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VOLUME 22 NUMBER 3 WINTER 1988/89 ■iiB ii ••▼•• w BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY WINTER 1988/89 REVIEWS 103 William Blake, An Island in the Moon: A Facsimile of the Manuscript Introduced, Transcribed, and Annotated by Michael Phillips, reviewed by G. E. Bentley, Jr. 105 David Bindman, ed., William Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job, and Colour Versions of William- Blake 's Book of job Designs from the Circle of John Linnell, reviewed by Martin Butlin AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY VOLUME 22 NUMBER 3 WINTER 1988/89 DISCUSSION 110 An Island in the Moon CONTENTS Michael Phillips 80 Canterbury Revisited: The Blake-Cromek Controversy by Aileen Ward CONTRIBUTORS 93 The Shifting Characterization of Tharmas and Enion in Pages 3-7 of Blake's Vala or The FourZoas G. E. BENTLEY, JR., University of Toronto, will be at by John B. Pierce the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India, through November 1988, and at the National Li• brary of Australia, Canberra, from January-April 1989. Blake Books Supplement is forthcoming. MARTIN BUTLIN is Keeper of the Historic British Col• lection at the Tate Gallery in London and author of The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (Yale, 1981). MICHAEL PHILLIPS teaches English literature at Edinburgh University. A monograph on the creation in J rrfHRurtfr** fW^F *rWr i*# manuscript and "Illuminated Printing" of the Songs of Innocence and Songs ofExperience is to be published in 1989 by the College de France. JOHN B. PIERCE, Assistant Professor in English at the University of Toronto, is currently at work on the manu• script of The Four Zoas. AILEEN WARD, Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Hu• manities at New York University, is the author of John Keats: The Making of a Pact (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986) and The Unfurling of Entity: Metaphor in Poetic Theory (Garland, 1987). ©1988 Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley WINTER 1988/89 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY EDITORS INFORMATION Editors: Morris Eaves, University of Rochester, and Managing Editor: Patricia Neill. Morton D. Paley, University of California, Berkeley. Blake / An Illustrated Quarterly is published under the Bibliographer: Detlef W. Dorrbecker, Universitat Trier, sponsorship of the Department of English, University of West Germany. Rochester. Review Editor: Nelson Hilton, University of Georgia, Subscriptions are $18 for institutions, $15 for individu­ Athens. als. All subscriptions are by the volume (1 year, 4 issues) and begin with the summer issue. Subscription pay­ Associate Editor for Great Britain: David Worrall, St. ments received after the summer issue will be applied to Mary's College. the 4 issues of the current volume. Foreign addresses Production Office: Morris Eaves, Department of En­ (except Canada and Mexico) require a $3 per volume glish, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, postal surcharge for surface mail, a $10 per volume Telephone 716/275­3820. surcharge for air mail delivery. U.S. currency or interna­ Morton D. Paley, Department of English, University of tional money order necessary. Make checks payable to California, Berkeley, CA 94720. Blake I An Illustrated Quarterly. Address all subscrip­ Detlef W. Dorrbecker, Universitat Trier, FB III Kunst­ tion orders and related communications to Patricia geschichte, Postfach 3825, 5500 Trier, West Germany. Neill, Blake, Department of English, University of Nelson Hilton, Department of English, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA. Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. Many back issues are available at a reduced price. Ad­ David Worrall, St. Mary's College, Strawberry Hill, dress Patricia Neill for a list of issues and prices. Waldegrave Road, Twickenham TWl 4SX, England. Manuscripts are welcome. Send two copies, typed and documented according to the forms suggested in the MLA Style Sheet, 2nd ed., to either of the editors: Morris Eaves, Dept. of English, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627; Morton D. Paley, Dept. of En­ glish, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720. International Standard Serial Number: 0006­45 3x. Blake IAn Illustrated Quarterly is indexed in the 3VX ISO Modern Language Association's International Bibliog­ raphy, the Modern Humanities Research Association's TUJ)SJKKJKM(5 ef Annual Bibliography of English Language and Litera­ ture, English Language Notes' annual Romantic Bib­ liography, American Humanities Index, the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, and Current Contents. -V Ir.v.-lVlC.I J }ji^l.<vJ J- A l^.-iiup nwi-*jt«4Mi - . 'in. WVWI.W IS. i "■■ *fv*i*m-C " PAGE 80 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY WINTER 1988/89 Canterbury Revisited: The Blake-Cromek Controversy BYAILEEN WARD If crooked roads without improvement are the ways of on Blake's own testimony, supported by a modicum of genius, the road Blake took to Canterbury was a veritable corroboratory evidence —that is, on Blake's recollections Pilgrim's Progress. For of all his works of art, the one that during his sixties which he passed on to the disciples who cost him the most grief and stirred up the greatest con• became Gilchrist's informants some three decades later. troversy during his lifetime was the large "fresco" paint• A fresh look at the evidence in the dispute over The ing of Sir Jeffery Chaucer and the Nine and Twenty Canterbury Pilgrims may not merely suggest a different Pilgrims on their Journey to Canterbury. This painting, interpretation of a central episode in Blake's life but also dated 1808, was the major work in Blake's 1809 Exhi• serve as example of the need for a critical re-examination bition and the first to be attacked in Robert Hunt's of his life as a whole. In the process the critic must scruti• scathing review in The Examiner. It also caused a bitter nize the minutest particulars of fact, weigh conflicting falling-out between Blake and his old friend Thomas testimony, and keep constantly in mind the ambiguity Stothard, who in May 1807 had exhibited an immensely of interpretation and the fallibility of memory. The successful oil painting of the same subject, similar in size remembrance of things past is a voyage over shifting and basic design to Blake's own. Blake's engraving from sands. his fresco, entitled Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, was Gilchrist based his account largely on John Lin- published in October 1810; the engraving of Stothard's nell's notes on Smith's memoir, which he wrote in 1855 painting was delayed, through a series of mishaps, till drawing on conversations with Blake over thirty years 1817. Stothard protested that Blake had "commenced earlier. According to Linnell, Cromek actually commis• his picture in rivalry" to Stothard's own, since, he re• sioned Blake to finish the Canterbury fresco for twenty ported, Blake had seen and admired his Procession of guineas with the promise that he would also receive the Chaucers Pilgrims to Canterbury while it was still in much more lucrative fee for engraving it-the identical progress. Blake on his side claimed that he had sketched arrangement he had made with Blake for his designs for the design for his Pilgrims even earlier and had shown Blair's Grave two or three months earlier. But, Linnell the drawing to Robert Cromek, his erstwhile agent, who, states, Cromek secretly negotiated with William Brom• while appearing to be delighted with it, had taken the ley to engrave Blake's design; meanwhile Blake became idea to Stothard and engaged him to paint it instead. suspicious and refused to give Cromek his drawing when Such are the outlines of the controversy as described requested; whereupon Cromek took the idea and the by Blake's earliest biographers, quite evenhandedly by commission to Stothard without informing either paint• John Thomas Smith in 1828 and, with obvious bias er of the other's involvement. Gilchrist like Linnell clears against Blake, by Allan Cunningham in 1830.1 But since Stothard of complicity in Cromek's scheme; he also the appearance of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William quotes an insulting letter that Cromek wrote to Blake in Blake in 1863, the controversy has been regarded as May 1807 which contains the only known reference to settled: virtually every twentieth-century biographer or the dispute by either of the two principals. The letter critic who has discussed the matter has, despite minor consists mainly of Cromek's abusive response to Blake's uncertainties over points of fact, followed Gilchrist in "furious rage" at the success of Stothard's Procession taking sides with Blake and accusing Cromek of treach• (then being exhibited in London) by challenging Blake ery.2 Yet it must be borne in mind that the story of "to send [him] a better": whereupon, Gilchrist adds, Blake's life as hitherto received is based in very large part "the indignant painter acted in executing, hereafter, his This article is an expanded version of a paper delivered in the symposium "William Blake: His Art and Times." The Yale Center for British Art, 11 September 1982. WINTER 1988/89 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY PAGE 81 The coronation procession of Edward VI from the Tower to Westminster by an unknown sixteenth-century painter, engraved by James Basi re in 1787. Photo courtesy of The Society of Antiquaries of London. projected 'fresco' from The Canterbury Pilgrims, and theft of his idea; rather it suggests that Blake's rage was 3 exhibiting and engraving it." directed against the extraordinary success of Stothard's Gilchrist's suggestion, that Blake painted, exhibit• painting and what he felt was Stothard's contemptible ed, and engraved his Pilgrims only after seeing Stot- treatment of the subject. The earliest accounts of the hard's painting and in response to Cromek's challenge in affair are vague about dates and mutually contradictory 1807, is curiously inconsistent with his earlier statement on certain points, and it is hardly surprising that recent (following Linnell) that Cromek first saw a sketch of the discussions also give a confused picture of the entire con• Pilgrims by Blake and then, after negotiations between troversy.6 A survey of the relationship between Blake and them broke down, went to Stothard and "suggested the Cromek from the beginning may help to clarify matters.
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