Issue of Blake Studies

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Bake Newsletter Nineteen

Winter 1971-72

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163 NEWS Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Kings College, Cambridge); Small Book of Designs , four plates (Brit• ish Museum).

BLAKE FACSIMILES RECENT BLAKE SALES—See Robert Essick's essay "Blake at Auction 1971" below. Notes. A limited number of single-plate "overs" (prices c2.25, £1.50, 45p) from the hand-colored facsimiles and the offset Handbook produced by the Trianon BLAKE IN THE GALLERIES Press, Paris, for the William Blake Trust which were on sale at the Blake Exhibition in the National Li• The Tate Gallery, London, announces that "following brary of Scotland in 1969 are available for pur• the very successful exhibition of William Blake's chase, along with greeting cards (price 5p) of seven illustrations to the poems of Thomas Gray, organ• subjects from Songs of Innocence and of Experience. ized by the William Blake Trust in association with Inquiries to the Publications Officer, National Li• the Tate Gallery, the Tate's own collection of works brary of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 by Blake has been re-hung in Gallery 29. Some ad• 1EW, Scotland. ditional works normally in store have been added to the display but more exciting are two important loans, "Winter" and "Evening," lent by the Trustees BLAKE SEMINAR, MLA CHICAGO 1971 of the Rev. B. T. Vaughan Johnson. These were painted by Blake to flank a fireplace at his friend The Rev. John Johnson's Rectory at Yaxham, Norfolk, The 1971 Blake Seminar, a gathering of about twenty which was rebuilt in about 1820-21; they have re• dedicated travelers, met on 28 December at the New• mained in the possession of the family ever since. berry Library in Chicago. Morris Eaves (University of New Mexico) led a discussion of The Marriage of Unfortunately, a third painting, a frieze showing Heaven and Hell. Olney Bridge, which ran across the top of the fire• As the announcement of the Seminar place, seems to have been destroyed early this cen• had warned, the discussion roamed freely from text tury. " to illustration to text with little guidance other than literary free-association, though it showed a tendency to focus repeatedly on plates 4 and 10 and The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, exhibited the plates most closely related to them in The Mar• the Blake collection of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne from riage. 19 November to 22 January. The collection of books, manuscripts, drawings, and engravings had never been seen before as a unit in public exhibition. At the BLAKE SEMINAR, MLA NEW YORK 1972 same time the Library showed Blake's watercolors for Milton and the Library's recently purchased copy of Poetical Sketches. Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr. (University of Wisconsin) A catalogue of the exhibition, has announced that Blake and Tradition is the topic The Blake Collection of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne (60 for the 1972 Blake Seminar, which will meet during pp. of text, 30 pis.) by G. E. Bentley, Jr., has the Annual MLA Meeting in New York. The papers that been published. will provide the basis of the discussion will appear in the Fall 1972 issue of Blake Studies. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, in late 1971 exhibited its copy of Blake's Job engravings and of the seven Dante engravings, both A NEW BLAKE VIDEOTAPE proof copies. They were purchased by the Gallery in 1943, but have never been shown there as a unit, A videotape interpretation of Blake's Visions of the and have been shown only once outside the Gallery, Daughters of Albion, (Our thanks produced at York University and at Buffalo's 20th Century Club in 1951. intended for use in the classroom, was shown on 29 to Professor Thomas Connolly for calling our atten• December to about thirty people at the MLA Annual tion to the Albright-Knox exhibit. Eds.) Meeting in Chicago. After the showing there was a discussion led by the director, Bob Wallace (York Paris, early 1972, will see Blake well repre• University), and by the writers of the script, Janet sented in a major exhibition of British Romantic Warner (York University) and John Sutherland (Colby painting. The catalogue entries for the Blake pic• College). The fifty-minute videotape was made in tures have been written by David Bindman (Lecturer October 1971. It includes a dramatic reading of the in the History of Art, Westfield College, London). poem and interpretive commentary, and it uses graph• There are likely to be twelve items shown: The Ad• ics from Blake, Stedman's Surinam, and a variety of oration of the Kings (Brighton Art Gallery); The other sources. Head of Voltaire (Manchester Art Gallery); The An• cient of Days, colored print (Whitworth Art Gallery, The House of Death, Shown here are three samples of graphics used Manchester); monotype (Fitz- in the videotape, plates from Capt. J. G. Stedman's william Museum, Cambridge); Death on a Pale Horse Pity, New• Narrative of a five years ' expedition, against the (Fitzwilliam); monotype (Tate Gallery); Revolted Negroes of Surinam . . . , 2 vols., 80 pis. ton, monotype (Tate); Beatrice on the Car, water- (London: J. Johnson & J. Edwards, 1796). Stedman color (British Museum); The Circle of the Lustful, drew all the illustrations for his book, and Blake watercolor (Birmingham City Art Gallery); Thornton's engraved about sixteen of them, including the three Virgil, wood engravings (Victoria and Albert Museum); shown here. 164

■ //„../„,,„„,,///„ . //,,„„ /„.,/,. .,/.//, /.,/,. /,„/,.,„ /Z,,,,//,,/,,,, ,/„ . Z„,„/r . /„,„/, , //->,■ Graphics from the York University videotape of Visions of the Daughters of Albion: Stedman' s Narrative, plates XIX, XXV, XLIX. Reproduced by permission of the Colby College Library.

American distribution for the videotape is now THE SONGS ONSTAGE IN NEW YORK being arranged. In January the Dance and Drama Theatre of New York City presented Three Pieces in Multi Media. The BLAKE AND GINSBERG ON ABC-TV'S "DIRECTIONS" third of the three was "Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience" directed by Michael Fischetti. Two films, both produced and directed by Aram Boyajian, were shown 16 and 23 January on ABC­TV's Directions. Allen Ginsberg sings and reads from W. H. STEVENSON AT STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM Blake's works in illuminated printing as plates from those works are shown. A facsimile was used in the The well­known Blake scholar W. H. Stevenson is now preparation of the films for shots of Jerusalem on­ editor of Studies in Romanticism (published quarter­ ly; otherwise the photography is of originals. ly by Boston University Graduate School at 236 Bay State Road, Boston, Mass. 02215). Although founded The subject of the first film, William Blake: in the Department of English, the journal publishes Innocence and Experience, is There is No Natural articles on all aspects of Romanticism­­its litera­ Religion and the Songs. Ginsberg talks about the ture (in any language), art, music, history, philo­ influence Blake has had on his own poetry, sings sophy, and science­­and thus it is of interest to "Ah! Sun­Flower", and reads several other songs. anyone with a specialized or general interest in the Besides plates from the Songs, there are shots of period. There have been articles on Blake at dif­ Westminster Abbey and of the high­rise building now ferent times by such scholars as G. E. Bentley, Jr., on the site of Blake's birthplace. William Blake: Robert F. Gleckner, John E. Grant, Martin K. Nurmi, Prophet, the second film, includes shots of the Morton D. Paley, and Edward J. Rose (who also has cottage at Felpham. Ginsberg talks on camera about an article in the Winter 1972 issue). The fourth the feeling of "going mad" when he heard a voice number of each volume is usually devoted to one speaking Blake's poems, and he sings "The Sick Rose.' author or topic within the field of Romantic stud­ He reads as selected pictures from The Book of Uri- ies. Subscriptions are $6.50 for one year; $12 for zen, Milton, Jerusalem, the watercolor Job series, two years; $16 for three years. A cumulative index and the Dante series are shown. is available for the first ten volumes, 1961­1971, price $1.

ROSE LECTURES ON BLAKE MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT NEWSLETTER E.J. Rose, Chairman of the Department of English at the University of Alberta, delivered the Edmund The Mary Wollstonecraft Newsletter will be published Kemper Broadus Lectures at the University 24­27 Jan­ twice a year beginning in May 1972. Its subject uary. All the lectures were on Blake: "Blake's will be women writers of the late­eighteenth and Los," 24 January; "Blake's Ore," 25 January; "Blake's early­nineteenth centuries, and women in the litera­ Woman Figure," 26 January; and "The Shape of Blake's ture of the period. Short articles of fewer than Vision," 27 January. 3000 words, notes, and reviews are welcomed from 165 subscribers. Manuscripts—accompanied by a stamped and addressed envelope for return—and subscriptions NOTES ($4) may be addressed to Janet Todd / Department of English / University of Florida / Gainesville, Flor• ida 32601.

JOHN BEER: PETERHOUSE, CAMBRIDGE WORKS IN PROGRESS Blake's "Donald the Hammerer" Hoover, Suzanne (Sudbury, Mass.): a group of essays on unexplored aspects of Blake's reputation in the In Blake Newsletter 15 (Winter 1971, pp. 75-77) nineteenth century. Mrs. Hoover will be in England Robert Essick describes the penci1-and-ink drawing as an NEH Fellow for the academic year 1972-73 to known as "Donald the Hammerer" in the UCLA Library, study British art and literature with particular and states that he has been unable to trace its reference to Blake. subject, though he thinks that Blake might be illustrating a scene in a book. Mills, A. C. (Newnham College, Cambridge): a de• tailed study of the illustrations to Jerusalem, I think that Donald himself is to be identi• their imagery and their relation to the text and to fied with a character mentioned very briefly in other of Blake's works. Scott's The Abbot (1820), ch. xxxiv. Roland Graeme, explaining how he comes to have the skills Paley, Morton D. (University of California, Berke• of a metal worker, says, ley): a book on Jerusalem. Paley has been named a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1972-73 in My patron the Knight of Avenel used to order to enable him to complete his book. compel the youth educated in his household to learn the use of axe and hammer, and working Peterson, Jane E. (Dallas, Texas): a Ph.D. disser• in wood and iron—he used to speak of old tation, "William Blake: Experimentation in Form and northern champions, who forged their own Structure in the Works of 1788-95, Excluding the weapons, and of the Highland Captain, Donald Manuscript Poems," directed by T. C. Duncan Eaves nan Ord, or Donald of the Hammer, whom he at the University of Arkansas. himself knew, and who used to work at the anvil with a sledge-hammer in each hand. Some said he praised this art, because he was AULT LEAVES NEWSLETTER himself of churl's blood. . . .

After this issue, Donald Ault leaves our editorial The appearance of two hammers in Blake's design board in order to devote more time to his own work. reinforces the identification with "Donald of the We are grateful for the help he has given us as As• Hammer." sistant Editor during the past two and a half years. What was not at first clear to me was whether Scott had here created a character for his own purposes or was adding a touch of veracity to his narrative by referring to an actual historical figure. Reference to Scottish records failed to solve the mystery. In the end, however, I con• sulted Dr. James Corson, Honorary Librarian of Abbotsford and an authority on Scott, to whom I am most grateful for looking into the matter and discovering that Donald the Hammerer was in fact a real person. I quote from his letter to me:

Donald nan Nord was Donald Stewart of the Invernahyle family, a younger branch of the Stewarts of Appin.

In 1817 Joseph Train presented to Scott a manuscript called "An authentic account of the Stewarts of Invernahyle." The manuscript is still at Abbotsford. In 1818 Gale and Fenner, the London publishers, asked Scott to edit a new edition of Edward Burt's "Letters from a gentleman in the north of Scotland." This book was one of Scott's great favourites and he used it extensively in The Lady of the Lake and in Waverley . He declined, however, to edit it and passed the task on to Robert Jamieson. This edition was called the 5th and was issued in 1818 and also in 1822 when it was still called the 5th. To this edition 166

Scott contributed the story of Donald the launched the curraoh (a wicker boat covered Hammerer taken from the manuscript presented with hides) with his own hand, and rowed it by Train. To Scott's annoyance the publishers across to Inverfalla. As he approached, put on the title page: "The history of Donald Duncan, being struck with the fury of his the Hammerer, from an authentic account of the countenance, fled from the impending storm family of Invernahyle; a MS communicated by into the house; but the old man followed him Walter Scott, Esq." with a naked sword in his hand. Upon entering a room that was somewhat dark, Donald, If Blake was using Scott he would be more thinking his degenerate son had concealed likely to use Burt (either 1818 or 1822) himself under the bed-clothes, made a deadly rather than The Abbot, where there is only a stab at his supposed son; but, instead of brief reference. killing him, the sword went through the heart of his old nurse, who was then near eighty I have looked at the 1818 edition and agree years of age. with Dr. Corson that Blake must have come across Donald in Burt rather than in Scott's novel. The After this unfortunate accident Donald actual phrase "Donald the Hammerer" was used only became very religious; he resigned all his by Burt; in addition there is an incident in the lands to his sons, and went to live at account as communicated to him by Scott which Columkill, where he at last died at the age corresponds to Blake's design. Donald was the only of eighty-seven. surviving child of Alexander, the first Invernahyle (called "the Peaceful"), who had been basely Blake's drawing is fairly clearly intended to murdered by Green Colin and his men. He has been illustrate the incident in which the smith and his rescued by his nurse, the blacksmith's wife of wife come to the young Donald to tell him his Moidart, and brought up secretly as one of her own secret, and in which the smith urges him to children. The account continues: revenge. But certain elements in the drawing encourage one to approach it in terms of Blake's When young Donald had acquired some strength, own ideas and imagery, as expressed in other works. he was called to assist his supposed father in The gestures of the woman, who is holding up one carrying on his trade; and so uncommon was his hand outstretched and pointing downwards with the strength, that when only eighteen years of other, correspond very closely to those of the age, he could wield a large fore-hammer in central woman in the Arlington Court Picture (apart each hand, for the length of the longest day, from the fact that right and left are reversed). without the least seeming difficulty or The male looks like one of Blake's figures of fatigue. energy: his left hand is held up like the woman's right; his right hand is pointing outwards--in the At last the blacksmith and his wife resolved direction (though not with the sweeping spread) of to discover to Donald the secret they had so those of the male in the Arlington Court Picture. long kept, not only from him, but from the world. After relating the mournful tale of In Blake's Visionary Universe, I argued that his parents' death, the smith brought a sword the Arlington Court Picture represents Blake's of his own making, and put it into Donald's interpretation of the last chapter of Revelation, hand, saying, "I trust the blood that runs in and in particular of the phrase "The Spirit and the your veins, and the spirit of your fathers, Bride say 'Come'"--the Spirit being the spirit of will guide your actions; and that this sword organized Energy and the Bride the Jerusalem who will be the means of clearing the difficulties stands for Blake's concept of vision. A related that lie in the way of your recovering your interpretation may be traced here, except that the paternal estate." Donald heard with surprise blacksmith, the figure of energy, is shaded, and the story of his birth and early misfortune; seems to be more ambiguous than the "Spirit" of the but vowed never to put the sword into a Arlington Court design. For a fuller interpreta• scabbard until he had swept the murderers of tion, it is better to go to a story which would his parents from the earth, (lxvi-lxvii) naturally be brought to mind by Donald's career as a Scots man of blood--that of Shakespeare's The rest of the account is concerned with the con• Macbeth. In my book I also suggested that Blake sequences of his vow. Donald became a man of blood read Shakespeare's play as a play about the and plundered the Highlands from end to end. He ambiguity of energy, the weird sisters presenting ended by quarreling with his own son, Duncan, who to Macbeth a destiny which in his visionless state had settled with his wife at the smithy where he accepts as one of ambition and destruction, but Donald had been brought up and was cultivating the which could be interpreted at a nobler level as an land as a man of peace. The account concludes: invitation to assume the sovereignty of his own human nature. According to such a reading, the Once, as Donald was walking upon the green nobility of Macbeth's own heart and blood- of Invernahyle, he looked across the river, consciousness is constantly expressing itself and saw several men working upon the farm of through his imagery while his deeds are carrying Inverfalla. In the mean time Duncan came out, him further into a sea of shed blood. and took a spade from one of the men, seem• ingly to let him see how he should perform the A similar interpretation may be applied to work in which he was employed. This was too "Donald the Hammerer." The lineaments of Blake's much for the old gentleman to bear. He Donald are those of a good character, but one who 167

is still innocent and unformed. If he were fully SUZANNE R. HOOVER: SUDBURY, MASSACHUSETTS to understand his own nature, the smith's words, "I trust the blood that runs in your veins, and the Fifty Additions to Blake Bibliography: spirit of your fathers, will guide your Further Data for the Study of His Reputation actions . . ." would be interpreted as a call to in the Nineteenth Century peace, not to war, to imitate his father rather than to avenge him, but the smith also calls him to use the sword, and Donald's hand is already resting Bibliographies, like other books, may be made for on it. In a few years, therefore, he will be a many reasons. But whatever may have moved the complete "man of blood" in the ignoble sense, his compiler to his labors, the bibliography of a energies fully devoted to destruction. Following single author provides, among other things, the raw materials for the study of that author's the smith's misdirection, indeed, he will end by reputation. Thus, the historical account of murdering the smith's own wife--the nurse whose Blake's reputation began officially in 1921 with mercy and care had originally preserved him from Sir Geoffrey Keynes's splendid, pioneering the effects of war and whose gestures in Blake's Bibliography of William Blake. Wide-ranging and design are still inviting him to a more visionary filled with new material as it was, the Biblio• and merciful view of humanity. graphy may be seen now, not surprisingly, to have been fairly incomplete. For example, its census Study of Burt's book suggests, in other words, of Blake's Illuminated Books was expanded by that Blake found in the story of "Donald the Keynes himself in a later work,^Z and its list of Hammerer" an echo of his interpretation of Macbeth nineteenth- and early twentieth-century bio• (as also of his own smith-figure, Los) and a graphical and critical items has since been fitting emblem of the misapplications of energy in multiplied several times over. And yet, Keynes his own industrialized and war-obsessed civiliza• was able, through his numerous — and, one would tion. Just as the Spirit and the Bride of the say, strategic--discoveries, to reveal both a Arlington Court picture were seen calling humanity breadth of interest and a lack of interest in to a fuller exercise of energy and imagination than Blake during the nineteenth century that had not that offered by self-imprisonment in a world previously been suspected. limited by generation and death, so the inner lineaments of the male and female of the design The manner of publication of Keynes's biblio• suggest a better sphere for the energetic man; graphy is itself a paragraph in the history of those of the male indicating a world which would Blake's reputation. This useful volume was not benefit from works other than those of weapons of published in a regular edition. It was, instead, war, those of the female indicating the larger printed for New York's Grolier Club in a world of imaginative vision which he might enjoy "sumptuous"2 edition limited to two hundred and as an artist. fifty copies. Of these, fourteen were given to Keynes to distribute among the great libraries of In his letter to me Dr. Corson also points England and Scotland; the remaining copies were out that Scott returned to Donald in his Tales of offered to Club members at the price of seventy- a Grandfather (ch.xxxix); but this, as he points five dollars. Thus, the Bibliography was acces• out, was after Blake's death. It follows, of sible, outside the Club, only to more or less course, from the date of Burt's fifth edition that determined scholars: a limitation due, surely- Blake's design was executed in or after 1818; and even if only in part--to the fact that interest in it is by no means impossible that the line of Blake was at a rather low ebb in the second decade thought which gave rise to it also played its part of this century. in the gestation of the Arlington Court picture, which is customarily dated about 1821. But that was about to change. Within a few years of the Bibliography (approaching the centenary of Blake's death), several \/ery important books on Blake were published; in the fifty years since, appreciation of Blake has grown to an almost alarming degree—especially in the last ten years. With so many people newly attuned to Blake's original and prophetic voice, we have at last become properly curious about the way in which Blake was regarded—and disregarded— in the past. Partly to answer this need, the bibliographical study of Blake was resumed in the 1950"s by G. E. Bentley, Jr. and Martin K. Nurmi. Their Blake Bibliography was published in 1964 in a regular edition by a university press.5 It aspired to exhaustiveness in every area it dealt with except that of commentary on Blake after 1863 (i.e., after the publication of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake). By thus aspiring, and particularly by making some further strategic discoveries of early commentary on Blake, the new bibliography made a detailed history of 168 his reputation feasible for the first time. And in fact, it has provided the basis for at least two extended studies of that fascinating subject/ 1833 Perhaps a word should be said here about the 4 North efforts, past, present, and future, of Blake Anon. "Art. 11.--Works of Mrs. Child." American Review, 37 (1833), 138-64. bibliographers to be exhaustive. Individual items in the present list, or another list, may vary widely in importance, but there is virtually no Sentimental anecdotes of Blake quoted from item that is unimportant, especially when viewed "the life of Mrs. Blake" in Biographies of as part of the history of Blake's reception by Good Wives (1832-1833), one of the works succeeding generations. For example, the smallest under review. The anecdotes are taken from review of Gilchrist's biography of Blake modifies, Cunningham. however slightly, our general view of the public 1834 response to it. Or, several minor items may assume a collective importance, like the articles b [Lister, T. H.] "Art. III.— Lives of the most below by Sir Sidney Colvin that mention Blake only Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and briefly but which, brought together, suggest a Architects. By Allan Cunningham." Edin• sympathetic preoccupation with Blake on the part of burgh Review, 59 (April 1834), 48-73. one of the most influential art critics of the late Victorian period. But happily, there are Interesting Blake reference on p. 64 omitted important items in the present list, as well as by Bentley and Nurmi in their entry for this minor ones. Special mention might be made of the article (item #633). Author now identified catalogues and handbooks of both the Manchester in the Wellesley Index of Victorian Peri• Art Treasures exhibition of 1857 (see items 8 and odicals. 9 below), and the International Exhibition of 1862 (see items 11 and 13). In spite of Gilchrist's mention of the Blakes at the Manchester exhibi- 1848 tion,-'' it has been implied in our time that Blake's work was never publicly exhibited between 6 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Journal Gulistan 1848" 1812 and 1876.6 [Houghton Library Ms. ?108].

"I cannot remember J.(ones) [sio] Very with• out being reminded of Wordsworth's remark on William Blake, 'There is something in the madness of this man that interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Diary, Reminiscences, 1796 Scott'" (p. 136). The and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, 1 from which this remark appears to be quoted, Anon. "Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition was published in 1869. Emerson and Robin• against the revolted Negroes of Surinam in son became acquainted in 1848. See items 16 Guiana ... by Captain J. G. Stedman." and 17 below. British Critic, 8 (Nov. 1796), 539.

The reviewer finds fault with some of the 1850 plates engraved by Blake, without mentioning his name. For a detailed account of this Blake ? Scott, William Bell. Memoir of David Scott review by the present writer, see the R.S.A. Edinburgh, 1850. Newsletter, 1 (June 1967), 7-8. From David Scott's notes: "Blake touched 1830 the infinite in expression or signification, without distraction from lower aims, and in a kind of Christian purity. He is very Anon. "The Lives of the most eminent British abstract in style or meaning, but very Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. By defective in execution" (p. 238). As the Allan Cunningham. Vol. II." Gentleman's epigraph to his last chapter (p. 334), W. B. Magazine, 100 (1830), 141-43. Scott quotes Blake's dedication "To the Queen" of his illustrations to Blair's Review of Cunningham that dismisses Blake as Grave (1808). This poem was requoted by "an amiable enthusiast, on the wrong side of George Walter Thornbury at the end of his the line of demarcation as it respected his chapter on David Scott in British Artists sanity" (p. 142). The "Ghost of a Flea" from Hogarth to Turner (London, 1861). anecdote follows.

3 Howitt, Mary. In Alaric Alfred Watts, Alaric 1857 Watts. 2 vols. London, 1884. Anon. Catalogue of the Art Treasures of the Mary Howitt comments on some works by Blake United Kingdom collected at Manchester in in a letter of February, 1830 (II, 6-7). 1857. London, 1857. 169

Two Blakes listed under "Drawings in Water- Interesting remarks on Blake and Stothard, Colours": "130. Oberon and Titania on a pp. 65-66. See the preceding item. Lily, lent by Wm. Russell, Esq.; 130a. Vision of Queen Catherine, lent by C. W. 14 Anon. "International Exhibition. The Dilke, Esq." English Water-colour Pictures." Athenae• um, 17 May 1862, p. 663. 9 Anon. A Handbook to the Water Colours, Drawings, and Engravings, in the [Man• Negligible mention of Blake in one cryptic chester] Art Treasures Exhibition. London, (misprinted?) sentence: "Blake's tran• 1857. scendental fancies are freely seen." This review was reprinted in Robert Kempt, what The Handbook is "a reprint of critical Do You Think of the Exhibition! (London, notices originally published in 'The Man• 1862). chester Guardian.'" Blake is paired with R. Dadd "as examples of painters in whom a IB Anon. "International Exhibition, 1862: disordered brain rather aided than impeded Pictures of the British School." Art the workings of . . . fancy" (pp. 12-13). Journal, 1 (July 1862), 149-52.

A comparison, favorable to Stothard, of 1859? his "Canterbury Pilgrimage" with that of Blake (p. 151). 10 Ruskin, John. Letter (unpublished) to Miss [Maria] Denman [no date] in Flaxman's copy 16 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Journal WAR 1862" of Songs of Innocence and of Experience. [Houghton Library Ms. #77].

A note of thanks for having been permitted Remarks by Blake (pp. 244-46), apparently to borrow the volume, with observations on quoted from H. C. Robinson. See item 6 Blake's feeling for color. Maria Denman, above. Flaxman's sister-in-law, died on 23 December 1859 at the age of eighty, which gives us the latest possible date for the letter. 1863 17 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Journal FOR 1863" 1862 [Houghton Library Ms. #79]. 11 Anon. International Exhibition of 1862. More Blake remarks, apparently quoted from Official Catalogue of the Fine Arts Depart• Robinson, and two Proverbs of Hell from ment [corrected, 1862]. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (p. 284).

Blake's paintings were listed as "221. 18 Anon. "The Life of William Blake." London Christ in the Lap of Truth, and Between his Review, 14 November 1863, pp. 519-20. Earthly Parents . . . R. M. Milnes, Esq.; 965. Joseph Ordering Simeon to be bound Review of Gilchrist's biography. This . . . J. D. Coleridge, Esq.; 966. Joseph item and the one following are evidently Making himself Known to his brethren . . . the first published reviews of the Life. J. D. Coleridge, Esq.; 967. Joseph's Brethren Bowing Before Him . . . J. D. 19 Anon. "William Blake." Saturday Review, 14 Coleridge, Esq.; 968. Canterbury Pilgrimage November 1863, pp. 650-51. . . . W. Stirling, Esq." The first of these, a tempera, was listed as an oil Review of Gilchrist. painting. The next three were wateredors, and the last was a tempera listed with the watered ors. 1864

12 P.[algrave], F.[rancis] T.[urner]. "The 20 Anon. "On Books." British Quarterly Review, British School of Water-Colour Painting." 11 (1864), 245. International Exhibition of 1862. Official Catalogue of the Fine Arts Department [Cor• One of the earliest reviews of Gilchrist rected, 1862], pp. 46-47. (1 January), which can be quoted here in its entirety: "The life of an eccentric A considerable part of this short article is man of genius, poet and artist, full of taken up by a comparison of Blake with anecdotes concerning artists and literary Stothard, whose "Canterbury Pilgrimage" was people, and written in the spirit of hero- also exhibited. worship."

13 Pal grave, Francis Turner. Handbook to the 21 Anon. "Retrospect of Literature, Art, and Fine Arts Collections in the International Science, in 1863." Annual Register [for Exhibition of 1862. London, 1862. 1863], pp. 345-78. 170 Short review of Gilchrist's Life, "an addition to biographical literature of o. 1868 some importance" (p. 352). 29 Whitman, Walt. Faint Clews & Indirections. 22 Notes and Ed. Clarence Ghodes and Rollo G. Silver. Anon. "Notes on Books, Etc." Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1949. Queries, 5 (April 1864), 312. A one-paragraph comparison of himself to Mery favorable review of Gilchrist, of just Blake, apparently prompted by the lengthy over two hundred words. comparison by Swinburne in his William 23 Blake. According to the editors, this Eastlake, Lady Elizabeth. In Anna Brownell miscellaneous jotting "is contemporary with Jameson, The History of Our Lord, con• the appearance of Swinburne's book" (p. 53). tinued and completed by Lady Eastlake. London, 1864. There is a passing reference to "the half- This very appreciative passage on Blake's mad vision of William Blake" in Good-Bye Job My Fancy (1891). (See Prose Works 1892, series (I, 229-31) written by Lady ed. Floyd Stovall, [II, 670], in Collected Eastlake, was called to my attention by Writings of Walt Whitman [New York: New Professor D. A. Robertson, Jr. York Univ. Press, 1961-].)

1866 1873 24 Tyrwhitt, R. St. John. "Ancilla Domini: Thoughts on Christian Art. [Part] II. 30 Colvin, Sidney. "From Rigaud to Reynolds: --Symbolism and the Grotesque." Contem• Characteristics of French and English porary Review, Painting in the 18th Century. XIII. 2 (1866), 59-79. --George Romney (continued)." Portfolio (1873), pp. 34-40. Blake discussed (pp. 67, 78-79) as master of "the sublime or terrible grotesque" by disciple of Ruskin. Interesting description of Blake (p. 39) as the only successful painter in the eight• eenth century of "the sublime and the terrible." In the next article in the 1867 series, on Fuseli {Portfolio [1873], pp. 50-56), that artist is compared with Blake 2b Anon. "Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experi• (p. 50). ence" Saturday Review, 5 January 1867, pp. 24-26. In Colvin's Memories & Notes of Persons & Places, 1852-1912 (London, 1921) there is Review of R. H. Shepherd's Pickering an account of Colvin's visit to Trelawny edition of the Songs (1866). (1792-1881) in February 1881. Trelawny "declared his great admiration for William 26 Colvin, Sidney. "English Painters and Blake . . ." and then stood to recite Painting in 1867." Fortnightly Review, 2 "London" (pp. 250-51). (1867), 464-76.

Comparison between Blake and Stothard (p. 31 Anon. "Art." Atlantic Monthly, 31 (March 472), very favorable to Blake. See item 1873), 370-73. 30 below. An article on varied topics, including a review of Sidney Colvin's Children in 1868 Italian and English Design (1772). Blake is the central figure of this review. 2V [Green, J. R.] "William Blake." Saturday Review, 1 February 1868, pp. 148-49. 1874 Review of Swinburne's William Blake (1868). Author identified in The Swinburne Letters, 32 Rossetti, W. M. "News and Notes." Academy. ed. Cecil Y. Lang (New Haven: Yale Univ. 6 June 1874, p. 645. Press, 1959), I, 289. Report of the discovery of Blake's original 28 Page, H. A. [pseudonym of Alexander Hay Japp]. illustrations for Young's Night Thoughts. "The Old Morality and the New." Contem• porary Review, August 1868, pp. 597-620, and September 1868, pp. 51-79. 1876

On pp. 76-78 of the second article Blake is 33 Rossetti, W. M. "The Blake Catalogue. compared with Whitman and Swedenborg. Academy, 15 April 1876, pp. 364-65. 171

Corrects some of W. B. Scott's statements Atlantic Monthly, 47 (1881), 717-19. in the catalogue of the Blake exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Review.

34 Scott, William B. "The Blake Catalogue." 41 Rossetti, W. M. "The Wives of the Poets. Academy, 22 April 1876, p. 385. —III." Atlantic Monthly, 47 (1881), 382- 91. Scott replies to Rossetti 's criticisms of the previous week. Blake's wife and marriage considered (pp. 389-91). 35 Anon. "William Blake's Works." Art Journal, 15 (April 1876), 127. 42 [Gray, J. M.] "David Scott, R. S. A." Black• wood's Magazine, 130 (1881), 589-611. Review-notice of the Blake exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club: "This col• An article that eulogizes Scott and compares lection is the largest and most varied we him to Blake and Durer. have ever seen. . . ." The review con• cludes with this note: "At the conver• sazione held by the Graphic Society in 1882 University College on the 8th, there was also exhibited a goodly collection of 43 Anon. "The New Edition of Gilchrist's Blake. Blake's works; but, to the honour of the Century, March 1882, p. 788. members of the Burlington be it said, the great proportion of the pictures came from Review. their club."

36 Symonds, John Addington. The Letters of John 1886 Addington Symonds. Ed. Herbert M. Schueller and Robert L. Peters. 3 vols. 44 Melville, Herman. The Letters of Herman Detroit: Wayne State University Press, Melville. Ed. Merrell R. Davis and William 1967-69. H. Gilman. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1960. Ecstatic reference, apparently to the Blakes at the Burlington Fine Arts Club Two letters about James Thomson ["B.V."] exhibition (II, 417 [May 1876]). Also, and Blake (pp. 282-83). there is an interesting allusion to Blake's illustration "Help! Help!" from For the Before he wrote these letters, Melville had Sexes: the Gates of Paradise (II, 590 been compared to Blake at least twice. See [1879]; III, 504 [1890]. review of Clarel, New-York Daily Tribune, 16 June 1876; and W. Clark Russell, "Sea Stories," Contemporary Review, 46 (1884), 1877 343-63. On p. 357 of Russell's article Moby Dick is compared to "a drawing by 37 Anon. "Etchings from Blake." Spectator, 50 William Blake . . . madly fantastic in (29 December 1877), 1660-61. places, full of extraordinary thoughts, yet gloriously coherent." Review of William Bell Scott's renderings of ten of Blake's paintings and drawings. In Jay Leyda, The Melville Log (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951), there is the fol• lowing note: "New York, June 4 [1870], 1881 M[elville] acquires Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake" (II, 712). 38 Gray, J. M. "The Life of William Blake; with Selections from his Poems and other Writ• 43 Anon. Critic, 6 (1886), 91. ings. ... A New and Enlarged Edition." Academy, 19 March 1881, pp. 212-14. An indignant note accusing Mr. Alfred H. Combe of having plagiarized a "design for Review of the second edition of Gilchrist the interior decoration of a family tomb" (1880). See item 42 below. in the Decorator and Furnisher for July 1886 from Blake's design for The Grave entitled 39 Anon. "Gilchrist's Life of William Blake." "Death's Door." London Quarterly Review, 56 (1881), 249-55.

Appreciative review, interesting for its 1890 remarks about the availability, in the 'seventies, of the first edition of 46 Carman, Bliss. "The Country of Har." Athenae• Gilchrist. um, 15 February 1890, p. 213.

40 Anon. "The New Edition of Gilchrist's Blake." Poem celebrating centenary of Songs of 172 Innocence. Called to my attention by 4l.e., "William Blake in the Wilderness: The Professor Morton D. Paley. Early History of His Reputation," unpublished doctoral dissertation by the present writer, 47 Anon. "The Blake Drawings in the Quaritch Columbia Univ., 1966; Deborah Dorfman, Blake in the Collection." Critic, 13 (1890), 110. Nineteenth Century: His Reputation as a Poet from Gilchrist to Yeats (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, Descriptive article. 1969).

There are more Critic notes and reviews in Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake the 'nineties. Perhaps the most interesting (London 1863), 1,3. It might be said that the of these is a review-notice of an exhibi• Blakes at the International Exhibition also are tion of drawings and sketches by Blake, mentioned by "Gilchrist," but this is a more Turner, and Gainsborough at Keppel's. complicated matter. As Gilchrist died in 1861, he "The Blake drawings, which are the most had nothing to say about the International important, belong to Dr. Charles E. West Exhibition of 1862, nor was notice of it added to of Brooklyn . . ." (12 [1892], 188). The the biography proper by those who completed the manuscript left unfinished at his death. However, remaining items are as follows: 15 (1891), W. M. Rossetti, in the "Descriptive Catalogue" 85 and 116; 16 (1891), 60; 20 (1893), 86; which formed part of the supplementary material 21 (1894), 4. that made up the second volume of the Life as published, notes the presence of works by Blake at the International Exhibition. All of the items in 1893 Rossetti's Catalogue that had been sent to the two exhibitions (seven works in all--see items 8 and 48 Anon. "William Blake." Nation* 57 (16 11 below) bear notes to that effect. The second November 1893), 376-77. edition of Gilchrist in 1880 introduced into the biography itself brief notices of the display of Review of William Blake: His Life, four paintings at the International Exhibition Character, and Genius, by Alfred T. Story {Life, I [1880], 57, 274). (1893). 49 Anon. "Fine Arts. The Works of William ^Nothing is listed in Keynes or in Bentley Blake. By E. J. Ellis and W. B. Yeats." and Nurmi having to do with the Manchester Athenaeum, 30 December 1893, pp. 920-21. Exhibition or the International Exhibition. Bentley and Nurmi state that the so-called Blake Review of the Quaritch edition (1893). Revival, begun by Gilchrist, "introduced Blake to a mass audience for the very first time, both as an artist and as a poet" [Blake Bibliography, p. 1905 15). Although Blake's works at these two exhibi• tions were not much noticed or sympathized with, 50 Raleigh, Sir Walter [Alexander], The Letters it is only fair to say that he had been introduced of Sir Walter Raleigh. 2 vols. Ed. Lady to a "mass audience" as an artist before 1863. Raleigh. London, 1926. Indeed, it was a much larger audience than Gilchrist's was to be. An article on the exhibi• Of the nine letters that contain Blake tions and Blake by the present writer will appear references, seven were written to John in a forthcoming issue of the Blake Newsletter. Sampson in connection with Raleigh's pre• face to Sampson's Oxford edition of Blake's Lyrical Poems (1905). All the important letters were written in 1905.

Notes ^William Blake's Illuminated Books: A Census, compiled by Geoffrey Keynes and Edwin Wolf 2nd 1 (near right) Frontispiece of Lavater's Aphorisms (New York: Grolier Club, 1953). on Man, 3rd ed. (London, 1794), engraved by Blake after a design by Fuseli. The Greek in• Keynes's own word. See his account of the scription, written in capital letters, translit• making of the bibliography in "Religio Biblio- erates GN0THI SEAUT0N ("Know thyself"). From graphici," Library, 8 (1953), 64-76. the Library of Congress, Rosenwald Collection.

3G. E. Bentley, Jr. and Martin K. Nurmi, A Blake Bibliography: Annotated Lists of Works, 2 (far right) Fuseli's pen and ink design for the Studies, and Blake ana (Minneapolis: Univ. of frontispiece of Lavater's Aphorisms. Photograph Minnesota Press, 1964). courtesy of Ernest Seligmann. 173

RUTHVEN TODD: CAN BIELO, GALILEA, MALLORCA, He peered at an enormous old cabinet of SPAIN print-drawers, upon which stacks of books were piled precariously, and then, pausing on occasion Two Blake Prints and Two Fuseli Drawings to consult his memory as a guide through the maze with some possibly pertinent speculations of magic within the cabinet, dug through drawer after drawer before producing a large manilla Toward the end of 1970. durinq my last visit to envelope. He smiled at me wickedly as he slipped London, I went to call on my old friend Ernest out two old and fragile sheets of paper. Seligmann, the bookseller in Cecil Court, off the Charing Cross Road. Such a visit today, although These were passed to me with the right sur• a luxurious experience, is little more than a faces facing up. I had no difficulty in identi• courtesy call, for I can seldom afford to buy the fying the unique strangers which I was now treasures which Ernest produces for my delectation handling. They were Henry Fuseli 's original and temptation. I think that by now he has almost drawings for the plates engraved by Blake as the ceased to look upon me as a genuine customer, but frontispiece for the Rev. John Caspar Lavater's we remain friends in memory of the days before and Aphorisms on Man, 1788, and for the last page of during World War II when books were still within Fuseli's own Lectures on Painting, 1801. Clearly my means because I had a taste for the off-beat such items were not for me to possess and after a which I then shared with a mere handful of friends, long time I laid them aside with a regretful sigh. most notably including Geoffrey Grigson. Our caviar was cheap then as there were few competitors Ernest, however, is generous in a stealthy who had developed a palate for it, but now the way (he once, knowing I r eeded copies of the hordes who used to snack on loaves and fishes have Everyman Gilchrist, had h is assistant send me one become intrigued and so our one-time reasonable as a gift with a note say ing that Mr. Seligmann delicacies have become as outre as PeYigord truf• had asked him to send it off, just before he him- fles stuffed with Beluga. Ernest, knowing as well self went into hospital), I dropped by his shop a as I did myself that I was not able to buy any• couple of weeks later as I wanted to take another thing costing more than a pound or two, nonetheless look at the Fuseli drawin gs, to pin them like led me into his back room. butterflies to cork on my memory, before they 174 disappeared into some collection which, even in 3 The verso of Fuseli's design for the frontispiece these days of charter-flights, I could not hope to of Lavater's Aphorisms. Photograph courtesy of visit for a long time, if ever. Ernest returned Ernest Seligmann. once again to his mysterious print-cabinet and, instead of producing the drawings at once, handed me two long stiff pieces of paper. During the interval he had achieved, by some strange leger• demain, full-sized photographs of both rectos and versos of the Fuseli drawings. So I want to celebrate and thank Ernest Seligmann, one of the great art-booksellers I have known in any country, for the thoughtful generosity which has inspired and made possible this venture. Apparently afraid to go out on a limb, G. E. Bentley, Jr., and Martin K. Nurmi, in their A Blake Bibliography , 1964, in describing the Aphorisms on Man go no further than to suggest that "the frontispiece, representing a seated man, looking up, is signed 'Blake sc,' and was probably [my italics] designed by Fuseli." The engraving, 120 x 75 mm., is known in three states, all to be seen in the Rosenwald Collection of the Library of Congress. The third is reproduced here [fig. 1] as it, presumably, shows the final intentions of both artist and engraver.

As his plentiful annotations on his own copy (now in the Huntington Library) show, the book was of immediate importance to Blake, but it was also The engraving is the reverse-image of the highly significant for Henry Fuseli who had not sketch, which means that Blake did not make a spe• only translated it from the German manuscript with cial drawing or otherwise transfer it in reverse to considerable freedom but had also supplied the the surface of the copper plate, as was common introduction. engraver's practice. The additions and alterations which occur between the drawing and the engraving It was issued as the first of a proposed pair are astonishing. The rather smudgy cherub of the of volumes, of which the second was intended to be drawing seems to be carrying an opened folio sheet Fuseli's own Aphorisms on Art. According to his of paper which, in the engraving, has become a official biographer, John Knowles, The Life and tablet of stone bearing an inscription in Greek. Writings of Henry Fuseli, 1831, vol. I, p. 160: This, quoted in Greek from Socrates, in the line "In conformity with this intention, one sheet was from Juvenal's Ninth Satire, on the title-page, worked off and corrected by him; but an accidental merely means "Know thyself." Fuseli must have fire having taken place in the premises of the written out the two words as, at that time, Blake printer, the whole impression was destroyed, and had probably not yet attempted to learn Greek. Th Fuseli could never bring himself to undergo the This, as well as the existence of three states, task of another revision." However, as Eudo C. suggests that there must have been consultations Mason, The Mind of Henry Fuseli, 1951, p. 33, between the two during the course of the engraving. points out, "he was engaged intermittently from There are, too, lines suggestive of wings curving 1788 till 1818" in writing his Aphorisms chiefly from both shoulders of the cherub, which Blake has relative to The Fine Arts which were eventually ignored. These remind one of Allan Cunningham's printed by Knowles, vol. Ill, pp. 63-150. story {Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters . . . , 1830, vol. II, p. 286) about Fuseli looking Looking at the pen drawing [fig. 2], approxi• at the first sketch of some anqels which he had mately 105 x 70 mm., on a sheet 205 x 165 mm., made for a paintinq in his Milton Gallery and ex• one is immediately surprised by the almost per• claiming "--for he generally thought aloud--'They functory character of the sketch, leaving so much shall rise without wings.'" Blake's wingless to the imagination of the engraver, being offered cherub, despite the apparent weight of the tablet, as the frontispiece to a book written by the hovers without effort. artist's earliest friend. A book, moreover, into which in the liberties of his translation, he had Although the posture of Blake's lower figure put so much of himself. The only possible con• is approximately the same as Fuseli's, a low table clusion is that, around 1788, Fuseli, although has been added in the background. From this a sixteen years older than Blake, must have felt the cloth or limp sheet of paper droops from beneath bond of sympathy between them to be strong enough a stand upon which a book rests, which, in turn, for him to leave the fuller development of his supports the left hand of the figure. Both the indicated desires to the younger artist, with con• cloak, apparently flowing from the right shoulder, fidence that the final engraving would express his and details of the clothing have been changed and original vision. clarified. The hollow bench upon which the pensive 175 man sits in Fuseli 's drawing is filled with un• Fuseli, who had become Professor of Painting identifiable objects, some resembling caricatures at the Royal Academy in 1799 (he was to be elected of babies' skulls. Blake has transformed the bench Keeper in 1804 and, in 1810, by special dispensa• into a bookshelf, before which a volume lies upon tion, was re-elected to the Professorship and its side with an hour-glass tilted against it. It allowed to draw the salary from both posts), deliv• is impossible, though I would not suggest it as ered three lectures on painting on March 16, 23 and fact, that the upper face in the left margin of 30, 1801. These were published as a handsome Fuseli 's drawing may have suggested to Blake the quarto in the same year. On the last page, below face, seen from the front and slanted upward, in the final four lines of the Third Lecture, there the engraving. Both share the "Grecian" line is an engraving of Michelangelo, 133 x 79 mm., running in a straight diagonal from the tip of the signed "Blake sc" in the lower right [fig. 4]. A nose to the top of the forehead. proof of this, bearing Fuseli 's name as well as Blake's, is in the British Museum Print Room. On the verso of Fuseli 's drawing [fig. 3], to the left and below the seated female figure with a The pen drawing [fig. 5], about 185 x 135 mm., child sprawled against her right foot, there is an on a sheet 200 x 168 mm., is rather more explicit extremely faint pencil note in what looks like John than the sketch for the Aphorisms on Man, but it Linnell's hand: "Given by W. Blake to J. Linnell / still seems to display Fuseli 's implicit trust in by Fuseli ." Blake's ability to produce a fully finished en• graving from a rather tentative suggestion. It is likely, from the style of the drawing, that it was done at least ten years earlier, and was not drawn especially for the Lectures on Painting in 1801; this is a matter to which I will return later. (Sir Geoffrey Keynes, A Bibliography of V/illiam Blake, 1921, p. 248, states that "Blake's engraving is reduced and considerably altered from Fuseli 's

4 Michelangelo, engraved by Blake after a design 5 Michelangelo, pen and ink design by Fuseli for Blake's by Fuseli. Fuseli's Lectures on Painting (1801). engraving. Photograph courtesy of Ernest Seligmann. Reproduced by permission of Library of Congress, Rosenwald Collection. 176

original wash drawing, which was recently seen by At present I am engaged in writing a 25,000 the writer." I can only hope that my notes here word introduction to a picture­book on Fuseli and, will cause this drawing in wash, and not in pen as is inevitable with me, I have been doing more and ink, to reappear). research than is needed for such a lightweight undertaking. One result of this is that I feel I The drawing in pen extends only as far as the should not only record my findings but also indulge crotch of the fi gure of Michelangelo. However, in in some speculation which I have, perhaps perverse­ the upper right corner, there is a light pencil ly, persuaded myself to be pertinent. sketch, about 83 x 56 mm., of legs against an abbreviated cloa k, very much as these details Blake did engravings after Fuseli for nine appear in the en graving. David Bindman and Martin volumes, fifteen plates in all. In addition three Butlin think it probable that this pencil work is separate plates are known and have been described, by Blake and not by Fuseli, and I agree with them. as well as two others which, although destined for The line is more like that of Blake's pencil his burin, it is probable that he did not start. drawings than of Fuseli 's in this period. I will attempt to deal with these items before proceeding with my speculations and my reasons for The difference between the Michelangelo presenting them. sketched by Fuseli and the final engraving by Blake is extremely striking. Fuseli's Michelangelo Since starting work upon this study, I have is shown with rather sparse yet unkempt hair on his received two most interesting letters, dated 28 head; his beard is brief and straggly and the ex­ July and 18 September 1971, from Gert Schiff and I pression on his face is disgruntled if not actually have taken the liberty of quoting from them in the embittered. appropriate places. Gert Schiff has, after many years of work, completed his Catalogue Raisonni of In the engraving, where Michelangelo has been the work of Fuseli, the two volumes of which, text immeasurably ennobled, both the hair and the beard and illustrations, are due to appear in Switzerland have become more abundant and wel1­trimmed, in early in 1972. My gratitude to him for his com­ masses of rather tight curls. The expression on ments upon my queries is immeasurable. his face is, perhaps, one of expectancy or at least of an acute awareness of the world at which he is The books are, in chronological order: gazing, a world behind the spectator of the print. The cloak, which in the pen drawing trails off (1) John Caspar Lavater, Aphorisms on Man, J. toward the bottom of the page, has become close to Johnson, 1788. The half­title reads "Aphorisms. that in the pencil sketch, finishing about a hand's Vol. I." Apart from comparisons of the three breadth below the knees. states, the frontispiece has been dealt with above.

As a background, some distance behind Michel­ (2) Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, J. angelo, Blake has added a stylized curving Roman Johnson, 1791. This contains the plate "Fertili­ building, and he has also defined the clouds in zation of Egypt." In the British Museum Print the sky. Room are both Fuseli's pencil drawing of the cen­ tral figure, representing the Nile, inscribed by In the lower left corner, the drawing bears Frederick Tatham [?] "Sketched by Fuseli for Blake the pencil inscription, in the hand of William Linnell [?]: "Mich] Angelo / by Fuseli / original Drawing had from WT Blake."

Although I do not know the history of the two ... drawings between their leaving the possession of the Linnell family and their present resting place in the good safe hands of my old friend Ernest Seligmann, the inscriptions upon them, undoubtedly made by members of the Linnell family, with the suggestion of the first having been a gift, do not tally with the only mention of Fuseli drawings "V made in G. E. Bentley, Jr.'s listing of the V> -V. i.-. Linnell accounts in Blake Records, 1969, p. 596: S "[Jan. 26 (1820)] to MC Blake on ace* for a Draw­ ''.'-' ■■ ■ ing of Heads by Mr Blake & two by Fuseli [£] 1

Having ventured so far, on the basis of the two Fuseli drawings which I have been able to reproduce here (along with the versos since they may contain material for someone with a different %/4 visual memory from my own; figure 6 showing the verso of the Michelangelo drawing), and Blake's The verso of Fuseli's design for Blake's engraving of engravings which derive from them, I find myself Michelangelo. Photograph courtesy of Ernest Selig­ unable to bring the matter to an abrupt and com­ mann. pletely factual close. 177 to engrave from," and Blake's more complete Gert Schiff has traced no drawings for these; realization of the whole subject. Here it strikes "only a rather weak and badly overpainted painting me as odd that a man who once wrote in a friend's of Wat Tyler killing the Tax-Gatherer is known album (Knowles, vol. I, p. 396), "I do not wish to (Zurich, coll. Dr. Conrad Ulrich)." build a cottage, but to erect a pyramid," should have left it to his engraver to supply him with My major concern here is the date, 1797, en• pyramids. graved on the plates. I would suggest that they were executed, even if not quite finished, con• Both drawings are reproduced in Sir Anthony siderably earlier. In 1797 Blake was engaged with Blunt's The Art of William Blake, 1959, pis. 21a his work on Edward Young's Night Thoughts and was and 212?, with 21c showing a drawing by George full of optimism about his future. Among other Romney which closely resembles the hovering figure things he had been commissioned by John Flaxman to to be seen between the legs in Blake's drawing. prepare a specially illustrated copy of Thomas The actual engraving can be seen in Kathleen Gray's Poems, eventually given to the sculptor's Raine's William Blake, 1970, p. 33, pi. 18. wife, Nancy, sometime before September 1805. He would hardly, in such rosy circumstances, have (3) Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden , The stooped to undertake such menial and trivial work Third Edition, J. Johnson, 1795, has the extra unless fulfilling a promise made long before. In plate "Tornado" (reproduced in my own "Pictureback," that year, too, Fuseli was ebullient for, having William Blake The Artist , 1971, p. 42). There is been in doubt about his plans for his Milton Gallery an early proof of the engraving in the British (see Knowles, vol. I, p. 190), he had received a Museum Print Room. Although the published print guarantee from six patrons to provide him with bears the date "Augt l?t 1795," it was probably fifty pounds from each "until the task was com• executed about the same time as the "Fertilization pleted." of Egypt." Gert Schiff knows of no drawing for this. (6) Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, The Fourth Edition, J. Johnson, 1799. This edition, "Tornado" did not appear in the first two reduced from quarto to octavo, contains "Fertili• editions, and was not re-engraved for the Fourth zation of Egypt," rather coarsely re-engraved by (see item 6). It is possible that, although for Blake from the larger version, but, like the other plates engraved by Blake in the book, it is dated some reason it did not appeal to Erasmus Darwin, 1 Joseph Johnson, having paid for the engraving of "DecC l! - 1791." It seems highly improbable that the plate, insisted upon trying it out in at least Johnson, in 1791, should have considered issuing an one edition. inferior octavo edition at the same time as his rather elegant quarto. A more likely suggestion is (4) Charles Allen, A New and Improved History that Blake did do the re-engraving in 1799 when he of England, J. Johnson, 1798. was suffering from the general slump in the employ• ment of commercial engravers, and depressed by the (5) Charles Allen, A New and Improved Roman failure of his Night Thoughts. The dating may be History, J. Johnson, 1798. due to some personal quirk on the part of Darwin or Johnson, indicating that the book had not been re• Since the plates in both books are dated vised, and the poor quality of the engraving in all "DecC 1, 1797," it is simpler to deal with them Blake's plates in the volume suggests that it was together. Archibald G. B. Russell, The Engravings probably a cut-price job, done in a hurry. Gert of William Blake, 1912, states of the second book Schiff thanks me for a "most convincing hypothesis that the plates were engraved "after designs in the as to the dating of these plates!" manner of Fuseli," but Sir Geoffrey Keynes, in his Bibliography, shows no hesitation in attributing (7) Henry Fuseli, Lectures on Painting, J. the four plates in each volume to Fuseli and now I Johnson, 1801. In the absence of the "wash draw• can see no reason for disagreement. ing" mentioned by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, I can only go on the drawing which I know personally. As I Frederick Antal, Fuseli Studies, 1956, pi. have stated, I think that the original drawing of 33a, reproduced "King John absolved by Cardinal Michelangelo by Fuseli dates from about the same Pandulph" from the first book. This shows much the time as the frontispiece for the Aphorisms on Man. same triviality of draftsmanship as, say, that in It is admittedly difficult to pin down the date of the emblematic frontispiece to Fuseli 's own Remarks any one of Fuseli 's drawings on purely stylistic on the Writings and Conduct of John James Rousseau, grounds, but I would suggest that this drawing was 1767, reproduced by Eudo C. Mason, facing p. 305 in almost certainly made sometime earlier than 1792. my copy although given as p. 136 in the list of Possible extra evidence is also given by Paul Ganz, illustrations, and described, for some unknown The Drawings of Henry Fuseli, 1949, p. 23, where he reason, as a "woodcut" by Grignion. remarks: "After 1800, he seems to have finally given up drawing with the pen." The style of the The History of England contains "Alfred and engraving, too, has much in common with other work the Neat-herd's'Wife,"' "King John absolved by which is definitely known to have been done by Cardinal Pandulph," "Wat Tyler and the Tax-Gatherer" Blake around 1790. and "Queen Elizabeth and Essex," while the Roman History has "Mars and Rhea Silvia," "The Death of With no more evidence than this, and perhaps Lucretia," "C. Marius at Minturnum" and "The Death the knowledge that the last lecture, delivered on of Cleopatra." March 30, appeared in an elegant book published in 178

May, I would venture to suggest that the plate was Fuseli, with the support of his rich patrons was actually engraved about the same time as the fron• suffering from no financial hardship but was prob• tispiece for Lavater's book. Although it is some• ably still depressed by the final failure of his what larger and certainly a much more important Milton Gallery, and this may have drawn him back to engraving than that plate--as is vouchsafed by his old friend when Blake returned to London from Blake's going to the trouble of reversing it on the Felpham in September 1803. copper so that the print would appear the same way round as the drawing—the Michelangelo would just Gert Schiff knows of no drawings for either have fitted into the format of the earlier volume. plate, but there are proofs of them in the Rosen- wald Collection of the Library of Congress and in My speculation, for it can claim to be no more the collection of Dr. Charles Ryskamp of the Morgan unless further information turns up, is that it was Library. In addition, a footnote by Sir Geoffrey intended to be the frontispiece for "Aphorisms. Keynes, in his edition of Mona Wilson, The Life of Vol. II," Fuseli's projected but destroyed Apho• William Blake, 1971, p. 214, notes of "Queen risms on Art. There can be no doubt that he wrote Katherine's Dream" that "The pencil drawing made the "Advertisement" declaring that "It is the by Blake for this engraving is now in the Rosenwald intention of the editor to add another volume of Collection, National Gallery, Washington, D.C." APHORISMS ON ART, WITH CHARACTERS AND EXAMPLES, not indeed by the same author, which the reader may The three individual prints are listed by Sir expect in the course of the year." Geoffrey Keynes, The Separate Plates, 1956, quoting Russell, The Engravings, 1912, for descriptions of Fuseli's discouragement in 1788 at the destruc• the first and third. I use Sir Geoffrey's numbers tion of his carefully corrected proof-sheet (and he here, and also his recording of the number of was a slow and careful corrector of his own written impressions known to him at the date of publication work) should be seen in the more glaring light of of his book. the earlier fire at Joseph Johnson's, on 8 January 1770, in which he lost almost all he possessed, including his manuscripts and the majority of the No. XXXIII, "Timon and Alcibiades" was ac• drawings which led Sir Joshua Reynolds to advise quired by the British Museum Print Room in 1863. him to become a painter. Although apparently a unique copy, this is the only one of these three prints to carry any inscription which indicates an intention of publishing it: Anyone who has read Eudo C. Mason's The Mind "Published by W. Blake, Poland St. July 28: 1790." of Henry Fuseli is bound to recognize that it was Gert Schiff tells me that there are two drawings quite in keeping with Fuseli's character to ag• for this, one reproduced by Nicholas Powell, The grandize himself even at the expense of his oldest Drawings of Henry Fuseli, 1950, and the other in friend and, furthermore, although he was to the Art Gallery, Aukland, New Zealand, and repro• fluctuate in his opinions of Michelangelo later, in duced in the catalogue of the Fuseli drawings the years around 1790 the Italian was his god. there.

If my suggestion is accepted as valid—and No. XXXIV, c. 1790?, "Satan," also known as Gert Schiff finds it interesting, although he lacks the "Head of a Man Tormented in Fire," has a list• the time to follow it up--it is more than likely ing of no less than six copies, to which I can add that Joseph Johnson, who published all the books a seventh at the University of Glasgow. This upon which Blake worked in collaboration with rather repulsive and intimidating head, 350 x 263 Fuseli, had also presumably paid Blake for the mm. on the plate, derives from or is connected engraving of Michelangelo meant for the aborted with, according to Gert Schiff, a head in Lavater's second volume and when he came to publish the Essays on Physiognomy, 1792, vol. II, p. 290. It Lectures in considerable haste some dozen years became no less terrifying but certainly more later decided to make use of the plate. acceptable when it was adopted and reduced by Blake in plate 16 of Illustrations of the Book of Job "Silence," engraved by F. Legat after Fuseli, "Satan cast forth." which appears on the title-page, may also have been a plate Johnson had in reserve. Certainly the sub• In London, early in 1971, I was shown a draw• ject has little to do with the sound of lecturing. ing which might either have been a copy of Fuseli 's original or of Blake's engraving. David Bindman, Finally, so far as the books are concerned, to whom it belongs, suggested that it might possi• there are two volumes of Alexander Chalmers's The bly be the work of the octogenarian Fuseli's Plays of William Shakespeare . . . _, J. Johnson prodigy prote"ge\ Theodore Matthias von Hoist. Gert [with many others], 1805. Schiff, however, writes, "I know of an oil on paper copy of this head which was once with a young (8) Vol. VII, p. 235. "Queen Katherine's London dealer .... but this certainly had no• Dream." "Act IV. King Henry VIII. Sc. II." thing to do with Von Hoist."

(9) Vol. X, p. 107. "Romeo and the Apothe• No. XXXV, c.1790?, "FALSA AD C0ELUM MITTUNT cary." "Act I [sio for V]. Romeo and Juliet. INSOMNIA MANES," is described, by Russell, from the Sc. I." copy which the British Museum Print Room obtained in 1882. Sir Geoffrey mentions having heard of These two plates seem to be connected with a another about which, however, he seems to have been revival of an old friendship between the two men. unable to obtain any details. Despite his wide 179 knowledge of Swiss collections, Gert Schiff has That Fuseli developed a mistrust of Blake's failed to trace other impressions of this or the ever-widening expanse of vision (although Joseph "Timon." He writes, however, "Falsa ad coelum: in Farington reports a conversation of 12 January 1797 my opinion not etched by Blake but by Fuseli him• in which Thomas Stothard claimed that Blake "had self (lefthandedness!) Iconographically one of the been misled to extravagance in his art" by Fuseli most involved, and charming, allegories Fuseli ever himself), while his own ambitions developed in invented." As the plate is a line-engraving, it is other directions, particularly erotically, is clear possible that Fuseli may have etched the outlines to anyone who has studied the lives and works of and some sections of the plate before Blake's burin both. took over. The use of etching for laying-out a plate before it was engraved was common usage. I Still, although they saw less and less of each wrote to Gert Schiff suggesting this, and in his other as the years went by and the intense intimacy later letter he says, "Your proposal of a collabor• of these five years was gradually smoothed away, ation of Fuseli and Blake in the plate seems fas• the friendship never perished completely. I have cinating, however, I have no reproduction at hand suggested a slight rebirth of intimacy in the early and thus cannot really form an opinion. What in• 1800's, and further evidence of this is shown by duced me to give the whole of its execution to Fuseli 's advertisement for Blake's illustrations to Fuseli is the clear lefthandedness.11 Robert Blair's The Grave, written in 1805, and in Blake's letter of June 1806 published in the I know too little about Fuseli 's accomplish• Monthly Magazine, defending Fuseli's "Ugolino," ment as an etcher or engraver to be dogmatic, but shown in the Royal Academy of that year, against a judging from the impatience of his temperament particularly spiteful attack in Bell's Weekly alone, I have never been convinced by the plate, Messenger. It seems likely that Blake's quatrain in what seems to be a mixture of mezzotint and engraving, credited to Fuseli himself by Antal, The only Man that eer I knew pi. 33b, "Religious Fanaticism attended by Folly trampling upon Truth." Who did not make me almost spew Was Fuseli he was both Turk & Jew And so dear Christian Friends how do you do The two phantasmagoric plates can be dealt with briefly. Eudo C. Mason reproduces (facing p. belongs to the years between 1803 and 1806. 208 of my copy although listed as facing p. 304) a "finished sketch" which he credits to Fuseli. This I have recently been investigating the matter he considers may be "Satan taking his flight from of the Truchsessian Gallery which, as his letter of Chaos," intended as an illustration for Cowper's 23 October 1804 to William Hayley shows, had an proposed edition of Milton's poems, which had to be overwhelming effect upon Blake. A discussion of abandoned when the editor became insane. Knowles, the Gallery does not belong here, but there are vol. I» p. 172, declares this to have been "ready points which can be raised in support of my belief for the graver of Blake" before August 1790, but no in a renewal of friendship during these years. proof of any print has been traced, nor has any Owing to the differences in sizes and typography of copy emerged of the other proposed engraving men• the printed documents relating to the collection, tioned by Knowles in the same sentence in connec• I decided to make a typescript of all I could ob• tion with Blake, "Adam and Eve observed by Satan." tain as they came to hand.

In connection with these two works Gert Schiff Typing out what seems to have been the second comments: "Satan taking his flight, as published of Count Joseph Truchsess's Proposals for the by Mason, or The Night Hag, as published by Ganz: Establishment of a Public Gallery of Pictures in definitely not by Fuseli, but possibly by Prince London .... [31 July 1802], from a Xerox copy Hoare, and perhaps related to the lost painting no. generously given me by Paul Grinke (another copy VIII of Fuseli 's Milton Gallery, The Night Hag and being in the Bodleian Library, Oxford), I was the Lapland Witches. Adam and Eve first observed struck by something which had made little impact by Satan; a fragment of the painting, the figures during my earlier reading. The Count's chief of Adam and Eve, half-length, embracing, is with bankers were Thomas Coutts and Co. Fuseli became Kurt Meissner, Zurich, an unfinished sketch by intimate with Thomas Coutts on his first visit to Fuseli is in the Kunsthaus [ZUrich]." England in 1763 and the banker was to remain his friend and steadfast patron until his death in My point in listing and commenting, however 1822, when his place was taken by his daughter, the incompletely, upon all Blake's known engravings Countess of Guildford, in whose house at Putney after Fuseli, as well as a couple which he may not Fuseli was to die in 1825. have started, has been to suggest that, despite the conflicting given dates of publication, for a short Proceeding to the Plan of Subscription . . . period, roughly from late 1787 to early 1792, the for the Purchase of the Truchsessian Picture-Gal- two men were in closer contact and enjoyed more lery . . . [15 January 1804], known to me only from absolute sympathy with each other than at any other the Xerox most kindly given me by Paul Grinke, I time during their friendship. While this continued found more which seemed pertinent. Among other (allowing my surmises about the Michelangelo plate information I gathered that admittance to the Gal• to be correct) Fuseli had an overwhelming confi• lery cost half-a-crown, a large sum of money in dence in Blake's ability to realize his wishes in a those days, when entry to Fuseli's Milton Gallery finished engraving. had been one shilling, with sixpence for the cata• logue. Most of the pamphlet is concerned with a 180

have given Blake the full use of the Gallery. the printer. It is also worth noting that artists whose names appear early in the alphabet receive Having also acquired Xerox copies of the fuller treatment than those mentioned later. Catalogue of the Truahsessian Picture Gallery> now exhibiting in the New Road, opposite Portland All this is a weak thread of evidence rather Place . . . [1803], and the Sale Catalogue of than a chain, but it is unlikely that Blake, in March, April, May, 1806 (both from the Bodleian 1804, was in a position to pay two shillings and Library), I have become more aware of the problems sixpence in visiting a picture-gallery and his which can be aroused by the contents of the col• enthusiasm suggests that he had seen the pictures lection. But this, as I have remarked, is not the more than once. place for me to approach these. It was possibly in reaction against the cost In the Catalogue of the Exhibition, I found of admission to the Truchsessian Gallery that when even stronger indications of a connection between Blake held his own Exhibition in 1809 the cost of Count Truchsess and Fuseli. The entry reads: A Descriptive Catalogue, certainly an awe-inspir• "BRUN. (Bartholomaeus). There are several german ing amount of reading material, was two shillings engravers of this name, who lived at the beginning and sixpence which included admission to the of the sixteenth century. But the name of this Exhibition. Further, in the unique page of ad• master, written upon the picture, with the year vertisement I found in 1942 in the Stirling 1532, has escaped the researches of the grand Maxwell collection (now at the University of dictionary, published by Fuseli." As Fuseli's Glasgow), Blake is clearly tempering the wind when first revision of Matthew Pilkington's Dictionary he states "Admittance to the Exhibition 1 Shilling; of Painters was not published until 1805, this is and Index to the Catalogue gratis." (No copy of evidence that the Count, in 1803, must have had this separate Index seems to have survived or been access to the corrected sheets as they came from traced.) number of "rules" under the heading "Terms of Sub• scription." An added hint about this temporary revival of a former friendship is shown in Fuseli's having The first rule reads: "Every person who shall become choosy about the quality of craftsmanship subscribe ['Five pounds' inserted in ink above line"] and interpretation of his works by engravers about previous to the first of May, 1804, on the payment the year 1803. In that year, having taken "the of this subscription, shall receive a printed lease of a commodious house, No. 13, Berner's ticket, acknowledging the sum paid; and this ticket Street," he offered rooms in this to Moses Haughton will give that person, for the term of ten years, and the following year he took Haughton with him the right of free admission to the Truchsessian when he moved into "the commodious apartments Gallery, at whatever state of augmentation and allotted" to him in Somerset House as Keeper of improvement it may arrive, after having become a the Royal Academy (Knowles, vol. I, p. 284). national property." Haughton, an accurate if somewhat pedestrian en• graver, remained there until 1818 working under After the rules applying to the subscribers of the direct supervision of his somewhat cantanker• larger sums and other matters, I arrived at rule ous patron who knew what he wanted and insisted seven. "Institution of a Gallery of painting being upon getting it. particularly intended for the use of the artists, every member of the Royal Academy, and also every Seldom indeed does such rapport exist between Painter, Sculptor, or Engraver properly introduced, a designer and his engraver as seems to have shall acquire the right of a Subscriber in either existed between Fuseli and Blake during the earlier of the aforesaid classes, by paying half the sub• and brief and undoubtedly exciting stretch of time. scription-money attached to them; and all such Blake's own recognition of the brevity is ex• artists, as well as any amateur known to exercise pressed in his letter of 12 September 1880 to John any one of the fine arts, being subscribers, will Flaxman, where he refers to the departure of the be admitted to the Gallery during the summer half- latter for Rome in 1787 and says "Fuseli was given year an hour before the ordinary time of opening, to me for a season." No such bond ever seems to and have, all the time it stands open, the right to have developed between Fuseli and his chosen and make studies and drawings in their portfolios from innocuous interpreter, Moses Haughton. whatever subject they please; but no picture can be removed from it's [sic) place, nor can tables and Certainly Thomas Stothard never permitted easels be granted, until a larger building afford Blake such an unbridled freedom of imagination, sufficient room. It is likewise understood that no judging from the careful drawings for engravings to formal copy or engraving after any picture is to be be made by the latter which I have so far seen. It made, without the assent of the Trustees and Direc• may be that Fuseli, using his own peculiar and pro• tors of the Gallery being first obtained." fane version of the English language, managed to communicate his intentions and desires to the It seems more than possible that the Count's younger man more completely than, say, George banker, Thomas Coutts, might well have supplied his Cumberland, John Flaxman or Stothard were ever old intimate (I believe that Fuseli's erotic draw• able to do, although they were compatriots. ings are closely connected with this friendship) with at least the minimum "Subscription." Fuseli Of course, here I have had to avoid any in turn may have performed the "proper introduction" attempt at an exploration of the visual influence and paid the two pounds ten shillings which would of either artist upon the other. I have been long- 181

winded enough in my attempt to suggest that there filled with projects and excursions which helped may indeed have been this brilliant interval, short to distract Rossetti from his grief. The comple• in the long lives of both artists, when it seems tion of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of Blake (1863) that they may have shared a mutual vision. was one such project and is certainly the "Blake business" to which the letter alludes. Since this has been, of necessity, a specu• lative argument, I will welcome any expressions of After Alexander's death from scarlet fever, disagreement or fragments of enlightenment which Mrs. Gilchrist moved her children to Earl's Colne, anyone cares to offer, either to me personally or sometimes called "the garden of Essex," her through the pages of Blake Newsletter. I will, mother's home, her own home for most of her early naturally, be delighted if anyone can add any in• and middle life, and the home of her ancestors formation about the short period when I believe since the Norman Conquest.2 But like Rossetti the that the ideals and imaginations of the two artists recent widow had her periods of depression, and actually coalesced. they also made her restless; in late August, for example, she wrote to her sister-in-law, "... Colne is intolerably painful to me, and I quite pine to get back to my quiet cottage among the dear Surrey hi!Is . . . ."•

THOMAS L. MINNICK: THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY Apparently Rossetti had written to Earl's Colne, then learned, probably through a dinner A New Rossetti Letter invitation from Mr. Ireland who lived in Chelsea, that Mrs. Gilchrist had moved for a while. I sus• pect she was visiting the Irelands who had been I recently had the good fortune to buy an unpub• her neighbors on Great Cheyne Row. (She and Alex• lished holograph letter by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. ander lived at no. 6; Thomas Carlyle and his wife As it concerns Blake and Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, it lived at no. 5, next door; and later in 1862 may be of interest to the readers of the Blake Rossetti himself moved to nearby 16 Cheyne Walk.) Newsletter. On a folded sheet of mourning note- Mrs. Isabella Ireland had offered help tending the paper Rossetti wrote: children who were also sick with "Scarlatina" when their father died.^ "Mr. Ireland" appears in 59 Lincoln's Inn Fields several of Rossetti 's letters from this period, Wednesday usually as a source of materials for Rossetti's projected memoir of Alexander Gilchrist.^ But My dear W. Ireland Rossetti names him "W. Ireland" while Herbert H. Gilchrist, writing his mother's memoir, calls him I am very sorry I cannot manage to be "Edwin."6 Perhaps he had a familiar name with you so early as 7, either today or ("Winny"?). Perhaps Rossetti 's pen or memory tomorrow, so must decline your kind slipped. Or perhaps Herbert Gilchrist, the only invitation to dinner, but shall be very source for "Edwin," misremembered: he was five glad to come a little later tomorrow years old and seriously ill when his family left evening, and will take the liberty of Chelsea. bringing my brother if he can come--say at half past 8. He, as well as I, wrote A final word. This note is one of several the other day to Mrs. Gilchrist, but the written to arrange a meeting between Anne Gilchrist, letters, being directed to Earl's Colne, Dante Rossetti and, occasionally, William Michael have not perhaps yet reached her. We shall Rossetti. There are almost as many letters post• both be very glad to see her again & go poning meetings or apologizing for missed ones. In over Blake business by word of mouth. I fact, the direct evidence that the Rossettis saw am very sorry to have delayed answering much of Mrs. Gilchrist in the process of bringing but was not sure till now which evening the Life of Blake to publication is slight. What I could come. With kind remembrances to William Rossetti wrote of Alexander Gilchrist Mrs. Gilchrist characterizes the relationship, in 1862, between Dante and Anne: "... I cannot remember that I I am yours very truly saw him more than once or twice again. We were both busy men, and one casualty or another kept us D G Rossetti apart."7

The paper is watermarked "1860"; the envelope is lost. NOTES Although the note is undated, the address implies that it was written between the end of ^So Oswald Doughty in A Victorian Romantic: April, 1862, and 24 October of the same year, the Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford only time when Rossetti lived at 59 Lincoln's Inn Univ. Press, 1960), pp. 307, 310. But Oswald Fields.^ He had moved there when, after Lizzie's Doughty and John Robert Wahl, eds., give 22 October death in February, Chatham Place became unbearable as the date Rossetti left; see Letters of Dante and when a few weeks' stay on Newman Street proved Gabriel Rossetti (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), unsatisfactory. These several months in 1862 were II, 458. 182

^Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist, ed., Anne Tl IK MARRIAGE OF 11EAVEN AND IIELL Gilohrist: Her Life and Writings, 2nd ed. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887), pp. 2c-9.

^The cottage was Brookbank, at Shottermill near Haslemere. This is the home Anne Gilchrist let to George Henry Lewes and George Eliot in 1871 where they read her husband's life of Blake and where, in a study lined with Blake drawings and engravings, George Eliot wrote the second part of Middlemarch. Gilchrist, pp. 155-56, 215-19.

^Gilchrist, pp. 101, 107, 114.

5Doughty and Wahl, II, 441, 452, 454, 455.

^Gilchrist, p. 107.

'"Prefatory Notice" in Gilchrist, pp. ix-x. I wish to express my appreciation to Mrs. Imogen Dennis, of Oxford, England, for her kind permis• sion to publish this Rossetti letter.

A DRAMATIC ADAPTATION Of I III- POEM B\ WILLIAM BLAKE PRESENTED BY CAWS COMPANY \\ nil UNtVEBSTTY OF CHICAGO JEROME J. McGANN: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ROCKEFELLER MKMOKI U, CHAPEL in I > M\ I 11 vr WOODI AWN MAY 8 4 10 11 12 Hid I'M I KM I S TWO lXM.I.AKs \l I III- Bl R 5811 ELLIS-CHICAGO 60637-MI3-0800-X4U7 Staging The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

which awareness is expanded in a variety of ways In May 1970 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was until an apotheosis becomes both the possible and presented in a stage version at the University of even inevitable result. Chicago. The production was the work of Cain's Company, a group formed a few years before at the The play differed from the poem in two other university with the first complete stage presenta• noticeable ways. In the first place, Blake himself tion of another great Romantic text, Lord Byron's was made the central character, and all the scenes Cain. But whereas Cain, though a closet drama, occurred in direct or oblique relation to him. retains at least the formal qualities of a stage The decision to make Blake a visible character did play, Blake's poem had to be converted wholesale not seem a distortion of The Marriage, but a into theatrical forms. theatrical representation of the intensely personal character of the poem itself. Yet the poem's drastic insistence upon ex• tending the boundaries of perception seemed to In the second place, while the text of the recommend an attempt at stage dramatization. The play was basically a reduced text of the poem, it work of adaptation took about four months, during incorporated as well some passages from Blake's which time it quickly became apparent that the other prose and poetry. The adaptation included greatest obstacle to a successful stage version was, nothing which does not appear in Blake's own col• paradoxically perhaps, the vigor of Blake's own lected works, and of course all the interpolated language and visual perceptions. One had con• passages (e.g., excerpts from "The Lamb" and "The stantly to resist the inclination simply to trans• Tyger") were only chosen if they would clarify fer the various "scenes" in the poem to the stage. aspects of the Marriage. Blake's poem has a powerful visual quality, but that quality is so involved with the nature of his language as such that the conception of a theatri• In adapting the poem, much time was spent cal representation was constantly being thwarted by inventing new, specifically theatrical representa• the words of the poem. tions for the ideas and conflicts in the poem. Yet no attempt was made to cast these translations into any terms which were not highly "poetical," ritu• In the end, the language of the poem was alized, and dreamlike. The recent London adapta• reduced to a schematic minimum so that the entire tion of a Blake world, Tyger, seems to me to have work of elaborating the poem's basic ideas and failed precisely because Blake's powerfully con• attitudes would be rescued from language and trans• crete abstractions were poured into stylized ferred to theatre. On the other hand, the skeletal realistic forms, on the apparent (and incorrect) form of the poem was preserved almost exactly in assumption that any current appeal of Blake's the play: the only major change was the precise strange visions requires a sort of Pop Art or Camp repetition of an early scene (plates 5-6) at a style. The principle which held throughout the later point in the play. The stage version thus Chicago production of The Marriage of Heaven and preserved Blake's pattern of a series of scenes in Hell, on the contrary, was much more* literal-minded 183

No attempt was made to compromise the bizarre ROBERT N. ESSICK: SAN FERNANDO VALLEY qualities of the poem (for example, the Printing [CALIFORNIA] STATE COLLEGE House in Hell scene). Blake's uniquely weird per• ception of such an (essentially) familiar place "What is the price of Experience do men buy demands a corresponding imaginative effort from his it for a Song": Blake at Auction 1971 reader. The method of the poem dictated the method of the play, which attacked the audience with a Last year was an exceptionally busy one for Blake wide variety of sensational stimuli organized not collectors. In spite of the number of items that according to patterns of plot but phases of pure came up for auction, the market held up well, with effect. At every point the essential aim of the no perceptible decline in prices. play was to induce new experiences of wonderment. For this reason the Chicago stage version resembled Copy C of The Book of Urizen is one of only a ballet almost as much as it did a drama, just as two copies containing plate 4 with the complete its text was at least as much scenario as play. text. Its auction at the Britwell Court Library The blocking of the production was constantly sale, Sotheby's, 29 March, was thus an event of turning into choreography. considerable importance. Details from the sale catalogue and a discussion of the book's fate can The Chicago Marriage was presented in the be found in the Blake Newsletter, 4 (Winter 1971), Chancel of Rockefeller Chapel, a large Neo-Gothic 69-70 and 4 (Spring 1971), [112]-113. Although church on the campus of the university. The audi• there were fears that Urizen would be dismembered ence was seated in the nave. The production it• immediately and sold as individual plates, it is self was based upon a severe design of multi-media still intact and for sale by a London dealer. effects. This design, an incorporation of dance, Another item (no. 34) in the Britwell Court sale, song, mime, and various forms of ritual drama, was a copy of Poetical Sketches, received previous no• set in a context of aggressive visual and audial tice in the Newsletter; see Michael Phillips, stimuli. In this way the style of the production "'Blake's Corrections in Poetical Sketches': A attempted to translate Blake's firm grasp upon the Forthcoming Supplement 2nd the Britwell Court Li• marvellous into effective theatrical terms, and brary Copy," Blake Newsletter, 4 (Spring 1971), even to reproduce a stage analogue for the farrago 148-49. This copy is not recorded by Keynes in his of literary styles which Blake's great poem illus• census in Blake Studies (2nd ed., Oxford, 1971), trates . pp. 41-45, unless copy H, which Keynes describes as "bound in green morocco, gilt, by F. Bedford, un- trimmed" and locates "in 1936 in the Carl H. Pforz- heimer Library, New York" somehow found its way to Britwell Court and during the voyage faded into the copy described in the sale catalogue ("olive straight-grained morocco gilt, t.e.g., uncut, by Francis Bedford"). The title-paqe is reproduced in the catalogue.

Copy A of The Book of Thel was sold at Parke- Bernet in New York, 19 October, lot 343, for $21,000. This copy had been on deposit in the Harvard College Library since 1941, and it was something of a surprise to see it up for sale. The very lightly colored title-page is reproduced on the cover of the sale catalogue.

The auction that attracted the most attention during 1971 took place on 15 June at Christie's, Cain's Company where the Blake-Varley Sketchbook was sold leaf by leaf. A note by Michael Phillips on the sale and various reactions to it appeared in the Spring 1971 issue of the Newsletter, pp. [112]-113. Listed below are the major drawings, all repro• duced in the catalogue along with thirteen lesser sketches, and the prices they fetched.

Lot 141, "The Ghost of the Flea." $5,040 to a London dealer for resale. I believe that this sketch is still for sale at considerably more than the auction price.

Lot 142, "A Standing Archer." $3,044 to Zeitlin & Ver Brugge of Los Angeles, California. The sketch was offered for sale and reproduced in their catalogue 228 for $4,550.

Lot 144, "Head of the Dying King Harold," 184 brought $4,065.60. An article by David Bindman in likely a world's record for a drawing by Blake-- the Guardian Weekly, 5 June 1971, p. 22, on the $15,420. According to Geraldine Norman, writing in forthcoming sale featured this sketch, reproduced The Times [London] (10 November 1971), it sold for in outline. A brief notice on its purchase ap• only $625 at auction in 1958. The fact that this peared in the Spring 1971 issue of the Newsletter, monochrome drawing brought more than the previous p. [112]. lot caused Miss Norman to headline her article "Reversal in values of works by Blake." Both Lot 145, "Milton's First Wife." $1,134. Tiriel designs in the sale fetched such high prices, not because of some rash vagary in the Lot 151, "Head and Shoulders of a Young Man," market, but rather because they illustrate one of p. 108 of the Sketchbook. $1,209. Blake's own poems composed at a crucial point in his career when he was beginning to develop il• Lot 155, "Head of Job." $2,520. luminated printing and prophetic narrative. In this case the collector responded to the scholar, Lot 156, "Prince Arthur." $2,016. paying more for a work in a "lesser" medium than for a tempera of lesser importance. The entire Sketchbook, including its worn cover and several drawings by Varley, realized $34,432-- Lot 73, "Tiriel Leaving Har and Heva," wash a handsome sum, but nowhere near the $120,000 drawing illustrating Tiriel, sold for $9,766. The mentioned as an upper limit by Phillips in his note sale catalogue entitles the work "The Blind Tiriel referred to above. Even the slightest sketches Departing from Har and Hela," but the introduction brought a large price. For example, lot 166 (p. of Hela into the group is surely an error. 84 of the Sketchbook bearing not much more than a doodle of some figures by a river) went for $2,016, Lot 74, "Prone on the Lowly Grave--She Drops," perhaps because a note in the sale catalogue com• watercolor intended to illustrate Blair's Jrave pares it with "Homer and the Ancient Poets" among but never engraved. This Stothard-like design the Dante designs. It continues to amaze non- sold for $5,140. Another rejected Grave pre• Blakeans in the art world that so many are willing liminary appears on the cover of the Spring 1972 to pay so much for the merest of Blake's trifles issue of Blake Studies. which have in themselves practically no artistic merit. Enthusiasts realize the wisdom of such Lot 75, "Saint Augustine Converting King opinions, but keep buying anyway. Ethelbert of Kent," a watercolor which sold for $2,570. A note in the sale catalogue states that The sale of the preliminary drawing for "Mr. David Bindman has pointed out that this is "Joseph Ordering Simeon to be Bound" is described one of an incomplete series of designs for a in the Spring 1971 Newsletter, p. [112], but its History of England, one of which, 'The Death of importance warrants a second notice here. This Earl Goodwin' [sic], Blake exhibited at the Royal drawing, sold at Sotheby's on 24 June (lot 108 for Academy in 1780, no. 315." "The Landing of Julius $6,720), is an early work (c. 1784-85) that can Caesar," reproduced in Charles Ryskamp, William play an important role in our understanding of Blake, Engraver (Princeton, 1969), is another work Blake's stylistic development. Curiously, the in this series. drawing shows the influence of Flaxman, while the finished design in the Fitzwilliam Museum just as Lot 76, "The Sacrifice of Manoah," a small and clearly shows the influence of James Barry. When probably early watercolor, with the same design in taken together, these works demonstrate how the pencil and grey wash on the verso, which sold for young Blake would change styles, even in the midst $1,157. The sale catalogue does not make clear of developing a single design, as he began to amal• whether it is the recto or verso in the reproduc- gamate them all into his own unique visual idiom. ti on.

The last Blake auction of 1971 took place at Lot 77, "Adam and Eve," a slight sketch of Christie's on 9 November when nine paintings and three figures that also sold for $1,157. drawings, as listed below, were sold from the col• lection of Lady Melchett. All but the last are Lot 78, "Lucifer and the Gods," an energetic reproduced in the sale catalogue. wash drawing in Blake's Flaxmanesque style which brought $2,827. Lot 71, "Saint Matthew and the Angel," tem• pera on canvas, c. 1799, sold for $12,336. Blake Lot 79, "The Deluge," a pencil sketch, attri• painted a series of four temperas of the Evange• buted to Blake in an inscription by Tatham, brought lists for Thomas Butts, of which this work is one only $437. of two surviving. "St. Mark" and "St. John" were in the Butts sale, 29 June 1853 (lot 141), but Except for the last lot, all the works in the have not been heard of since to my knowledge. "St. auction were of considerable interest. It may be Luke" was in the Graham Robertson collection and many years before we see again in one year three now, according to Geoffrey Keynes, William Blah ' sales of such importance as the Book of Urizen, Illustrations to the Bible, belongs to "C. Blake-Varley Sketchbook, and Lady Melchett auctions. Kearley, Esq." Our thanks to David Bindman for several items of in• Lot 72, "Tiriel Supporting Myratana," wash formation on Blake sales in 1971, all incorporated drawing illustrating Tiriel. The price is yery above. (Eds.) 185

MORTON D. FALEY: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY and DEIRDRE TOOMEY: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

Two Pictorial Sources for Jerusalem 25

1 Jerusalem 25. From the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. We are grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Mellon for permission to reproduce these pictures and to Mr. Willis Van Devanter for his assistance in obtaining them. 186

:fj\ Jerusalem 9, bottom. From the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

I Morton Paley: The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus and although Bla ke cannot have seen Poussin's powerful renderi ng of this scene in Rome--or in Paris, to which ''The difference between a bad Artist & a Good One it was removed during the Napo- leonic period^­­he could easily have been familiar Is: the Bad Artist Seems to Copy a Great deal. 7 with the version by Joseph Marie Mitelli [fig. 6], The Good one Really Does Copy a Great deal." As an engraving lis Sir Anthony Blunt has shown, Blake really did copy ted as one of Mitelli's "principal works" by Michae 1 Bryan in 1816 (A Biographical a great deal," though when he borrowed for one of and Critical Die his own works, the borrowing was seldom without tionary of Painters and Engravers [London], II, 7)6. Blake has of course shifted some kind of transformation. Such is the case with Poussin's supine the design on plate 25 of Jerusalem [fig. 1], suffering figure to a more Michelangelesque pose,7 yet the drawing out and winding of the e ntrails remain the central con- The central figure in this picture is Albion, ception of both pictures. as we know from the presence of the sun, moon, and stars in his limbs. (Two plates later we are told But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the NOTES mighty limbs of Albion, "'­­A 649). He is bound in a position strongly reminiscent of that of the Annotations to Reynold's Discourses, The central figure of The Blasphemer3 in the Tate Complete Writings of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Gallery, but here the figure at the right is draw­ ing something out of his body. This action has Keynes (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 455-56. (This edition hereafter cited as K.) been variously interpreted as "winding a 'clue' of vegetation from his navel," "drawing out the um­ 2 bilical cord from his navel" and "disembowelment."^ The Art of William Blake (New York: Colum­ bia Univ. Press, 1959). Actually, it is all three, for to Blake the bowels and the umbilical cord are equally manifestations of those fibres of vegetation which play so large ■^Also known by the W. M. Rossetti title, The a thematic role in Blake's later works. In this Stoning of Achany but see Martin Butlin, William particular picture the same fibres that the figure Blake / A Complete Catalogue of the Works in the on the right winds out of Albion's body and into a Tate Gallery (London, 1971), p". 45. A similar ball stream down the plate on either side from the Michelangelesque posture may be seen in J 91 [fiq fingers of the central female figure. The identity 2]. of substance is more apparent in the Mellon copy than in the black­and­white copies, for Blake uses S. Foster Damon, William Blake: His Philos­ the same russet coloration for fibres of vegetation ophy and Symbols (1924; rpt. Gloucester, Mass : throughout (compare for example plate 57 [fig. 3], Peter Smith, 1958), p. 470; Joseph Wicksteed, where the russet fibres stream from the fingers of Wzlliam Blake's Jerusalem (New York: The Beechurst the two female figures above and seem to entrap Press, 1955), p. 155; Butlin, p. 45. the one below). This winding of Albion's "bowels of compassion" (56:34) into a ball is a demonic William Blake: An Introduction to the Man parody of the activity Blake urges on the reader and His Work (New York: Ungar, 1970), p. 165. in plate 77 [fig. 4] with its accompanying picture. Winding and unwinding, weaving and unweaving are °See Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas indeed among the central motifs of Jerusalem [cf Pousszn / A Critical Catalogue (London, 1966), pp. fig. 5].

The meaning, then, is thoroughly Blakean. C H. Collins Baker suggests that the fiqure But the depiction of a figure whose bowels are may derive from Flaxman; see "The Sources of Blake s Pictorial Expression," Huntington Library being unwound is a rather unusual subject, and the Quarterly, 4 (1940-41), 365. y existence of just such a figure in a painting by an artist whom Blake admired suggests that Blake was following his own advice in J 25. The painting Miss Deirdre Toomey points out that The is The Martyrdom of St. Erasmur, by Nicolas Poussin. Martyrdom of St. Erasmus was seen and remarked on Blake praises Poussin several times in the Annota­ by Henry Fuseli when he visited the Louvre in 1802 tions to Reynolds (A 469, 477), and according to S mmariZeS S Vi6W f thG aintl in^as ?ollows : ^^ " ° P Raymond Lister Blake made a copy of Poussin's The Giant Polyph me which was engraved by George Byfield c. 1820.,J Saint Erasmus was martyred by The actual martyrdom of St. Erasmus is one having his entrails drawn out and wound on a winch, of those subjects which ought not to be told to the eye-because it is equally loathsome ^^^^^^^™ 1

187

3 Jerusalem 57. From the collec• 1 tion of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

- < rr*~

4 Jerusalem 77, top. From the V collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

vers* ixTZ^St&JSutba.-1™

5 Jerusalem 59, center. From the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. 188 and horrible; we can neither pity nor shudder; ture depth, at the same time concentrating the move• we are seized by qualms, and detest. Poussin ment within the design. In the Rosso there is a and Pietro Testa are here more or less objects characteristic tendency towards diffuseness; the of aversion, and in proportion to the greater strong triangle formed by the three bodies is broken or less energy they exerted. This is the only by the outward thrust and gaze of all the figures. picture of Poussin in which he has attempted Blake's modifications all tend towards making the to rival his Italian competitors on a scale of design more concentrated, dramatic and energetic. equal magnitude in figures of the size of life; The self-consciousness of the Fates disappears and and here he was no longer in his sphere; his their potential energy is harnessed by the introduc• drawing has no longer its usual precision of tion of the fourth figure and hence an action. In form, it is loose and Cortonesque; his colour typical Mannerist fashion the diagonals in the Rosso on this scale has neither the breadth of fresco, bisect on the pudendum of the central Fate, which is nor the glow, finish, or impasto of oil. thus the focal point of the design. In plate 25 this central figure is foreshortened and the focal —The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli point becomes Albion's agonized chest. Blake also (London, 1831), I, 270-71. ignores the merely ornamental parts of the design; the "Testa Divina" head-dresses disappear and blocks of stone are substituted for the draperies, pedestal and basket of flowers. Blake takes the spinning motif of Le Tre Parohe II Deirdre Toomey: Le Tre Parche a stage further both formally and iconographically. Instead of the symbolic thread, the females really wind "the thin-spun life," Albion's "tender bowels." The anonymous engraving after II Rosso Fiorentino^ Le Tre Parahe This winding of entrails can be seen to be taken known as [fig. 7] is usually attri• from Poussin's St. Erasmus [fig. 6]: two sources buted to Rene Boyvin, a sixteenth century French en• 2 are thus admirably conflated in plate 25. The bun• graver and designer. Boyvin was born in Angers in dles of flax held by the central Fate also undergo 1530, worked in Paris and died in Rome in 1598. A- a curious transformation, being enlarged into long bout 226 prints can be attributed to him, mainly en• willow-like roots. It is important to note that, in graved after II Rosso and Primaticcio. Boyvin en• taking over and elaborating the Rosso spinning mo• graved two versions of this subject; in the other, tif, Blake disrupts the process: in the former, the also after II Rosso, the Fates are clothed. Accord• bundles of flax are being spun into thread, in the ing to Robert-Dumesnil a bad copy of the engraving latter there is no visually logical connection be• exists with the following inscription in the margin: tween the "roots" and the entrails.^ Blake's in• "Dum terrae lovis ante pedes fera pensa sorores de- terest in spinning and weaving can be seen else• volvunt; cave ne tempus mane fluvat." where in Jerusalem, viz., plates 59 [fig. 5] and 91 [fig. 2]. The bands worn by two of the Fates and The resemblance between this Boyvin print and used as distaff-holders are rather surprisingly ig• plate 25 of Jerusalem [fig. 1] in general design nored by Blake: similar bands are to be seen more and minute detail is striking enough to lead one to than once on Blake's male figures, viz., Vala p. 60, conclude that Blake had seen and studied it. The and, more debatably, on female figures in Jerusalem. engraving is, and presumably was, extremely rare, The most plausible of these is seen in plate 59, a and I can find no record of it in Cumberland's Cata• spinning scene; the bands in plates 5, 8 and 24 are logue; it is possible that a copy was owned by Fu• nearer to harnesses of some sort. The female band seli, who possessed an interesting collection of was a classical device, often used in the Renais• Mannerist prints. Two copies of this rare print sance and available to Blake in countless engrav• were acquired by the British Museum in 1850 from the ings. Blake's source for the male band is probably collection of a Mr. Bowerfield. Fuseli. Blake's debt to the Rosso design is immediately evident. It can be seen in his use of the unusual The sun, moon and stars seen on Albion's body pyramidical composition of three female nudes; in in this plate can be read as symbolic references to the torso and outstretched arms of the central fig• his microcosmic nature: ure and the bundles of cord-like substance that she holds; in the relationship of her arms to the heads You have a tradition that Man anciently of the other two figures; and in the head, features, contain'd in his mighty limbs all things in tear-stained face and hunched pose of the right- Heaven & Earth: this you received from the hand figure. Indeed the very theme of plate 25 can Druids. be seen to be derived from the Parohe. "But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion." [J 27) Blake alters the proportion from rectangle to square to accomodate the extra figure. He dis• They can also be read, more simply, as primitive cards the left-hand Fate for a more compositionally decorations, very similar to those seen on the bod• N ht Historie symmetrical adaptation of Michaelangelo's i9 - ies of the Ancient Britons in Speed's [fig. The central Fate is considerably foreshortened, her 8]. Here the ancient Britons are seen as "naked sprawling legs are removed and her arms are straight• Heroes," dwelling in "naked simplicity," though ened.-^ The right-hand Fate suffers a slight rear• Speed's Britons are not Blake's original Britons, rangement of her legs and arms; her hunched pose re• "learned, studious, abstruse in thought and contem• mains remarkably unmodified. Blake enlarges the pic• plation" but, as we see from the heads that they car -f

Mitelli's engraving of Poussin's The Martyrdom of St. Eras• 7 Rene Boyvin's [?] engraving of Le Tre Parehe, after II Rosso Fl• orentine Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Brit• mus. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Brit• ish Museum. ish Museum.

J 190 ry and trample upon, belong rather to the corrupt JOHN E. GRANT: UNIVERSITY OF IOWA age "which began to turn allegoric and mental signi• fication into corporeal command, whereby human sac• The Meaning of Mirth and Her Companions in rifice would have depopulated the earth." Suns, Blake's Designs for L 'Allegro and II Penseroso. moons and stars form part of their body-decoration, Part II: Of Some Remarks Made and Designs as do birds and beasts: "... Man contain'd in his Discussed at the MLA Seminar 12: "Illuminated Limbs all Animals ..." (J 27). Books by William Blake," 29 December 1970

Deirdre Toomey will discuss the two states of J 25 in (Summer 1972). (Eds.) Blake Newsletter 21 "The wisest of the Ancients considerd what is not too Explicit as the fittest for Instruction because NOTES it rouzes the faculties to act." Blake, letter to Trusler, 23 August 1799 (E ^The Rosso original is lost. 676/K 793) ^However Yves Metman argues that much of the Blake is certainly not above criti cism, but his work hitherto attributed to Boyvin must be assigned work will not just lie there, like an inert legacy, to another Fontainbleu engraver, Pierre Millan: passively waiting to be explained- or exploited, this version of the Parohe is among those reattri• because the Rev- buted. SeeMetman, "Pierre Millan; un Graveur in- Blake was exasperated with Trusler connu de l'Ecole de Fontainbleu", Bibliotheque D'Hu- erend had declared Blake in need o f someone else manisme et Renaissance (1941), pp. 202-21A [includ• "to elucidate" his ideas. In all his work both as ing a supplement of documents]. poet and painter Blake was constan tly striving to do exactly that for himself. To h is disciples Blake was "The Interpreter"--of li fe as well as oth- •^They come to resemble those of the floating er men's works; to scholars Blake is also the inter- female in the Victoria and Albert Allegorical Design preter of his own work, not the on ly one, but the with a River God. primary one. How is it then, that there has been much erroneous or irrelevant criti cism of Blake? ^However if we turn to the text connections can Ignorance of the range of Blake's symbolism seems be made: the roots can be seen as Vala's veil being to be the root cause of most mi sinterpretations . thrown over Albion's "deep wound of sin" by the Or, what comes to the same thing, exegetes have not leaning central figure. tried hard enough to ascertain Bla ke's own opinions

At times hostile critics take issue with Blake because they disagree with him or even find hi's thought objectionable. This is fair enough, if Blake has been correctly construed; every thinker has to take his chances. What is impermissible is to misrepresent Blake's ideas while professing to expound them. Now that Damon's Blake Dictionary is available in paperback (oddly in the 1965 rather than the 1967 version), even the Blakist of modest means has only to complete the easy additional task of checking out the key terms at issue in the Erd- man Concordance in order to get straight about most problems verbal. The authorial impulse involved in the next stage, that of putting the resulting thoughts down on paper, must still be reckoned with, but the desire to write need not be at odds with Blakean actualities. No guide to the pictorial as• pect of Blake's work is as convenient as the Con• cordance , but a number of important publications in 1971 have helped to make his art more locatable and accessible. Especially noteworthy are Essick's up• dated Finding List in the Summer-Fall 1971 issue of the Blake Newsletter and the catalogues of the Thorne collection by Bentley, of the Fitzwilliam collection by Bindman, and the Tate collection, re• vised, by Butlin. One must also mention Keynes's Blake Trust facsimile of THERE is NO Natural Reli• "The Portraitures and paintings of the Ancient Brit- gion and his catalogue of the Gray designs, which ains," from John Speed's Historie of Great Britaine is complemented by Tayler's outstanding interpre• . . . from JULIUS CAESAR, to . . . KING JAMES. "The tive edition. Finally, though it does not consti• Second Edition Revised, and enlarged with sundry tute an ideal instrument for reference, the purport• descents of the Saxons Kings, Their Marriages and edly complete (as corrected) Micro Methods film- Night Thoughts Armes" (London, 1623), Book V, Chap. 6, p. 39. strip of the designs ought also to be consulted by a scholar before he makes a pro• nouncement on a pictorial problem. Blake's largest 191 gallery of pictorial imagery can no longer be dis• multaneously seems to have generated juxtapositions regarded because an earlier generation of scholars that can only be understood as ironical in some saw fit to denigrate these great designs as works sense. The most notorious case is that of "The Ty- of art. After having made all the necessary checks, ger," where the sublime terror of the poem is set however, the true scholar must still decide whether against a picture of the beast that is--usually--un- what he has to say represents a substantial addi• heroic, if not contemptible. I have written at tion to what is known or, at least, a significant length about this problem elsewhere and do not wish correction or clarification of the issues. It is to reiterate here. But I continue to maintain that not a sufficient justification that one say some• the incommensurability of the picture and the poem thing new. It is not even sufficient that one say is too patent to have been accidental and that only something true. prejudice has led viewers to suppose that a picture which accompanies a poem must illustrate it, in the The additions of Songs of Experience to Songs sense, that is, of attempting to imitate its mood of Innocence, together with the other alterations and angle of vision. Beneath this prejudice seems made in forming the consolidated anthology, stand to lurk the superstition about appearance and real• as examples of how Blake continued to draw on the ity that the truest image of a tiger is a blood• stock of verbal and visual images established in thirsty ferocious beast, such as was sighted for a his earlier work. This aspect of his art is partic• time in the drafts of the poem. If, on the contra• ularly interesting for our purposes since Damon has ry, one looks at actual tigers in a zoo, or even at proposed that Blake derived his idea for an amalgam• Stubbs's pictures of tigers, he will be led to re• ated Songs from Milton's example in the twin-poem flect how much the savage abstraction is a projec• L'Allegro-II Penseroso. But in returning to an im• tion of his own fears and fantasies, as well as age, Blake rarely repeats himself exactly. Usually those of his culture. Like the Ghost of a Flea, an an image is re-employed only with noteworthy varia• image of a terrifying tiger is a phantom in the tions which may, in turn, alter the valuation radi• theatre of selfhood. cally, as from positive to negative or vice versa, or at least qualify it appreciably. Recent criti• I remain convinced, therefore, that Blake cism has tended to employ the term "irony" to de• wanted us to understand all this as an implication scribe this strategy of variation. But once the of the indubitable non-correspondence between his suspicion of irony has been raised, everything, es• picture and text in the same plate. It does not, of pecially everything ostensibly positive, seems course, follow that all or most of his other pic• called into doubt, and what Swift referred to as tures stand in such an antithetical or "ironic" re• "the converting imagination" is liable to take com• lation to a text. Indeed, such discrepancies seem mand of critical vision. Few of those familiar to be quite rare, and to have been aimed chiefly at with the literature have not felt that Blake has on rousing the spectator's faculties to act in a more occasion been made to appear oblique where he him• imaginative or inquiring manner than they do when self strove successfully to be direct. The possi• he is content to look at pictures as illustrations bility of irony must somehow be tested to determine merely. Whether the technique of non-correspond• its presence though I have no infallible test to ence is best referred to as "illumination," as Hag- propose. All I would urge is that the expositor strum seems to have proposed, is another matter. ask not whether he is able to construe the image in Whatever we should call it, we cannot doubt that, question ironically, but whether Blake gives him as a multi-media artist, Blake always has a palpable sufficient authorization for attempting to do so. design on the viewer; Blake is trying to elicit or provoke a determinate response from his audience, What I do want to insist, however, is that rather than incoherent evidence that they have been Blake's capacity for irony seems to have been a moved. Still, I suppose he would have been grati• gift more than a development. The record hardly al• fied to know that anybody had bothered to memorize lows us to imagine a time before which Blake was in• one of his poems, much less pour over his pictures, capable of irony and one of the few indubitable or even make a glad noise to accompany meditations things Blake must have found valid in Platonism is stimulated by one or the other. No doubt I'm refer• Socratic irony. Since as a critic I myself have ring to Ginsberg and Orlovsky here. sometimes been linked with the school of irony, I can hardly suppose irony to be a wholly unprofitable The first task for an interpreter is to see a interpretive concern. Nevertheless, we can still poem or picture as it is. I tried to give an ade• profit from a modest denial Northrop Frye made dur• quate descriptive account of the initial design for ing the bicentennial year, well before there had L'Allegro in the first part of this discussion been much talk about Blake's irony: Frye went so (Blake Newsletter 16, 4 [Spring 1971], 117-34). far as to declare that Blake's writing lacks irony Now I wish to begin an interpretation by propounding (Fables of Identity, p. 139). Had more considera• the captious question: "What is the matter with tion been given to this dictum, I believe that Mirth?" scholarship would have been spared much ingenious but unprofitable commentary. I will quickly add that this would be a bad question for a class of beginning students since it It remains true, however, that one essential might encourage them not to get to the first base aspect of Blake's art necessarily involves something in Blake studies, which is the ability to distin• very like irony. Even more than other great art• guish between Innocence and Experience. Confusion ists Blake was attracted to such strategies as coun• at this level is both natural and lamentable. The terparts, sequels, contraries, and alternative ver• first premise for a balanced presentation should be sions; moreover, his deployment of several media si• "Mirth is a good thing, and don't you forget it!" 192 "Mirth and Her Companions," en• graving, first state. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.

But as a question for experts, "What is the matter of Blake's mental powers of discrimination in this with Mirth?" should stimulate a closer look at all passage, his insistance on qualification, even when the twenty-four or more figures in this complex al• he was out of all patience in dealing with a fool. legorical design. Blake himself said that "all" of The placing of "Mirth" in a middle position with re• Milton's dozen personifications are brought together spect to value is also a point to reflect upon, in this design: I have learned to think that Blake though, in itself, it is not a more decisive consid• meant what he said on all occasions. eration than that nice little pencil drawing of "Mirth" that Keynes reproduces as plate 19 in his Of course, being mostly readers, we tend to 1956 selection of drawings. If this be irony, let place more faith in words than in pictures and are us make the most of it. likely to be put in a more receptive mood by some more words. Here are a few relevant things Blake What are all those golden builders up to any• said when he was laying it on the line: way? Are there destroyers among them? Early (Ann. Lavater, 5 574/A 67) "I hate scarce There is probably a conventional element in smiles I love laughing." Blake's designs for L'Allegro and II Penseroso that would have been apparent to his contemporaries who Later (to Trusler, 23 August 1799, E 676/A' 793): were familiar with the stage and pictorial tradi• "Fun I love, but too much Fun is of all things tions representing these subjects. More closely the most loathsome. Mirth is better than Fun connected with Blake's designs in some respects & Happiness is better than Mirth--I feel that than any of the helpful pictures reproduced in a Man may be happy in This World. And I know Marcia Pointon's Milton and English Art are two de• that This World Is a World of Imagination & Vi• signs by George Romney, "Mrs. Jordan as L'Allegro" sion." and "Mrs. Yates as Melancholy," which I have seen only briefly in large engravings by R. Dunkerton I most want to call attention to the display dated 1 October 1771. My notes indicate that 193 2 "Mirth and Her Companions," en• graving, second state. Reproduced by permission of Sir Geoffrey Keynes.

.v r»

Blake's first design more closely resembles the Blake deliberately placed the hands in various posi• former, in which L'Allegro appears playing a tam• tions and all must be accounted for. To think at bourine in company with four girls, three of whom all about this problem, of course, we must consider are musicians who play a triangle, a lyre, and a why Blake relocated the left forearm of Mirth in guitar, than his seventh design resembles the lat• the second state of the engraving [figs. 1 and 2] ter. The equivocal symbolism of musical instru• and this positioning, I suspect, leads us back to ments in, for example, Milton 15 should be suffi• the general question of meaning, the problem of cient caution against the Blakist's assuming that what, if anything, is wrong with Mirth. But I am the presence of music is an indubitable sign of vi• not ready to consider the overall meaning of the sion and liberation, though the joy expressed with picture just yet. musical instruments at the end of Job, as well as the conclusive reordering attended by horns in the First, it is noteworthy that there are three Last Judgments are, of course, basic standards of balls or bubbles to the right of the trumpet which orientation for determining Blake's meaning. nobody would doubt hsve been blown from the horn. I can think of no other example in Blake's work of There is only one mu sical instrument depicted bubbles being blown from a horn, though any Blakist in the watercolor version of Mirth and her Compan- would suspect that such symbolism implies an unfa• ions, the long trumpet be ing blown by the little vorable comment. It is true that bubbles may well twisting figure who takes off in slightly differing be portentous, as the transparent spheres certainly ways, described in Part I , from the left hand of are in the painting "The Fall of Man" [fig. 3], Mirth in Blake's two earl ier versions of the design, which I mentioned in Part I in connection with de• I should say that I have considered the possibility sign 6, but their conventional associations with that the relation of the trumpeter to Mirth's hand trivial or unworthy goals are also utilized; thus may be coincidental, as 1 s perhaps the case with •Blake represents them in Night Thoughts no. 39 (II, the relation of Quiet to the hand of Melancholy in 5), but they may be soporific or distracting, as design 7, but this seems to me a dubious hypothesis; with Fame's Trumpet, Night Thoughts no. 352 (VIII, 194

3 "The Fall of Man." Reproduced by courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum. 195

6). Blake must have thought this trumpet was cele• relationship between designs 1 and 7 as a simple brating folly, but the great trumpet blowing in contrast between Innocence and Experience. The vi• "The Five Wise and the Five Foolish Virgins" (no. 44 sions in the two designs can be more precisely de• in Butlin's revised Tate Gallery catalogue: this scribed as, first, a quasi- (not pseudo-) Innocence version is now supposed to be a copy) resounds to and, second, a qualified (incompletely organized) clarify the definitions of both parties. Perhaps Experience. It is not to be expected that either the trumpet in Mirth can also make a discriminating state will be found pure in this world. In certain sound, even though it issues bubbles of vain vision. respects "Mirth and her Companions" stands in a more distinctly contrary relationship to Blake's frontis• Before we consider the activities of the other piece for J. T. Stanley's version of 6. A. Burger's figures, it is well to identify them as definitely Lenore [fig. 4], which was designed twenty years as we can, still bearing in mind Blake's declaration earlier and may be understood as a negative proto• that "all" Milton's personifications are represented type to the L'Allegro design. The symbolic continu• in this picture. Sport, Wrinkled Care, and Laughter ities are remarkable; for example, the front five are all labelled in the second state of the engrav• of Mirth are quite similar, at times even in pos• ing [fig. 2], and there is no doubt that the central ture, to the five dancers in the middle distance be• figure is Mirth, whatever else one might feel com• tween the moon and gibbet in the background and the pelled to call her. The "Mountain Nymph Sweet Lib• grave in the foreground (which is closely related to erty" is likewise unmistakable. (Perhaps Blake's the titlepage of Vala) in the Leonora frontispiece. image of her was further particularized in response There is also a trumpeter in the Burger design, to lines 70-72 in Collins's "The Passions: An Ode though he has a more serpentine instrument and is for Music": "When Cheerfulness, a Nymph of healthi• differently positioned than the one in Mirth. The est Hue, / Her Bow a-cross her Shoulder flung, / Her commanding pall of Death at the top of the Burger Buskins gem'd with Morning Dew. . . .") It seems design, which Blake used again in Night Thoughts no. reasonable to agree with Keynes that the boy who at• 81 (III, 6) [fig. 5] is related to that of Night in tends Mirth is Jest while the girl beside her is II Penseroso 7 and elsewhere, but it is the Fiery Youthful Jollity. This leaves the girl at the right Cherub Contemplation who dominates the Milton de• in the front five unidentified and the various other sign and assures that Melancholy and her Companions subordinate figures to be connected with the six ab• have the capacity to see as far as Job and his com• stractions mentioned in lines 27 and 28 of the poem. panions in Job 14. The second Beck, who tries to Morton Paley suggested that there may be implica• exercise comparable control, is a rather shadowy tions now lost to us in some of the archaic words, figure in the watercolor version of Mirth, but she but the annotations in standard students' editions comes through more clearly as a Mirth-dispenser in of Milton do not indicate anything decisive. Be• the engravings. Is she not the airy sister of lady cause neither Blake's nor Milton's words seem to im• Ololon who spreads her blessings over the human har• ply a different order of correspondence, it seems vest on the last plate of Milton? best to read down the picture for personifications in line 27. Thus, the trumpeter and the two or more But the smiling face shown by Death in the Leo• people beneath his bubbles are Quips; the flyer and nora frontispiece continues to haunt us. It bears his companions—there are definitely three in the a close resemblance to the beefy face of Laughter, engraved versions—are Cranks (i.e., witticisms); especially as he is represented in the engraved ver• and the girl at the front right, the bat-winged fe• sions. Though it is appreciably heavier, the face male above her and the ass-eared creature above her of Death is also similar to the sober face of Satan are Wanton Wiles. Rather whimsically I call the in His Original Glory (no. 33 in Butlin's revised girl "Kitty" because of her cat whiskers in the en• Tate Gallery catalogue). And both faces also have graved version—a detail brought to my attention a distinct resemblance to that of Jest who dances at some years ago by Irene Tayler—the woman above her the right side of Mirth—not as he is represented in consequently being "Batty" and the male creature a- the watercolor but in both engraved versions; even bove her "Assy." This makes Nods the two women to noteworthy is the fact that the hair-crown complex the left of Sport, Becks the two women to her right of Satan comes to a point, quite like the hair of (the second of these with outspread arms, trimmed Jest. I do not believe that Blake meant us to infer in the watercolor, in the position of a presiding from this that Jest is lethal, but perhaps he would or sponsoring spirit), and Wreathed Smiles being have his fans recall the simple-seeming "Blind-man's the four or more spirits in the halo of Mirth. The Buff" and the affinity between "The laughing jest, fact that Smiles spirits definitely become musi• the love-sick tale" (E 413/£ 16). cians, with two horns and two tambourines, in the engraved versions is a distinct indication to me Perhaps the moral of these family resemblances that, in the end, Blake arrived at a less negative in L'Allegro 1 is that the particular likeness of attitude towards the whole group, though I cautioned Laughter to Death is reason enough to suspect laugh• earlier against being too sanguine about Blakean ing, and the proximity of Laughter to Assy is anoth• music. er good reason to be dubious about its consequences. Laughter may be lovable, but it must not be allowed Pictures that Blake made later in his career to dominate, as Hobbes and others have supposed it are often most clearly understood as transformations inclined by nature to do. Laughter is doubtless of pictures he made earlier, with important elements most jolly when holding himself to his own place. having been added or subtracted; such systematic In the case of Jest, however, his resemblance is counterparting produces works that tend to exist in closer to the pre-lapsarian Satan than to the post- an Innocence-Experience relationship. I have al• lapsarian Death; if the interpreter were to argue ready in effect cautioned against trying to see the that Jest's high-stepping is to be understood merely 196

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4 Blake's frontispiece for J. T. Stanley's version of G. A. Burger's Lenore (London, 1796). Reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 197 5 Night Thoughts 81 (III, 6). Reproduced by per• similarly depicted man at two o'clock in Europe 2. mission of the Trustees of the British Museum. The real face of such figures may be either what we suppose that of the scribe to be in "God Writing on the Tables of the Covenant" (Figgis, pi. 55) or Jesus in "The Ascension" (Graham-Robertson, pi. 33-- now Fitzwilliam, no. 23), but the wind that blows the hair of Burger's hero associates him with the former. The possibility of a redeeming face ought never to be foreclosed, however; in Blake's symbol• ism the problematic figure of "furious desires" in Urizen 3 (no. 13 in Butlin's revised Tate Gallery catalogue) becomes the Holy Spirit that dominates the Genesis titlepage (see Damon, Dictionary, pi. II) or the central figure of the Redeemer in "The River of Life" (no. 19 in Butlin's revised Tate Gal• lery catalogue). When something of his face is re• vealed, he appears as Milton about to descend to Eternal Death in the titlepage of Milton or as some of the many faces of Jesus.

The missing link in this symbolism of regenera• tion is the great design of a "Spirit with Fiery Pegasus" [fig. 6], no. VI in the Descriptive Cata• logue {E 536/A: 581). There we see that, of its own accord, this Eternal Horse (magnified from MHH 27) is leaping from the barren cliffs over the very sun as it is about to be bridled by a rider who shows his face and knows how much spirit great Pegasus possesses without dependency on external wings. The girl on the cloud, who is both a sister to re• generate Earth as depicted in L'Allegro 2 and a

as the leap before the fall, this would be sourly to refuse delight in the dance of life. Such suspi• cions are worthy only of Wrinkled Care. Blake would not wish his ideal spectators to share them. The two chief figures in the Leonora frontis• piece, the hero and heroine boldly setting out above the moon on a fiery horse, did not survive this seeming-brave beginning as the ballad makes clear, and if they are to return at all in the company of Mirth they will have to get over some unfortunate habits, an accomplishment not impossible, as sug• gested by the resurrection of the Youth and the Vir• gin in "Ah! Sun-Flower." Unquestionably they have a weakness for reckless driving and a too-familiar relationship with Death. Like the male rider in the background of the colorprint "Pity" (no. 19 in But- Tin's revised Tate Gallery catalogue) the hero does not show his face, but if he did, the poem suggests, he might himself look like Death on a Pale Horse, in that other equestrian picture now in the Fitz- william collection (in Bindman's catalogue).

Faces thus deliberately turned away from the viewer, it must be said, are particularly chal• lenging for the interpreter. I believe that the figure at eleven o'clock in the Leonora design, who manages to cling to the pall of Death and tries al• so to hold onto his head, is the hero just escaped 6 "Spirit with Fiery Pegasus." Reproduced by per• to this next ambush of Death; he is much like the mission of the Trustees of the British Museum. 198 front view of resurrected Earth as depicted in the 8 Night Thoughts 204 (V, 49). Reproduced by per• "Introduction" to Experience, is shown learning all mission of the Trustees of the British Museum. that is involved in transport, both from the reality of her cloud and the wisdom of her book.

The interesting inscription on the Leonora frontispiece, which is altered from Young's Night Thoughts, also leads us to a pair of Blake designs that accompany the actual lines of Young's poem. | Such, on A'arrifa* Couch, he loito-d long, These are, first, a pretty girl with wonderful red > Unknown ; »nd when directed, (till was fcen hair who sits on an odd leafy stump while clutching To/mk ; fuch Peace has Innocence in Death! M,>il bam the; I »ho i Icalt hit Art» deceive. a bow and arrow, Night Thoughts no. 203 (V, 48; cf. One Lye on Death, and one lull fix"d on Heaven, Vala p. 124) [fig. 7]. The sequel, no. 204 (V, 49) Becomes a Mortal, and Immortal Man. [fig. 8] shows the other side of hypocrite Death | Long on his Wiles a piau'd, nod palous Spy, (with a long cue of hair) being observed by the ad• I \ i ken, or dreamt I faw, the Tyrant Jrefi ; venturing traveller from behind, as he leans on a Lan by his Horrors, and put on his Smiles. S.u Mule, for thou rrmembcr'fL, call it back, mound while still holding his bow and flaunting his r Ami Ihesv Ijtre*:-" the furprr/ing Scene; pretty girl mask. The next design, no. 205 (V, 50) II 't«.\s a Dream, his Genius can explain. [fig. 9] shows Death as a huge reveller with a crown 'Twas in a Circle of the (Jar, I ftood. of roses reaching down and holding hands with two Dealt would have entered ; Salare pulht him hack; humans who are dancing thoughtlessly to the tune of ' Supported hy a IVictor 11 Renown, Hi'. Point He gain'd. Then arrfulls difmift two human musicians and being inspired by the spir• I In S.IOL, for Drntrnt defrgn'd to he conceaM. its of the punch bowl. I am sorry to be prompted He ga\c an old Vivacious L'furer by such closely connected pictures to further suspi• Hal Meager Afpeci, and his naked Bones , cions concerning the ethical status of Mirth and her Companions. I too love laughing and, like everyone else, would be happier if we could dispense with irony.

When it comes back to Mirth and Melancholy, which is better? Which is Good? Or should we per-

TW) haps try to get beyond Good and Evil altogether? What are Hit Arts to lay our Vm% aflcep? Let us get inside good and evil, rather. Jerusalem Tihtnan Art* his Purpofci wrap up has as one of its themes a concern I have never seen In deep Diflknulation's durkelt Night. Lake Princes unconreft in foreign Courts, adequately discussed in print—except, of course, Who travel under Cover, Death aflumes by Blake. Briefly, it is how to distinguish what is 1 he Name, and Look of Life, and dwells among us. valid in Jerusalem and what is valid in Vala. The He takes all Shapes that ferve his black Defigni; K problem is attractively enough presented in J 32 Tho" Mafter of a wider Empire lar (46)--note the spirit urging a girl to rise and com• Than that, o'er which the A'«»a» Kagle flew, Lake AVr», He's a Kidler, Charioteer, pare the plight of Kitty--but the sequel sometimes Or drives his Phaetmm, in Female CJuife ; is J 47, where the two women are shown to have Quite unlufpecled. till the Wheel beneath, turned Albion's head and confounded him. This dif• Hit diiarray'd Oblation he devours. ficulty is unresolved as it is reenacted by Cambel He rooft affects the Form leaf) like himfelf, and Gwendolyn in J 81, but possibly resolved for H is Slender Self. Hence hurl y Corpulence Is his familiar Wear, and (leek Difguifc. each woman in J 96 and J 99. In "The Judgment of Behind the rofy Bloom ha loves to lurk. Paris" the problem is a triplicated dilemma. As I Or, Ambufli in a Smile ; or, wanton dive see the Arlington Court Picture, the Sea Goddess, In Dimpled deep ; Love's eddies, which draw in the Unveiled Lady, and the Water Carrier are all a- Unwary Hearts, and fink them in IVfpair. Such bout redemptive tasks, intending to set right the disrupted cycle of love and vision. (See Blake News• letter, 3 [May 1970] and 4 [August 1970], and Stud• ies in Romanticism, 12 [1971].) In Night Thoughts no. 465 (IX, 47) Nature is shown to be undertaking \ this whole task by herself, but since it is still night time the best one can expect her to do is set a salutary precedent for eternal day.

The evidence indicates that despite their pre• ^ft possessing characteristics Mirth end her Companions are all in jeopardy, though some more clearly than 7 Night Thoughts 203 (V, 48). Reproduced by per• others. I have suggested that the "Mountain Nymph mission of the Trustees of the British Museum. Sweet Liberty," in spite of her name, may not be as 199

Night Thoughts 205 (V, 50). Reproduced by per• in this sequence the youth is directly entrapped and mission of the Trustees of the British Museum. done in by a woman may lead us to prophesy that Jest has a similar fortune in store. But it is notewor• thy that in both engraved versions Jest is depicted looking straight ahead, which indicates that he may not fall for some unworthy creature after all. The primary analogues to the figure of Youthful Jollity are more unequivocally favorable. Her face A pampcr'd Spendthrift \ whofc fantaftic Air, as it is represented in both engraved states, partic• Well falhion'd Figure, and cockaded Brow, ularly the first, is very like that of the imposing He took in change, and underneath the Pride Of coftly Lumen, ruck'd hit filthy Shroud. woman at the viewer's left in the front row of "The His crooked Bow he ftraightned to a Cane; Spiritual Condition of Man" (no. 33, Fitzwilliam And hid his deadly Shafts in Myra'% Eye. catalogue). Preston in his commentary on the pic• The dreadful Maiqueradcr thus etruipt, <(, ture (Bentley and Nurmi no. 1783) identifies her as Out-Sallic* on Adventures. A For his peculiar haunts, as a Hindu jatta; in posture, however, Youthful Jol• Let lint fuffice ) fure as Night follows Day, Dealt treads in Pltafurt'i footfteps round the World, lity is much closer to the indubitable figure of When Pleafim treads the Paths, which Rcafom (hunt. Hope represented at the right in the front row of When, again!) Rtafim, Hit (huts the door, this picture. From this perspective, when we com• And Gtftty fupplies the Place of Stnfi, pare the dancers who accompany Mirth with the clown• Then foremoft at the Banquet, and the Ball, ish dancers of Death in the Leonora frontispiece, Dealt leads the Daocc, or (lamps the deadly Die ; Nor ever fads the M idnight Bowl to crown. \ we understand that, whatever the resemblances, it is Gayly caroufing to his gay Tempters, C the contrasting ethical status of the two sets of Inly he laughs, to foe them laugh at him, figures that is of most importance. As Abfcnt far; and when the Revel boms, Still, it is not possible to exculpate Kitty and her adventure, though this escapade is probably intended to be risible rather than tragic. Of the companions of Mirth Kitty is obviously

( 3» ) good as she looks; however, it is important to re• ExpecVan Empire ? He forget* lus Chain, cognize that the bow and arrow are not always unac• And thron'd in Thought, hit abfent fcepter waves. And what a Scepter waits u« ? What a Throne? ceptable equipment. The interpreter must be alert Her own imraenfe Apomtmcnta to roirrjrtite, not to conflate the golden bow of the Jerusalem Or comprehend her high Prerogatives, hymn with Satan's black bow. For example, Blake In this her dark Minority, how toils. certainly represents a redemptive bow in the hands How vainly pants, the human timl Divine ? of the stately Diana figure in Night Thoughts no. Too great the bounty feemb for Earthly joy ; What heart but trembles at lb ftrange a Bills ? 500 (IX, 82). And if the viewer cannot be quite In fpite of all the Truths the Mule has fun,;, A • easy even with this vision, he must accept Christ Truths touching! marvellous ( and lull of Heaven! the Bowman in Night Thoughts no. 325 (VII, 53) or Ne'er to be prii'd enough ! enough revolv VI' Hyperion in the sixth design for Gray's "Progress of Arc there, »hn wrap the World fo clofc about than, Poesy." Qualifications such as these are essential They fee no farther than the Clouds j and dance On heedless Vanity's prunUlbc Toe, to an accurate vision of all these "personifica• Tdl Humbling at • Straw, m that career, tions": to see what Blake did, we must see as Blake Headlong they plungc,whcre end both dance, and long? did. Are there Itrtteu! bit rjorubk? Are there on Earth (let me not call them Men) One naturally tends to admire a high-stepper Who lodge a foul Immortal in their brealb., //? like Jest, the only male figure in the front Vm. line with Mirth; it is true that, in the watered or version, the glance he casts toward Youthful Jollity passes behind the back of Mirth and thus can seem dubiously surreptitious, but, in itself, this is hardly to be reprobated. In addition to his afore• mentioned resemblances to the images of Death and Satan, Jest also has a considerable resemblance to some of the deathly dancers in the frontispiece to Leonora, and he closely resembles the first reckless youth of the dream of the fanciful writer in Night Thoughts no. 14 (I, 9--reproduced in Blake's Vision• ary Forms Dramatic, pi. 82), particularly in the en• 10 Night Thoughts 253 (VI, 32). Reproduced by per• graved version, which is reversed. The fact that mission of the Trustees of the British Museum. 200 11 Night Thoughts 389 (VIII, 43). Reproduced in most potential danger. Ever since the aforemen• Poetical Sketches by permission of the Trustees of the Brit• tioned "Blind-man's Buff" in , a L'Allegro ish Museum. poem which echoes and contains a "Kitty," Blake fans had been warned that too much fun may be harmful, and anyone can see that the latter Kitty has picked up sinister companions. One may recall several other women who are similarly threatened. There is Oothoon, who flees from Bromion on the ti- r«i tlepage of VDA 11. Then there is Sense, who evi• dently does not even try to run fast enough to es• cape the pall of Death in the aforementioned Night Thoughts no. 81 (III, 6) [fig. 5], since she appears quite unaware of the danger (see the article by Helmstadter for further discussion of this picture). \lery like her is poor Vanity, who dances on tiptoe on the edge of the grave in Night Thoughts no. 253 (VI, 32) I fig. 10]. At the MLA seminar David Erd- man wisely asked whether I was postulating an invis• ible grave in front of Kitty that would make her plight equivalent to that of the girl in Night Thoughts. I hope I made a convincing denial. The point is that Kitty is in trouble, like Vanity, but has her eyes directed up to the source of the dan• ger; consequently, she is more likely to fall up be• cause of the machinations of Batty and Assy. Her fortune is likely to be equivalent to that of the girl trapped in the element of water in II Penseroso 9 by a wingy-finned female who deploys her toils from a clam shell. To strengthen this connection I showed four slides of Blake's designs for Gray's "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat," which were kindly loaned by Irene Tayler; design 1 shows the fish with bat-wing-type fins, design 3 features a curve in Selima's tail like that in the cue of Kit• ty, and design 5 shows the nymph falling in a posi• tion very like that of the fallen woman in II Pen- seroso 9. I also showed Cat-Ode design 6 to indi• cate how, in the resurrection of Selima, Blake imag• ined a future for her beyond Gray's powers of pro• jection; the implicit thought is that, though Kitty may be swept off her feet, it is possible that she may also get her feet on the ground again and then assay a more worthy transcendence.

Kitty's other betrayer appears in a pair of Night Thoughts designs, nos. 389 and 390 (VIII, 43 and 44) [figs. 11 and 12]. Here Assy is shown first beating a drum, accompanied on the pipe by another sly creature, in a military recruiting team that is appealing to a sweet young man to get a piece of the action. Then, in the second design, the recruiters seem to have hooked him, since the young man is mov• ing to follow them; Assy is shown here high-stepping in triumph, like Jest, while one of his now two co• horts is a sly Kitty. The fond young man is about to be hit by three arrows from bows operated from a- bove by three putti.

What is in store for Kitty if she becomes disen• gaged from Mirth is doubtless comparable to what will happen to the young man as a redcoat. The undevel• oped area of Cranks in the watercolor version makes prediction dubious, but it would be realistic to ex• pect the young man to become a murderer and Kitty a good-natured whore; the considerable resemblance of her (engraved) hat to that of the Wyf of Bath in the 12 Night Thoughts 390 (VIII, 44). Reproduced Canterbury Pilgrims {Separate Plates, pi. 27) makes by permission of the Trustees of the Brit• this seem more probable. The area by Laughter's ish Museum. left knee, rising from Assy's hand, has been taken 201 up in the engravings by a small woman who rises 13 Night Thoughts 455 (IX, 37). Reproduced by while looking at herself in an oval mirror. Blake permission of the Trustees of the British employs mirrors frequently in the Night Thoughts de• Museum. signs and elsewhere, perhaps not always in their tra• ditional signification, but it would appear that here a trivial Vanity of Vanities is clearly depicted. Similarly the more developed figures in the engrav• ing of the pitcher-pourer and the goblet-receiver do not require analogies from Night Thoughts to make us suspicious; however, a particularly close relation is in no. 455 (IX, 37) [fig. 13], in which an old planetary spirit pours from a pitcher to serve a young planetary spirit who holds out a flat basin. This way of getting high is not propitious, not, at any rate, as depicted in the first state of the en• graving.

Finally one must observe the connection between the family group of three at one o'clock and the drastically relocated arm and hand of Mirth in the second state of the plate. There Mirth is shown fostering the transfer of the babe from the mother to the father. As I see it, the resemblance to the aforementioned colorprint "Pity" is not discredit• ing. The colorprint is ambiguous insofar as it in• vites us to consider that Pity is promising in its inception but may be maleficent in its nurture. Evidently the more strenuous training envisioned by the haloed father in the second state of Mirth will be a better education. But the assistance per se given to the newborn-babe in the earlier colorprint was not mistaken. Also relevant are the struggles of the Good and Evil Angels for Possession of a Child in MHH 4 and the corresponding colorprint (no. 23 in Butlin's revised Tate Gallery catalogue). The genders in the various versions of this design are problematic, but the more maternal figure al• ways protects the child from the awesome male. In the presence of Mirth a properly cooperative egali• dispensation of Mirth and yet is seduced to aspire tarian relationship is established, a relationship, no higher than foolish lower Cranks, there can be indeed, of Innocence, in which there is sharing no help for her. After all, the comic mode has its rather than sulking. true prophets, exemplified by the higher flyer with the scroll, who may be taken to signify the great Irene Tayler suggested at the MLA meeting that artists since Aristophanes who have also labored the design of Mirth and her Companions is profoundly for our freedom from Care. In the end the music of concerned with sexual problems and that the analysis Mirth's wreathed Smiles is not delusive, as are the of Mirth becomes increasingly less favorable in the scrannel pipes of the Jovial Muses to Spare Fast in engraved states than it was in the watered or. At II Penseroso 7 or the wrangles of Platonic airy this time I am still unable to imagine how the sec• nothings for benighted Milton himself in II Pensero• ond part of this interpretation can be sustained. so. Certainly the darkening of the picture is no mark against its regenerative implications. Blake's own What then of the inscription scribbled on the design for the regenerate man in Death's Door [Sep• plate to accompany the unfinished second state? It arate Plates* pi. 25) was much darker than Schia- may be explanatory, but there are several different vonetti's comparatively bright and cheerful version. ways to read it. Possibly Blake felt frustrated Perhaps I should add parenthetically a point I made because he couldn't get the right foot of Mirth to in an earlier article, that the decapitated man in come out satisfactorily after having done so much the upper panel of the parody version of regenerate work on the plate. He might also have decided that, man [Separate Plates, pis. 23, 24) has a cat head since the activities of most of the figures can be as one of his available masks. I suppose this to reduced to vanity by the technique of ironic re• be one of the masks of Cromek, the headless man, gard, he himself had accomplished in the picture though it may also have had particular associations nothing better than a comprehensive anatomy or epit• with Skofield. But the judgment against Kitty in ome of Vanity, and that nothing "can be foolisher L'Allegro 1 cannot be as severe; when in company than that." But I believe that the activities of with Mirth she is less deceiving than deceived. the family and the (now-haloed) flyer on either side With her arm relocated, Mirth is enabled both to of Mirth's redrawn left arm are both above reproach, foster the family and, perhaps, to guide Liberty in• and that we must also consider the halos added to to the paths of sweetness, rather than into those the figures of Laughter and even the wine-pourer of self-righteousness. If Kitty appears under the ("First were created wine & happiness," £626) in 202 the second state of the engraving. In the last REVIEWS analysis the irony in the inscription redounds on Solomon's head: in the end the Vanity of Cynicism is the greatest Vanity of all. Consider, for instance, the example of "our friend Diogenes the Grecian" mentioned in MHH 13 and epitomized in his famous encounter with Alexander the Great and David Bindman. CATALOGUE OF THE BLAKE COL• Aristotle in front of his barrel; this is depicted LECTION OF THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM CAMBRIDGE. in Night Thoughts no. 469 (IX, 51). Diogenes was Cambridge: Heffer, 1970. Pp. vii + 88. 44 supposed to have been a Cynic but Blake knew him to pis., including 1 in color. £3. be a prophet, one who did not have to read a book to understand that Solomon's kind of wisdom must Blake's Exhibition and Catalogue Reconsidered: have been uttered by a sage who had grown weary of On the Occasion of The Fitzwilliam Museum life. Nevertheless, Blake was careful to show us Exhibition and Catalogue, 1971 that, though Diogenes had abjured almost everything else, he had not given up books. Reviewed by Duncan Maomillan, University of Edinburgh If one will lift up his eyes to the good book of the heavens, though it be opened by the sober wise figure of Night, who resembles Melancholy, he The publication of the Catalogue of the Blake will see a goal for regeneration—as in Night collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is Thoughts no. 501 (IX, 83) [fig. 14]. This is what an important event for Blake students. The range Milton does in the end in II Penseroso 12, as he and quantity of the museum's holdings of Blake's looks up and sees the starry heavens humanized works and of Blake material is well known, and this while a center opens beneath the pathetic, futile publication adds one more to the first class cata• vanities that are unable to rise above the surface logues now available of the major British Blake because they want to fly before they have learned collections.-^ The new catalogue includes as an how to benefit from the companionship of Melancholy appendix the entries from Sir Geoffrey Keynes' own catalogue, Bibliotheea Bibliographioa, for the items in his collection that will come by his be• quest to the Fitzwilliam. Though we hope this will be in the far distant future, the publication of the appendix gives us a measure of the importance of the promised bequest. It is, and will always be, a reminder of the great debt that we all owe in our knowledge and understanding of Blake to Sir Geoffrey.

David Bindman has done an excellent job of editing the Fitzwilliam catalogue. It contains sixty-four items of which the first forty-four are Blake's own works. Of the remainder, numbers 45-56 are portraits, though this includes the life mask by J. S. Devi lie, and at number 56 that curiously personal relic, Blake's spectacles. Numbers 1-55 are fully illustrated. The remaining items, num• bers 57-64, are a small collection of commercial engraved work by Blake. The first forty-four items are arranged chronologically. They cover the whole of Blake's productive life, from the early Joseph designs to the visiting card for George Cumberland which was one of the last things that Blake pro• duced. Although a chronological arrangement always presents difficulties, as used here it makes good sense. The illuminated books,for example, are placed by their dates of conception, not by their much more problematic dates of execution.

For greater intelligibility the chronology is subdivided into the five main periods of Blake's life: (1) the Early Works to 1789; (2) the Illumi• nated Books and Prints, 1789 to 1797; (3) Thomas Butts and Felpham, 1799 to 1808; (4) the Years of Obscurity, 1809 to 1818; (5) the Last Years and the patronaae of John Linnell, 1818 to 1827. Each of the subdivisions is preceded by a brief explanatory outline of the signiftcant events of the years that it includes. The two other sections of the cata• 14 Night Thoughts 501 (IX, 83). Reproduced by logue are also similarly prefaced. The individual permission of the Trustees of the British entries are clear and full throughout. David Bind- Museum. 203 man steers a skilful course through the rocks and Blake to take the conventional road to artistic shoals of Blake scholarship to produce an admirably success, but that Blake could not or would not make lucid and accessible work of reference. the compromise necessary to follow Hayley's prompt• ing. Nevertheless A Descriptive Catalogue and the The publication of the catalogue was marked by exhibition show that Blake agreed with Hayley's an exhibition of the Fitzwilliam's own collections main point, and even if Hayley's advice were super• of Blake and of Blake material, together with a fluous, both agreed that Blake could and should suc• number of additional items from various sources. ceed as a painter. The argument was over their These included, as well as a portrait of Mrs. Blake, ideas of what a painter was, and the kind of six portraits of the artist himself to add to those painter that Blake should become. What his ambi• already in the Museum's collection. Brought togeth• tions were as an artist is set out in A Descriptive er these likenesses made a striking and memorable Catalogue, although as so often the combative experience. Through the various renderings of his language and the hyperbole obscure the comparative face and person the image of the man came across straightforwardness of much that he. is saying. One very strongly to confirm his essential humanity, so thing that is clear to any careful reader is that strongly expressed in Gilchrist's Life. It was a the traditional explanation of both the exhibition delicate gesture on the part of the organizers of and Catalogue as prompted by his quarrel with the exhibition to remind us in this way of Blake Cromek and Stothard is simply inadequate. Blake himself, and it is salutary to be so reminded at a was far too intelligent to waste his energy in such time when the humble individual is in danger of a way. The entry in the Catalogue for the Canter• disappearing under a mountain of scholarship, some bury Pilgrims is the longest of the entries, but of whose relevance, or even meaning, he might be only one third of it has anything at all to do with hard put to understand. either Stothard or Cromek.

William Rossetti wrote in preface to his list Blake's status as an engraver-painter was not of Blake's works as it was published in Gilchrist, unique in his period. The greatest of all his pre• that his descriptive catalogue was a humble tribute decessors, Hogarth, was after all nothing else. He to the soaring genius of the author of A Descriptive was trained as an engraver, and lived by publica• Catalogue. The Fitzwilliam Catalogue and exhibi• tion of his works, usually engraved by himself. tion inevitably recall Blake's own Catalogue and ex• James Barry too, although a painter, lived in his hibition of 1809. A comparison between the two e- later years largely on the sale of his own prints vents reflects a distortion that has crept into our from the paintings in the Society of Arts. James understanding of the artist's work. Perhaps it is Ward was a slightly younger contemporary originally not serious or fundamental, but it is nevertheless trained as an engraver. Thus as an engraver trying worth making a small attempt to correct. to establish himself as a painter Blake was not a forlorn outsider, but doing something that nobody The most important painting in the Fitzwilliam would have regarded as exceptional. Nor in the collection and the one to which the Catalogue gives pictures that he painted and the ambitions that he most space, both of text and illustration, is the set himself in his Catalogue was he so far out of picture known as "An Allegory of the Spiritual Con• his generation as is sometimes thought. His views dition of Man." This seems to date from the years on outline, for example, were shared by Cumberland immediately after the exhibition of 1809; and with• and Flaxman, and were not very remote from the out entering into the problem of its meaning, the ideas of Ingres, or, as far as we can see, that picture's size, and the evident complexity of its somewhat nebulous contemporary group in France, the subject, link it to the kind of paintings that Primitifs. What he says about oil-paint reflects Blake produced for his exhibition. Nevertheless, the great controversy of the 1790's over the hung with so many smaller works of a somewhat dif• "Venetian secret," the idea that there was a parti• ferent character the importance that this kind of cular kind of paint or varnish that the Venetians picture had for Blake himself is lost. His domi• used and on which their effects depended. This nant ambition was after all to be an artist in the and similar thinking had led to disastrous experi• way that his contemporaries understood the term. ments in technique in which Reynolds in his later His early association with the circles that in• work had been particularly prominent. Blake's cluded Flaxman, Fuseli, and Barry was not merely picture, "The Goats, an experiment Picture," "1 a- casual but shaped some of his most basic ideas. boured to a superabundant blackness" and therefore That these others regarded him as a conventional especially "worthy the attention of the Artist and visual artist like themselves is demonstrated by Connoisseur" is a hilarious comment on this kind of the suggestion recorded in a letter of Flaxman's attitude to the old masters.2 Barry too had been that a subscription should be raised to send Blake vigorous and outspoken in resisting contemporary to Rome, the goal of all aspiring artists in the fashions for impure techniques. Although some of later eighteenth century.2 Blake's own experiments have not fared too well, when one sees what has happened to much of the painting of his contemporaries his absolute mis• It is clear that in 1809 Blake's decision to 4 hold an exhibition was not merely a gesture of trust of oil-paint seems quite reasonable. despair, but the result of fairly long meditation on his position as an artist. The seriousness and One of the most important facts about Blake's fulness of A Descriptive Catalogue should be evi• exhibition, although it is often mentioned, in its dence enough of this. From his letters while he true significance is also often ignored. Of the was at Felpham we can see that at least part of two most important paintings in the exhibition, Blake's difficulty with Hayley was that he wanted one, "The Ancient Britons," must have been enormous. 204

To accommodate three life-size ancient Britons the great hero of the day, which apparently attracted canvas must have been at least eight feet high and large crowds when West exhibited it at his house in proportionately wide. Seymour Kirkup writing in the summer of 1806.° These crowds must have in• 1870 reckoned the picture was about 10 by 14 feet.0 cluded Blake, for his own painting of "The Spiritual This is not the only large picture that we know Form of Nelson," which he exhibited in 1809, seems Blake painted. The lost "Last Judgment" was also to reflect West's composition."' In an Advertise• evidently very big. His ambition to paint on a ment for his exhibition Blake actually describes large scale is quite clearly set out in the De• his Pitt and Nelson as "Apotheoses," thus using scriptive Catalogue and should be taken at its face West's title, although he changes this in the Cata• value. Blake's proposal to paint Westminster Hall, logue. even if only half-serious, is only one of a series of projects for big pictures in public places that Though the Nelson and the Pitt are usually re• began in the 1770's with the project for the de• garded as a pair, the Nelson is a much flatter and coration of St. Paul's in which Barry was involved simpler composition. Nelson supported on Leviathan and which eventually led to his paintings for the is surrounded by a simple circle of figures. The Society of Arts. The ambition to paint monumental whole group seems to be supported on a cloud. There public pictures was inherited by B. R. Haydon, who are no subsidiary scenes and no views into depth as almost certainly knew Blake,0 and it was largely there are in the Pitt. West's composition is also, through his agitation that the redecoration of for a classical artist, surprisingly flat, and, as Westminster Hall and the new Houses of Parliament, in Blake's picture, the central figure is surrounded in fresco, just as Blake had proposed, became a by a circle of secondary figures. Blake's composi• national preoccupation in the 1840's. tion is much tauter and denser than West's, and he makes a feature of its flatness in a way of which In scale and subject "The Ancient Britons" be• West is incapable, but the basic similarity is suf• longed in a long line of similar paintings that be• ficient to be striking. The most important point gan in the 1760 's with Gavin Hamilton's monumental in common, however, is that in West's picture pictures from the Iliad. These enormous canvases, beneath the cloud on which Nelson is borne appears of which the engravings circulated very widely, Leviathan in the traditional form of a whale. were profoundly influential on painters of the group Blake's composition would therefore appear to be to which Blake belonged. The idea of a greater something of a critique upon West's. He still owes heroic past preceding historical antiquity was wide• something to West, however, in that by eliminating spread and was used in a variety of ways by painters the faults in West's picture Blake has himself from Gavin Hamilton onwards. The idea is apparent arrived at a much more satisfactory composition in their constant use of Homer and Ossian, and it than his own earlier essay in the same genre, the is also seen in Barry's assertion, of Lear's Pitt of 1805. It is clear that patriotic allego• Britishness in his painting of "The Death of ries of this kind were highly fashionable just at Cordelia," now in the Tate Gallery. It has in the the time that Blake was painting. A few years background a kind of Stonehenge, just as Blake's later in 1815 a similar allegory on the subject of picture had, and is clearly an ancient British sub• Wellington was commissioned from James Ward after ject. It provides a direct precedent for the cen• a public competition. It was to be hung in the terpiece of Blake's exhibition.'7 Chelsea Hospital. When it was completed Ward's picture measured 21 by 36 feet. In his written ex• planation of the allegory the artist enumerates 52 The kind of antiquarian nationalism which is different figures. Although Ward grossly exceeded implicit in Barry's interpretation of Lear, and the terms of his commission, even as originally which appears in so many ways in Blake, was not new given it was quite as large and elaborate as any• in Barry's picture. It appeared with a Scottish thing to which Blake aspired in his Catalogue. slant in Alexander Runciman's decorations of Penicuik House in 1772 with scenes from Ossian and the life of St. Margaret of Scotland. Barry and The elaborate symbolism and complexity of Runciman were friends in Rome in about 1769 and the meaning of Ward's Wellington picture was not pecu• idea seems to have been a fairly common one among liar to him, or shared only with Blake. West's painters of their circle. The more up-to-date kind Nelson has already been cited, but the most ab• of patriotism that Blake expresses in his pictures struse and elaborate of all were Barry's paintings of Pitt and of Nelson and in the suggestion that for the Society of Arts. These illustrate the they should be the subject of a national commission civilizing influence of the arts on the progress of to be executed "on a scale that is suitable to the mankind, but in order to give his purpose in detail grandeur of the nation . . . the parent of the Barry published a small volume of explanatory text. heroes," also has several antecedents. In Barry's In spite of their complexity his pictures were Society of Arts pictures "The Triumph of the Thames" generally well received. Barry's last major pic• takes a very important part. Flaxman had proposed ture, "Pandora, the Heathen Eve," now in Manchester, various gigantic national monuments, one of which, is an enormous canvas packed both with figures and the Nelson Pillar, was engraved by Blake. Benjamin with esoteric meaning. It was intended as part of West's "Death of Wolfe" had been the most popular a series illustrating the history of religion. and successful history painting of the later eigh• Barry's obscurity and the over-burdening of his teenth century, and Barry had painted the same sub• pictures was part of a widespread attempt to assert ject. In 1806 West had had another success with a the moral and intellectual seriousness of art. similar subject very differently treated. This was Blake differed from Barry in his far greater power the monumental "Apotheosis of Nelson" [fig. 1], a of creating effective symbols, but not in the highly allegorical painting of the death of the nature of his ambitions. He too was sometimes led 205 "The Apotheosis of Nelson" by Benjamin West, exhibited in 1806. Reproduced by courtesy of the National Maritime Mus• eum, Greenwich, England.

public understanding. He was working in an intel• into burdening his pictures with meaning beyond lectual and allegorical genre practised by other what they could express in a directly visual way, painters of his generation, in which obscurity was and therefore, like Barry and Ward, led into the no obstacle, and a written key was a perfectly use of an accompanying explanatory text. We know acceptable part of the picture. that he provided such a text with the Petworth "Last Judgment," for it survives. Explanation too The other major picture in Blake's exhibition, was the primary purpose of the Descriptive Cata• and the one to which he gives most attention in his logue to which the long account of the lost "Last Catalogue is "The Canterbury Pilgrims" now in Glas• Judgment" was evidently intended as an addition. gow, 'in the absence of "The Ancient Britons" this David Bindman suggests that the key to the picture is the most important of all Blake's paintings. It that is called "An Allegory of the Spiritual Con• is represented in the Fitzwilliam collection by dition of Man" may lie in some published text, as Blake's engraving. It is a different kind of in the case of the picture from Hervey's Medita• painting from those discussed so far, but there is tions; but in view of the evidence it seems even one important point about it that has bearing on more likely that had he had occasion to do so, this discussion of Blake's position as a painter. Blake would have accompanied his picture with an Both in general conception and in some of its de• explanatory text of the kind that Bindman recog• tails it is inspired by the sculptures of the nizes may once have existed. The same is therefore Parthenon. The idea of the procession of horses probably true of the Arlington Court picture. The seen both in line and in depth clearly derives from obscurity of these paintings was not exceptional. the splendid clattering procession of cavalry in Blake was not isolated in producing this kind of the Panathenaic procession in the frieze. The involved allegory, and his pictures are therefore Knight in his upper half is the figure from the not part of a deliberate idiosyncratic retreat from 206 east pediment that used to be known, and was known tion was published in 1952. Sir Geoffrey Keynes' 20 to Blake, as Theseus.- The Wife of Bath is the catalogue, Bibliotheca Bibliographica3 was pub• figure of Demeter from the same pediment, and the lished in 1964. Martin Butlin's new edition of the Host seems to derive his gesture from Persephone, Tate Gallery Blake Catalogue has appeared this year, though the rest of his figure is from one of the and the Handlist of the British Museum Department horsemen in the west frieze reversed. The odd of Prints and Drawings Blake Collection is to be stiff front legs of his horse appeared on a rider• published in a forthcoming number of the Blake News• less horse at the extreme western end of the north letter. frieze. The standing figures at the back of Blake's 2 procession bear a general relationship to four The project of sending Blake to Rome to com• standing figures who appear right at the back of plete his artistic education is mentioned in a let• the equestrian procession in the north frieze. ter of Flaxman to Hayley, 26 April 1784. It is One of the figures stands round the corner to link published by G. E. Bentley, Jr., in Blake Records the north and west friezes. As a group these (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), p. 27. figures play the same compositional role that the standing figures do in Blake's picture. Several ^Blake's picture, though it makes a slightly other details link it to the sculptures. The main different point, recalls Hogarth's "Time smoking a point here, however, is not art-historical source picture," a print in which he lampooned contemporary hunting, but that by this connection we can see taste for old masters. Hogarth also produced a Blake being amongst the very first to react to the burlesque of his own "Paul before Felix," "designed major artistic event of the first years of the and scratched in the true Dutch manner." The prints nineteenth century, the arrival in London of the were soaked in coffee to give them a good antique Elgin marbles. These were not unpacked until 1807, finish. so Blake's reaction was direct. By 1809 perhaps only Haydon, Flaxman, and Fuseli could have shown ^Blake's understanding of fresco was probably themselves as familiar with the sculptures as Blake no more eccentric than that of any of his contem• does in his picture. The only person to beat him poraries. The technique was virtually forgotten in to a public comment on the sculptures in this way Britain until the 1840's, when it was re-introduced was Stothard. If Stothard took this idea from for the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament. Blake, Blake's anger with him is even more under• Even then some pretty disastrous things were done standable than if Stothard simply stole Blake's in the name of fresco. subject. Ignoring the quarrel with Stothard, how• ever, Blake's use of the Parthenon sculptures shows ^Letter of Kirkup to Lord Houghton, 25 March him being absolutely up to date in the most impor• 1870, quoted in Bentley, Blake Records, p. 222. tant painting to survive from his exhibition of 1809. His identification of the Canterbury Pil• ^The evidence given below that Blake knew the grims with the Parthenon in this way also illumi• sculptures of the Parthenon very soon after they nates what he says about Chaucer and about his were first visible in London suggests that he and painting, for it creates a link with what he knew Haydon must have come into contact. By his own was one of the great archetypes of European art. account Haydon was in practically constant study of the marbles at that time. It would be a nice In his exhibition, in his Catalogue, and in irony if Blake by strengthening Haydon's ambition the pictures that he painted around 1809, Blake was had helped to inspire the redecoration of the Houses therefore up to date, even topical. He had every of Parliament, in fresco, with scenes from the lives reason to expect that his attempt to establish him• of British heroes, including in an enormous paint• self as a painter would be well received, and that ing "The Death of Nelson" by Maclise, though neither at least the more discerning public would recognise Blake nor poor Haydon lived to see it done. that his aims as an artist were straightforward. Though Blake was highly original, he was neverthe• ^Ancient British subjects of one kind or less within the main stream of contemporary art. another had been fairly common from the 1770's. That people did not recognise this did not weaken The indefatigable Angelica Kauffman produced pic• the justice of his case, but it has meant that tures of this kind. Flaxman's drawing of Hengist since then our judgement of his art has always been and Horsa might be thought comparable to Blake's lopsided. Because he failed to be recognised as a "Ancient Britons." This kind of subject was matched painter, we forget that this is what he was by by the current fashion for Druidry and the appear• vocation. Our collections, through no fault of ance of dolmens and menhirs in various contemporary their own, do not represent him as he sought to re• parks. Alnwick Park in Northumberland, for example, present himself when he appealed to the public in has menhirs for milestones. his exhibition and Descriptive Catalogue. For this reason it is appropriate to remember Blake's own ^Farington's Diary for 2 July 1806.

undertaking in considering this new catalogue and 5 exhibition. It is to the author of A Descriptive Miss Jane Mackenzie first suggested this Catalogue that David Bindman and the Fitzwilliam analogy to me, but it is also considered in Morton have now, like Rossetti, paid a fitting tribute. D. Paley's Energy and the Imagination (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), esp. Chap. 7.

NOTES -^Palmer quotes Blake's opinion of the Theseus in a letter to Gilchrist of 23 August 1855, quoted •^The Catalogue of the Graham Robertson collec• in Gilchrist, Life, 1880, I, 320. 207

David V. Erdman and John E. Grant, eds. John E. Grant, who has been in the forefront of BLAKE'S VISIONARY FORMS DRAMATIC. Princeton: those insisting—and demonstrating—that the text Princeton University Press, 1970. Pp. xxiv + alone is half the story, and that super-organizer 476. 120 plates, 8 in color. $20.00. of cooperative Blake scholarship, David V. Erdman. The editors have not merely put together a collec•

Reviewed by Martin K. Nurmiy Kent State Uni• tion of essays from the contest with several other versity papers; but in numerous notes, some really essays, they comment like seminar directors on what is being said, adding information, correcting, Blake's composite art is easier to experience than criticizing, sometimes even disagreeing with each to analyze--that is, analyze as composite art. As other. W. J. T. Mitchell remarks in one of the essays in this collection, "the basic groundwork for under• Composite art is conceived in this volume com• standing Blake's pictorial symbolism remains to be prehensively as including "all the arts of dis• done. Critics still tend either to content them• course" (p. 93), and the book contains essays on: selves with identification of subject matter or to (1) the theatre (a very illuminating piece by search for a fixed set of pictorial conventions" Martha England on "The Island in the Moon" as be• (p. 73). Or, one might add, they merely call at• ing possibly connected with Samuel Foote's dra• tention to elements in the designs by describing matic satires at the Haymarket); (2) the theory of the designs in terms of shapes and lines or make composite art (W. J. T. Mitchell, who argues comparisons between one design and another. And against considering Blake's work in terms of ut attempts to put the designs together with the text piatura poesis because this implies a dualism which usually take the form of talking about the text he was trying to defeat, and Jean Hagstrum, who with appended notes on the designs. We simply would prefer retaining ut piatura poesis and the don't have an aesthetic or criticism of composite idea of the "sister arts" in a richer and more art that amounts to very much. We should have one comprehensive version); (3) Blake's illustrations not only for Blake but for others, in an age in of the texts of others (Irene Tayler's delightful which many poets, like Robert Duncan, sing some of account of the illustrations of Gray's ode on the their poems, and either draw pictures of their own, death of his cat, from a welcome study now pub• or collaborate with artists in covering their pages lished; Grant's fine description and thematic with designs. analysis of the early drawings for Young's Night Thoughts3 also part of a large forthcoming study; Blake criticism until very recently has been and Ben F. Nelms's discussion of the Job engravings, almost exclusively concerned with the text and has which complements Frye's essay on the same subject made great progress. It has built up a body of in the Rosenfeld collection for S. Foster Damon); critical concepts about it as poetry with enough (4) individual works by engraved plates (Erdman's general acceptance so that each new critic no essay on America, to which he brings his enormous longer has to feel he has to start from scratch. knowledge and enthusiasm to show it to be practi• Critical study of Blake's text alone is quite de• cally a total experience; Michael Tolley's useful manding enough for most people, but the fact re• reading of the plates of Europe in relation to the mains that reading him in a printed version is not patterns of biblical history and Milton's Nativity the way he wanted to be read. And the experience Ode; Robert E. Simmons' ingenious and complex of reading even a sparsely illuminated work like analysis of the symmetry of structure and designs The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from an engraved in The Book of Urizen)\ (5) the structure and form page is simply different from reading it in print. of certain works (William F. Halloran's essay For some curious things begin to happen. Even if arguing that the French Revolution, when considered one concentrates very hard on what is being said with its model-in Revelation, emerges as deserving on a plate like 16 of The Marriage, which expounds a higher place in the canon than it has had; Brian theoretical doctrine, the picture at the top re• Wilkie's essay on Milton as a Romantic epic; Helen mains very much present in peripheral vision, and T. McNeil's account of The Four Zoas as an "epic of the little squiggles of figures following the lines situations" which are cosmic confrontations; Henry of writing move the eye along in a way that imparts Lesnick's study of the structure of Jerusalem which a rhythm to the whole thing, rhythm taking the suggests that the opening and closing plates of the place of punctuation. Though the analogy is too chapters show the structure; (6) iconographic ele• easy because it involves only one art rather than ments (Janet Warner's study of gesture to which is two, reading Blake's text alone is a little like appended a suggestive catalog of ten frequent forms singing the tunes of Schumann's songs without the of gesture in the designs; Eben Bass's study of the accompaniment, where most of the music really is a Songs displaying design elements such as curves, good deal of the time, or playing Couperin without diagonals, curved vegetal designs, and so on; (7) ornaments. the characters of Urizen and Ore (John Sutherland's account of Urizen as an allegory of a mental acti• vity; George Quasha's intense examination of Ore This book represents a cooperative attempt psychologically and esthetically as "a fiery through a kind of super-seminar deriving from an paradigm" of torsion and energy; (8) a mythical essay contest at the 1968 English Institute to source study (Irene Chayes's study of the Cupid form some beginnings for the kind of criticism and Psyche myth); and finally, (9) important re• [that we need to develop if Blake scholarship, current imagery (Kenneth R. Johnston's study of having reached some degree of consolidation in urban imagery; Edward J. Rose's account of imagery dealing with the text, is to move toward meeting of the harvest). Blake more fully on his own terms. Its editors are 208 The subjects treated, though generally on the Geoffrey Keynes, ed. Drawings of William topic of "visionary forms dramatic," range quite Blake 92 pencil studies. New York: Dover widely. Even so, any discussions of visionary forms Publications, 1970. Pp. xiv + [185, in• to be found in music, except for Erdman's discussion cluding 92 plates]. $3.50. of sound imagery in America* are almost completely lacking, a rather curious omission since Blake was Reviewed by Raymond Lister, Honorary Senior said to have sung his songs .and his epics are full Member of University College, Cambridge of songs and choruses, with instrumentation speci• fied (one group in Night V of The Four Zoass for instance, includes "the soft pipe the flute the viol organ harp & cymbal / And the sweet sound of For a long time most Blake facsimiles and repro• silver voices" that calm Enitharmon on her couch). ductions were available only in expensive limited Indeed, the whole of The Four Zoas> with its arias, editions, far beyond the means of the average choruses, and set pieces, really resembles an opera student. Such cheaper reproductions as were pub• more than it does an epic. And in Jerusalem 74 (E lished were inadequate. Recently there has been a 227) Blake seems to me to show a remarkable degree welcome tendency to issue adequate reproductions in of sophistication in music theory in the passage modestly-priced editions, often in paperback: the beginning on line 23: "The Sons of Albion are Oxford Paperbacks edition of Songs of Innocence and Twelve: the Sons of Jerusalem Sixteen / I tell how of Experience , edited by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, and Albions Sons by Harmonies of Concords and Discords issued in 1970, is an example. / Opposed to Melody, and by Lights & Shades, op• posed to Outline / And by Abstraction opposed to The two collections of reproductions of the Visions of Imagination / By cruel Laws divided Blake's drawings available up to 1970 were those Sixteen into Twelve Divisions." The details are published by the Nonesuch Press in 1927 and 1956, too complicated for inclusion here, but I believe under the editorship of Geoffrey Keynes. They that Blake is taking a visionary position on the were expensively produced books and, if printed side of the melodic Pythagorean division of the now, would cost several times as much as they did octave, as opposed to the harmonic tempered division originally. It is a sobering thought that the still being vigorously debated in 1806 which would 1927 collection was published at £1-75. It is divide the octave into 12 equal or nearly equal but doubtful if it could be published today at less abstract (as opposed to natural) intervals by mathe• than fifteen times that amount. Now Dover Publi• matical manipulations of "harmonies of concords and cations has issued a welcome and cheap paperback discords," and that this concept was quite impor• edition of Blake's drawings, also edited by Sir tant to him. Geoffrey. It says much for the editor's vitality that forty years separate the first of the None• This book doesn't quite give us the theory such collection from this one. that we need to deal critically with Blake's com• posite art, but to ask for that is perhaps asking The Nonesuch collections contained a total of too much. It does give us a vigorous attempt at one-hundred and thirty-eight drawings; the Dover such a theory, with a great deal of useful matter, edition contains ninety-two, so it is far from and, perhaps most important, it dramatizes the need complete. In any case, Sir Geoffrey informs us for a conscious re-direction of Blake scholarship. that "there are perhaps more than two hundred Its fresh hammer-and-tongs approach to some of the drawings now extant." It is therefore to be hoped problems as well as the enthusiasm of the enter• that the book meets with such success that another prise should stir up further activity. Because of collection may be issued to bring the selection all these things, it should be a required book for nearer completion. But the Dover book is not mere• any serious study of Blake from now on. ly a reprint or rehash of drawings previously pub• lished, for a few are here reproduced which did not appear in the earlier selections. Among these are two early drawings, made for Basire, from monu• ments in Westminster Abbey (plates 1 and 2); and the powerful "Charon, from an Antique" (plate 82).

As in every medium in which he worked, Blake's range in his drawings is enormous, from the poetic, yet homely qualities of "The Virgin Mary hushing the young Baptist" (plate 34), to the almost ab• stract "Time's triple bow" (plate 53), which, in its tight network of curves might almost be mis• taken for a schematic study by the Bauhaus artist, Oskar Schlemmer.7 This selection also illustrates how Blake could produce excellent "academic" draw• ings, like "Laocotin: the Antique Group" (plate 58), as well as being able to indicate with a few rough lines the energy and power that would later be translated into a finished design, as in "The Soul exploring the recesses of the grave" (plate 41). On the other hand, when drawing an uncongenial or uninteresting subject, he could be incredibly weak, 209 as in the poor "Landscape with trees" on plate 36. leap off the pages of the literary magazines; and, Indeed, as Sir Geoffrey says, without Frederick in a characteristic Mitchell phrase, a eunuchoid Tatham's inscription on it, "it could not be iden• bureaucrat dismisses the troublesome artist by tified as his." remarking that "he does tend to bite the hand that has no intention of feeding him." The drawings are adequately reproduced, but the typography has a number of ugly features, As long as Mitchell uses Blake as a symbol of especially the plate numbers, which are not only the vilified and beleaguered artist, then the show far too heavy for the rest of the type, but tend to is pungent and alive; and the poet's hatred of all distract attention from the drawings themselves. forms of brutality and slavery is movingly evoked in Nevertheless, the book is a bargain and is, more• a scene in which Blake leads a group of the per• over, likely to be come a standard work. manently oppressed down to the blazing footlights as Mike Westbrook"s music reaches a roof-shaking cres• cendo. Doubts creep in, however, with the attempt Cf. Oskar Schlemmer, Man, ed. Heimo Kuchling to render Blake's vision of a new Jerusalem in con• crete theatrical terms. At the end Blake is des• (London, 1971). patched to the moon in a baroque space capsule that is dismantled by the whole cast and then re-assem• bled in the form of a chimneyed country house. Blake may have believed in human brotherhood but the building of a Mary Poppins residence seems a weak and inadequate symbol for his vision of a Adrian Mitchell. TYGER. Produced at the New resplendent golden age. Theatre, London, 1971.

Reviewed by Michael Billington and Morton D. Despite its inability to embody Blake's Paley. Mr. Billington1's review originally mysticism and the impression it initially gives appeared in The Times, London, 22 July 1971, that Blake's poetry (as the old lady said of Hamlet) under the title "Blake Revitalized" and is is full of quotations, the show still represents an reproduced from The Times by permission. Mr. heroic attempt to marry different elements of the Paley 's review appears here for the first time. English theatrical tradition: musical, panto, satire and cod burlesque. And in one hilarious sequence that is pure Footlights revue the greats Michael Billington "A celebration of William of English poetry troop on in grotesque disguises: Blake," is how the programme describes this exuber• thus Chaucer becomes an open-air hearty with khaki ant and freewheeling extravaganza written by Adrian shorts and a rucksack, Shakespeare a gun-toting Mitchell with music by Mike Westbrook, and, al• cowpuncher and Milton a track-suited disciplinarian though this overlooks the show's undertow of advocating a hundred lines before breakfast. astringency, it accurately sums up its content. It may not win any prizes as the most cohesive enter• The National Theatre production by Michael tainment of the year but it has enough theatrical Blakemore and John Dexter has the ruthless mechani• vitality and sheer Dionysiac gaiety to make one cal efficiency one associates with Broadway musi• overlook its invertebrate structure. cals and manages the transitions in place and time with astonishing ease; and in a vast company there Interweaving past and present with quicksilver are suitably broad-scale contributions from Gerald fluency, Mr. Mitchell has taken some of the key James as the squat, eponymous hero, John Moffat as elements in Blake's life to comment on certain un• an insidious cultural middleman and Bill Fraser as changing aspects of the English artistic and poli• a lunatic English sadist. Doubtless Messrs. tical scene. As Northrop Frye pointed out in his Mitchell and Westbrook will be said to have gone brilliant essay on Blake, this great visionary too far; but, as Blake himself told us, it's the epitomizes the native Protestant-Radical-Romantic road of excess that leads to the palace of wisdom. tradition which takes the individual as the primary field of operations rather than the interests of society; and Mr. Mitchell pursues this line by showing Blake both as the perennial opponent of the Morton D. Paley (University of California, Berkeley) Establishment and as a "harmless nut" who believed In Blake's house are many mansions, but does Adrian that God was the divine essence that existed in Mitchell's Blake inhabit any of them? The closest every man and woman. contact the show makes to the poet and artist of that name is in the extraordinary physical Thus we first see Blake as a penurious en• resemblance of Gerald James to Linnell's portrait graver standing four-square against the ossified of 1825--that and Isabelle Lucas's moving singing traditionalism of the art of his time, against of verses from "London" and Jerusalem. Otherwise Philistine patrons who argue that starvation is what we get is an occasionally funny, frequently essential for the creative artist and against the boring piece of anti-Establishment nose-thumbing bureaucratic machine with its wish to classify all in the guise of "a celebration of William Blake." human activity. In one of the funniest of all the If Tyger succeeded in an imaginative transformation of its material, one wouldn't care much about its show's burlesque scenes Blake even applies for a literal truth or falsehood, any more than, say, one grant to the British Cultural Committee, composed cares about the historicity of Brecht's Galileo. of smooth-faced administrators and female smut- But for the most part the spirit of Blake is hunters who complain that four-letter words just 210 scanted here as much as the letter: Mitchell's Jarry was than Mitchell. giving the Blakes a child for his own purposes is one thing, but the spectacle of Blake building In the last part of Act II, we actually get Jerusalem on the moon instead of in England's back to Blake, and here alone (with perhaps the green and pleasant land gives one pause. exception of slides occasionally shown) a Blakean prop is used—the winged ark of Jerusalem 39. Mad As the stance of the show is deliberately King George having decided to get rid of Blake by "anti-intellectual" —that is to say, anti what sending him to the moon ("A British rocket will Adrian Mitchell mistakes for being intellectual — never come back"), Blake agrees provided he can it should be emphasized that Tyger's weakness is substitute his own landing vehicle and name his not its contemporaneity. In "a celebration" one own flight controllers. The latter are Henry is prepared to enjoy a Klopstock own cultural Fuseli (portrayed for some reason as a generation master-of-ceremonies, especially as gleefully younger than Blake) and Samuel Palmer; the landing pranced by David Ryall. The scene in which Sir vehicle is the moon ark. For a few moments, as Joshua Rat lectures on Civilisation on the pub tv the ark is opened and Jerusalem starts a-building, while Mr. Blake mutters annotations (though ad• aided by (ostensibly) Lunarians while Isabelle mittedly precious few of them) is genuinely funny; Lucas beautifully sings, one feels close to Blake even Scofield's appearance as the bouncer is mildly --but as with everything else in this production, funny; but when Blake holds Scofield off with the the moments become minutes, many, many minutes, coal scuttle, one gets the feeling that something and then even after the curtain calls, the scene has been lost. Again, there is an amusing scene goes on and on to Mike Westbrook's unutterably before the Arts Council, three Negations who give banal music. 10,000 pounds to Evelyn Graze, transvestite mod editor, but who are put to sleep by Mr. Blake's The theatre program should be added to the reading from Jerusalem. Best of all, perhaps, is list of Blakean ephemera. It includes a page of the episode in which Scofield tempts Blake to pity selective Blake chronology, two pages of anecdotes by abusing an ingenious mechanical dodo in a super• and quotations, a reproduction of the 1821 Linnell market shopping cart. This is Mitchell at his portrait, a page of "Quotes by Blake," full-page best, but there is much more of Mitchell at his reproductions of the first and twenty-first Job worst. When our hero advertizes for lovers, he engravings, three photographs of one of the life gets three kinky dames in black leather who seem masks, and a page and a half of quotations headed more an answer to Leopold Bloom's prayers than W. "Blake and Slavery." B.'s; and the Blakes' marital crisis is solved by a hunt through an anatomical dictionary, culmina• ting in the discovery of—the clitoris! This, in addition to portraying Blake as a sexual nincom• poop, manages to evade what Blake himself tells us Ruthven Todd. WILLIAM BLAKE THE ARTIST. about his marital problem and its solution—but to Studio Vista/Dutton Pictureback. London: talk about Sacrifice of Self in the West End in Studio Vista; New York: Dutton, 1971. Pp. the year 1971 would cost a man his life, or at 160, illus. £1.80 hardbound, 80p paper. least his reputation for trendiness. $2.25 paper, U.S.

In Act II most pretense to any relation Reviewed by David Bindman, Lecturer in the between Tyger and Blake is abandoned. Eight of History of Art, Westfield College, University the twelve songs are by Mitchell, but this is mere• of London ly an indication. A large part of the Act is a variety show in which figures named after poets appear: a nondescript Chaucer, Shakespeare with Ruthven Todd has been something of a legend to six-guns, Milton wearing a "Paradise Now" sweat• students of Blake, and this book is his most shirt, to be joined by a bunch of swingers named lengthy contribution to Blake studies for many Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. years. Most people who have been lucky enough to Then come "the late Victorians" wearing white get hold of his long out-of-print Tracks in the ducks, striped jackets, and straw hats—one of Snow treasure it as one of the few classics on the these five is "Walt Whitman"! Allen Ginsberg subject of English Romantic painting, particularly alone appears at home. The silliness of all this on the painters of the Sublime, of whose company is relieved for a short time by a conversation Blake was proud to regard himself a member. between Sir Joshua and Mad King George the Fiftieth. Mad King George, as it turns out, loves nothing so The present book is an excellent if unconven• much as to see, cause, ruminate on, and enjoy the tional introduction to Blake, for it concentrates prospect of children being beaten. The trouble is not on the interpretation of the Prophetic Books, that as the conversation goes on, one becomes more but on Blake as a craftsman working within the and more aware of the prototype of Mad King George limitations of his situation as a penurious en• --not Nobodaddy but Jarry's Pere Ubu, a derivation graver. The book follows the career of Blake year that Bill Fraser's brilliant performance seems to by year, and a picture of the man emerges, not just recognize and build on, cocking the head and as a visionary, but as a proud and even defiant strutting while delivering sadistic sententiae. craftsman, prepared to take on any engraving work Perhaps Tyger may be followed by a celebration to give himself time to work on his visions. Even called Merde, but meanwhile one can't help re• in his last illness nothing persuaded him to put flecting on how much more daring and more talented down the large folio in which he was making the 211

Dante wateredors, and in certain years, in parti• I thought it was clear from the review itself cular the year 1795, the amount of constructive why, writing for a specialized audience and with and experimental activity was breathtaking. The little space to spare, I decided to consider the author is at pains to show what was actually in• section of the book other reviewers would probably volved in the making of Blake's Prophetic Books and pass by. (I am rather sorry Mr. Beer did not color prints, and he puts into perspective Blake's choose to defend his selection of illustrations and innovations in relief printing. the special commentary as a miniature prophetic book, for organizing it would have been one kind of The most useful parts of the book for Blake response, concrete as well as "visionary," to scholars will be the regrettably brief accounts of Blake's example.) I did indicate, too, that I Blake's stereotype and color-printing processes. found things to praise in the detailed commentary Mr. Todd has carried out his own experiments, and on the poems in the main text, and on specific has provided a convincing account" of Blake's solu• points Mr. Beer and I are in accord more often than tion to one of the most obvious difficulties in• he grants. We both have noted the relation of "The volved in combining text and design on a copper Little Girl Lost" to Spenser's episode of Una and plate: getting the lettering the right way round. the lion, he in Blake's Humanism and again in What slightly worries me is how Blake stopped the Blake's Visionary Universe and I in an essay pub• nitric acid, which must have covered the plate for lished earlier. (See my "Little Girls Lost: Prob• some length of time, from eating away under the lems of a Romantic Archetype," BNYPL, 67 [1963], lettering—or was some simple method known at this 581-82; reprinted in Blake: A Collection of Criti• time of preventing it? The problems of Blake's cal Essays, ed. Northrop Frye [Spectrum Books, color-printing processes are harder to fathom, and 1966], where the observation occurs on pp. 67-68.) it is to be hoped that Mr. Todd will devote a much More recently, we evidently have been coming on lengthier work to the whole problem of Blake's some of the same art sources for Blake, and the printing techniques in the near future. mutual corroboration is encouraging. But Mr. Beer is far off the mark in his charge that I think Some mention should also be made of the excel• Blake was "more likely to know original paintings lent choice of illustrations. They are hardly ever than engravings after originals." For one answer the most obvious examples, and English readers can to his question about Blake's use of prints, I refer be particularly grateful that he has not reproduced him to the essay cited in the review, my contribu• works from the Tate when less familiar ones will do tion to the new Erdman-Grant collection, Blake's One is grateful, for example, for reproductions of Visionary Forms Dramatic. There will be more on the Minneapolis Nebuchadnezzar, the Metropolitan the subject of Blake's art sources and how he may Museum Pity and the Edinburgh Heoate. With well have known them in the book I am now working on, over 100 illustrations the book seems to me to be which, as it happens, will give my own view of what an excellent value, and its modest format makes a occurred when Blake's "interpreting imagination" refreshing change from the bulkiness of many recent intervened between his sources and his designs. books on Blake. That an intervention did take place, I agree with Mr. Beer. I differ with him on how it took place, what was involved, and what the result was, and the preliminary explorations in the essay just mentioned will show how profound these differences can be. More immediately, Mr. Beer's recent ex• ploratory remarks only widen the distance between DISCUSSION "With intellectual us in the simple matter of looking at Blake's pictures. In a Blake design, even when the total spears, & long winged arrows of composition is baffling, most of us see a great deal more, and more that is provocative, than a thought" "slant of the eye" or "thrust of the forehead" which under certain conditions may be equated with one or another of Mr. Beer's key terms. When we are re• IRENE H. CHAYES: SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND minded of an earlier work by another artist, it is likely to be something far more definite than a A Rejoinder to John Beer generalized "visual likeness" or a similarity of "tone and atmosphere" that arrests the attention, and no points of resemblance can be too obvious for I share the dismay of both editors and readers at comment. Mr. Beer gives a subordinate place to the prospect of a serial controversy, but John what he calls "immediate visual memory," and he sets Beer's reply to my review of Blake's Visionary Uni• up as Blake's "interpreting imagination" a kind of verse (Blake Newsletter, 4 [Winter 1971], 87-90; administrative, allegorizing faculty, which might reply in 4 [Spring 1971], 144-47) does call for a well have produced the polemical annotations, or rejoinder. The aesthetic theory Mr. Beer begins to some parts of "A Vision of the Last Judgment," but disclose in the last half of his last paragraph as it is described could not have created a single (wher^ even Blake's concept of "states" is unrecog• drawing, painting, or etched design. In comparative nizable) seems to leave no common ground for dis• groupings such as Mr. Beer reproduces, the evidence cussion of "the larger points at issue" about is that, on the contrary, memory and imagination either Blake or Coleridge. Therefore I too will acted upon each other with equal force, and "inter• limit myself to what can reasonably be debated. pretation" did not necessarily move in the direction 212 Mr. Beer assumes—that is, from another artist's frame of reference that would make a contrast images to Blake's (or Mr. Beer's) "symbolic pat• meaningful; the narrative situations they pertain terns." At this moment in time, certainly, no to are merely different. What they do have in .one's method of reading Blake's designs can be common is Blake's modification of the Laocotin called wholly adequate to the complexities that are composition, which also contributed to the scene presented, but Mr. Beer's is limited, and limited in the Ghisi engraving Mr. Beer uses as a compara• unnecessarily, by what his own words suggest is a tive plate. He himself mentions Laocobn, and the confusion of private, "visionary" aims with the "lineaments" of "energy" he is responding to may public task of the critic. actually be those of the venerable classical com• position; the opposition expressed in his captions On specific designs, Mr. Beer in effect an• has in fact a counterpart in the disparity between swers, "Read my argument." Since it is not his attitude and expression which was noted in the argument as such that was in dispute, I'll try to marble group long ago by Winckelmann. To this ex• clarify my criticism, with apologies for the repe- tent, at least, Mr. Beer's critical practice would ti tion. be consistent with his aesthetic theory. But if the Laocotin provides what he is looking for, what Urizen 25, Jerusalem 75: My original objection need has he of Blake? concerned the presence of women in the first design (since conceded by Mr. Beer in his reply to John The Death of Adam: Mr. Beer misunderstands Grant) and the difference between the two kinds of my criticism here. Har and Heva in Tiriel are entwining creatures: those in Urizen 25 are winged obvious figures of Adam and Eve (although not only and wormlike, manifestly not serpents; those in that), with or without Mr. Beer's special inter• Jerusalem 75 bear scales, but their horns make them pretation. Since there is an Expulsion from less serpents proper than the "dragon forms" refer• Paradise on the title page of Songs of Innocence red to in the text. The contrast Mr. Beer sees is and of Experience, it would be reasonable enough supported only by the apparently different reac• for the title page of Songs of Experience to refer tions of the two groups of figures to their respec• in some way to the death of Adam (Genesis 5.5). tive entanglements, which he expresses by his past But why must the white-haired corpses of the Ex• participles: "Men gripped by spectrous energies" perience design be identified as Har and Heva--an versus "Energies and vision reconciled." If these Adam and Eve who have not left Paradise and hence were two separate and untitled watercolor drawings, have not been doomed to die? In this instance I say, associated with no literary texts and other• think it is legitimate to see a contrast in situ• wise unexplained, Mr. Beer might be justified in ation, an intended one, as well as a distinction his interpretations. But both are intimately re• rather than an identity between the two pairs of lated to Blake's own texts, and the passages he aged figures actually depicted. probably worked from are not hard to find. The design on plate 25 bridges two metamorphoses in Europe 4: Since Ore is exhorted to "arise" The Book of Urizen: the generation of Urizen's in the text (on the same plate, not the preceding) daughters "From monsters, & worms of the pit," in and since in response he does rise (line 15), it the text of plate 23, and the shrinking of Urizen's is hardly perverse to see in the design an act of later descendants into "reptile forms" in the text waking by uncovering. The lines Mr. Beer quotes, of plate 25 itself. It is true, of course, that "Forbid all joy," etc. [not from the same plate, the "reptile forms" here are images of the shrunken but from plate 6) are about a very different kind human perceptions ("their eyes / Grew small like of activity: neither covering nor uncovering the eyes of a man"), which Mr. Beer might very directly, but spreading in order to snare; in well say would be included in what he calls "the "every secret path," not among clouds or cloud distortion of energies at the Fall." But in its images; by "the little female," not by a full- own context the other design does not (as it grown female rather too old for the youth who by should in Mr. Beer's pairing) represent the libera• this interpretation would be her prey. And "nets" tion of the perceptions, or even any kind of (an image usually precisely rendered in Blake's "reconciliation" that would be approved in Blake's designs; see the last plate of The Book of Urizen) system of values. The figures fondling the dra• are what is spread, not the cloak or mantle be• gons' heads are not "the daughters of Jerusalem, neath which we see the second figure, who in any who know nothing of the Law," as Mr. Beer identi• event cannot be snared because he is not moving fies them in his commentary (p. 372), but the along a path but is lying face downward, in the members of the third group of Rahab's churches attitude of one asleep: in other words, a fit listed in the text of Jerusalem 75: "the Male subject to be waked by uncovering. In the essay I Females: the Dragon Forms / The Female hid within hope will become available to Mr. Beer some day, I a Male." In this design, too, there is a sugges• have proposed a source for both the general situ• tion of metamorphosis as the "hidden" females ation (woman waking sleeping youth) and the speci• emerge from the dragon folds, their thighs covered fic pose and gesture of Blake's woman, who in with scales at the point of juncture. They are terms of the text would be Enitharmon, as the emerging because they are being revealed, and youth is Ore. For the image of the cloak, there through them is revealed Rahab, who is "Mystery are two famous paintings Blake may have been re• Babylon the Great: . . . Religion hid in War: a calling (yes, via engravings), and in both the Dragon red, & hidden Harlot." crucial act is not of covering but of uncovering and revealing. In "Madonna of the Veil," the The two designs thus are not in contrast with Child is being unveiled also, as Mr. Beer acknow• each other at all, for they belong to no common ledges in his caption. (I will concede that under 213

other circumstances, writing or thinking about it fourteenth Proverb of Hell ("Bring out number, directly, Blake might possibly have interpreted weight & measure in a year of dearth") "is built on Raphael's scene as Mr. Beer does, perhaps even, a close translation of the Aramaic writing on the for ideological purposes, made Mr. Beer's shift wall (Daniel 5.25-28), 'mene, mene, tekel, from unveiling to veiling. But I still would re• upharsin,' or 'numbered, numbered, weighed, divid• late "Madonna of the Veil" to Europe 4 only through ed.'" the ironic Ore-Jesus analogy, and through the pictorial image of the veil itself.) But first, Middleman's translation of this perplexing phrase is hardly "close" (literal), Both external and internal evidence (to use though it is viable enough working backwards from a those old-fashioned scholarly terms) confirm a knowledge of Blake's Proverb; and, while the apoca• reading of this particular design which does not lyptic concerns of The Marriage invite an astute really conflict with anyone else's reading of reader to find a parallel in the Daniel passage Europe: A Propheey as a whole. Mr. Beer's own in• (and in many other Biblical passages as well), they terpretation may be "perfectly self-consistent," as do not, of themselves, justify a derivation. he asserts, but aside from the inapplicable lines of text, he offers no objective evidence to per• Second, a much less elliptical possibility suade us to accept it, and even no subjective lies closer to hand. Much more likely that Blake's evidence but his feeling about the outstretched Devil is having corrosive fun with one of Milton's arm. When "vision" is silent about so much, it may angelic interpreters, Andrew Marvell, whose poem, be time to return to the humbler, vegetative eye. "On Paradise Lost," typically prefaces Milton's poem and concludes with the lines: Irene Chayes 's reply has been shown to John Beer, and he has written a brief riposte on some of the Thy verse, created like thy Theme sublime, issues involved. Since Blake Newsletter 20 will be In Number, weight, and measure needs not rime. devoted to the British Museum Blake Handlist, how• ever, the riposte will not appear until Newsletter Blake's Devil may be thought of as mocking Marvell 21. (Eds.) for being cowed by Milton's resonances into ac• cepting Milton's Deistical Trinity of Destiny, ratio of the five senses, and vacuum. He agrees with Marvell that "number, weight, and measure" is a fit description of Milton's poem--though not of the verse only. EDWARD W. TAYLER: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY EVERETT C. FROST: LOS ANGELES

The Source of "Bring out number, weight & measure in a year of dearth" MINUTE PARTICULARS Edward W. Tayler Louis Middleman asserts {Blake Newsletter, 4 [Spring 1971], 147) that Blake's use of the Bible, though "copiously documented," in• cludes an unnoticed allusion to mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. But the infernal Proverb in question, MARTIN BUTLIN: KEEPER OF THE BRITISH COLLEC• "Bring out number, weight & measure in a year of TION, THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON dearth," unquestionably relies on the apocryphal book of the Wisdom of Solomon 11.21: omnia in An Extra Illustration to Pilgrim's Progress mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti ("thou hast disposed all in measure and number and weight"). This verse is quoted, varied from, and I am sure that the picture referred to as "A Warri• alluded to frequently in medieval and renaissance or with Angels" in Robert Essick's Finding List, literature. Blake, doubtless, knew the original; Blake Newsletter, 5 (Summer-Fall 1971), 141, figure but he could also have encountered it in any num• 9, is an extra watercolour from the series of illus• ber of neo-platonic treatises, not to mention John trations to Bunyan in the Frick museum. The dimen• Donne and Ben Jonson. In any case Blake would have sions and watermark tally, as does the style if one had to go no farther than his edition of John Milton disallows Mrs. Blake's work on the Frick watercol- which would include the commendatory lines of Andrew Marvel 1: ours. The subject of the Rosenwald design, which retains all its original Blake freshness, is "Chris• tian descends the hill from the Pilgrim's House" Thy verse created like thy Theme sublime, (Sir Geoffrey Keynes has suggested the title "Chris• In Number, Weight, and Measure, needs not Rhime. tian with the Shield of Faith"). An additional sup• port for this identification is the number "20" in• There is no need, then, to confuse Blake's Proverb scribed in the upper right-hand corner of the sheet; with Daniel's "numbered, numbered, weighed, divid• this corresponds with similar numbers on the Frick ed." drawings and places the subject of the design in its correct sequence. Incidentally, the inscriptions on the Frick drawings raise additional complications Everett C. Frost Louis Middleman argues that the in that they do not seem to be by Blake and are not 214 always accurate, for instance that inscribed "12 In public domain. Carolyn E. Jakeman of The Houghton the Interpreter's House," but this is another prob• Library wrote that, to the best of her knowledge, lem. The Rosenwald watercolour comes from an album copy U is the property of Mrs. Harold White; formed by Mrs. Charles Aders in the 1820s and pre• Christina Hanson of the Beinecke Rare Book and sumably became separated from the main series before Manuscript Library wrote that posthumous copy d they entered the Butts collection some time after was in the hands of C. A. Stonehill of New Haven Blake's death. in 1939 and that the purchaser's name is unknown to her. Since the new Bibliography by Bentley and Nurmi does not mention this, and since that work and the Census are the chief sources for locating the various copies of Blake's works, this small detail might be a useful timesaver for seekers of exemplars of the Songs. MARNEY WARD: UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Copy N of the Songs

According to William Blake's Illuminated Books: A Census by Geoffrey Keynes and Edwin Wolf 2nd (New York: Grolier Club, 1953), copy N of the Songs of Innooenoe and of Experience (in the Huntington Li• brary) "lacks plates 28 and 34." Actually, it lacks plates 28 and 54, the frontispiece of Experience A CHECKLIST OF and "The Voice of the Ancient Bard." It does not lack plate 34, which is the first plate of "The Lit• BLAKE SCHOLARSHIP tle Girl Lost." OCTOBER 1970-MARCH 1972

This is our fourth checklist. It was compiled prin• JOHN ADLARD: HIGHBRIDGE, SOMERSET cipally by Foster Foreman, Susan Grossman, and David Wyatt, all of the University of California, Berkeley Blake's Indenture and "The Little Vagabond" and by Roberta Goetsch, of the University of New Mexico. The Japanese items were kindly contributed by Kenji Nakamura, College of Education, Tokyo Uni• I read in Blake Records (p. 10) the terms of the versity; the French items by Professor Andre Le Vot indenture that must have been signed when Blake of the Sorbonne; and all the musical scores by Mi• was apprenticed-- chael A. Keller, Music Library, State University of New York at Buffalo. Our thanks to Professor Thom• He shall not haunt Taverns. . . . as Connolly for his initiative in getting the list . . . finding unto his said Apprentice, of musical scores compiled. To the best of our Meat, Drink, Apparel. . . . knowledge, the scores have not been listed previous• ly in any Blake bibliography or checklist. --and immediately thought of "The Little Vagabond" Again this year we have included entries for Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or many items that are not scholarly, but that we be• the Barrel lieve our readers will be interested in knowing a- But kiss him and give him both drink and apparel bout, such as films, videotapes, theatrical produc• tions, phonograph records, tapes, and musical scores And again, especially in the non-scholarly categor• ies but also in the scholarly ones, we have listed a number of items whose dates fall far outside our nominal 1970-71 boundaries. For the first time we MARY ELLEN REISNER: UNIVERSITE LAVAL, QUEBEC have listed the contents of the Newsletter itself in the Checklist. The contents of the present is• The Locations of Copy U of Songs of Innocence sue are not included. and Copy d of Songs of Innocence and of Ex• perience We would appreciate corrections and additions from our readers. Having had occasion, last summer, to write to a number of libraries on the subject of their Blake holdings, I found that two copies, Songs of In• The list is divided into these categories: Biblio• nocence, copy U, and Songs of Innocence and of Ex• graphy /Catalogues/New and Revised Books/Reprinted perience, posthumous copy d (as listed by Keynes Books/Articles and Sections of Books/Reviews/Films and Wolf in the Census)* far from being at Harvard and Videotapes/Tapes and Phonograph Records/Theater/ and Yale respectively, seem to be no longer in the Musical Scores. 215

BIBLIOGRAPHY . Letters from William Blake to Thom- as Butts, 1800-1803. Facsimile. Ed. Geoffrey Allentuck, Marcia. "Addendum to Bentley and Nurmi: Keynes. Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Press, 1969. Stillman on Blake." Papers of the Bibliograph• . London. Illustrated by Paul Piech. ical Society of America, 64 (4th quarter 1970), Bushey Heath: Taurus Press, 1969 (?). 463. . Poemas Profeticos y Prosas. Ver- Erdman, David V. "Blake." English Poetry: Select sion y prologo de Christobal Serra. Barcelona: Bibliographical Guides. Ed. A. E. Dyson. Lon• Barral Editores, 1971. don: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971. Pp. 144-66. . Poemes. Trans, and pref. by M. L. et al. "The Romantic Movement: Cazamian. (Bilingual French-English ed.) Bi- A Selective and Critical Bibliography for 1970." lingue Aubier-Flammarin 11. Paris: Aubier- English Language Notes. 9 (Supplement) (Sept. Flammarin, 1968. 1971), 27-35. The Poems of William Blake. Ed. Essick, Robert N. A Finding List of Reproductions W. H. Stevenson, text by David V. Erdman. of Blake's Art. Published as the combined Longmans Annotated English Poets. London: Summer-Fall 1971 issue of the Blake Newsletter. Lonqmans, 1971. [distributed in U. S. by Nor• Gorham, L., et al. "A Checklist of Blake Scholar• ton] ship / June 1969-September 1970." Blake News• . Songs of Innocence [color facsim- letter, 4 (Fall 1970), 51-59. See also '"A TTeT New York: Dover, 1971. Checklist of Blake Scholarship / June 1969- Songs of Innocence and of Experi- 1970,': Additions and Corrections." Blake ence: "shewing the Contrary States of the Hu• Newsletter, 4 (Winter 1971), 73-74. man Soul [color facsimile]. Introduction and commentary by Sir Geoffrey Keynes. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970. CATALOGUES . Then She Bore Pale Desire. Illus- trated by Jeff Nuttall. Brighton: Hand• Bentley, G. E., Jr. The Blake Collection of Mrs. printed by T. Kavanaugh, 1969. London K.'Thorne. New York: Pierpont Morgan . Tyger, Tyger. Illustrated by Paul Library, 1971. Piech. Bushey Heath: Taurus Press, 1969. Bindman, David. William Blake: Catalogue of the . William Blake. Ed. with selec• Collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Cam• tions by John Adlard. London: Studio Vista, bridge. Cambridge: Heffer, for the Syndics of 1970. Fitzwilliam Museum, 1970. . William Blake's Water-Colour De- Butlin, Martin. William Blake: A Complete Cata• signs for the Poems of Thomas Gray. Introduc• logue of the Works in the Tate Gallery. Lon• tion and commentary by Geoffrey Keynes. Paris: don: Tate Gallery, 1971. Trianon Press for the William Blake Trust, Keynes, Geoffrey. William Blake's Water-Colour De• 1971. [". . .a Commemorative Catalogue to ac• signs for the Poems of Thomas Gray. Introduc• company the exhibition" of Blake's designs at tion and commentary by Geoffrey Keynes. Paris: the Tate Gallery, London, and the Paul Mellon Trianon Press for the William Blake Trust, Center for British Art and British Studies, 1971. [". . .a Commemorative Catalogue to ac• Yale University, 1971-72] company the exhibition" of Blake's designs at Brunskill, Ann. Aphrodite: A Mythical Journey in the Tate Gallery, London, and the Paul Mellon Eight Episodes with Etchings by Ann Brunskill. Center for British Art and British Studies, Accompanying Poems by William Blake (and oth• Yale University, 1971-72] ers). London [?]: World's End Press, 1970. Dorfman, Deborah. Blake in the Nineteenth Century: His Reputation as a Poet from Gilchrist to NEW AND REVISED BOOKS Yeats. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. Dumbaugh, Winnifred. William Blake's Vision of A- Alldritt, Keith. The Visual Imagination of D. H. -erica. Pacific Grove, Calif.: Boxwood Press, Lawrence. London: Edward Arnold, 1971. 1971. [Blake noted briefly but frequently.] Erdman, David V. and John E. Grant, eds. Blake's Blake, William. America: A Prophecy. Stony Brook Visionary Forms Dramatic. Princeton: Prince• 3/4 (1969). 1-16. [monochromatic facsimile] ton Univ. Press; London: Oxford Univ. Press, . Auguries of Innocence, by William 1970. The contents of this volume are as fol• Blake. Tllust'rated by Paul P. Piech. 2 Wil• lows: Eben Bass, "Songs of Innocence and of low Dene, Bushey Heath: Taurus Press, 1970. Experience: The Thrust of Design"; Irene H. . Blake: Complete Writings. Ed. Chayes, "The Presence of Cupid and Psyche"; Geoffrey Keynes. Reprinted with corrections. David V. Erdman, "America: New Expanses"; John Oxford Standard Authors. London: Oxford Univ. E. Grant, "Envisioning the First Night Press, 1971. Thoughts"; Jean H. Hagstrum, "Blake and the . Blake's Illustrations to the Poems Sister-Arts Tradition"; William F. Halloran, of Gray. Ed. Irene Tayler. Princeton: "The French Revolution: Revelation's New Form"; Princeton Univ. Press; London: Oxford Univ. Kenneth R. Johnston, "Blake's Cities: Romantic Press, 1971. Forms of Urban Renewal"; Henry Lesnick, "Nar• rative Structure and the Antithetical Vision of The Book of Thel: A Facsimile and . Jerusalem"; Helen T. McNeil, "The Formal Art of a Critical Text. Ed. Nancy Bogen. Providence, The Four Zoas"; W. J. T. Mitchell, "Blake's R. I.: Brown Univ. Press; New York: N. Y. Composite Art"; Ben F. Nelms, "Text and Design Public Library, 1971. in Illustrations of the Book of Job"; George . The Chimney Sweeper. Bushey Heath: Quasha, "Ore as a Fiery Paradigm of Poetic Tor• Taurus Press, 1969. sion"; E. J. Rose, "'Forms Eternal Exist For• . A Choice of Blake's Verse. Ed. ever': The Covenant of the Harvest in Blake's Kathleen Raine. London: Faber, 1970. Prophetic Poems"; Robert E. Simmons, "Urizen: . The Divine Image, by William Blake. The Symmetry of Fear"; Irene Tayler, "Metamor• Illustrated by Paul P. Piech. 2 Willow Dene, phoses of a Favorite Cat"; Michael J. Tolley, Bushey Heath: Taurus Press, 1970. pe: 'to those ychain'd in sleep'"; Janet . Drawings of William Blake. Ed. A. Warner, "Blake's Use of Gesture"; Brian Geoffrey Keynes. New York: Dover Publica• Wilkie, "Epic Irony in Milton". tions; London: Constable, 1970. Harris, Eugenie. The Poetry of William Blake. Mon• . Infant Sorrow, by William Blake. arch Notes. New York: Monarch Press, 1965. Illustrated by Duine Campbell. Leicester: Keynes, Geoffrey. Blake Studies. 2nd ed. Clarendon Black Knight Press, 1970. 216 Press: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971. 195-96. Okamoto, Kenjiro. William Blake. "Masters of Art" Anon. Notice of a Blake exhibition. The Times [of Series 3. Tokyo: Iwasaki Bijutsu-sha, 1970. London], 21 Jan. 1971, 9d. O'Neill, Judith, ed. Critics on Blake. Readings in . Notice of a Blake musical to be produced. Literary Criticism, 7. London: George Allen The Times [of London], 11 July 1970, 14h. and Unwin, 1970. Archibald, Douglas N. "Yeats's Encounters: Obser• Pointon, Marcia R. Milton and English Art. Man• vations on Literary Influence and Literary chester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1970. History." New Literary History, 1 (1970), Raine, Kathleen. William Blake. London: Thames 439-69. and Hudson, 1970; New York: Praeger, 1971. Bacon, Mary E. "Blake's Imitation of Pope: A Com• Rasmussen, Egil. William Blake: En psykologisk pliment To The Ladies and A Pretty Epigram studie. Oslo: Dreyers Forlag, B. A. Buten- For The Entertainment of Those Who Paid Great schrfn A/S & Co., 1969. Sums In The Venetian And Flemish Ooze." The Reubart, A. et al. , eds. Blake through Student Eyes. Explicator, 9 (May 1970), item no. 79. Oakland: Mills College, Roussel Sargent, 1971. Beer, John. "Blake at the Fitzwilliam." Cambridge [student papers and poems on Blake for courses Review, 29 Jan. 1971, pp. 110-13. taught January 1970 and 1971] . "A Reply to Irene Chayes." Blake News• Revol, Enrique 1. Caminos del Exceso: William Blake letter, 4 (Spring 1971), 144-47. y el Marques de Sade. Argentina: Universidad . "A Reply to John Grant." Blake News• Nacional de Cordoba, 1964. letter, 4 (Winter 1971), 103-06. Rousselot, Jean. William Blake. Paris: Edition . Reply to Richard Downing ("Blake and P. Seghers (Poetes d'Aujourd'hui) 118, 1964. Augustine," TLS, 18 June 1970, p. 662). Times Singer, June K. The Unholy Bible: A Psychological Literary Supplement, 2 July 1970, pp. 726-27. Interpretation of William Blake. New York: Bentley, G. E., Jr. "An Apocryphal Blake Engraving: Putnam, 1970. The Minor's Pocket Book (1814)." Blake News• Tayler, Irene. Blake's Illustrations to the Poems letter, 4 (Winter 1971), 107-08. of Gray. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press; . "Blake Scholars and Critics: London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971. Commentators and Exhibitions." University of Todd, Ruthven. William Blake the Artist. Studio Toronto Quarterly, 40 (Fall 1970), 86-1 Of. Vista/Dutton Pictureback. London: Studio Vis• . "Two Contemporary Facsimiles ta; New York: Dutton, 1971. of Songs of Innocence and of Experience." Vogler, Thomas A. Preludes to Vision: The Epic Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Amer• Venture in Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, and Hart ica, 64 (4th quarter 1970) 450-63. Crane. Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1971. Bindman, David, [on the Blake sale at Christie's, Wilson, Mona. The Life of William Blake. Ed. Geof• 15 June 1971]. Guardian Weekly, 5 June 1971, frey Keynes. 3rd ed. London: Oxford Univ. p. 22. Press, 1971. . "An Unpublished Blake Pencil Draw• Wittreich, Joseph. Nineteenth Century Accounts of ing of the Lambeth Period," Blake Newsletter, William Blake. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars 4 (Fall 1970), 38-40. Facsimiles, 1970. . "William Blake and the Victorians." Cambridge Review, 29 Jan. 1971, pp. 113-15. REPRINTED BOOKS Blake, William. "A Vision of the Last Judgment. (From The Notebook)." Tree: 1 (Winter 1970), Blake, William. The Note-Book of William Blake 80-82. Called the Rossetti Manuscript. Ed. Geoffrey Bloom, Harold. "Blake's Jerusalem: The Bard of Keynes, 1935; rpt. New York: Cooper Square, Sensibility and the Form of Prophecy." Eight• 1971. eenth-Century Studies, 4 (Fall 1970), 6-20. Clutton-Brock, Alan Francis. Blake. 1933; rpt. . "First and Last Romantics." Studies Haskell House, 1970. in Romanticism, 9 (Fall 1970), 225-32. Damon, S. Foster. A Blake Dictionary. 1965; rpt. . "To Reason with a Later Reason: New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971. [a reprint of Romanticism and the Rational." Midway 11 (Sum• the first Brown Univ. Press printing] mer 1970), 96-112. Gardner, Charles. William Blake, the Man. 1919; Campbell, William Royce. "The Aesthetic Integrity rpt. New York: Haskell House, 1970. of Blake's 'Island in the Moon'," Blake Stud• James, Laura DeWitt. William Blake and the Tree of ies, 3 (Spring 1971), 137-47. Life. Berkeley and London: Shambala Press, Connolly, Thomas E. "A Blakean Maze," Blake Stud• 1971. [reprint of William Blake: The Finger ies, 3 (Fall 1970), 61-68. [on bibliographi• on the Furnace (New York: Vantage Press, 1956) cal description of the Songs of Innocence and with new illustrations] of Experience"] Jugaku, Bunsho. A Bibliographical Study of William Crook, J. Mordaunt. "A Neo-Classical Visionary: Blake '8 Notebook. 1953; rpt. New York: Has• The Architecture of Thomas Harrison--III." kell House, 1971. Country Life, 6 May 1971, p. 1089. Lowery, Margaret Ruth. Windows of the Morning: A Davie, Donald. "The Poetry of Samuel Menashe." Critical Study of William Blake's "Poetical (Summer 1970), 107-15. [Menashe's poetry is Sketches." 1940; rpt. New York: Archon compared to Blake's] Books, 1970. deGroot, H. B. "R. H. Home, Mary Howitt and a Rudd, Margaret. Divided Image: A Study of William Mid-Victorian Version of 'The Echoing Green.'" Blake and W. B. Yeats. 1953; rpt. New York: Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), 81-88. Haskell House, 1970. Downing, Richard. "Blake and Augustine" (letter). Story, Alfred. William Blake: His Life, Character, Times Literary Supplement, 18 June 1970, p. and Genius. 1893; rpt. New York: Haskell 662. [see also Beer, John] House, 1970. Easson, Roger R. "Blake and the Contemporary Art Swinburne, Algernon C. William Blake. 1868; rpt. Market." Blake Newsletter, 4 (Spring 1971), Lincoln, Neb.: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1970. 137-39. Eaves, Morris. "A List of the Entries in Damon's ARTICLES AND SECTIONS OF BOOKS Blake Dictionary." Blake Studies, 3 (Fall 1970), 69-85. Adlard, John. "The Garden of Love." Blake News• Essick, Robert N. "Blake's Newton." Blake Studies, letter, 4 (Spring 1971), 147-48. 3 (Spring 1971), 149-62. Allentuck, Marcia. "Dorothy Richardson on William . "The Blakes at UCLA." Blake News• Blake and the Broadside: An Unrecorded Ap• letter, 4 (Winter 1971), 75-78. praisal." Blake Studies, 3 (Spring 1971), . "A Finding List of Reproductions of 217 Blake's Art." Blake Newsletter, 5 (Summer-Fall Knights, L. C. "Early Blake." The Sewanee Review, 1971), 1-160 [entire combined issue]. 79 (July-Sept. 1971), 377-407. Fawcus, Arnold. "Early States of the Job Series." Kroeber, Karl. "Graphic-Poetic Structuring in Blake Newsletter, 4 (Spring 1971), 150. Blake's Book of Urizen." Blake Studies, 3 . "William Blake's Watered our De• (Fall 1970), 7-18. signs Illustrating Gray's Poems--and Mr. Paul . "The Relevance and Irrelevance of Mellon." The Connoisseur 179 (Jan. 1972), 10- Romanticism." Studies in Romanticism, 9 (Fall 14. 1970), 297-306. Finch, G. J. '"Never Pain to Tell Thy Love'--Blake's Leyris, Pierre. "William Blake et Nous." Le Monde, Problem Poem." Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), 8 Oct. 1971, pp. 20-21. [article accompanied 73-79. by French translation of Blake poems] Fussell , Paul, Jr. "Writing as Imitation: Observa• McGann, Jerome. "Blake and a Tradition." Poetry, tions on the Literary Process." In A. Cheuse 117 (Oct. 1970), 45-49. and R. Koffler, eds., The Rarer Action: Es• Maxwel1-Mahon, W. D. "The Prophetic Mind: An As• says in Honor of Francis Ferguson. New Bruns• pect of the Poetry of Blake and Yeats." Unisa wick, N. J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1970. Pp. English Studies, 2 (March 1964), 11-16. 218-39. [Blake is discussed pp, 230-32] Mel lor, Anne K. "Blake's Designs for The Book of Ginsberg, Allen. "A Talk with Allen Ginsberg" [in• Thel: An Affirmation of Innocence." Philolog• terviewed by Alison Colbert]. Partisan Re• ical Quarterly, 50 (April 1971), 193-207. view, 38 (no. 3, 1971), 289-309. [more about . "The Human Form Divine and the setting the Songs to music] Structure of Blake's Jerusalem." Studies in . "To Young or Old Listeners: Set• jlish Literature, 11 (Autumn 1971), 595-620. ting Blake's Songs to Music, and a Commentary Middleman, Louis. "Bring out number, weight, & on the Songs." Blake Newsletter, 4 (Winter measure in a year of dearth." Blake Newslet• 1971), 98-103. [reprinting of the liner notes ter, 4 (Spring 1971), 147. to Ginsberg's recording of the Songs; also re• Pache, Walter and Ursula Salacki. "Blake and Ovid." printed in Caterpillar 14 (January 1971)1 Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), 89-92. Grant, John E. "Addenda and Some Solutions to Tol- Paley, Morton D. "Blakes at Buffalo." Blake News• ley's Blake Puzzles." Blake Studies, 3 letter, 4 (Winter 1971), 81-86. (Spring 1971), 129-35. Parr, James. "Songs of Imprudence." Humanities As• . "Blake's Designs for L'Allegro and sociation Bulletin, 17 (Autumn 1966). [graphic II Penseroso , Part I: A Survey of the Designs." and literary parodies] Blake Newsletter, 4 (Spring 1971), 117-34. Peckham, Morse. "On Romanticism: Introduction." . "Redemptive Action in Blake's 'Ar• Studies in Romanticism, 9 (Fall 1970), 217-24. lington Court Picture'." Studies in Romanti• Pfefferkorn, Eli. "The Question of the Leviathan cism, 10 (Winter 1971), 21-26. and the Tiger." Blake Studies, 3 (Fall 1970), Hall, Jean. "Blake's Everlasting Gospel." Blake 53-60. Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), 61-72. Phillips, Michael. "Blake's Corrections in Poetical Halloran, W. F. "Blake's Tiriel: Snakes, Curses, Sketches." Blake Newsletter, 4 (Fall 1970), and a Blessing." South Atlantic Quarterly, 40-47. 70 (Spring 1971), 161-79. . "'Blake's Corrections in Poeti• Harding, Eugene J. "Jacob Boehme and Blake's 'The cal Sketches1: A Forthcoming Supplement and Book of Urizen.'" Unisa English Studies, 8 the Britwell Court Library Copy." Blake News• (June 1970), 3-11. letter, 4 (Spring 1971), 148-49. Hazen, James. "Blake's Tyger and Milton's Beasts," Raine, Kathleen. "Blake's Last Judgement." The Am• Blake Studies, 3 (Spring 1971), 163-70. ple forth Journal, 76 (Summer 1971), 70-84. Helmstadter, Thomas H. "Blake and Religion: Icono- Reid/ Anthony. "Ralph Chubb, the Unknown; Part I: graphical Themes in the Night Thoughts." Stud• His Life, 1892-1960." Private Library, 2nd ies in Romanticism, 10 (Spring-Summer 1971), series, 3 (Autumn 1970), 141-56. [parallels 199-212. between the career and art of Chubb and Blake] Holloway, John. "Blake--The Lyric Poetry." Unisa Reisner, Mary E. "The Wages of Art: Blake and His English Studies, 8 (March 1970), 33-41. Public." Culture, 4 (Dec. 1970), 327-37. Honnighausen, L. "Aspekte des Blakeverst'andnisses Reisner, Thomas A. "Cain: Two Romantic Interpre• in der Asthetik des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts." tations." Culture, 2 (June 1970), 124-43. Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, 33 (1970), Rhodes, Judith. "Blake's Designs for L'Allegro and 41-53. II Penseroso: Thematic Relationships in Dia• Howard, John. "An Audience for The Marriage of gram." Blake Newsletter, 4 (Spring 1971), 135- Heaven and Hell." Blake Studies, 3 (Fall 1970), 36. 19-52. Rice, Howard C, Jr. "Lesser Known Examples of Blake's Engraving Skill." University: A Jackson, M. V. "Prolific and Devourer: From Non- Princeton Quarterly, mythic to Mythic Statement in The Marriage of no. 46 (Fall 1970), 2, 26- 32; also (with one less illustration) in Prince• Heaven and Hell and A Song of Liberty." Jour• ton Alumni Weekly, nal of English and Germanic Philology, 29 Sept. 1970, pp. 38-44. 70 (A- Rose, Edward J. "Blake's Fourfold Art." Philologi• pril 1971), 207-19. cal Quarterly, 49 (July 1970), 400-23. Jakobson, Roman. "On the Verbal Art of William . "Blake's Metaphorical States." Blake and Other Poet-Painters. I. One of the Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), 9-31. Songs of Experience." Linguistic Inquiry, 1 . "The 1839-Wilkinson Edition of (January 1970), 3-23. Blake's Songs in Transcendental America." James, Laura DeWitt. "Sweet Science." Tree: Blake Newsletter, 4 (Winter 1971), 79-81. (Winter 1970), 83-95. [reprinted from William . "The Spirit of the Bounding Line: Blake and the Tree of Life} Blake's Los." Criticism, 8 (Winter 1971), 54- John, Brian. "William Blake's 'Hereford, Ancient 76. Guardian of Wales.'" Blake Studies, 4 (Fall Rosenberg, Marc. "Style and Meaning in The Book of 1971), 33-42. Urizen." Style, 4 (Fall 1970), 197-212. Jones, M. "Blake's 'To Spring': A Formative Salacki, Ursula. See Pache, Walter. Source?" Notes and Queries, n.s. 17 (August Simmons, Robert and Janet Warner. "Blake's 'Arling• 1970), 313-14. ton Court Picture': The Moment of Truth." Kay, Wallace G. "Blake, Baudelaire, Beckett: The Studies in Romanticism, 10 (Winter 1971), 3-20. Romantics of Nihilism." The Southern Quarter• Spicer, Harold. "Biblical Sources of William Blake's ly, 9 (April 1970), 253-59. America." Ball State University Forum, 8 (Sum• Kmetz, Gail. "A Reading of Blake's 'The Gates of mer 1967), 23-39. Paradise.'" Blake Studies, 3 (Spring 1971), Stevenson, W. H. "Death's Door." Blake Newsletter, 171-85. 218 4 (Fall 1970), 49. . Drawings of William Blake. 92 Pen• Takemori, Osamu. "William Blake's 'To Tirzah': An cil Studies. Selection, introduction, and com• Interpretation." Studies in English Literature mentary by Geoffrey Keynes. Reviewed by Robert (English Literary Society of Japan), 42 (March N. Essick, Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), 99- 1971), 179-98 [in Japanese; synopsis in English, 103; Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. 1971, pp. 325-26]. pp. 1-3. Taniguchi, Shigeru. "A Study of Spectres in The . Europe, A Prophecy (Blake Trust Four Zoas and Milton: Questions of Counterpart facsimile). Reviewed by Times Literary Supple• and Negation." Bulletin of Reitaku University ment, 22 Jan. 1970, p. 14. [Reitaku University, Kashiwa], 12 (August 1971), . Illustrations to the Divine Comedy 140-58 [in Japanese]. of Dante. Reviewed by C. Ryskamp, Master Tarr, Rodger L. '"The Eagle' versus 'The Mole': Drawing 8 (Spring 1970), 56. The Wisdom of Virginity in Comus and The Book . The Notebook of William Blake of Thel." Blake Studies, 3 (Spring 1971), 187- Called the Rossetti Manuscript (rpt. facsimile). 94. Reviewed by Robert N. Essick, Blake Newsletter, Taylor, Peter Alan. "Providence and the Moment in 4 (Spring 1971), 142-44. Blake's Milton." Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), . The Poems of William Blake (Long• 43-60. man's Annotated English Poets). Ed. W. H. Todd, Ruthven. "Blake's Copy of Dante." Blake News• Stevenson, text by David V. Erdman. Reviewed letter, 4 (Fall 1970), 49. by Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. 1971, pp. . "The Bohn Catalogue and James Vine." 1-3. Blake Newsletter, 4 (Spring 1971), 149. . The Poems of William Blake. Ed. Toki, Kohji. "Icons of Albion." English Quarterly W. B. Yeats (1905; rpt. Harvard Univ. Press, [Apollon-sha, Kyoto], 8 (August 1971), 222-34 1969). Reviewed by Choice , 6 (Dec. 1969), [in Japanese]. 1390; Murray Patrick, Studies [Dublin], 59 Tolley, Michael J. "Some Blake Puzzles--01d and (1970), 215-18; John Wren-Lewis, The New States• New." Blake Studies, 3 (Spring 1971), 107-28. man, 22 Aug. 1969, p. 249. Trawick, Leonard M. "The Present State of Blake . Songs of Innocence and of Experi• Studies." Studies in Burke and His Time, 40 ence. Reviewed by A. Weinberg, Unisa English (Winter 1970-71), 1784-1803. Studies, 8 (Nov. 1970), 34-36. Tsuchiya, Shigeko. "Who is Milton-Blake?" English Bloom, Harold. Blake's Apocalypse: A Study in Po• Quarterly [Apollon-sha, Kyoto], 8 (March 1971), etic Argument. Reviewed by Rodney M. Baine, 144-57 [in Japanese]. Georgia Review, 25 (Fall 1971), 380-81. Uphaus, Robert. "Thomas Traherne: Perception as Boutang, Pierre. William Blake. Reviewed by Robert Process." University of Windsor Review, 3 Louit, "Blake Le Liberateur," Magazine Litter- (Spring 1968), 19-27. [Traherne's idea of per• aire, no. 48 (Jan. 1971), 38-39.' ception compared and contrasted with Blake's] Butlin, Martin. William Blake: A Complete Cata• Valdes, M. J. "Archetype and Recreation: A Compar• logue of the Works in the Tate Gallery. Re• ative Study of William Blake and Miguel de Una- viewed by Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. muno." University of Toronto Quarterly, 40 1971, pp. 1-3. (Fall 1970), 58-72. Erdman, David V. The Poetry and Prose of William Warner, Janet. "James Vine." Blake Newsletter, 4 Blake (4th printing with revisions). Reviewed (Winter 1971), 106-07. by Rodney M. Baine, Georgia Review, 25 (Fall . See also Simmons, Robert. 1971), 380-81. Wimsatt, W. K. "Imitation as Freedom--1717-1798." . Prophet Against Empire (2nd ed.). New Literary History, 1 (Winter 1970), 215-36. Reviewed by Rodney M. Baine, Georgia Review, 25 (Summer 1971), 238-41; Patrick J. Callahan, REVIEWS Blake Studies, 3 (Fall 1970), 87-89; E. J. Rose, Blake Newsletter, 4 (Fall 1970), 48-49; Beer, John. Blake's Visionary Universe. Reviewed Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. 1971, pp. by Rodney M. Baine, Georgia Review, 25 (Summer 1-3. 1971), 238-41; Margaret Bottrall, Critical Erdman, David. V. and John E. Grant, eds. Blake's Quarterly, 12 (Autumn 1970), 286; Irene H. Visionary Forms Dramatic. Reviewed by Morton Chayes, Blake Newsletter, 4 (Winter 1971), 87- D. Paley, Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), 93-99; 90; Brian John, Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. 1971, pp. 107-10; W. H. Stevenson, Durham University 1-3; Virginia Quarterly, 47 (Summer 1971), 110. Journal, 63 n.s. 32 (Dec. 1970), 74-75. Frye, Northrop. Fearful Symmetry. Reviewed by Alan Bentley, G. E., Jr. Blake Records. Reviewed by Weinberg, Unisa English Studies, 8 (Nov. 1970), Rodney M. Baine, Georgia Review,25 (Summer 34-36. 1971), 238-41; F. W. Bateson, Review of English Gardner, Stanley. Blake. Reviewed by Mary Lynn Studies, 22 (May 1971), 221-22; David Bindman, Johnson, Blake Studies, 1 (Fall 1970), 94-98. "Blake through the Eyes of His Contemporaries," Ginsberg, Allen. Allen Ginsberg/William Blake: Burlington Magazine, 113 (April 1971), 218-19; "Songs of Innocence and Experience" by William Norman Brennan, Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971), Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg [a recording]. 103-07; Choice, 7 (Nov. 1970), 1229; David V. Reviewed by Morris Eaves, Blake Newsletter, Erdman, English Language Notes, 9:suppl. to no. 4 (Winter 1971), 90-97. 1 (Sept. 1971), 27;'T." J. Galvin, Library Jour• Goff, Phyllis. William Blake: Catalogue of the nal, 95 (April 1970), 1370; Max F. Schulz, Preston Blake Library. Reviewed by Kenneth Eighteenth-Century Studies, 4 (Summer 1970), Garlick, Apollo 92 (1970), 398. 490-92. Lister, Raymond. William Blake: An Introduction Bindman, David. William Blake: Catalogue of the to the Man and to His Work. Reviewed by T. E. Collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Cam• Luddy, Library Journal, 95 (August 1970), 2682. bridge. Reviewed by Times Literary Supplement, Mitchell, Adrian. Tyger [a musical]. Reviewed by 10 Dec. 1971, pp. 1-3. Michael Billingt'on, The Times, 22 Jan. 1971, p. Blake, William. All Religions Are One (Blake Trust 13. [reprinted in this issue of the Newsletter'] facsimile). Described by Arnold Fawcus, Blake Paley, Morton D. Energy and the Imagination: A Newsletter, 4 (Fall 1970), 33-34; reviewed by Study of the Development of Blake's Thought. Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. 1971, pp. Reviewed by Rodney M. Baine, Georgia Rev 1-3. 25 (Summer 1971), 238-41; Choice, 7 (Oct. 1970), . The Blake-Varley Sketch-book of 1042; Robert F. Gleckner, Modern Language 1819. Ed. Martin Butlin. Reviewed by T. Crom- Quarterly, 32 (Sept. 1971), 326-28; Joh,n How• bie, Apollo, 92 (Oct. 1970), 319. ard, Blake Studies, 3 (Spring 1971), 197-99; 219

John D. Jump, Critical Quarterly, 13 (Spring BBC Symphony conducted by Colin Davis. Phil• 1971), 87-88; R. E. Luddy, Library Journal, ips 6502-001. [Edward Elgar's arrangement, 95 (Aug. 1970), 2682; P. Malekin, Review of with the Proms audience as chorus] English Studies, n.s. 22 (Aug. 1971), 352-54; Vaughan Williams, Ralph. Job, A Masque for Dancing Robin Mayhead, English, 22 (Summer 1971), 59- [1930]. London Symphony Orchestra conducted 62; Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. 1971, by Sir Adrian Boult. Angel-EMI S-36773. pp. 1-3; Virginia Quarterly, 47 (Summer 1971), [based on Blake's Job illustrations; a new re• 110. cording; the old was conducted by Boult with , ed. Twentieth Century Interpre• the London Philharmonic, Everest 3019] tations of "Songs of Innocence and of Experi• . [A recording that includes ence": A Collection of Critical Essays. Re• V-W's Blake songs, sung by Ian Partridge]. viewed by Robert N. Essick, Blake Studies, 3 EMI HQS-1236. (Fall 1970), 91-94; A. Weinberg, Unisa English . Three Song Cycles. Desto Studies, 8 (Nov. 1970), 34-36. DC-6482. Lincludes V-W's "Ten Blake Songs" Pointon, Marcia R. Milton and English Art. Re• with Lois Winter, soprano, John Langstaff, viewed by J. R. Harvey, Durham University baritone, and Ronald Roseman, oboe] Journal, 63 n.s. 32 (June 1971), 244-46. Raine," Kathleen. Blake and Tradition. Reviewed by P. Malekin, Review of English Studies, 22 (Feb. THEATER 1971), 93-95; E. J. Rose, Dalhousie Review, 50 (Summer 1970), 269-71; Peter Russell, Southern Fischetti, Michael, director. "Blake's Songs of Review, n.s. 7 (Oct. 1971), 1145-56. Innocence and Experience." Part III of Three . William Blake. Reviewed by Jean Pieces in Multi Media. Performed in New York Hagstrum, Modern Philology, 68 (Aug. 1970), 76- by the Dance and Drama Theatre of New York 82; Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. 1971, City, January 1972. pp. 1-3; H. R. Wackrill, Blake Studies, 4 (Fall McGann, Jerome et al. The Marriage of Heaven and 1971), 110-13. Hell. Performed by Cain's Company at Rockefel• Rosenfeld, Alvin H., ed. William Blake: Essays ler Memorial Chapel, Chicago, 8-12 May 1970. for S. Foster Damon. Reviewed by Margaret Bot- Mitchell, Adrian. Tyger. Performed by the British trall, Critical Quarterly, 12 (Autumn 1970), National Theatre in London, 1971. [musical 286; P. Malekin, Review of English Studies, 22 comedy] (Feb. 1971), 93-95; Max F. Schulz, Eighteenth- Century Studies, 4 (Winter 1970-71), 223-29. Tayler, Irene. Blake's Illustrations to the Poems MUSICAL SCORES of Gray. Reviewed by Thomas Helmstadter, Blake Newsletter, 4 (Spring 1971), 140-42; Anson, H. V. Three Blake Partsongs for female or Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. 1971, pp. boys' voices, n.d. 1-3. Bantock, G. Three Blake Songs: 1. In a myrtle Todd, Ruthven. William Blake: the Artist. Re• shade, 2. The wildflower's song, 3. Love's viewed by Times Literary Supplement, 10 Dec. secret. 1909. 1971 , pp. 1-3. Beeson, J. Three Songs: 1. I laid me down upon a Wells, William. William Blake's "Heads of the Po• bank, 2. Never seek to tell thy love, 3. I ets." Reviewed by Desiree Hirst, Blake Stud• asked a thief. 1945. ies, 3 (Fall 1970), 98-100. Bezanson, P. T. Songs of Innocence. New York: Wilson, Mona. The Life of William Blake. Ed. Geof• American Composers Alliance, 1962. frey Keynes. 3rd ed. Reviewed by Times Lit• Birch, R. F. Memory, come hither. (Op. 21, no. 1,) erary Supplement, 10 Dec. 1971, pp. 1-3. New York: Patelson, 1952. Brian, H. Songs which include settings of Blake. Not published, no date. FILMS AND VIDEOTAPES Brook, H. "The Shepherd" in Kinley, E. A. A song book. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1940. Blake's "America." Produced and directed by Janet Busch, W. Four Songs: 1. Memory, come hither, 2. Warner, John Sutherland, and Robert Wallace. Laughing song, 3. The Echoing green, 4. The York University, 1970. [videotape] shepherd. 1943. Blake's "Visions of the Daughters of Albion." Pro• Davies, H. W. I love the jocund dance. (Op. 18, duced and directed by Janet Warner, John Suth• no. 4.) 1905. erland, and Robert Wallace. York University, Delaney, R. M. Night. Boston: E. Schirmer, 1934. 1971. [videotape] Duke, V. Four songs. New York: Broude, 1955. Holy Thursday. George F. Hood and Richard Blakes- Goosens, E. Two *ongs. 1922. lee, 1969. 20 minutes. Sound, color, 16 mm. Hart, F. Seven songs. (Op. 25.) 1917. ["A visual poem .... to explore the mean• Homer, S. The sick rose and Infant sorrow. (Op. ing of William Blake's Holy Thursday section 26.) New York: G. Schirmer, 1912. of his Songs of Innocence."] Lloyd, C. H. To morning, for 8 part chorus, n.d. William Blake: Innocence and Experience. Produced Luening, 0. Three songs for high voice and piano, and directed for ABC-TV's Directions by Aram no. 2 "Young love", no. 3 "Auguries of inno• Boyajian. First telecast 16 Jan. 1972. cence." New York: G. Schirmer, 1944. William Blake: Prophet. Produced and directed for McLain, M. S. To a child asleep. New York: Morris, ABC-TV's Directions by Aram Boyajian. First cl946. telecast 23 Jan. 1972. Moeran, E. J. The echoing green. 1933. Poldowski, Lady D. P. Song. n.d. Powell, L. To Spring. London: Williams, cl922. TAPES AND PHONOGRAPH RECORDS . To Summer. London: Williams, cl930. Spelman, T. M. I love the jocund dance. New York: Britten, Benjamin. Songs & Proverbs of William Galaxy, cl938. Blake, Op. 74; The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Thomson, V. The sunflower. 1919. Op. 35. Peter Pears, tenor, Dietrich Fischer- Voynich, E. L. The golden net, a cantata, n.d. Di=skau, baritone, and Benjamin Britten, piano Whiting, A. B. The golden cage. New York: G. London OS 26099. [a new recording] Schirmer, cl926. DeMott, Benjamin. Blake and Manchild. Sound Semi• nars 75998. New York: McGraw-Hill, n.d. [tape recording] Parry, Hubert. "Jerusalem" ["And did those feet in ancient time"] in The Last Night of the Proms. S. foster 'Damon 1893-1971

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