BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND BULLETIN

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1 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND BULLETIN Volume Thirteen, Number Three (Issued November 1990) Third Quarter, 1989 BLAKE'S SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS AND THE ENGRAVER'S CRAFT NOT LONG AFTER HE COMPLETED HIS APPRENTICESHIP as an engraver in 1779, William Blake made a design! (see Plate 1) illustrating Revelation i, 12-17: I saw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: 2 and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. The design represents the Seven Golden Candlesticks with Christ standing before them. He wears a long robe, but the most striking feature is the flaming sword which emerges from His mouth, the handle just touching His lips. Blake made an engraving of the plate, signed 'Blake d & sc' and inscribed 'Published as the Act Directs Fe/Y by Fielding', which was issued with fascicule 92 of The Royal Universal Family Bible, edited by John Herries (London: Vol.I, Fielding & Walker, 1780[-81]; Vol.II, Fielding, 1781[-82]) - see Plate 2. The book was advertised in a prospectus 3 as having '0 NE HUNDRED of the most elegant COPPER-PLATES that were everyet given in the Sacred Scriptures... The Engraving of which has cost the Publisher upwards of Seven Hundred Pounds' or about 7 each. Only ten of the hundred plates are signed by a designer. It has recently been discovered that there was another edition of The Royal Universal Family Bible, or at least of its New Testament. In the only known copy of this edition, in the State Library of South Australia, the Old Testament is the original edition, but the conclusion of the New Testament title-page has been altered from 'P A TER NOSTER-ROW. I MDCCLXXXI [1781], to 'PATERNOSTER ROW. I M.DCC.LXXXV [1785],. The plates in the New Testament, including their imprint dates, seem to be unchanged, but in Blake's two engravings, for Matthew iii. 13 and Revelation i , his name has worn off (see Plate 3 here).

2 82 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks It was of course a great honour to be commissioned to design a plate for a book, and most artists who received such commissions had already been through a long training as painters in oil. Many of them were members of the Royal Academy, where Blake had been accepted as a student as recently as October 1779, but few engravers received such commissions, and very few of them received commissions like this so very early in their careers. It is extraordinary that Blake should have been given a commission for an original design from a run-of-the-mill bookseller like Fielding so soon after he had embarked upon the sea ofbusiness. 4 Blake's designs are often apocalyptic, so we should not be surprised ifhe illustrated this particular scene,s and he made some splendid watercolours of The Great Red Dragon and The Woman Clothed with the Sun from Revelation. But these apocalyptic scenes date from much later in his life, after 1790 generally, and this particular design of The Seven Golden Candlesticks does not seem characteristic of them, though it is not unlike the somewhat stiff and conventional style Blake used in the 1780s. The oddity of Blake's receiving a design-commission from a commercial bookseller so early in his career and the uncharacteristic nature of the design with his name on it should make us question his part in it. In fact, the design is a traditional one, and Blake has scarcely altered the tradition in his versions. This literalistic illustration of Revelation showing Christ with a sword coming from his mouth had been in print for over four hundred years by the time Blake copied it and had been attributed to a number of designers, most of whom probably made no more contribution to the tradition than Blake did. It appeared in scores of works related to the Bible published both in Britain and on the Continent, and its origin is almost certainly both Continental and Roman Catholic. Blake is not the designer ofthis plate - and probably he never pretended to be. His drawing (Plate 1) focuses upon the figures of Christ and St John, with a couple of candlesticks only roughly indicated, and his engraving (Plates 2-3) reverses the scene, changes the shape of the candlesticks and adds five more, and clarifies both the book in Hebrew in front of St John and the clouds round Christ. The crucial and dramatic figure of Christ with his sword, candlesticks, and cloud is very much in the traditional form (see Plate 4 fl); it is only the attitude of St. John which varies much in traditional representations of the scene, dependent partly upon the shape of the space available. The Vision of St John depicting Christ with the Seven Golden Candlesticks has been noticed thus far in two works of the fifteenth century, nineteen works of the sixteenth century, twelve of the seventeenth century, twenty-four of the eighteenth century, and five of Most of these plates of course do not identify the inventor of the design, but it is attributed to ALBRECHT DURER in his Apocalypse (1498) - see Plate 4; to Lucas Cranach the Elder in Das Newe Testament Deutzsch (September 1522) - see Plate 5; to H.S. BEHAM in Biblicae Historia, artificissime Depictae: Biblische Historien Figurlich forgebildet H S B[ehamJ (Francoforti, 1537) - see Plate 6; to B. LENS in le Sieur De Royaumont, The History of the Old and New Testament, Third Impression, The Whole Illustrated with Two Hundred and Sixty Historical Sculptures (London: R. Blome, S. Spring, & Jo. Nicholson, 1705) - see Plate 7; to 1. de LEENZE (the name is hard to read) in P. Mortier, Histoire de la Bible (Antwerp, 1708?) - see Plate 8; to B. PICART in The Holy Bible... or A Family Bible,

3 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 83 edited by Samuel Clark (London: J. Fuller, 1760), and in The Royal Bible, edited by Leonard Howard, Second Edition (London: 1. Pottinger, 1762), and in The Universal Bible, edited by John Buyse (London, 1766) - see Plate 9; and to WILLIAM BLAKE in The Royal Universal Family Bible (1782; 1785) - see Plates 2-3. Clearly these artists did not all invent the design. Either there is a great deal of misleading attribution on these plates or we have misinterpreted the conventions of attribution. At first glance, there seems to be some duplicity in Blake's claim to have made a design the chief elements of which had a previous history of almost two hundred and fifty years. However, this harsh conclusion is almost certainly unjustified. In the first place, the inscription was probably not written by Blake at all. Highly specialized writing-engravers were usually responsible for such i nscriptions-thepoefs contemporary, William Staden Blake of 'Change Alley', was known chiefly as a writingengraver. 6 Such artisans wished to be known primarily as calligraphers, making elegant title-pages and trade cards, but much of their employment doubtless came from adding the inscriptions to designs engraved by other men. The design-engraver might scratch his name faintly on the copper for a proof - for example, 'Etch'd by Wilr Blake 1788'7 - but this would later be erased by the writing-engraver, who would then add, as directed by the bookseller, the names of the designer and engraver ('Engraved by wn Blake'), the title of the design, and the publisher's imprint - and the writing-engraver's name would not appear at all. 8 And of course the bookseller and the writing-engraver might be careless in recording the names ofthe artist and engraver - many such names are misspelled, and in Mora's Meditaciones Poeticas (1826) William Blake's designs are attributed to 'Guillermo Black'. In most cases, probably neither the designer nor the engraver saw the final inscription on the plate until it had been published. In the second place, there was some ambiguity about the terms 'd & sc', which stand for 'delineavit et sculpsit', or 'drew and engraved' (see Appendix below). It could mean either an original design or a mere copy of someone else's design. The development of the design is fascinating. The earliest version of it which I have traced is in the Bible published by Quentell and Koberger in Cologne in 1479 and reprinted in Nuremberg in In this anonymous design the candlesticks make an arch over a seated regal figure, and his beard is transformed into a sword pointing at the figure with a halo kneeling before him; there is little of the supernatural here. 9 Durer adapted the design and enlarged and improved it enormously in his 1498 Apocalypse (which quotes from it), but he followed its basic structure (Plate 4). The chief differences are that the seated man is identified as divine by rays from his head and by flame-eyebrows, he holds an open book in his left hand, his extended right hand has six stars round it and a seventh on the palm, and a sword, with the hilt just touching his lips, sways like a pendulum to the right; the seven candlesticks make a U beside and below him, and the kneeling figure, now on our left, has no halo. 10 And in the first edition of Luther's translation of the New Testament (September 1522), the design by Lucas Cranach is very closely related to Durer's, but God is standing, the outlines of His head and beard are obscured by rays from it, and St John is prostrate face down before him (Plate 5). Blake's figure is standing, like that of Cranach, but St John is to

4 84 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks our right and we see his face in profile (the others showed only the back of his head), the book is now open before St John rather than in God's hand, and the candlesticks - only six of them now, not seven - are beside the deity rather than framing him.l1 The basic conception is very similar, but each has made important adaptations. Copperplate designs for commercial books in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries normally went through at least six stages: (1) The original work was invented (= inv). (2) The original work was copied on paper in the exact size intended for the book (= del), often by the design-engraver. (3) This reduced design was copied on copper by the design-engraver (= sc), and at various stages progress-proofs were pulled, often by the design-engraver, to judge the accuracy of the work and eventually to submit to his employer. (These progress proofs rarely survive today.) When the engraved design was approved but before the final lettering was added, the publisher might commission a commercial plate-printer to pull a number of 'Proofs' for sale. Such published 'Proofs' are not uncommon. 12 (4) The inscriptions - title, names of designer and engraver, publisher's imprint, and perhaps a design- or page-number, a running-head, or a dedication -were added to the copperplate by the writing-engraver, but his name was rarely recorded except on engraved title-pages. 13 (5) The plate was printed, normally on a rolling press especially designed for printing copperplates, by a commercial plate-printer,14 whose name was very rarely recorded in the book, even when the printer of the text was identified there. The quality of the presswork could have a great effect upon the finished print, and a master printer could emphasize or minimize effects by heavy inking, by wiping the plate or even by masking parts of it, as Blake did with America, plate Sometimes the prints would then be coloured by hand., Ordinarily this was a poorlypaid cottage industry,16 and only rarely was it done by a master-colourist like William Blake or John Harris.17 Such print-colouring had traditionally been reserved for prints to be sold separately, such as those published by Thomas Macklin or Blake's 'Ancient of Days' or individual prints from The Wit's Magazine (1784), but by the 1790s it was becoming more common to colour the plates in luxurious books, such as J.E. Smith and J. Abbot, The Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia (1797, 104 plates, 21) and William Blake, Jerusalem (1804[-20], 100 plates, 21), and in the first years of the nineteenth century Rudolph Ackermann had a kind of factory for hand-colouring the prints for his publications, particularly fashion-plates. And of course the colouring could not only make the print more beautiful but also Change it profoundly, as when Blake coloured out the word 'First' in the title of The First Book of Urizen (1794), or eliminated two figures each in Urizen plates 6 and 24, or added an eagle and a boy to plate 15, or gave the young man a long white beard in plate 16. (6) The plates were then collated with the letterpress text and stabbed or bound together. Of course the order in which the prints are bound and where they are placed can have an important effect upon how they are understood and enjoyed. Since letterpress text and intaglio plates were printed at different presses and usually on different paper, they had to be collated with great care, and in works with many plates

5 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 85 there was often a set of printed 'Directions to the Binder for Placing the Cuts'. In Blake's works in Illuminated Printing, the order in which he arranged the plates is. notoriously variable; the eight known copies of The First Book of Urizen were arranged in nine(!) different orders, and the fifty-odd surviving copies of Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) have thirty-five different arrangements of the plates. Sometimes suites of plates were bound and sold by the original publisher without the text for which they were originally designed, as with Boydell's Graphic Illustrations of the Dramatic Works of Shakspeare (1803?), Blair's Grave (1808), and Blake's Large and Small Books of Designs (1796?). And of course the identity of the collator and binder is rarely known. It is only in the case of Blake's works in Illuminated Printing that we can identify with confidence the inventor (Blake inv), the copyist (Blake del), the design-engraver (Blake sc), the writing-engraver (William Blake), the printer (William or sometimes Catherine Blake), the colourist (William or perhaps Catherine Blake), the collator and binder (William or perhaps Catherine Blake), 18 and the book-seller (William Blake). The craft involved in making a reduced drawing of, say, the statue of the Laocoon or Raphael's painting of 'Joshua sold to the Ishmaelites'was formidable. Though there were technical devices to make it easier, such as squared paper and even a reducing machine, great skill was required so that the result would not be mechanical and lifeless. There were artists who specialized in such work, and others who refused it. For instance, when John Flaxman agreed reluctantly in 1806 to make a design of 'Cowper & Milton united as Patrons of an Orphan' for William Hayley, he wrote: 'It will be necessary for M. Stothard to reduce it to proper scale for your volume as well as to give the proper effect for the Engraver', since 'I am unused to shadow small drawings for engravers to copy'.19 Unfortunately the term 'delineavit' was often used indiscriminately on copperplates to represent either the original designer or the artist who made the reduced copy for the engraver. Sometimes, of course, the inventor was also the copyist, particularly when the inventor engraved his own work, as Durer, Hogarth and Blake often did. But it was only in the most elaborate or meticulous prints that the individuals performing each of these roles were identified. 20 Often 'del' clearly means the inventor, as in Blake's plates for Hayley's Designs to a Series of Ballads (1802), Virgil'sPastorals (1821), and Remember Me! (1825). Indeed, the terms 'del' and 'inv' were sometimes used interchangeably, as they were in Hayley's Designs, where Blake is said to have 'del' some and 'inv' others, though his role seems to have been the same in each - and almost certainly Blake was the writing-engraver as well as the inventor, copyist, and design-engraver for these plates. It is Blake himself who is using the terms 'del' and 'inv' here to mean the same thing, 'invented'. Sometimes 'del' clearly identifies the copyist, as in Blake's copperplates representing Wedgwood pottery (Wedgwood Catalogue (1816)) and the Laocoon (Rees, Cyclopaedia (1816)). No one would think that he had carved the Laocoon or cast the pottery merely because the designs are signed 'Blake del'. And when both terms are used, as in 'Maria Flaxman inv & del' (Hayley, Triumphs of Temper (1803)), we can be quite sure

6 86 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks what is intended: Maria Flaxman made both the original designs and the reduced-size copies of them. But even when 'del' identifies the copyist, it often does not mean that he was copying the original. Blake was copying the facsimile statue of the Laocoon in the Royal Academy, not the original in Rome, and most copies offamous paintings were probably made from other copies (often engravings) rather than from the originals. The plates Blake engraved for The Protestants Family Bible ( ) signed 'Rubens del' were certainly copies from intermediary designs rather than from the originals. The difficulty with 'del' arises chiefly when we do not have independent evidence as to who made the original design. In The Protestants Family Bible, the Blake plates attributed to Rubens are in fact after Raphael, as Blake, who cared passionately about the matter, very well knew. The error must be that ofthe writing-engraver. In tl:le case of The Seven Golden Candlesticks from The Royal Universal Family Bible, the evidence is plain that the main elements of the design were invented over two centuries before Blake's birth. It is important to recognize that the design-engraver usually did not add the writing to the plate which described his role in it and that the role ascribed to him may have little authority. It is usually the only authority we have, but it is not very good. Probably there are numbers of plates engraved by William Blake of which we have no record today either because no engraver was identified on them or because some other name, such as that of his master Basire, is there in place of his. With the engraving of The Seven Golden Candlesticks, the 'Blake d' identifies him as the copyist of a long-familiar design rather than its inventor. G.E. Bentley, Jr, University of Toronto.

7 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 87 Plate 1 Blake's drawing (c.1780) of The Vision ofst John of The Seven Golden Candlesticks for Revelation i, (British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings).

8 88 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks Plate 2 Blake's engraving of The Seven Golden Candlesticks in The Royal Universal Family Bible, edited by John Herries ( ), inscribed 'REVELATIONS, I Chap.!, Ver. 12 & 13', 'Blake d & se' scratched just below the lower right side of the design within the frame, and 'Published FelY , by Fielding, Paternoster Row London' (from the collection ofgeb). It is described in the Directions to the Binder as 'The Vision of the Seven Golden Candlesticks'. Note that, according to the Prospectus, the plates were 'ornamented with curious borders by Mr. Clowes'.

9 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 89 Plate 3 Blake's engraving of The Seven Golden Candlesticks from the newly-discovered edition of the New Testament (1785) in The Royal Universal Family Bible (State Library of South Australia), in which the scratched inscription within the border below the left of the design attributing the plate to Blake has almost worn off except for the '& sc'. This copy of the print has the most spectacular off-set from the facing page which I have ever seen, presumably suffered when the print was inserted between the still-damp sheets of text.

10 90 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks Plate 4 Durer's design in his Apocalypse (1498) (Princeton University Library).

11 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 91 Plate 5 Cranach's woodcut in Luther's Das Newe Testament Deutzsch (1522) (Princeton University Library).

12 92 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 1.. T pvs. A I. Plate 6 The Seven Golden Candlesticks attributed to H.S. Beham in Biblicae Historia, artificissime Depictae: Biblische Historien Figurlich forgebildet H S B [ eham 1 (Franco forti, 1537) (British Library).

13 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 93 Plate 7 The Seven Golden Candlesticks attributed to B. Lens in le Sieur De Royaumont,The History of the Old and New Testament, Third Impression, The Whole Illustrated with Two Hundred and Sixty Historical Sculptures (London: R. Blome, S. Spring, & Jo. Nicholson, 1705) (British Library).

14 94 Bloke's Seven Golden Candlesticks Plate 8 The Seven Golden Candlesticks attributed to J. de Leenze (the name is hard to read) in P. Mortier, Histoire de la Bible (Antwerp, 1708?) (University of Chicago: BS b, used as extra-illustrations to The Holy Bible (London: J. Baskett, 1715, 1722)).

15 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 95 Plate 9 The Seven Golden Candlesticks attributed to Picart, engraved by Tringham, in The Universal Bible, edited by John Buyse (London, 1766) (University of Chicago: f BS ).

16 96 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks APPENDIX Some of the ways in which the designer of a plate could be identified are indicated in the commercial plates Blake designed or engraved: I: del. or delineavit William Enfield, The Speaker (1780 etc): Stothard del Olivier, Fencing Familiarized: J. Roberts delt ad vivum The Protestant's Family Bible: Raphael & Rubens del The Royal Universal Family Bible, edited by John Herries: Blake d & sc Kimpton, History of the Bible - plates reused in Josephus, Works (1785-6? etc): Metz & Stothard del Bonnycastle, Introduction to Mensuration: Stothard del Ladies' Pocket Book: Stothard del Novelist's Magazine, VIII-IX (1782 etc): Stothard del John Scott, Poetical Works (1782 etc): Stothard del Chaucer, Poetical Works: Stothard del Thomas Henry, Memoirs of Albert de Hailer: Dunker del Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1783 etc): Stothard del Novelist's Magazine, X-XI (1783 etc): Stothard del Joseph Ritson, A Select Collection of English Songs: Stothard del The Wit's Magazine: Samuel Collings and Stothard del Commins, An Elegy set to Music: W Blake del t & sculpt Gough, Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain: Basire del & sc Mary Wollstonecraft, Original Stories (1791 etc): Blake d. &. sc. Bellamy's Picturesque Magazine: CR. Ryley del Stuart & Revett, Antiquities of Athens: W. Pars del Catullus, Poems, tr. [John Nott]: Xavierus Della Rosa delin Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy (1799 etc): Rubens del William Hayley, Designs to A Series of Ballads (1802): Blake d & s - but note'blake inv & sc' on one and 'T. Hayley del' on another William Hayley, Life... of Wiliam Cowper: T. Lawrence and Francis Stone del; Blake d & sc 1804 Prince Hoare,Academic Correspondence: J Flaxman del 1816 Rees, Cyclopaedia (1816 etc) - Laocoon: Blake del & sc 1816 [Wedgwood Catalogue (1816? etc)]: Blake d & sc 1821 Virgil, Pastorals: Blake del. et Sculp Remember Me! (1825 etc): Blake del & sculpt 21 'del' is clearly used in the simplest sense of inventor in Hayley, Designs (1802), Virgil, Pastorals (1821), Remember Me! (1825), and Job (1826). 'del' means making the reduced design for the engraver in Hayley, Triumphs of Temper (1803), Rees (1816), and Wedgwood (1816). 'del' and 'inv' are used interchangeably in Hayley, Designs (1802) and Remember Me! (1825).

17 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 97 Il: inv. or invenit 1791 Darwin, Botanic Garden Part I: The Economy of Vegetation (1791 etc): H. Fuseli inv 1796 Burger, Leonora, tr. J.T. Stanley: Blake inv; Perry sc 1797 Young, Night Thoughts: W B inv & sc 1800 Hayley, Essay on Sculpture: T H[ayley] invenit 1800 [Hayley] Little Tom the Sailor: W Blake Inv & sc 1803 Hayley, Triumphs of Temper (1803 etc): Maria Flaxman inv & del 1805 Hayley, Ballads: Blake inv & sc 1805 Shakspeare, The Plays (1805 etc): H. Fuseli inv 1806 Malkin,A Father's Memoirs of His Child: wm Blake inv t 1812 Chaucer, The Prologue and Characters ofchaucer's Pilgrims: W Blake inv & sc 1826 Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826 etc): W Blake inv & sculp Ill: From a... [Painting, Sketch, Original Invention or Design, Medallion, Bust, Medal, Portrait, Model, Composition] 1791 David Hartley, Observations on Man: 'From a painting by Shackleton' 1793 John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and NOIfolk Island: 'From a Sketch by Governor King' 1796 George Cumberland, Thoughts on Outline (1796 etc): 'From an Original Invention by G. Cumberland' 1797 Leonard Euler, Elements of Algebra: 'From a Medallion... by Ruchotte' 1800 William Hayley, Essay on Sculpture: 'From a Bust'; 'From a Medal [by Flaxman'] 1803 William Hayley, Life... of William Cowper: 'From a Portrait... by Romney'; 'A Sketch... from the original Model by John Flaxman' 1805 Flaxman, Iliad (1805 etc): 'FROM THE COMPOSITIONS OF IOHN FLAXMAN' 1806 Robert Blair, The Grave (1808 etc): 'From Original Designs' - the prospectus says 'Designs invented... by William Blake' IV: Pinxit 1795 John Brown, Elements of Medicine: Donaldson Pinx t 1803 William Hayley, Life... of William Cowper: D Heins Pinx 1806 Prince Hoare, Inquiry into the... Present State of the Arts: Sketched from the Picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds; sr Josh a Reynolds pinxt

18 98 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks V: Designed by 1817 John Flaxman, Compositions for... Hesiod (1817 etc): Designed by John Flaxman 1826? Dante: Designed and Engraved by W. BLAKE VI: Drawn by 1819 Rees, Cyclopaedia (1819 etc): Drawn by Farey 1825? Whitaker, The Seraph: Drawn by the late W. Blake Esqr R.A. VII: ldainted by 1790 William Hogarth, Original Works: Painted by wm Hogarth 1803 William Shakspeare, Dramatic Works and Boydell's Graphic Illustrations to... Shakspeare (1803 etc): Painted by J Opie VIII: Other 1809 William Hayley, Life of... George Romney: Sketch of a Shipwreck after Romney IX: NONE (i.e., no designer identified on any Blake plate, though in many cases the original inventor is known and identified below) Henry Emlyn, A New Order in Architecture (1781 etc): Henry Emlyn Seally & Lyons, Geographical Dictionary (1784 etc) Fenning & Collyer, A New System of Geography: Stothard Lavater, Aphorisms on Man, tr. [Henry Fuseli] (1788 etc): Fuseli C.G. Salzmann, Elements of Morality, tr. [Mary Wollstonecraft] (1791 etc): David Chodowiecki James Earle, The Operation for the Stone (1793 etc) John Gay, Fables (1793 etc): W. Kent & J. Wootton J.G. Stedman, Narrative (1796 etc): J.G. Stedman AlIen, History of England: Fuse1i? Monthly Magazine AlIen, Roman History: Fuseli? John Flaxman, A Letter to the Committee for Raising the Naval ldillar: Flaxman C.G. Salzmann, Gymnastics for Youth

19 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 99 NOTES 1. Now in the British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings - see Plate 'I came not to send peace but a sword' (Matthew x, 34), quoted in Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790? -1793), plate In the John Johnson Collection of Ephemera in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (b 79). 4. The unusualness of the commission has scarcely been remarked upon, and most publications which touch on the matter at all, such as the great Bibliography of William Blake (1921) by Geoffrey Keynes and my Blake Books (1977), do little more than record the fact that Blake designed a plate for The Royal Universal Family Bible. So far as I know, only David Bindman, Robert N. Essick, and Michael Tolley have privately questioned the attribution of the design to Blake, and D.V. Erdman merely mentioned that it was not by Blake in a review of William Blake Book fllustrator, edited by R. Easson & R.N. Essick, in English Language Notes, 12 (1974): Blake represents Christ's 'feet... as if they burned in a furnace' in the design for Vala (1796?-1807?), p. 16; the image of burning feet is repeated on p.31, 1l.9-10: 'I see not Luvah as of old[;] I only see his feet Like pillars of fire'; and the image is represented in Jerusalem ( ?), plate See my Blake Records (1969), pp.58, 561 and 'Trade Cards and the Blake Connection', which will appear shortly in The Book Collector. 7. William Hogarth, Original Works (1790), plate 103. Like most bibliographical details about Blake here, this information derives from G.E. Bentley, Jr, Blake Books (1977). 8. The name of the writing-engraver was rarely recorded, except on elaborate calligraphic engraved titlepages or trade cards. As it happens, we know who engraved the words on Blake's plates for Flaxman's Hesiod (1817) because of the payments of (or c. 7s.8d. per plate) recorded in the Longman archives for 'Jeffreys writing' on 37 plates (Blake Books (1977), p.557). 9. See the reproduction in Erwin Panofsky, The Life andart of Albrecht Durer (1955), plate Ibid, plate See the reproduction in the Sotheby (New York) catalogue of 9-10 November 1989, Lot 'Proof Copy' was marked on the plates in the 688 folio copies ofblair's Grave (1808) with Blake's designs (see Robert N. Essick & Morton D. Paley, 'The Printings of Blake's Designs for Blair's Grave', Book Collector, 24 (1975): ); 'Proof was engraved on each plate in the first 215 copies of Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826) (see Blake Books (1977), p.519); and F.1. Du Roveray regularly had 12 proofs printed of each of the illustrations in his editions of Pope, Milton, Homer, Thomson, Goldsmith, Glover, and Gray in (see G.E. Bentley, Jr, 'F.1. Du Roveray, Illustrated-Book Pu blisher : III: Du Roveray's Artists and Engravers and the Engravers' Strike', Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin, 12 (1988, issued 1990): The issue can become more complicated when the copyist in stage 2 is working not from an original but from a copy, say another engraving. Further, when the engraved plate becomes worn from printing, the lines may be re-entered by a third engraver, whose name will rarely be recorded, and, when the original publisher sells the plate, his imprint will often (though by no means always) be changed by a fourth engraver to that of the new publisher. And little trace of the number of steps between the engraved copy and the original invention or between the plate and its first printing will be easily visible on the print before us. 14. The press used for printing ordinary intaglio plates exerts extreme and uniform pressure as it rolls over the copper, forcing the dampened paper into the engraved recesses of the metal. Blake owned such a press and printed on it in commercial quantities the plates for Hayley'sLife... of William Cowper (1802-3) and perhaps other works, but normally of course his plates were printed by commercial plate-printers. The press for printing from moveable type is different in structure and exerts far less pressure on the printing-surface; plates with the designs in relief (rather than recessed as in intaglio plates), like woodcuts or Blake's blocks in Illuminated Printing, can easily be printed on this press. (A lithographic press is quite different again and is scarcely relevant to Blake, who is known to have made only one lithograph.) 15. See 'The Printing of Blake'sAmenca', Studies in Romanticism, 6 (1968): According to The Diary of Joseph Farington, edited by Kenneth Garlick & Angus Maclntyre, III (1979), pp , 'J. Baron, a Young Man [near 24 years old]... is employed by Green from Manchester in colouring prints... Green gives him 15 shillings a week' but is now (27 Dec 1796) no longer 'able to employ him on acet. of the bad times for selling prints'. 17. See 'The Colouring ofblake's Illuminated Works' in WilliamBlake's Writings (1978), VoU, pp.liii-lvi, and G.E. Bentley, Jr, The Edwardses of Halifax: The Making and Selling of Beautiful Books in London and Halifax by William, John, Richard, Thomas, and speciallyjames EDWARDS, The Medicean Bookseller with Catalogues of Their Publications, forthcoming from Ohio State University Press.

20 100 Blake's Seven Golden Candlesticks 18. Blake did not 'bind' his own books; rather he sold them stabbed, or occasionally sewn, through plain paper wrappers. All surviving copies in skin, cardboard, or cloth were almost certainly bound after they left Blake's hands, frequently in the later nineteenth century. 19. Shelley M. Bennett, Tlwmas Stothard: The Mechanisms of Art Patronage in England circa 1800 (S t Louis: University of Missouri Press, 1988). 'M.' probably stands for 'MT>. 20. Similarly, today it is unusual to identify the photographer of a painting and the man who made the plate from which the photograph is printed. And it is rarest of all to find a record of who printed the plate, for often of course he had not been chosen at the time the text was composed. 21. A proof is inscribed, probably by Blake, 'w. Blake invin. & sculp'. CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE G.E. BENTLEY, JR is Professor of English at University College, University of Toronto, and was a 1988 Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia. ELAINE J. ZINKHAN is a Canadian researcher with a particular interest in nineteenth-century Australian literary culture.

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