DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31843#0043
V
THE BEAUTIFUL BOOK
The long series of relief-etchings made for Blake's own books, from the
Songs of Innocence to Jemsalem, are the most original part of Blake's
production as an artist, and, with Job, the Dante, and the Virgil woodcuts,
they are the most important of his engraved works. Also, it is by these
books that Blake takes so important a place in the history of printing and
of book-production. We realize his originality and insight into the con-
ditions required, when we remember the fashions of book-illustration
during the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century. Engravings
on copper or steel, which had no relation to the type of the printed page,
were largely superseded by wood-engraving after the success of Bewick
and his school; but again there was no study of right relations; and the
vignette continued its horrid vogue. Blake from the first went to the root
of the matter.
The conception of a book as a complete unity, in which the lettering,
the decoration, the illustrations, the proportions of the page, the choice
of paper, should all be determined and carried out by a single mind and
hand, surpassed even the conceptions of the mediaeval scribes and minia-
turists. For Blake combined not only the scribe and the illuminator, to
whose arts he added the art of the printer; but, unlike his mediseval
predecessors, he was the sole author of the text. In the history of book-
production these works are unique.
Blake's methods, it is true, did not lend themselves to the exquisite and
finished delicacy of the miniature painters ; nor could he rival their pen-
manship, though in the conditions of the age in which he lived we may
wonder that his script is as good, and so successfully combined with
decoration, as it is in the best of the books. He at first used Roman
minuscule, but in the Songs of Experience and in all the succeeding books
he adopted an Italic hand.
The etching process, however, could not possibly yield the beauty and
character in lettering which flows from the energetic and sensitive strokes
of a pen filled with ink. There was always a certain roughness in the
method of printing, though we may take more pleasure from Blake's
accidental effects than from the neat exactitudes of the professional
printer.
Uncoloured copies exist of most of the books; but evidently Blake did
23
THE BEAUTIFUL BOOK
The long series of relief-etchings made for Blake's own books, from the
Songs of Innocence to Jemsalem, are the most original part of Blake's
production as an artist, and, with Job, the Dante, and the Virgil woodcuts,
they are the most important of his engraved works. Also, it is by these
books that Blake takes so important a place in the history of printing and
of book-production. We realize his originality and insight into the con-
ditions required, when we remember the fashions of book-illustration
during the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century. Engravings
on copper or steel, which had no relation to the type of the printed page,
were largely superseded by wood-engraving after the success of Bewick
and his school; but again there was no study of right relations; and the
vignette continued its horrid vogue. Blake from the first went to the root
of the matter.
The conception of a book as a complete unity, in which the lettering,
the decoration, the illustrations, the proportions of the page, the choice
of paper, should all be determined and carried out by a single mind and
hand, surpassed even the conceptions of the mediaeval scribes and minia-
turists. For Blake combined not only the scribe and the illuminator, to
whose arts he added the art of the printer; but, unlike his mediseval
predecessors, he was the sole author of the text. In the history of book-
production these works are unique.
Blake's methods, it is true, did not lend themselves to the exquisite and
finished delicacy of the miniature painters ; nor could he rival their pen-
manship, though in the conditions of the age in which he lived we may
wonder that his script is as good, and so successfully combined with
decoration, as it is in the best of the books. He at first used Roman
minuscule, but in the Songs of Experience and in all the succeeding books
he adopted an Italic hand.
The etching process, however, could not possibly yield the beauty and
character in lettering which flows from the energetic and sensitive strokes
of a pen filled with ink. There was always a certain roughness in the
method of printing, though we may take more pleasure from Blake's
accidental effects than from the neat exactitudes of the professional
printer.
Uncoloured copies exist of most of the books; but evidently Blake did
23