pseudo- are wooden toys, and his dogs pigs; but the Chaucer than the "softened stage dres• Chaucerian "Cuckoo and the Nightin• individual character is in every human ses" of Stothard on the one hand, and gale," and his extract from Troilus and face, and look and dress. Mr. Blake under• Home on the other. Because of these stood Chaucer, like Mr. Wordsworth, Criseyde. remarkable opinions, the identity of profoundly. Mr. Stothard read him like Mr. this reviewer should be of interest to Home, superficially. Together with his Ex• The author of the manuscript review scholars of Blake and Wordsworth alike. is a person of sound literary judgment, hibition, Mr. Blake gave you, for your shill• ing, a printed description of his Picture, in The candidate that comes first to mind who possesses a thorough knowledge contrast with Mr. Stothard's. This con• is Henry Crabb Robinson. Robinson, of Middle English and has read carefully tained a little madness about painting, and of course, knew both Blake and Words• the commentary in Tyrrwhitt's edition a great deal of abuse of Mr. Stothard; but it worth, attended and wrote about was prefaced by some Observations on of Chaucer's poems. We can surmise Blake's 1809-10 exhibition, owned four that he is a lawyer, for besides refer• Chaucer's Poem, of so striking and original a kind, that, as the pamphlet is now as copies of the Descriptive Catalogue, ences to Blackstone's Commentaries good as MS. (few people being in the habit one of which he gave to Charles Lamb, and trade and tariff regulations, he of preserving their Exhibition Catalogues) and purchased two copies of the "Can• draws on an extensive knowledge of we shall conclude this article by quoting terbury Pilgrims."3 He was also a lawyer. them: English law and the organization of the But the arguments against his author• Inns of Court to illuminate several ship are substantial. First, the reviewer At this point, the reviewer indicates, by passages of Chaucer's verse. It is also speaks of the admission price to the writing "the characters significant that he claims to know 1809 exhibition as being one shilling. happy", that he wishes to in• Wordsworth personally. He disap• This is both inaccurate—the price was proves of the Chaucer Modernized pro• clude a lengthy quotation from Blake's half a crown (2s.6d)— and does not ject, but directs his opprobrium at the Descriptive Catalogue—the entire de• square with what Robinson himself contributions of Home and Powell, not scription of the Canterbury Pilgrims, wrote in his Reminiscences ten years at Wordsworth himself. Home, the re• beginning on page 9 of the catalogue viewer writes, "cannot even construe and ending on page 25. The review 92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

7 later: "a half crown was demanded of Barron Field's character and circle of friends. In fact, he is mentioned in two the Visitor for which he had also a acquaintance are in accord with the of the Elia essays, including "Distant Catalogue... "4 Second, there is a prob­ profile I have suggested for the author. Correspondents," which is addressed lem with the spelling of the name of Field, a lawyer, had published an analy­ entirely to Field, who was then living Blake's rival, Stothard. In his Remin­ sis of Blackstone's Commentaries in in Australia. His friendship with Lamb iscences, Robinson spelled this name 1811, and as Chief Justice of Gibraltar is especially significant because he inconsistently, either as Stodart or Stod­ until 1841, would have been familiar echoes Lamb's opinion about Blake's dart. The reviewer, however, spells it with the kinds of trade and tariff regu­ Chaucer criticism: "Lamb," recalled Rob­ correctly all five times. Third, whereas lations discussed in the review. More­ inson, "... declared that Blake's descrip­ the reviewer depends on Cunningham over, Field had long been associated tion [of the Canterbury pilgrims] was the with major literary figures. He was a finest criticism he had ever read of Chau­ for his account of the Stothard inci­ 8 dent, Robinson gives a different ver­ schoolmate of Leigh Hunt at Christ's cer's poem." Wordsworthians know sion that is more sympathetic to Church Hospital, and as a young man Field primarily as the author of a memoir Stothard, whom he calls "an amiable wrote reviews for Hunt's Reflector and of the poet, completed in 1840 but not and excellent man."5 Finally, and most published poems in the Examiner. Field published because of Wordsworth's convincingly, the handwriting in the met Wordsworth as early as 1812, and objections, and there survives a series manuscript is not Robinson's. The re­ Robinson and Lamb were lifelong of letters between the two, in which view itself may have been the work of a copyist, but traces of the author's handwriting survive; they are found on clippings from the Chaucer Mod­ ernizedvolume that have been pasted into the review. On these clippings, the author has written pencil correc­ tions of Home and Powell's transla­ tions. These corrections do not match Robinson's hand at all. Crabb Robinson's diaries help to ,.. ,,, . '/*. /, * r ?.<■■/*&*{> /'* *i*,/*mm Su f/^ . 6mO&. ' m­*U6* Us&+*­, r^Llm* ~~> pany of Barron Field, a lawyer and a j,.ft.,.- .,/Cii y/-y ■ / J--• - • • ' . /;^v^'^.. >*/ ^■■"«'*' ••'' • &*—y£» correspondent of Wordsworth.

re Walked with Field to M Blake The poor Luff*** ■ •?'' /t"/fJ a*( «W#**W« £'•/■<*, '**"'' ""

This means that Field, like Robinson and Lamb, owned a copy of Blake's "Canterbury Pilgrims," which makes him the only other person among Wordsworth's acquaintance whom we know to have possessed one. And it would have been natural for Robinson to give him a copy of the catalogue too, Courtesy of the Wordsworth Trust, Dove Cottage, Grasmere. to go with the proof. Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 93

Field criticized the ways Wordsworth Field then tells how Wordsworth "threw and Church of England Quarterly 14 had revised his poems and urged him his Cuckow and Nightingale into a bad Review in April. The first and third of (often successfully) to change them collection of pieces entided ' Chaucer these reviews were favorable, al• back. Field, in fact, kept an annotated Modernized.'"u These remarks corre• though J. A. Grimes in Monthly Maga• copy of Wordsworth's collected poems, spond closely to two passages in the zine points out several errors in Home's in which he recorded all of the poet's review. In the first paragraph, Field translation of the "General Prologue." alterations in the published versions of writes that "Mr. Wordsworth ... is so But Henry Chorley in the Athaenum, his poetry,9 and he joked with Words• warm an admirer of ["The Manciple's although kind to Wordsworth and Hunt, worth about having "the honour to be Tale"], that we have heard him lament called Home's efforts a "counterfeit your Editor. 'The fifteenth Edition, with the impossibility of translating the presentment," called attention to Notes by Barron Field.'"10 Furthermore, whole." Then, at the end of his discus• several of the same faulty passages that a comparison of handwritings confirms sion of Leigh Hunt's "emasculated" ver• Field did, and complained that "Father Field's authorship. sion of the tale, we find the following: Chaucer [has been] reduced to sickly weakness and effeminacy."15 Field him• Fortunately, we can trace Field's inter• [T]he Tale is well done, with a proper sense est in the Chaucer Modernized volume of what we once heard Mr. Wordsworth self was not in England at this time: he with some exactness. In the early call the great poet's dramatic skill and was in Gibraltar until autumn, then re• months of 1840, shortly after complet• courage, in making the Manciple, whose turned to England to take up perma• ing his memoir of Wordsworth, Field only object in life was to be a trusty domes• nent residence for the first time in over tic, draw this moral alone from the Tale, a decade.16 He may have written the visited England and called at Rydal passing by all the crime, rashness & misery Mount. No doubt the main subject dis• of the tragedy, as if they were things that review abroad, but probably wrote it cussed during the visit was the memoir, would happen in the best-regulated after his return, and it is likely that whose publication Wordsworth had families, and that servants should see all publishers considered it somewhat re• resisted. But Wordsworth was also and say nothing. petitive and rather old news. Deprived preparing to publish his moderniza• of a public forum, Field may then have tions of Chaucer in Home and Powell's What Field seems not to have known, given the review to Wordsworth, as volume and had a long discussion with or perhaps to have suppressed, is that both a token of appreciation and as a Field about doing so. In a paragraph Wordsworth had modernized "The quiet reminder about asssociating him• 17 added to the memoir after 1841, Field Manciple's Tale," and had originally self with dubious literary enterprises. tells how offered it to Thomas Powell for publi• But since the manuscript, which is still cation in Chaucer Modernized. He with• in its original blue cover, lacks a the Poet . . . read to me . . . his Lines of drew the offer, however, after family presentation autograph, it seems un• hearing the Cuckoo at the Monastery of and friends complained about the tale's likely that Wordsworth ever saw it. San Francisco d'Assisi, and his modern• bawdiness.12 In any case, it is clear that Probably the review found its way into ization of Chaucer's Cuckow & Nightin• Field was interested in this project, and the Dove Cottage Papers sometime gale. . . . [I]n illustration of the latter he 18 referred to the part the Crow plays in the in Wordsworth's questionable alliance after Field's death in 1846. Manciple's Tale, and praised the father- with Home and Powell, well before Why Field should go so far out of his poet's dramatic skill and courage, in the volume was published. His review way to call our attention to Blake is an making the Manciple, whose only object may even have been written as a kind even more intriguing question. Field in life was to be a trusty domestic, draw this moral alone from the story:— of public reminder to Wordsworth to did not attend the 1809 Blake exhibi• be more selective in his literary as• tion—he apparently had never heard 13 My sone, beware, and be non sociations. of Blake before 1813—so unlike Crabb auctour newe Two problems remain. First, why was Robinson he would not have seen the Of tidings, whether they ben the review never published? Second, original painting of the Canterbury Pil• false or trewe: why was Field so interested in promot• grims, nor any of the other impressive Wher so thou come, amonges 19 high or lowe, ing Blake's reputation that he would artworks on display. Nor did Field, to Kepe well thy tonge, and drag him by the heels into a review like our knowledge, ever meet Blake; his thinke upon the Crowe. this? And about both problems we can only direct contact seems to have been only speculate. Chaucer Modernized with Catherine Blake in 1828. Yet the He wished that the delicacy of modem ears appeared in time for the Christmas trade print and catalogue he owned, his read• would allow him to translate the whole of in 1840 and was reviewed in three ing of Cunningham's biography, and this Tale, and dwelt with rapture upon the periodicals: Monthly Magazine, on 5 his conversations about Blake with remorse of Phoebus for having slain his January, TheAthaenum, on 6 February, Robinson and Lamb impressed him adulterous wife.. .. 94 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

12 deeply. Field's review thus serves to Wordsworth initially offered "The Man• John Clerk, Esq. underscore how often Blake was a sub• ciple's Tale" to Powell in a letter dated "[late 18391" by Alan Hill. Objections were raised ject of discussion among members of by Edward Quillinan and, perhaps, Isabella the Wordsworth circle, and how much Fenwick, and in a letter of 1 May 1840, David Groves we owe to figures like Charles Lamb Wordsworth withdrew his offer. See The and Henry Crabb Robinson for helping Letters of William and Dorothy Words• n Robert Cromek's 1808 edition of to preserve the reputation of William worth, ed. Alan Hill, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1982) 6: 755-56,7: 35, 39,71. Robert Blair's Grave, with designs Blake. I '5 Field's suspicions of Powell were later by Blake, the name of "John Clerk, borne out in ways he could not have Esq." appears in the list of sixteen Edin• Research for this paper was made pos• predicted. Powell was discovered to have 1 sible by grants from the American Council supported himself by embezzlement and burgh subscribers to the volume. No of Learned Societies and the National En• forgery; he faked insanity to avoid prison, Blake scholar has yet identified this dowment for the Humanities. I am grateful and spent the rest of his days in New York. intriguing figure, or discussed his wide to both for their assistance. I am also grateful See Blainey 114. influence in artistic, literary, and social to Jonathan Wordsworth and the Trustees of 14 These reviews are all listed in N. S. circles. Perhaps none of Blake's first the Wordsworth Trust for permission to Bauer, William Wordsworth: A Reference quote from the Dove Cottage Papers. Guide to British Criticism, 1793-1899 (Bos• readers were as paradoxical, irascible, Finally, I wish to thank Alexander Gourlay, ton: G. K. Hall, 1978) 133-35. immoral, or influential as John Clerk. Mark L. Reed, and Joseph Viscomi for their 15 TheAthaenum(6 February 1841): 107- Clerk (1757-1832) is now such a for• generous advice, without which the paper 08. Blainey 105, 115, notes that Chorley gotten figure, however, that few if any could not have been written. was a perennial enemy of Home. modern readers will know of him.2 In 16 Little 51. 1 An amusing account of Home's dif• 17 Field had the opportunity to give his time, Clerk was famous as an Edin• ficulties in translating Chaucer may be Wordsworth the review (providing he had burgh lawyer and judge, and an art found in Ann Blainey, The Farthing Poet: finished it by then) in September 1841 collector. A Biography of Richard Hengist Home, when he spent time in the Lake District It was almost certainly Blake's de• 1802-1884, A Lesser Literary Lion (Lon• (Little 51). Field also tells of helping Words• signs, rather than Blair's poem, which don: Longman's, 1968) 115. worth write an article on Talfourd's copy• 2 G.E. Bentley, ed., Blake: Woe Critical right bill at this time. led the 50-year-old lawyer to subscribe Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 18 Shortly after Wordsworth's death, as to The Grave. Clerk had studied as an 1975) 220. materials for Christopher Wordsworth, Jr.'s artist in his youth. He had little interest 3 See Robinson's Reminiscence of Blake memoir of the poet were being collected, in poetry, but for many years he con• in G.E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records (Oxford: there was correspondence between Robin• tinued to paint and draw in his spare Clarendon P, 1969) 537-38. son and Edward Quillinan about Barron moments. Several of his drawings ap• 4 Bentley, Blake Records 537. Field's papers. It seems possible that Robin• son or Edward Quillinan may have had peared in the Scots Magazine, and else• 5 Bentley, Blake Records 537-38. 3 6 Bentley, Blake Records 362. access to them, so perhaps at that time the where. Presumably Clerk found 7 See Geoffrey Little's biographical intro• review passed into the hands of the Words• pleasure in Blake's designs to The duction to his edition of Field's Memoirs of worth family. See Tloe Correspondence of Grave; in any event, the book was still Wordsworth (Sydney: Sydney UP, 1975) Henry Crabb Robinson with the Words• in his library when he died.4 7-17. worth Circle, ed. Edith Morley, 2 vols. (Ox• 8 Bentley, Blake Records 538. ford: Clarendon P, 1927) 2: 738-39. With a personality like "crystallised 9 This copy can be found in the Words• 19 According to Bentley, Blake Records vinegar," Clerk was notorious for his worth Library in Grasmere. 231, "Crabb Robinson wrote in his Diary atheism, self-righteousness, and "drol• 10 Barron Field to Wordsworth, 10 April for Tuesday, January 12th, 1813: 'In the lery": "It was impossible that he could Eveng at Coleridge's lecture. And then at 1828, published in Little 133. The manu• be wrong because he acknowledged script is in the Wordsworth Library. home. Mrs. Kenny[,] Barnes & Barron Field » Little 49. there—The usual gossiping chat—F & B. no judge in heaven or earth but John both interested by Blake's poems of whom Clerk."5 Something of his legendary they knew nothing before!.]—'" abrasiveness may be gauged from an episode involving his friend Henry Raeburn the painter, when they were both students: Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 95

One day John [Clerk] asked [Raeburn] to go Admittedly these details tell us noth• ings attributed to Rembrandt, Holbein, Van and dine with him in his garret [above ing about William Blake. But they may Dyck, Rubens, Correggio, Salvator Rosa, Breughel, Titian, Tintoretto, Raeburn, and Parliament Square in Edinburgh]; On going help readers to appreciate the diversity into his room the landlady came in and put others. It is not known who purchased on the table John's ordinary dinner—four of Blake's original audience, and to Clerk's copy of The Grave, or what price it herrings and three potatoes—John got up perceive more fully the social context fetched. in a terrible rage and chucked the two in which Blake sold his work. They 5 John Heiton, The Castes of Edinburgh, plates out of the window and turned about may also counteract slighdy the com• 3rd. ed. (Edinburgh: Nimmo, 186l) 56, 57, 57n. Only the third edition of Heiton's book to the astonished landlady and said What mon assumption that Blake's work for ye bitch did ye no bring aucht herrings contains these (and many other) stories and sax tawties .. .6 received little attention in contem• about Clerk. porary Scotland. 6 James White, citing his conversation In later years, Clerk was wealthy and with Raeburn, in a letter to Allan Cunnin• titled; he became "Lord Eldin," and a 1 See Robert N. Essick and Morton D. gham, 29 March 1831, National Library of judge, in 1823. Although a bachelor, Paley, Robert BlairsThe Grave, Illustrated Scotland MS 832, ff 28-29; cited by permis• he had several children by different by William Blake; A Study with Facsimile sion of the Trustees of the NLS. "Aucht" and "sax" are Scots terms for "eight" and "six." women. Once, accosted by two labor• (London: Scolar, 1982). The list of sub• scribers is unpaginated. This excerpt has not previously appeared ers who demanded money on the 2 Clerk receives a brief mention in the in print; Cunningham gives a drastically grounds that he was their father, Clerk Dictionary of National Biography, his name bowdlerized version in his Lives of the Most "grinningly drew out his purse" and does not seem to appear in any other twen• Eminent British Painters (5: 210). I have said, "Weel, there's five pounds; and tieth-century work. included this quotation partly to show that Clerk adhered to Scottish ways and the never let me see your ugly mugs 3 The last of Clerk's drawings for the 7 Scots Magazine. "Craig Crook Castle," was Scots language; he was not Anglicized. again." "Engraved by Rlobert] Scott," and appeared Clerk's lodgings above Parliament Square Despite his arrogance towards women, as the frontispiece in April 1810 [n.p.]); for would have placed him near the center of Edinburgh's legal and literary establishment. children, and the lower classes, Clerk information on Robert Scott, the engraver 7 was a prominent reform politician. He with a "mania for Blake," who considered The two men's mothers were sisters; "The reader has only to count the kin," was a friend of the critic and politician the 1808 Grave to be one of the "two greatest books" in his library, see Auto• comments Heiton, "to understand the mora• Francis Jeffrey, and sometimes joined biographical Notes of the Life of William lity of [Clerk], who was received into the Jeffrey in public demonstrations.8 But best society" (Heiton 57n). Bell Scott, ed. W. Minto, 2 vols. (London: 8 he was far removed from the sober Osgood, Mcllvaine, 1892) 1: 68, and my For information on Clerk's political and rationalism of Jeffrey and his circle. All note on "Blake, The Grave, and Edinburgh literary connections, see Henry Cockburn, Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh: Black, reports agree that Clerk's temper and Literary Society" in Blake24 (1990): 35-36. A satirical sketch by John Clerk, "The Three 1856) 407-08, and John Gibson Lockhart, emotionality rendered him "not quali• Legal Devotees," may be found in John Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, 3 vols. (Edin• fied for the duties of a judge." Even Kay, A Series of Original Portraits and burgh: Blackwood, 1819) 2: 43-52. For an after his promotion to the bench, Clerk Caricature Etchings, ed. H. Paton, 2 vols. account of a Reform meeting at which Fran• led a scandalous, "Rabelaisian" exist• (Edinburgh: Black, 1877) 1: plate 119 (at• cis Jeffrey and John Clerk shared the stage, see anon., "Celebration of Mr Fox's Birth ence, sometimes "riding down openly tributed to Clerk in the text, 2: 439-40). In suggesting that Clerk "had little interest in Day," The Scotsman 15 Jan. 1823: 33-36. in his carriage to his mistress... or sitting 9 9 poetry," I have relied on the evidence of Heiton 57-58, passim. I have not been carousing with the thief Maccoul." the Catalogueof'his library, cited in note 4 able to identify "the thief Maccoul." 10 Clerk's judgments in court became below. Robert P. Gillies, Recollections of Sir 4 increasingly erratic, until public out• See anon., Catalogue of the Library of Walter Scott, Bart. (London: Fraser, 1837) the Late John Clerk of Eldin . . . which will 284. Gillies is citing his conversation with rage forced his resignation in 1828. His Scott at Abbotsford in 1829. be sold by Auction, by Mr C B. Tait, . . . 11 final years were shrouded by some On Monday, January 21 1833, and Nine George Thomson, letter to the painter unnamed disease. He became "ungov• following Days (Edinburgh: Tait, 1833) 56. Thomas Stothard, 7 July 1832, National ernably insane"10 and "quite imbecile."11 Item 1382 in the catalogue is described as Library of Scotland MS 685, f 88; cited by Perhaps, in his last lucid moments, "Blake's Illustration [sic] of Blair's Grave, permission. John Clerk reflected on the theme of 13 plates, engraved by Schiavonetti." In addition to listing the books in Clerk's Blair's Grave, and its accompanying library, this catalogue shows that he pos• designs by Blake. sessed many original paintings and draw• 96 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

orientations that, Fuller would have us REVIEWS recognize, underlie his interpretations of Blake in the foregoing chapters. One of the more puzzling of several Blafeto heroic puzzling things about Fuller's book is David Fuller. Blake's He• argument his apparent belief that he has inter• roic Argument. London, preted Blake in a way highly flavored New York, Sydney: Croom by his particular values and beliefs. Blake's Heroic Argument has, if any• DAVID FULLER Helm in association with thing, a little less than its share either Methuen, 1988. xv + 297 of controversial readings of Blake or of pp. 16 illus. $67.50 US/ novelty in critical approach—a fact $85 Canada. wherein, as I have implied, lies much of the book's value to a certain kind of reader. I don't mean that Fuller says nothing fresh or controversial about Reviewed by Brian Wilkie Blake. I feel sure that many Blakeans will share my discomfort at hearing CROOM HELM London • New York • Sydney Blake described as a relativist (88, rom time to time—perhaps every 135)—though even that term seems, in ten years or so—a need arises in context, to be a slip of the pen in• F tended to mean something like "open Blake criticism for a comprehensive to change and development." Among survey of his works, written for new of his in the volume An Infinite Com• matters that Fuller treats more con• but serious students of Blake. Ideally, plexity (ed. J. R. Watson, Edinburgh vincingly and, if not always originally such books reflect recently emerging UP, 1983). (For sixty-seven and a half at least freshly, are Blake's under• emphases or issues in Blake scholar• U.S. dollars, the batteries, one feels, standing of implicit and explicit sym• ship and interpretation while preserving might have been included.) The third bolism in literature (21-25); the kind whatever in older criticism still com• chapter is on Jerusalem. Within each and degree of Blake's platonism and mands broad assent. The authorial of these chapters, the organization is unplatonism (37-41); the tortured psy• voice can be individual and distinctive chronological and linear, treating the chology of Theotormon in Visions of (like that of J. Middleton Murry, for poems in historical order and, espe• the Daughters of Albion (43-44); example, or Harold Bloom), but nei• cially with the long epics, reading Blake's mythological method and the ther the core of the content nor very them straight through, from beginning dynamic of growth in the myth he per• much of the interpretative detail ought to middle to end. This organization, sonally created (57-64); the importance to be strongly eccentric. The kind of obviously, enhances the value of Ful• of rhythm in Blake's verse (90-93, in• book I am describing ought also, typi• ler's book as an enchiridion for begin• cluding a wonderfully effective visual cally, to be a general study not obvi• ning students. The fourth chapter, re-shaping of a passage from Blake, ously informed by too obsessive an which makes up about one-fifth of the bringing out its elaborate parallelisms); argumentative thesis or limited by a book, is not concerned directly with some good analyses, passim, of Blake's highly specialized critical method— Blake; rather, it is in part personal self- pictures, in the Four Zoas manuscript, feminist, psychological, Marxist, revelation by Fuller, in part a plea for in the illuminated poems, and else• deconstructionist, or the like. reforms in the practice of criticism and where; a convincing parallel between This is the bill that, more than any in the process of education. The goal the Los-Enitharmon-Orc triangle and the other, David Fuller's Blake's Heroic Ar• of these reforms is to foster greater Vulcan-Venus-Mars story (118, 289); gument fits, however roughly. (The personal involvement in the processes Blake's high valuation of comedy (172- author apparently intended something of learning and interpreting, thus free• 73); the motif of friendship in Jerusa• different, about which more in a mo• ing students and critics to invest their lem (176-77); the relationship of Los ment.) The book consists of four chap• individual values and experiences in to his Spectre in Jerusalem (177-80); ters. The first is on Blake's works earlier their readings of Blake and, indeed, of Blake's relationship to eighteenth-cen• than The FourZoas. The second is on all creative literature. The same goal tury ways of understanding and defining the Zoos and Milton, though very little accounts for the autobiographical ele• "enthusiasm" (180-81); the importance is on Milton; Fuller invites us (289- ment in this final chapter, which is for Blake of the Judgment-of-Paris 90), in lieu of more detailed treatment designed to make explicit the personal of that poem, to read a substantial essay Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 97

myth (204); and a number of striking his insistence that Blake's myth and represent but with who they are—but points in the final chapter—for exam• values are developmental rather than Blake is also here [in Night 1 of The ple, the application to doctrinaire ad• serenely monolithic, are reminders Four Zoas] writing a psychological al• herents of literary theory of their own that he writes in the 1980s, but they are legory. Mental life is seen as attempt• familiar argument, vis-a-vis those who very pale reflections indeed of the ing to dominate the workings of the resist them, about the conditioning more outspoken critical attempts, passional faculty, and vice versa, and power of hidden psychological since the late 1970s, to de-idealize their conflict corrupts the imagination. dynamics (254). A book that does all Blake in these respects. Or.. . one aspect of the emotional life, these things is, patently, worth some• The most glaring defect of Fuller's Vala, demands too exclusive an atten• thing to veteran Blakeans as well as to book is this insensitivity to both the tion ..." (99). Other ideological trans• novice readers. tradition and the recent currents of lations appear on pages 32, 103, 118, These interesting and useful pauses Blake scholarship and criticism, an in• 120, 127, 133, 139-40, and l6l. Why, for synoptic comment are effectively sensitivity so glaring as to seem, some• then, so short and contemptuous shrift placed in Fuller's otherwise step-by- times, almost willful. Scholarly spleen— for the likes of Ostriker and Wilkie- step progress through Blake's works. like charity in at least one respect— Johnson? But most of them are brief, and to• begins at home, and so I'll begin with The same kind of need to mis• gether they bulk much smaller than Fuller's treatment of Blake 'sFour Zoas: represent appears in Fuller's remarks the rather orthodox, and often The Design of a Dream, by Mary Lynn on Nelson Hilton's book Literal Imag• familiar, matter of which Fuller's com• Johnson and me. This treatment con• ination: Blake's Vision of Words (1983), mentary largely consists. Certainly sists of half of a single fleeting refer• where Fuller quite wrongly implies there is nothing novel in his fun• ence (95 and note) to the tendency of that Hilton's attribution of elaborate damental premises that Blake is a poet critics—Alicia Ostriker too—to allegor• wordplay to Blake is an invitation to of ideas, that his meaning resides both ize Blake. Now, it has been proved by admire the indefinite and blurred. It in minute particulars and in the total several interpreters of the Zoas, since requires considerable perverse ingenu• form or impact of his visions, and that our book appeared in 1978, that the ity, I think, to misread Hilton in this content and form are inseparable (xii-xiii, poem can be discussed intelligently way, since Hilton argues—and shows— 1). What, then, makes Fuller believe and incisively without much if any that Blake's writing is literal—a multi- that his views of Blake are so novel or recourse to Wilkie and Johnson. But vocal interplay of very definite special that he must spend several that does not describe what happens meanings, not "an indefinite pos• dozen pages elaborating the personal in the Fuller book; his 75-page com• sibility of suggestion and association" experience that has made him, for ex• mentary on the poem is not substan• (287). I don't see how the literal can be ample, a "libertarian socialist" (256)? It tially different from ours, and a indefinite. Would Fuller call the poly• is true that throughout Fuller's book he number of his detailed remarks on it phonic—i.e., multivocal—lines of the occasionally expresses such political are very similar indeed. Moreover, the St. Matthew Passion an exercise in values, in passing, along with mildly allegorical approach, in which the Zoas blurred ambiguity? In the same league rebellious religious ones, but other• are human faculties, is only one of four with the treatment of Hilton is Fuller's wise I find little or no sign of a distinc• used in Wilkie-Johnson, and the other anger with John E. Grant for inferring, tive, informing personal vision, and three approaches, which treat the poem from the Four Zoas illustrations, that even his rather moderate political left• as an intricate structure, as an almost "the pursuit of natural happiness tends ism can hardly be considered unusual realistic novel or drama of character, to lead insensibly toward a quest for in the context of Blake criticism over and as a potent myth inviting deeply the unnatural." This, says Fuller, is "Uri- the last few decades. The tone of Fuller's personal response, are very close to zen's view of sexuality, not Blake's" approach to Blake may owe some• the approach Fuller himself claims to (288-89; cf. Grant, "Visions in Vala," in thing to the atmosphere and values of be taking and to be encouraging in Stuart Curran and Joseph Anthony Wit- the late 1960s (the period when, he other critics and readers. Even Fuller's treich, Jr., eds., Blake's Sublime Alle• says, he first read Blake, xi), but much impatience with ideological translation gory, U of Wisconsin P, 1973 [194]). the same anti-establishment tone had of Blake's myth seems disingenuous, Surely Fuller has misconstrued Grant informed many books on Blake for at since in a number of places he seems here, out of temporary blindness to least a decade before that epoch and to be doing that very thing himself. Blake's special sense of the word has, in different veins, continued to do Apparently it's all right to do so as long natural, which almost certainly is the so thereafter. The discomfort Fuller oc• as one confesses to self-contradiction: sense in which Grant is using the word. casionally confesses with apparently "[Our] primary awareness of the char• I fail to see how anyone who has read sexist elements in Blake's work, and acters is not concerned with what they 98 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1990/91

much of Grant's work on Blake can sition to Frye's comparative mytholo- sparing the reader the irritation of re• make Fuller's accusation. gizing—his alleged tendency, for ex• reading and re-construing so many As for the giants of Blake interpreta• ample, to lose sight of Blake's Ore in a sentences, of which this is one tion, Fuller is sometimes a little cavalier more universalized "Ore cycle"—is specimen: "Because of the mutually with Kathleen Raine (220 and note) understandable but would be more so creating and reinforcing relationship and David V. Erdman (291), and per• if Fuller did not at times attribute the between the inner and outer worlds in haps a little careless with Erdman, fail• same kind of synoptic mythic imagina• Blake's view his poetry, like a Dantean ing to credit him with identifying the tion to Blake, who, Fuller tells us, allegory, often engages with both at "boring screws" and "hollow globes" "praised Jacob Bryant's A New System, once" (58) and this is another: "Blake's of The Four Zoos Night 8 as, respec• or Analysis of Ancient Mythology 0T7A- myth has analogies with all these myth• tively, tools of naval warfare and shrap• 76) because ... it has at its heart a com• ologies as well as with the Christian in nel (141; cf. Erdman, Blake: Prophet parative approach to the understanding most cases though only analogies with Against Empire, rev. ed., 1969 [398]). of mythology which he accepted" in the Christian myth are explicitly drawn" For the most part, however, Fuller's Descriptive Catalogue(61). The hostil• (61). But, indeed, the proofreading of quarrels with Raine and Erdman are ity to Frye in Fuller's book seems in the book has been so unreliable that conducted according to legitimate excess of what, given Fuller's own cri• resorts to a conjectural text are some• canons of intellectual dissent. tical principles, the situation warrants. times necessary: "Milton had begun The situation with Northrop Frye is He seems more interested, for exam• the process of transformation between more complicated and puzzling. De• ple, in arguing that what Frye calls the The Faerie Queene and The Prelude, spite occasional bows to him, Frye is "Ore cycle" is a misnomer for the revo• not only in the directly personal pas• virtually a bete noire for Fuller. Plenty lution-reaction pattern in Blake's myth sages of Paradise Lost but also in that of Blakeans today resist Frye's ideas than in denying that the pattern is there the poem's central characters and its and influence, and the lines of such (67-68, 286). basic issues of the nature of true free• opposition can be meaningfully drawn. In Blake's Heroic Argument Fuller dom and the proper limits of knowl• But Fuller's antipathy is harder to once refers to university professors of edge and of obedience which can be define or explain. The main bone of literature as "paid interpreters" (22), and seen as dramatisations of Milton's own contention seems to be Frye's desire, again, later, as persons "paid to speak subjectivity" (60). That non-sentence expressed in the Anatomy of Criticism, and promote speech" (252). After awak• can be turned into either of two dif• to detach literature from value judg• ing from a brief, not entirely un• ferent sentences—parsable, however ments about life. But, even granted pleasant fantasy of my colleagues and shaky—but only surgically, by delet• that this is what Frye called for in that myself as fatcats, I began to wonder ing either the that or the which. Take book, surely it does not describe his who was getting the sixty-seven and a your choice. This puzzling-out of sen• critical practice in general, or in his half to eighty-five North American dol• tences can get fatiguing. main work on Blake, Fearful Symmetry. lars being charged for each copy of this Someone should have had a part in There, on the contrary, Frye could more book, and what we have a right to the production process who knew how cogently be faulted for the opposite: expect for that price. At the very least, to spell Warren (the American Revolu• for blending his voice polemically with I suggest, a well-produced book. In• tionary hero; page 283 reads "Watten"), Blake's. The "Case against Locke," for stead, though, we get what is probably dissension(\ 10), Joseph Priestley's last example, that constitutes the first chap• the most sloppily produced book I have name (199), Stuart Curran's last name ter of Fearful Symmetry is one of the ever reviewed. In the broadest terms, (288), cumbrous(\22), and Gethsema- most impassioned pieces of criticism this statement applies to the book's ne(2l4). Someone on the team ought produced by an academic writer in whole plan; the senior editor who to have known that the Immaculate recent decades. I should have thought handled the project and the expert Conception refers to Mary's birth from that the unusually pungent Frye would Blake referees who, I presume, were her mother, not the birth of Jesus from be considered a prime model of the consulted, ought to have told Fuller Mary (203). Someone ought to have kind of investment of personality in that the long concluding chapter, with ruled out round parentheses inside criticism that Fuller advocates. Perhaps its call for personal involvement and round parentheses, or, better still, have Fuller has allowed his opposition (263 unconventionality of approach, does not rectified sentence constructions so that ff.) to principles announced in the Ana• jibe with the rather orthodox content that confusing oddity did not come tomy of Criticism to color unduly his and method in the discussion of Blake into play in the first place. Someone view of Frye's Blake criticism, so that in the body of the book. If not such should have taken care that there be Frye becomes a kind of morally dis• persons, a good copy editor ought to an adequate index, or, having failed to engaged aesthete (282). Fuller's oppo• have coached Fuller in punctuation, do so, should have avoided flaunting Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 99

the deficiency: "Only the more exten• FourZoas rather than merely MS page up to a point, serves a legitimate pur• ded discussions of characters and loca• numbers. Someone ought to have re• pose and that, at his best, he writes a tions of Blake's mythology are membered to tell us how we are to supple and expressive prose, certainly referenced" (294). Someone ought to distinguish references to plates of better than in many current academic have known that a table of contents is Blake's illuminated works from refer• books. The main trouble with this book not an index and that therefore, by the ences to the sixteen plates of Fuller's is not in its sloppy texture but in the conventions of book publishing, heads book. (Roman vs. italic, I think, but author's basic misjudgment of the rela• listed in the contents should actually that's an inference.) tion between what the book is and occur on the identified pages of the These annoyances of format distract what he seems to have intended it to be. book. Someone ought to have asked us from what we might otherwise re• Fuller to supply Night numbers of The cognize more clearly: that Fuller's book,

oncisely formulated and meticu• West-ostlicher Divan, his last large Martin Bidney. Blake and Clously documented, this compara• poem-cycle, and of "changed value," tive study should be of equal interest the folkloristic-supernatural elements Goethe: Psychology, Ontol• to students of romanticism and of Ger• in Faust. Beginning with Goethe's ogy, Imagination. Colum• man literature in the Age of Goethe. It conversion to classicism, as the writing bia: University of Missouri is, moreover, an impressive work of of the drama progressed these super• Press, 1988. xvi + 184 pp. scholarship that does credit both to its natural elements were used with ever $24. author and to its publisher at a time greater irony and ever more directly when books by university scholars satiric, often anti-romantic, intention treating foreign language materials (e.g., in "Witch's Kitchen," usually dated and appearing under the auspices of 1788—with its mocking of superstition Reviewed by Stuart Atkins university presses are often painful to —and in many later scenes through act read because of inaccurate citations, 4 of Part II, written in 1831, with its jibes inexact quotations, frequent mistrans• at the cult of medievalism). Although lations, and obviously insouciant editing. Bidney's premise of a basically roman• As critical analysis in the Jungian tic Goethe is in no way idiosyncratic, tradition of Maud Bodkin's Archetypal having been promulgated for some Patterns in Poetry, Bidney's mono• decades even by self-proclaimed Goethe graph persuasively demonstrates—to specialists, it means limiting Goethe's some extent by definition, since it classical period—Bidney does not, like treats the archetypical—strikingly some who take his position, suppress similar elements of thought and form the fact that there was such a period in selected texts of Blake and Goethe. for Goethe—to "the decade of his Because a "spiritual kinship" (xii) can friendship with Schiller" (xii) and ig• be discerned in the shared interest of noring the fact that Goethe expressed both writers in neo-Platonic and later stronger disapproval of romanticism in hermetic materials, Bidney is persuaded the decades after Schiller's death than that they are very similar "Romantic in the one before it and was still criticiz• poet-thinkers" (xi). In Goethe's and ing romanticism in his last years (e.g., Blake's writings it is indeed possible to in the concluding volume of his ac• find "Shared Ideas and Myths" (title of count of his Italian sojourn, published Bidney's first chapter), some of 1829, and in Faust II, chiefly written which—like the pairs "Selving" and 1825-31). "Unserving" or "negation" and "con• The extent to which Goethe in some trariety"—are constants, while others periods and works is a romantic poet- are to be found in Goethe only in early thinker comparable with Blake is works or in ones using motifs typical economically but adequately demon• of his early writing but without their strated by Bidney with reference to a original positive value or importance. limited corpus of materials, namely, The most obvious example of "re-use" representative lyrics and a few prose would be the anacreontic motifs in passages by each writer, and major 100 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

sections of The Four Zoas and Faust. Chapters 5 through 7 (and a very he mirrors the Devil"—although most His second chapter, "Between Selving brief conclusory 8) identify many fea• readers of Faust agree that Faust coura• and Unselving: 'The Authentic Pulse of tures common to Faust and The Four geously rejects Worry (at the price of Life,"' compares successive pairs of Zoas, but their central concern is the blindness) and dies confident (perhaps lyrics (from adolescence, early adul• two poets' "broader vision of self-tran• mistakenly) that he has at last achieved thood, and later years) to show how scendence" and how the "emerging something significant. (Bidney has an• "Blake and Goethe express their psy• form of this vision is dictated by each ticipated this objection by observing chological and mythopoeic affinities" poet's need to try to solve, in a more that what is described in Faust's last in what indeed are "strikingly similar comprehensive way than was possible words as a "daily battle for the right to formal patterns" (23). Slightly less satis• in the lyrical utterances we have stu• live, fought against the daily threat of factory is his third chapter, "Overcom• died, the ever-growing problem posed chaotic inundation hardly sounds like ing Negations: Problematics of Reason by the power of psychological and paradise" and actually "resembles R. D. and Desire," which examines how "the ontological negation" (98). On The Four Laing's portrait of the schizoid indi• selving-unselving balance" operates for Zoas Bidney speaks with authoritative vidual" 034), and by claiming that the each poet in the area of psychology, conviction; on Faust he is generally dying Faust "reveals ... his obsession although this may be because some of convincing, although at times what with permanence and his fear of in• the texts by Goethe used for purposes might be regarded as the adduction of vasive flux, the twofold worry of his of illustration are less aptly chosen than forced parallels between these two texts teacher Mephistopheles" (135). Faust in the two preceding chapters. For ex• seems to weaken an already well- has not, however, bidden the Moment ample, an occasional four-hexameter made point. Thus Faust, Mephis- tarry, which would be a renunciation epigram (mislabeled "elegantly satiric topheles, Homunculus, and the Eternal of flux and change and growth, nor distichs" [60]), that a genuinely appre• Feminine are said to be the counter• has Mephisto had any teacher-role for ciative Goethe wrote to thank Herder parts of Luvah, Urizen, Tharmas, and Faust after his Helen experience, having (court-preacher as well as scholar, and Urthona and, "as the four major char• become at the drama's end hardly more hence "priest and wise man" in Bidney's acters in the respective poems," to "have than the mere servant of an ever more correct translation) for his essay at their command innumerable atten• imperious Faust.) "Nemesis" is interpreted to mean that dant (or rebellious) spirits" (99). But Bidney uses Night 7a of The Four "Goethe's priest is a well-intentioned the Eternal Feminine—unlike Margarete Zoas and the Classical Walpurgisnight but impertinent mediator" like the "Dis- and Helen of Troy—is not a character of Faustas the texts best showing how guiser of the Female Form" in Blake's in Faust, and Homunculus, however Blake and Goethe similarly indicate verses beginning "A fairy skipd upon important the ideas he embodies or that if "Humanity is to regain the au• my knee." symbolizes, merely appears as an epi• thentic pulse of life, a Spirit of Mediation In his fourth chapter, "Overcoming sodic figure in it, and neither he (him• must counterbalance the Spirit of Nega• Negations: Problematics of Imagina• self a spirit) nor the Eternal Feminine tion" (138). He correlates the "three tive Becoming," which has as its theme (or even Margarete or Helen) nor— distinct types of insight" attained by ontology, Bidney convincingly demon• normally—Faust ever deal with atten• Urthona-Los with those experienced strates basic similarities in the two poets' dant spirits. in their quests by Faust, Mephisto, and concepts of time and space with lyric Bidney is more persuasive when, as Homunculus, the last of these exem• examples all well chosen except for in chapter 6, "The Spirit of Negation: plifying "the kind of self-surrender"— "Do You Know That Land," said to Selving and Stasis," instead of forcing here Bidney as it were corrects his represent Goethe "in his classical dec• an exact equation, he distinguishes be• Laingian interpretation of Faust as ade" (it was written a full ten years tween the kinds of negation repre• schizoid—"that Faust will begin to earlier) and interpreted—without regard sented by Mephistopheles and Urizen, show only in the final scene of the for the fact that in Wilhelm Meister's although even here he pre-dates the play." He persuasively concludes that Apprenticeship it is a narratively func• composition of Faust, w. 1349-58, by for Los and Faust "the key to an im• tional expression of Mignon's longing over 20 years (123) to bolster (again aginative ontology, to life in the eternal for Italy and the home from which unnecessarily) his point. Later in this present, is finally revealed as loving she was abducted as a young child— same chapter his forcing of parallels creativity, or creative love" (150). But as presenting "an Italian journey between "Mephistopheles-Faust and then he weakens what seems to me a whose projected goal is a classical Urizen-Orc conflicts" similarly permits effective conclusion by moralistically Eden, a comforting shelter for the nos• him to assert that Faust dies racked interpreting the tragic fate of Faust's talgic self" (87). by the problem of Worry and fear of and Helen's son Euphorion (act 3 of the future—"in his fear of Becoming, Faust If) as "an ironic reminder that in Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERL Y 101

courting Helen, Faust was moving backward in time as misguidedly as his son later tried to move forward." To Approaches to Teaching observe that "Rebellious Euphorion, Blake's overcompensating both ontologically Songs of Innocence and psychologically, seeks to violate others and succeeds in killing himself" and of Experience (155) is to state only a partial truth, since Euphorion's "killing himself" Edited by Robert F. Glecknrr serves what, as the threnody on his and Mark L. Greenberg Byronic death makes clear, we are to recognize as a noble-humane cause, Greek Independence (the historical equivalent in Faust of the more gen• eral good of mankind that as he dies Faust will believe he has furthered). To the extent that Goethe was a romantic thinker, as in his Storm and Stress years, or that his ideas coincided with those of romantic contempo• raries, Bidney's observations in Blake and Goethe persuade one of their valid• ity, especially since they are offered with scrupulous documentation and scholarly accuracy. Exceptions to this last generalization are so few that in no way do they diminish his book's merits: David W. Lindsay, ed. Robert F. Gleckner and (6.15 himself [/britself], 41.24 and 119.7 Blake: Songs of Inno• Mark L. Greenberg, eds. dumb [for stupid, Ger. dumm], 43.30 cence and Experience. Approaches to Teaching sullen [for, probably, unenlightened, The Critics Debate Series. Blake's Songs of Inno• Ger. triibe], 60.33 un [fortheEng. arti• General editor, Michael cence and of Experience. cle an], 95.39 the heart [for our heart], Scott. Basingstoke: Macmil- Approaches to Teaching 96.29 enjoy [not the imperative Lafst, but Lalst, can be enjoyed], 104.5 O to lan and Atlantic Highlands, World Literature 21. Series sink down [forO had I but sunk down], NJ: Humanities, 1989. editor Joseph Gibaldi. New 104.21 Faust's relief [none at given 92 pp. £18.50 cloth/ £4.95 York: Modern Language point in Goethe's texi\, 127.18 jealous paper; $29.95/ $8.50. Association of America, [for inconstant], 157.28 the good Lord 1989. $32.00 cloth/ $17.50 [fora great—or fine—gentleman], and 158.27 Lusty Person [for Clown]). It paper. might now be rewarding to compare Blake and Goethe as artists as well as thinkers, although Goethe's fondness for idealized realism and for the clas• Reviewed by ality, and method. The book is divided sics (in contrast to Blake's "it is the into two halves: the first is a survey of Classics ... that Desolate Europe with Edward Larrissy critical approaches; the second, called Wars"), his limited respect for Flax- "Appraisal," in fact "traces the evolu• man, and his lifelong love of tion of Songs of Innocence and Ex• landscape and landscape painting avid Lindsay's book is pan of a perience [sic] in the context of Blake's suggest that here might prove to be series the aim of which is to intro• other writings and gives closer atten• less "spiritual kinship" between them D duce students to "a variety of critical tion to eight poems." in this area than in the areas that Bid- approaches to specific texts." He pur• The survey first defines the text, dis• ney has so thoughtfully examined. sues that aim with lucidity, imparti- cussing the different editions. It goes 102 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

on to look at literary and artistic ante• chiefly because of Lindsay's wise de• cedents of the Songs, bringing in (ac• cision to be selective in his choice of Steven Blakemore. Burke cording to the brief) the ways in which songs. This will be a useful book to and the Fall of Language: knowledge of these has modified cri• students who do not succumb to the tics' responses. The fact of the Songs temptation to make it a substitute for The French Revolution as being an illuminated text is then wider reading, not least because it sug• Linguistic Event. Hanover, broached, and we encounter impor• gests the value of many different ap• NH: University Press of tant interpretations of visual motifs, in• proaches to so subtle and rich an New England, 1988.115 pp. cluding some from such critics as author. It may, however, be a pity that $20. Keynes, Erdman, and Mitchell. The the approaches of Hazard Adams and ideas of the dramatic lyric, and of an David Wagenknecht do not receive a occasionally ironic use of the repre• mention here. sented speaker, are introduced, and Gleckner and Greenberg's book is Reviewed by then Lindsay adopts the useful ruse of aimed at teachers rather than students, Lisa Plummer Crafton using "The Chimney Sweeper" as a and this aim does control most of the peg on which to hang typical reactions essays in it. As well as providing in• to Blake, because it exemplifies so many stances of approaches to Blake, then, tarting with the basic premise that of the complexities of the Songs, both they are very much the records of in• Slinguistic interpretations of revolu• in its strategies and in its allusions. The structors on how they go about teach• tions are as viable and important as discussion then moves on to the rela• ing the Songs in the class. I found this economic, sociopolitical, or ideologi• tionship between the Songs and Blake's emphasis of the book fascinating and cal ones, Steven Blakemore's book con• "system," glancing at the opposed im• helpful. W. J. T. Mitchell is useful on tributes to revisionist critiques of the plications of Frye and Hirsch. It also ways of talking about the "composite French Revolution. Burke and the Fall looks at paired poems ("Counterparts"), text," as one would expect. David Simp• of Language explores the language of at speakers in Experience, and at the son, in "Teaching Ideology in Songs" revolutionary and counterrevolution• symbolism of flowers. follows almost precisely my own way ary discourse. Although Blakemore The second part, "Appraisal," has of raising questions about "The Chim• focuses on Burkean texts and themes, much less to do with "the critics": hard• ney Sweeper," referring to Erdman, he also analyzes the "special linguistic ly anything, in fact. It is Lindsay's learned "false consciousness," Glen, Raine, and self-consciousness" (2) that shapes all and astute introduction to the Songs, the "corporeal" soot from Swedenborg. visions of the revolution. While the Joseph Viscomi recounts a most inter• looking at eight poems chiefly in the author makes no mention of Blake esting method he uses of asking clas• light of Blake's other work. The read• (nor of literary tradition per se), this ses to copy designs from Blake plates. ings are tactful, and responsive to many exploration of the nexus between lan• This has at least the merit of focusing different contexts, although the allu• guage and ideology contributes much to attention on the facts of a given design sions to Blake's prophetic books suffer a methodology for analyzing Blake's (an important consideration in itself) from a brevity imposed by the format revolutionary texts. Not only has Blake• as well as on the materiality of Blake's of the series. In this respect they share more assembled valuable historical production methods. But most of the their suffering with some previous sec• material, for instance on the debates approaches treated here could yield tions of the book. There are occasions over constitution, authority, and patri• something of value to most teachers. when one wonders if a student will be archy, but also his contextualizing of The editors have included an extraor• able easily to digest the various buffet the poles of revolutionary and counter• dinarily full reasoned bibliography to of critical approaches so briskly served revolutionary texts amidst these themes the essays. up. But this is not always a problem, provides a revealing, albeit narrowly focused, account. The title, which implies that lan• guage is the unified focus of study, is misleading in that only the last half of the slender book deals specifically with the language of revolution. The first three of the six chapters offer back• ground information on what the author considers the significant bases of the arguments and how Burke and Paine exploit various topoi for their respec- Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 103

Although the historical topics of the first half are rewarding, the last half of Jerome J. McGann. Towards the book is even more so as Blake• more delves into the connection be• a Literature of Knowledge. tween language and ideology by Chicago: University of Chi• examining Burke's belief that revolu• cago Press, 1989. xii+138 pp. tionary criticism of government, $24.95. religion, and, above all, language and the Fall of means a fall from innocence; a "strip• ping of linguistic veils" (70) actually Language creates chaos. Thus the revolution as a Reviewed by The Trench Revolution radical linguistic event was one that Michael Fischer as Linguistic Event upset the entire worldview. Blakemore discusses specific historical linguistic arguments over classical versus ver• owards a Literature of Knowledge nacular language, the establishment of T is the final installment in a wide- a new "national" language, and the ranging series of books on literature, Steven Blakcmorc renaming of the French calendar and history, and ideology. Elsewhere I streets. In fact, the revolutionaries have discussed the first four books in tive political purposes. For example, wanted a demystification of language this series: The Romantic Ideology Burke argues for a constitution that that would change the title French King (1983), A Critique of Modern Textual exists "time out of mind" (8) in an to "king of the French," so that com• Criticism (1983), The Beauty of Inflec• unwritten past preserving traditional mon men would not be, as Paine said, tions (1985), and Social Values and meanings whereas Paine insists that a "immured in the Bastille of a word." Poetic Acts (1988).,* Here I want to con• constitution's legitimacy comes from The final chapter, which is somewhat sider why such a tentatively entitled writing, as evidenced by the American loosely joined to the rest of the book book concludes this series—why, in colonists' document. Legitimacy of gov• (perhaps due to its being printed earlier other words, at the climax of his pro• ernmental authority is also "proven" by in Eighteenth-Century Studies) explores ject McGann sees himself still moving towards a literature of knowledge in• both sides through an argument from Burke's nostalgia for the aristocracy in terms of language and his fear that stead of arriving at it. origins. Burke's authority rests in an revolution would create a second Babel "ancient" origin that is "unknowable By "a literature of knowledge," or worse. and hence fruitless to trace" (21). McGann means a literature that "deals Blakemore points out that Paine stra• Throughout the book, Blakemore in matters of truth and error" and "pro• tegically emphasizes a Biblical myth of keeps his eye on Burke's "majestic pre• motes moral and political values" (vii). origins that predates Burke's abstract sence," and this not so subtle reverence For him this is all literature. "The secret "ancient" sources. This answer to for Burke may annoy some readers, of the imagination" is "that it makes Burke is very similar to the way in but the well-written final chapter suc• statements, that it communicates, that which Blake's French Revolution em• cessfully argues for Burke's "modern" its architectonics have designs upon phasizes France's "ancient" liberties (as sensitivity to language. Blakemore's us" (vii). In the brief theoretical intro• study, aside from its value as a com• Michael Ferber has noted, the word duction that opens the book, McGann pendium of important revolutionary carries a largely Burkean resonance suggests that the intellectual and poli• arguments of Burke and Paine, employs throughout the poem). Finally, Blake• tical force of literature has remained a a rewarding method of interpreting dis• secret (rather than public knowledge) more contrasts how the language of course as a dialectic in sociopolitical because formalist aesthetic theory has patriarchy is used by both sides. Burke reality, a strategy especially fruitful in emphasized the purity of the arts, their had used this argument in defense of Blake studies, as Blake directly and rising above political protest, sales the American revolution, but Blake• indirectly reinterprets Locke, Newton, pitches, sermons, and other discourse more notes this change of heart: and Burke. Blakemore's study intends with designs upon us. McGann sees "Whereas Burke envisions the Am• uppermost to remind us how much lan• literary works as speech acts interested erican Revolution as the oppressive guage alters our perception of reality in accomplishing a wide range of poli• father denying the American child his and, indeed, that any interpretation of tically charged tasks, from achieving constitutional rights, he envisions the history or literature is "bounded by the social change to identifying what ought French Revolution as a revolt of the very language that expresses it" (105). to count as knowledge. Unlike other child against his natural parents" (38). equally interested forms of commun- BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

ication, however, literary works have somehow necessitates liberation. consequences that always exceed the The apparently inevitable struggle intent of the writer. Although literary between poetry and ideology occu• works are thus more intentional (or pies the four writers McGann goes on less pure) than the formalist concedes, to discuss: William Blake, Lord Byron, they are also more open-ended and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Ezra self-subverting than the propagandist Pound. Except for Rossetti, each has would like. figured prominently in preceding vol• This view of literature will be familiar umes in this series and much of to readers of McGann's other work. McGann's analysis goes over what is I remain bothered by McGann's will• now familiar ground. Even so, McGann's ingness to speak of "all poetry" (7) overview of these writers here gives us everywhere and always. McGann has an especially clear look at his approach a penchant for generalizing about "art's to poetry and his expectations for performative function" (4) and for criticism. laying down ironclad, ahistorical laws A typical McGann reading begins by like '"The truth, the whole truth, and acknowledging a poet's intent as stated nothing but the truth.' This is the in the poet's literary works, letters, and apophthegm under which poetry is notebooks. This intent usually com• compelled to operate" (8).2 The pas• mits the poet to the formalist literary sive voice in this statement typically own political choices. Still, he under• goal of incorporating tensions, ambi• avoids specifying who or what obli• standably wants those choices to feel guities, and paradoxes, only to resolve gates poetry to operate this way. not simply desirable but necessary. By them in some disinterested synthesis Critics of course have compelled poet• sleight of hand (for instance, by the that includes everything and privileges ry to do all kinds of things, among passive voice), he attributes his values nothing. "Privileging nothing" means them imitate men in action, promote to the operation of poetry per se. It turns simply existing as a self-contained ob• moral truths, reinforce the Bible, and out that "poetical works necessarily ject; "disinterested" means disdaining tap into the collective unconscious. I involve deconstructive critical func• to advocate a particular ideology or think politically-minded academic critics tions" (7) at odds with not only these aim at a specific goal. Along these lines, like McGann compel poetry to operate works' own ideological aims but with McGann describes Rossetti's dedica• their way in order to justify it as an critics who try to stand in their way tion to the "pure pursuit of Beauty" especially self-critical form of discourse. ("poems may be at the mercy of their (72) and Pound's "quest for Total Form" McGann evades saying this perhaps readers, but readers find themselves (105). Blake seems less enamored of because such a statement makes his equally at the hazard of the texts" [8]). this ideal than McGann's other ex• critical approach seem only the pref• When critics obstruct the ideological amples. According to McGann, "the erence of a particular group of critics self-scrutiny triggered by poetry— balance and reconciliation of opposite who happen to value self-criticism and when, for example, they use poems to and discordant qualities form no part conflict. Instead of arguing for his way enforce rather than contest certain ... of Blake's programme and works" of looking at poetry, McGann conceals doctrines—they are opposing poetry. (20). Nevertheless, even Blake sought it in apparently disinterested defini• This appeal to poetry seems desper• in art "a complete redemptive scheme" tions. Critics don't falsify the ideological ate to me. I can imagine some literary (34) that would not only overcome loss investments of poems; "poems [again critics thinking twice about opposing but make it a moment in the imaginative all poems] seek ... to 'falsify' them• poetry, but I doubt that such an argu• person's regeneration. selves" (7). ment carries much weight in the culture Having noted these writers' formal• I can only speculate why McGann at large, where, as McGann himself ist aspirations, McGann shows how makes poetry itself responsible for the notes, literary works "today do not com• their work fails to accomplish what ideological self-subversion that he mand much more than a marginal they set out to achieve. McGann rede• 3 favors. In previous political criticism— authority and importance." In any case, fines this failure as success at demysti• in much of Marxism, for example—a McGann's reliance on poetry is set up fying formalist ideology, or the illusion critic's politics could be entrusted to by the default not just of history but of that a poem can be a self-sufficient history, which was presumably headed other ways of supporting political organic whole. Whereas Rossetti re• toward the socialist ending that the critic change (like "man was born free, and luctantly relinquishes his dream of desired. For many reasons this option everywhere he is in chains"). Distrust purity, Blake, Byron, and Pound set in is closed to McGann, who wisely no of ends and origins has left poetry "the motion a process that they cannot con• longer calls on history to support his one form of discourse" (7) that still trol. Blake, for instance, scarred plate Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 105

3 of Jerusalem as if to introduce one Pound's contradictions summon "the because the knowledge acquired in discordant moment or gap that would reader to intervene" by creating "an this process "must remain provisional, prevent our seeing the poem as a delib• opening or gap in the poetry which subject to change, and even sometimes erately finished whole. Later he applied demands some kind of response" (118). unassimilated at the authoritative level water colors to soften the blow but the These interventions by the reader "will of its consciousness" (57). damage had already been done to his be as particular as the originary acts of In light of these expectations for own ideology of imaginative redemp• production" (118). criticism, I think it fitting that the pro• tion. Here was one loss not even Blake McGann is very hard on readers who ject McGann began in The Romantic could recuperate or wish away. turn the other cheek when assaulted Ideology pauses rather than stops in In showing how poems subvert the by poets like Blake and Pound. Chal• Towards a Literature of Knowledge. ideological designs of their authors, lenged to act, to return fire with fire, It is as if McGann were catching his McGann often appeals to such physi• these readers opt for merely aesthetic breath rather than finishing up. The cal features of the text as the gouge on contemplation. McGann calls these trajectory of his considerable critical plate 3, the typography in Milton, the readers clerical (they are the academic labors has been defined by McGann's cover, the binding, even the kind of descendants of Coleridge's clerisy), desire to denounce fascist poetry, reac• cloth Rossetti wanted for Poems of 1870, reactionary (they evade the critique of tionary criticism, and social barbarism, the borders and capitals in the first ideology that literature urges them to all in an effort to change what he editions of The Cantos, and the differ• take up), hypocritical (they gloss over believes to be wrong. Like the poets he ent type-fonts used throughout Pound's the complicity of formalist criticism with admires, he has provoked comparable work. These details entangle poems in acts of power), and sentimental (they activity in his readers, injecting new the commercial transactions that litera• deny that "the documents of civiliza• energy and seriousness in literary criti• ture (in formalist theory) transcends. A tion—the writings of the great poets, cism, especially in romantic studies. seemingly complete product turns out the readings of the high-minded As McGann's own view of criticism to be an unstable composite provi• critics—are all of them, as Benjamin leads us to expect, he sometimes lapses sionally patched together by authors, said, equally and at the same time docu• from his own standards. These dead editors, and publishers. ments of barbarism"[128D. spots in his work, these "resting places This emphasis on the often messy McGann's concluding sentences ex• and seeming sure points of Reasoning" process of literary production sets up plain what he as a critic is trying to too firmly held to be doubted (as Keats McGann's view of reading. The works accomplish: might put it), include the dogmatic pro• he studies in Towards a Literature of nouncements about poetry that I noted We move towards a literature of knowl• 4 Knowledge do not simply result from edge along the trajectory of a desire to earlier. I am more concerned, how• social actions and decisions; these works change what we believe to be wrong, to ever, with his needing constantly to are events in history, not objects to repair what we see is broken, and to tell himself "not to yield." This advice, be contemplated at a safe distance. redeem what we know has been lost. of course, comes from Tennyson's McGann's description of Blake fits his Through poetry we learn how we cannot "Ulysses," which is also the source of succeed in any of these quests, and how, other examples: "[The work of art] is on that very account, we are called upon the epigraph to Social Values and fundamentally an action, and to the to maintain them, and "not to yield" to their Poetic Acts ("Tis not too late to seek a degree that the 'completed' work re• repeated, illusory achievement. (133-34) newer world"). For McGann, yielding veals it as an action, the work is suc• means giving into the frustration that "We" here is vague, but I take McGann cessful. Such an activity then tries to results when we learn that we must fail to be referring to critics as well as poets. call out in the reader/viewer/ audience in our critical quest to mend what is He asks us to judge literary criticism a reciprocating response" (13). Merely broken and false. Demoralized, we are not by the position it finally attains but aesthetic appreciation or censure of tempted to settle for someone else's by the quest it undertakes. That quest these works dodges their demands on (always illusory) claim to have achieved aims at rectifying what we believe to us. When McGann notes, for example, what we desire but cannot obtain. The be wrong or false in poetry, criticism, that "the Cantos is difficult to like or injunction "not to yield" calls attention and the larger world in which literature enjoy" (97), I think he means that Pound's to this temptation even as it tries to and criticism intervene. By critiquing political invective has to be read as combat it. all ideology, even the ideology political. "When the work is fascist favored by the poet, poetry teaches As already suggested, some academic there is no mistaking the fact" (109), critics to distrust all presumably final readers (myself included) have been say by claiming irony on Pound's part solutions, their own included. A criti• energized watching McGann work or by turning Hitler into a metaphor. cal project should "[learnj from itself through this series of books, as if he Such work cries out for a political rather by constantly searching out "the false• were proving that criticism can again than formalist response. In other words, hoods in its own truths"—constantly, have political meaning. I fear this re• instead of being resolved aesthetically, sponse will be short-lived because 106 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1990/91

McGann disavows any hope for success ting even worse. He is treading water McGann's political disappointment in or evidence of progress in his critical so that he won't drown; he presumab• formalism threatens to overtake his quest. His doubts about the possibility ly cannot move ahead. own work. of progress may explain why Towards I do not have an answer to this 1 a Literature of Knowledge revisits the problem but I do want to emphasize See my essay-review of Social Values texts and examples of McGann's earlier one of its consequences. As McGann and Poetic Acts in Blake 25 (1989): 32-39. 2 Still another dictum along these lines books. Within the book, even McGann's retreats from the claim to improve the occurs in McGann's discussion of the Can• examples repeat themselves like varia• world, he approaches the formalism tos. " [The poem] is particular on these mat• tions on a musical theme, with Pound, he has criticized. The best formalist ters, as it should be; for being particular is for instance, sounding like Blake, albeit critics—Northrop Frye and many of what poetry does, is what poetry is sup• in a fascist key. McGann repeats him• the New Critics, for example—also posed to do" (109). 3 Jerome J. McGann, Social Values and self because he has to; he must start all praise the study of literature for check• Poetic Acts (Cambridge and London: Har• over again because in his own mind he ing our otherwise inevitable drift toward vard UP, 1988) 96. has not gotten anywhere. More exactly, what Frye calls a "self-policing state," 4 Some of McGann's political judgments he cannot get anywhere in his attempt or a "society incapable of formulating also seem too sure. Although I sympathize to rectify what he thinks is wrong. an articulate criticism of itself and of with his saying of the Cantos "when the 6 work is fascist there is no mistaking the Poetry, however, calls upon him to developing a will to act in its light." fact" (109), he never spells out, let alone sustain his quest even as poetry tells Frye, too, sees "continually in the world argues for, his definition of "fascist." him that his quest must fail. around us ... a constant and steady per• Making political terms problematic or un- I think McGann's predicament here version of the vision of a free and equal decidable (as in "Who's to say what is has less to do with the teachings of social future."7 Literature controls the fascist'") can be a way of avoiding judg• ments we must make. But McGann's damage that will always be done to poetry than with his bleak situation as brusque assertion comes close to political a putatively radical American academic this vision. stone-kicking. critic working without any guarantee Such claims on behalf of literature 5 McGann is describing his own society that he can "deliver poetry from reac• have disappointed many activist critics, when he says that "in a society like Ros- tionary hands" (132).5 In the terms of who want not simply to hold the line setti's, so luxurious and self-deceived, to "Ulysses," although he wants to say attempt an exposition of 'the good' is to against barbarism but to reduce and may• run in peril of mere cant, while to leave the much remains (thanks to poetry), he be even eliminate it. I count McGann 'ill' to guesswork and generality is to court has to concede much has been taken, among these critics. The appeal of his inconsequence" (84). McGann's account or at any rate much more political work has resulted from his daring us of Rossetti's poetry also fits his own criti• support is needed to make us confi• to hope for more than formalist critics cism: "This is an art difficult to practice, the index of a world not easy to survive" (95). dent that some constructive work may accept: hence the force of his pledge 6 Northrop Frye, The Modern Century yet be done. Lacking this support, that it is not too late to seek a newer (Toronto: Oxford UP, 1967) 45. McGann mounts a holding action world. In Towards a Literature of Knowl• 7 Northrop Frye, Creation and Recrea• designed not to build a better world edge, however, seeking a newer world tion (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, but to keep our current one from get• replaces any prospect of finding one. 1980) 17. Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 107

were produced. John Grant gave a The majority of the other papers Historicizing Blake: A Con• detailed account of the development provided contexts either for the poetry of the figure of the aged male patriarch or broader thematic issues across the ference held at St. Mary's from the early Joseph of Arimathea whole of Blake's work. Phillip Cox College, Strawberry Hill, design to the various states of the "Lon• teased out the complex relationship 5-7 September 1990 don" plate of Songs. The traditional between The Four Zoas and eighteenth- dating (c.1821) of Blake's unfinished century pastoral poetry in some inter• drawings based on the Book of Enoch esting developments of issues which was discussed in John Beer's paper. have exercised John Barrell's criticism. Reviewed by Jon Mee He put forward an alternative date, Taking Dyer's The Fleece as his primary contemporary with Blake's composi• example, Cox showed how the genre's tion of Milton, on the basis of similar• naturalization of the expansion of trade he recent "Historicizing Blake" con• ities between the thematic treatment of and industrialization seems to be un• Tference at Strawberry Hill offered sexuality in the drawings and the poem raveled in the various configurations ample evidence of the current vitality and evidence that excerpts from the of Tharmas in Blake's poem. The re• and diversity of historical criticism, apocryphal book were available in lated issue of eighteenth-century at• while at the same time attesting to its translation much earlier than is often titudes to imperial expansion was the difficulties of theoretical self-definition accepted. context provided in Andrew Lincoln's in relation to the still dominant for• The first of the contexts to be discussion of the seventh and eighth malist tradition in Blake studies. The broached was the art historical one of Nights of The Four Zoas. Lincoln per• organizers, Steve Clarke and David Blake's painting and engraving. ceptively linked Blake's poetry to the Worrall, had clearly worked hard to Suzanne Matheson discussed Blake's histories of empire written by Ferguson, bring together a crowded and stimulat• place in the hegemonic discourse of Gibbon, Hume, Miller, Rousseau, and ing program. There were speakers Protestant art criticism. At the center of Smith. All of these historians offered a from Britain, North America, and her discriminating paper was an ex• perspective from which to critique im• Australia, as well as an encouraging ploration of the Descriptive Catalogue perial ambition and the decadence of mixture of distinguished scholars and and the particular fusion of aesthetic luxury that Blake seems to have taken younger speakers. The atmosphere and theological notions of judgment up and developed in more radical direc• was one of enthusiastic exchange and which it employs. Alexander Gourlay tions. If time had permitted, a com• often as much was on offer at the bar returned to the Descriptive Catalogue parison of Blake's position with other and between mouthfuls of food as at at the end of the conference in a paper radical developments of the critique of the sessions themselves. that was as entertaining as it was con• empire, such as Volney's Ruins, would vincing. Gourlay detailed the involve• have been interesting. More generally A range of methodologies flourished, ment of The Canterbury Pilgrimsin the both of these papers revealed the dyna• most of which were left implicit in their iconography of contemporary political mism of Blake's engagement with the presentations by the speakers (perhaps prints to reveal a level of signification cultural mainstream of the eighteenth- as much a symptom of the 35-minutes- in the engraving lost to most formalist century, a point also made in Mary per-paper format as any theoretical readings. Detlef Dorrbecker's con• Lynn Johnson's discussion of Blake's bashfulness). The majority of the papers cerns were more general and his paper relationship to the various theories of presented contexts, some traditional, offered a much needed appraisal of the atom available in both scientific some much less so, against which to the social and cultural position of en• and cultural discourse. read Blake. Three well-established graving as a profession (or craft?) in the scholars stood out against this tendency The papers given by Marilyn Butler art establishment of Blake's time. and presented diachronic descriptions and Susan Matthews inspected the re• Though there is a growing body of of Blake's output. Michael Phillips de• ceived notion that Jerusalem represents work on the techniques of engraving scribed the various copies of Songs of a shift into nationalism for Blake. But• contemporary with Blake, relatively Experience and hinted that Blake gave ler suggested that nationalism was not little has been done on the social and progressively less consideration to the necessarily to be identified with Church cultural place of the engraver. Dorr• presentation of the text of the poems and King conservatism. Drawing at• becker's paper was distinguished by and increasingly foregrounded the tention to the pervasive and progres• impressive historical detail and visual aspects of the plates. It would sive influence of the literature of the theoretical acumen which revealed have been interesting to have heard a Celtic fringe on Blake's rhetoric, she this neglect in a challenging way. fuller debate about the significance of concentrated on what Jerusalem gained these changes in relation to the dif• from the radical cast of Welsh nation- ferent cultural contexts in which they 108 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1990/91

alism contemporary with its composi• Its particular concern with the aspiring the politics of Paine and Blake in a tion. Matthews's paper came to similar literati amongst the artisan classes and paper that undermined some of the conclusions, though with an approach their political affiliations is of obvious received assumptions about their differ• less concerned with contexts. Her dis• interest to Blake scholars. The paper ences while asking searching questions cussion of a series of key passages in delivered at the conference returned to about their relevance to the modern Jerusalem confirmed that the nation• this culture by following the career of reader. What a political reading of alism of Blake's great epic is far from W. H. Reid, a radical turncoat who was Blake's texts have offered our recent being a univocal celebration of either almost the exact contemporary of past was Phillip Gorski's concern. His the political or literary establishment. Blake. McCalman took us back into a paper charted the development on the Desiree Hirst turned to a much less period slightly before that covered by British left, from the 1930s onwards, of familiar historical ground in a paper his book to trace the struggles of the a cultural affiliation that sought to iden• which drew attention to a neoplatonic aspiring writer, his relationship to the tify in Blake an alternative to a rigid and tradition which she and Kathleen Raine radical movements in place before the mechanistic Marxism which still main• have sought to maintain as the bound• French Revolution, his response to the tained the force of a radical critique of ing line of Blake's meaning. It was the Revolution controversy, and the con• capitalism. The possibilities and limita• ambiguities of Blake's own notion of tinuing but inconsistent nature of his tions of that radicalism for a feminist the bounding line which concerned radicalism thereafter. Apart from the critique were explored by Helen Bruder Edward Larrissy. His dexterous paper many particular similarities adduced and Young-ok An. Bruder offered a explored the significance of alchemi• with Blake's situation and publications, subtle and convincing reading of The cal symbolism for what is one of the the major significance of McCalman's Book of Thel which moved with skill most slippery key words in Blake's paper for literary studies was its between an account of late eighteenth- rhetoric. Both of these papers touched description of the eclectic refashioning century restrictions on female self- on the popular enthusiastic culture of cultural materials undertaken by determination and the modem critical which was the focus of my paper as aspiring literati like Reid. The am• maintenance of those restrictions. A well as those of Peter Kitson and Iain bivalent engagement with polite cul• more theoretical feminist approach to McCalman. ture typical of Reid and his peers offers Blake propelled An's Althusserian ex• My own concern was to discuss the a new way of thinking through the plorations of "History, Textuality, and significance for Blake of a particular alterity of Blake's own visual and writ• Blake." case of the pervasive antinomianism of ten bricolage. The uniqueness of Perhaps it was this last grouping of the popular religious culture of Lon• Blake relative to his familiar canonical papers that came closest to theorizing don. The subsidiary intent of the paper contemporaries need not be fixed as the objectives of a historical criticism. was to show that some of the texts of the reflex of romantic genius; it could be None, however, directly addressed the seventeenth-century radicals to which the sign of his proximity to the rich issue of what historicizing Blake might Blake is often linked were reprinted undergrowth of literary activity illu• be, the most obvious omission from the and implicated in the public religious minated by McCalman. The more this conference as a whole. Historical cri• and political controversies of Blake's undergrowth comes to light, the less ticism does not entail theoretical illit• time. Kitson looked at the parallel adequate the romanticism we derive eracy, as any number of recent studies ground of Blake's millenarianism and from Wordsworth, Coleridge et al. have demonstrated, nor was such illit• suggested some of the difficulties of seems either as a context for teaching eracy evident amongst the participants relating it to the missions of Richard Blake or, more importantly, as a descrip• in the conference, judging by the intense Brothers and Joanna Southcott. The tion of the culture of the period. discussions which went on around the limited nature of studies which con• The many questions asked of Mc• papers. What the conference did de• fine the context of millenarianism in Calman after his paper suggested just monstrate above all was the pressing the 1790s to Brothers and Southcott how important to the attraction of Blake desire to practice a historicizing cri• has been admirably demonstrated by is the perception that his poetry and ticism, a desire which for many of the Iain McCalman's recent book Radical designs open up both a politics and a speakers was informed by a sense that Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries history that have been marginalized in to evacuate the site of history, espe• and Pornographers in London, 1795- the construction of our present intel• cially the fugitive history brought to 1840 (Cambridge UP, 1988). This re• lectual reality. It was the question of light by McCalman, would be a politi• freshing and challenging study has what this radical opportunity means cal as well as critical evasion. opened a substantial period of British for the reader now which might be history to reveal a neglected but vivid said to characterize my last grouping nexus of "unrespectable radicalism." of papers. Bruce Woodcock examined Winter 1990/91 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 109

BLAKE AND THE ISSN REPRODUCTIONS OF BLAKE'S FAERIE QUEENE NEWSLETTER Only very intense readers will have noticed that the ISSN number in the In Blake's small office, we still have BLAKE'S front of this issue has changed. In quite a few copies of the large color FAX 1977, when the Blake Newsletter be• reproduction of Blake's Spenser paint• came Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, ing, which was originally published in In November 1990, with help from a the National Serials Data Program as• the Blake Newsletterin 1975. The price foundation grant, Blake purchased a signed Blake another ISSN number, is $5 including shipping and postage. facsimile machine. The number is 716 although we hadn't applied for it, nor It will be sent to you by first class mail, 442 5769- Our readers are invited and did we print it. The new number is in a cardboard tube. Make checks out encouraged to send faxes to this num• ISSN 0160-628X. to Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly and ber whenever they have a problem mail to Patricia Neill, Managing Editor, with their subscription, galleys to re• Blake, Department of English, Univer• turn, or news to share. sity of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627.

^SWRJP^^V. ^BfcjM* 110 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1990/91

TRIANON PRESS ARCHIVE EXHIBITION SCHEDULE OF EVENTS The UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN and THE FRIENDS OF THE UCSC LIBRARY ARCHIVE EXHIBITION cordially invite you to view the exhibit and attend the following events:

NOVEMBER 5 - DECEMBER 14, 1990 THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8at2:00pm Special Collections, McHenry Library

UNIVERSITY LIBRARY JULIE FAWCUS will speak on UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ "The Trianon Press: A Triumph of Enthusiasm over Reason" A reception in her honor, hosted by The Friends of the UCSC Library, will follow.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9 at 2:00pm Special Collections, McHenry Library

A SERIES OF FOUR TALKS:

The Art of Printing and Publishing JACK STAUFFACHER, Greenwood Press

Gislebertus, Sculptor of Autun VIRGINIA JANSEN, Associate Professor of Art, UC Santa Cruz

Af- iftifth for JiatduM f+e V Marcel Duchamp ie ^,-tr *e »<,£ SHELDON NODELMAN, Associate Professor of Visual Arts, UC San Diego Foyer & Bridge portions of the exhibit open all Library hours. William Blake MARY HOLMES, Professor Emerita of Art, UC Santa Cruz Special Collections Exhibit Hours: Mon.- Fri. 10am -12, 1 • 4pm. Open Saturday, November 10 & December 8. Closed November 22 & 23. Mcllenry Library Exhibition Locations: Foyer, Bridge and Special Collections. Please park on Hagar Drive. Then will be a shuttlebus available on both afternoon*.

CORRECTION VOLUME 24 NUMBER 1 SUMMER 1990 Readers may have noticed that the summer issue (volume 24, #1) was a CONTENTS bibliographer's nightmare; that is, in• stead of starting the pagination at zero ARTICLES Blake in the Marketplace, 1989. Including a Report on the Recently Discovered Blake-Varley Sketchbook, with the new volume number, we con• by Robert N. Essick tinued it from the last issue of volume 22 Blake's Tiger and the Discourse of Natural History' 23- In fact, we blundered. Essick's by Colin Pedley "Blake in the Marketplace" should MINUTE PARTICULARS have started on page 4, "Blake's Tiger" 31 A Caricature Source for One of Blake's Illustrations to Haley's Ballads by Pedley on page 22, "A Caricature Marcus Wood Source" by Wood on page 31, and so 33 Blake and Wedgwood on. See below for correct pagination. G.E. Bcndeyjr.

35 Blake, The Grave, and Edinburgh Literary Society David Groves

REVIEWS

37 John Gabriel Stcdman, Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against tbe Revolted Negroes of Surinam. reviewed by G. E. Bcndcy, Jr.

44 The Franklin Library Reproduction of Songs U, reviewed by Alexander Gourlay and John E. Grant

46 Peter Marshall, William Blake: Visionary Anarchist, reviewed by Michael Fcrbcr