ENGRAVED DESIGNS OF WILLIAM BLAKE

dictating vision and song to Job's children. Vines curl up from the
ground and enclose the design on either side. The steps of the throne
are ornamented with a design of Gothic arches,

8|x 12I in.

See reproduction, Plate 38.

This is the only lithograph made by Blake. See above, page 21.

WOOD-ENGRAVINGS

[137-153]. Seventeen wood-engravings made by Blake in illustration of
Ambrose Philips' imitation of Virgil’s First Eclogue. Robert John
Thornton was Linnell’s family doctor. In 1812 he published a School
Virgil, containing the Eclogues in Latin with English imitations in
verse by Philips, Shenstone, Pope and others. In 1821 a new edition
(the third) was issued; and, probably through Linnell, Blake was
commissioned in 1820 to illustrate the first Pastoral, and to engrave
some portraits of classical personages after ancient coins and busts.
He made twenty-one drawings in Indian ink, three of which were
engraved by other hands. He also drew another subject on the wood
which was not engraved at all. No drawing for the frontispiece
survives, but the twenty were sold at the Linnell sale in 1918 and
fetched 108 guineas. The three subjects not engraved by Blake
illustrate comparisons in Colinet’s last speech; birds flying over
corn ; ships on the ocean ; and a winding river. In these the character
of Blake’s vigorous conceptions is quite destroyed. The professional
engravers would have persuaded Dr. Thornton to reject Blake's work
altogether and let them re-engrave the others also ; but Lawrence,
James Ward, and other artists intervened. As it was, the blocks were
brutally cut down to fit the book, and villainously presented, four on
a small page. Comparison of the eight proofs, here reproduced,
with the prints as cut down shows how much we have lost.

The whole set were reproduced in Little Engravings, No. II, with
introduction by L. Binyon (Unicorn Press, 1902). A few proofs
from the unmutilated blocks exist, but of the first eight subjects only.
A set was presented to the Print Room by Mr. Herbert Linnell in
1919. Proofs of the first four subjects are in Mr. Rinder’s collection;
of the second four in the Fitswilliam Museum. The quotations here
given as titles are from Philips’ Pastoral.

80