BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY WINTER 1987- 88 CONTRIBUTORS MARK ABLEY is a journalist in Montreal and the edi­ tor of The Parting Light: Selected Writings of Samuel Palmer (1985). STEPHEN C. BEHRENDT, Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, is the author of The Moment of Explosion.' Blake and the Illustration ofMt'lton (1983). He has recently completed a study of Shelley and his AN ILLUSTRATED UARTERLY audiences. His poetry is widely published. VOLUME 21 NUMBER 3 WINTER 1987-88 G. E. BENTLEY,jR., University of Toronto, is publish­ ing Blake Records Supplement (Oxford Universlty Press, perhaps 1987), as well as works on Richard and James CONTENTS Edwards, Thomas Macklin, and George Cumberland. 85 E11rope 6: Plundering the Treasury MARK BRACHER, Assistant Professor of English and by Stephen oJ. Behrendt Associate Director of the Center for Literature and Psy­ choanalysis at Kent State University, is the author of MINUTE PARTICULARS Being Form 'd' Thinking through Blake s Milton (1985) and coeditor of Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument ofMethod (1987). He is writing a psychoanalytic study 95 Blake's comme-bined Cherubim: A Note on of Blake's early prophecies. Milton, Plate 32 by Leslie Brisman LESLm BRISMAN is Professor of English at Yale Uni­ 99 Blake's 'I he Tyger" and Edward Young's Book versity. His next book is The Voice ofJacob: A Midrash of Job on Genesis. by Robert F. Gleckner 102 A Swedenborgian Visionary and The Marriage of ROBERT F. GLECKNER, Professor of English and Di­ Heaven and Hell rector of Graduate Studies in nglish at Duke Univer­ by Mi hael S riv n r sity, is author of The Piper and the Bard, Blake s Prelude: 104 New Blake Documents: Job, Oedipus, and the Poetical Sketches, and Blake and Spenser. He is current­ Songs ofInnocence and of Experience ly working on a monograph study of The Mam'age of by . Bentley, Jr. and Mark Abley Heaven and Hell. DAN MILLER teaches literature and literary theory at REVIEWS North Carolina State University and is coedi or (with Mark Bracher and Donald Ault) of Critical Paths: Blake 108 Tc ten e Allan Hoagwood, Prophecy and the and the ArgumentofMethod(forthcoming, Duke Uni­ Pht'losophy of Mind: Traditions of Blak.e and versity Press). Shelley, r view d by Mark Brach r 114 Rob rt N. ssi k, The Work.s ofWilliam Blake in MICHAEL SCRIVENER, Associate Professor of English the Huntington Collections: A Complete Cata­ at Wayne State University, is the author of Radical logue, reviewed by . Bentley, Jr. Shelley (1982) and various articles and reviews on the 116 N Ison ilton and homas A. Vogler, eds. Un ­ English Romantics. He is presently researching the nam 'd Forms: Blake and Textuality, reviewed by poetry and literary assumptions of English radicalism Dan Mill r from the 1790s tQ the (:hattist period. ©1987 Morris Eav sand MorLOn D. P ley WINTER 1987- 88 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Subscriptions are $18 for institutions, $15 for individ­ EDITORS uals. All subscriptions are by the volume (1 year, 4 issues) and begin with the summer issue. Subscription pay­ ments received after the summer issue will be applied to Editors: Morris Eaves, University of Rochester, and the 4 issues of the current volume. Foreign addresses Morton D. Paley, University of California, Berkeley. (except Canada and Mexico) require a $3 per volume Bibliographer: Detlef W. Dorrbecker, Universitat Trier, postal surcharge for surface mail, a $10 per volume West Germany. surcharge for air mail delivery. U.S. currency or interna­ tional money order necessary. 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Dorrbecker, Universitat Trier, FB III Kunst­ Morris Eaves, Dept. of English, University of Roches­ geschichte, Postfach 3825, 5500 Trier, West Germany. ter, Rochester, NY 14627; Morton D. Paley, Dept. of Nelson Hilton, Department of English, University of English, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720. Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. David Worrall, St. Mary's College, Strawberry Hill, International Standard Serial Number: 0006-453x. Waldegrave Road, Twickenham TWl 4SX, England. Blake / An Illustrated Quarterly is indexed in the Modern Language Association's International Bibliog­ raphy, the Modern Humanities Research Association's INFORMATION Annual Bibliography of English Language and Litera­ ture, English Language Notes' annual Romantic Bib­ liography, American Humanities Index, the Arts and Managing Editor: Patricia Neill. Humanities Citation Index, and Current Contents. Blake I An Illustrated Quarterly is published under the sponsorship of the Department of English, University of Rochester. PAG;' 84 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY WINTER 1987-88 1. William BJak . Etlropc, plate 6. Lessin J. Ros nwald Colle rion, Library of Congress, Washington. .c. WINTER 1987-88 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY PAGE 85 Europe 6: Plundering the Treasury STEPHEN C. BEHRENDT In The Illuminated Blake, David V. Erdman suggests words are being inscribed) or "Granary" (19 January that plate 6 of Europe: A Prophecy (illus. 1) presents a 1803). The most immediately relevant occurrence (and case of incipient cannibalism, citing as evidence the one of the earliest) of the Treasury facade is in Monstrous gloss supplied by Blake's friend George Cumberland Craws, at a New Coalition Feast (illus. 2), published 29 which labels the picture "Famine" and includes the May 1787 and extant as both monochrome etching and notation, "Preparing to dress the Child," along with a hand-colored aquatint. The print takes as its point of de­ quotation from Dryden: " ... to prolong our breath We parture the recent exhibition in london of two women greedily devour our certain Death." Erdman observes and a man whose remarkable greatly distended necks that the picture demonstrates not only that the camp had undoubtedly resulted from goiter affliction. 5 Gill­ followers of War are Famine, Pestilence, and Fire, but ray appropriated this sensational topical image for his also that "it is the rich and powerful who devour the picture of Queen Charlotte, the Prince of Wales, and children, the young who die of plague, women and chil­ George III (whom Gillray dressed as a woman, to repli­ dren who perish in flames. "1 Already in 1784 Blake had cate the sexes of the unfortunate trio exhibited in lon­ assembled these apocalyptic elements in his Royal Acad­ don) devouring golden porridge from a great bowl bear­ emy picture of War unchained by an Angel, Fire, Pesti­ ing the inscription 'John Bull's Blood" - the national lence, and Famine following; by 1794 he had begun a wealth - in a variation of one of Gillray's favorite related series of pictures that would culminate in the themes: the exorbitant pu blic expense of maintaining watercolors of Pestilence, Fire, War, and Famine - the the royal family. The Prince of Wales, his own nearly latter, explicitly representing cannibalism - which he empty craw symbolic of his perennial want of ready completed for Thomas Butts c. 1805. 2 That Blake had al­ money, glances enviously at his greedy mother. In his left ready begun to associate cannibalism with famine by the hand he holds a spoon inscribed "£10000 pr An." and in time of Europe 6, however, is apparent from the rela­ his right another inscribed "£60000 pr An.," these be­ tionship of Blake's design to several images from the ing the sums allotted him by Parliament and the king. popular and widely-circulated work ofJames Gill ray. Visible within the arch in Monstrous Craws and That Blake was familiar with Gillray's work is evi­ most of the other prints in which the Treasury appears dent from numerous connections between Gillray's are its spike-topped gates: here the spikes surmount a political prints and Blake's visual works from the early horizontal line that passes behind the king's right hand. 1790s. 3 Only a year Blake's senior, Gillray had entered The distinctive wall, rounded arch, and gate spikes all the Royal Academy in 1778, the year before Blake, and recur in Europe 6, the horizontal line (in nearly the had become an acquaintance and correspondent of same position where Gillray locates it) split to flank the Fuseli in the following years. Asserting flatly that Blake hearth-grate, the spikes modified to wavy verticals at the "must have been acquainted with Gillray, " David Bind­ kettle's right and crosshatched lines at its left. Even the man observes that despite their later political differences wavy lines indicating the wall's texture recur in Europe t~e two artists "share a sense of the unremitting corrup­ 6, as they do in other plates in Europe and America. tion of the world. "4 Precisely this sense of unremitting Gillray often ironicaJIy juxtaposed the notorious corruption links Europe 6 with Gillray's work. Signi­ public extravagance of the royal children - particularly ficantly, though, the background rather than the figures the Prince of Wales, whose debts were both a public themselves establishes the tie. scandal and a public burden- with the purportedly The dark, arching stonework of the hearth in modest private lifestyle of the king and queen, as in his Bla~e's picture is unmistakably that of the Treasury, famous print of royal belt-tightening, Anti-Saccharites, whIch appears frequently in Gillray's prints, occasion­ or John Bull and his Famtly leaving offthe use ofSugar ally bearing not the usual inscription, "Treasury" (which (published 27 March 1792; illus.