BLAKE’S POETICAL SKETCHES (1783)

Turnbull Library Record, Volume I, Issue 3, 1 March 1968, Page 4

BLAKE’S POETICAL SKETCHES (1783)

D. F. McKenzie

The Alexander Turnbull copy of Blake’s Poetical Sketches (1783) has long been valued as the unique authority for two of Blake’s poems, ‘Song Ist by a Shepherd’ and ‘Song 3d by an Old Shepherd’, as well as for a third poem, ‘Song 2d by a Young Shepherd’, which is a variant version of Blake’s ‘Laughing Song’. 1 The interest of the volume however is not exhausted by these three poems written in an unknown hand on its fly-leaves. Like other copies of the Poetical Sketches it contains numerous alterations to the printed text, and it has gradually been accepted that some of these changes were made by Blake himself. But again the Turnbull copy would appear to be the unique authority for at least three and possibly five emendations none of which has yet been admitted to the established text.

The Poetical Sketches was Blake’s first book of poems and the only one printed in the conventional way. The cost was met jointly by John Flaxman and the Reverend Mr Anthony Stephen Matthews, although the expenses cannot have been very great if, as Sir Geoffrey Keynes thinks, only fifty or so copies were printed. 2 The advertisement speaks of Blake as having been ‘deprived of the leisure requisite to such a revisal of these sheets, as might have rendered them less unfit to meet the public eye’ and confesses the ‘irregularities and defects to be found in almost every page’. These prefatory remarks by his two friends were a little tactless, but Blake did do his best to remove some of the blemishes while the sheets were still in his possession, for apparently the book was not published in the ordinary way, but distributed privately by the author, either in sheets or simply stabbed. Of the 22 copies of the Poetical Sketches known to be extant, 7 contain inked corrections affecting n substantive readings. 3 They may be listed as follows:

1. and in [uncorr: in] his hand P.S. p. 4 2. while [uncorr: whilst] the sun rests p. 5 3. her pale cheek [uncorr: cheeks] p. 7 4. behold [uncorr: I am] thy husband’s head p. 9 5. love: I hear his [uncorr: her] tongue p. 12 6. my griefs infold [uncorr: unfold] p. 15 7. the rustling birds [uncorr: beds] p. 15 8. none other [uncorr: others] curse p. 24 9. of lengthen’d Eares [uncorr: cares] p. 24 10. Reason, in his [uncorr: her] Frail bark p. 44 11. leave him [uncorr: them] all forlorn p. 46 As the accompanying facsimiles show, six of these readings (numbers 1,3, 4,6, 7 and 9) may also be found in the Turnbull copy and

they thereby help confirm the authenticity of the other corrections so far noted. Far more important however, if they are Blake’s, are the five additional corrections which appear uniquely in the Turnbull copy. These are:

1. The graves gave [uncorr: give] up their dead ■ i . p. 7 2. the jolly swain laughs still [uncorr: his fill] p. 13 3. Curse my ill [uncorr: black] stars p. 17 4. wash thou my [uncorr: And wash my] earthy mind p. 24 5. when thou yield’st [uncorr: yields] to night ' p. 24

But are these Blake’s? The argument may be built up by simple steps the marginal correction ‘gave’ matches the marginal correction ‘eares’, thought to be Blake’s; the hand which wrote ‘ill’ is not plainly, different from that which wrote ‘birds’, definitely Blake’s; and the marginal correction ‘still’ has much in common with the form of ‘ill’. One can also find similar forms in other examples of Blake’s handwriting or printing. Less obviously consistent with the other corrections are the two remaining ones ‘wash thou’ and ‘yield’st’, although the form of the ‘t’ makes it clear that they are themselves in the same hand. For the moment we may regard the first three corrections as probably Blake’s and the other two as only doubtfully hiszongi f sxigtm gnibeoi zirh 3cdi

Further evidence may be sought in the inks used and the nature of the changes made. The corrections on pages 4, 9 and 15 are in one ink (i.e. it is the same ink in these three cases, is black rather than brown, and the letters written in it are of a consistent density); the corrections on pages 7, 17 and 24 are in a second ink (i.e. it seems to be the same ink in these three cases, is brown now rather than black, and the letters written in it are of varying density). I cannot be sure about the correction on page 13: that which deletes ‘his’, adds ‘s’ and thereby implicitly converts the original ‘fi’ ligature into ‘sti’, may be in the first ink, but the marginal correction ‘still’ is in the second.

It would seem therefore that the corrections were made in at least two distinct stages, and the nature of the corrections lends some weight to the evidence of the inks. Those made in black ink form the first group and many of them are alike in seeking to preserve the typographic form of print. They are: ‘in to ‘in’ on p. 4, ‘I am’ to ‘behold’ on p. 9, possibly ‘his fill’ to ‘still’ on p. 13, ‘unfold’ to ‘infold’ on p. 15, and ‘beds’ to ‘birds’ on p. 15. The erasure of the final ‘s’ of‘cheeks’ on p. 7 may perhaps be grouped here, and it is also possible that the single inked curve converting ‘cares’ into ‘Eares’ on p. 24 represents a further minimal and ‘typographic’ correction made at this first stage. All but one of these examples, correcting the worst errors, are to be found in other copies of the Poetical Sketches.

The second stage corrections and amplifications, made in brown ink, would therefore seem to have been the following: ‘give’ to ‘gave’ on p. 7, the full word ‘still’ on p. 13, ‘black’ to ‘ill’ on p. 17, ‘And wash my’ to ‘wash thou my’ on p. 24, ‘yields to ‘yield’st’ on p. 24, and the full word ‘eares’ also on p. 24. All the new readings here, together with ‘still’ on p. 13, are peculiar to the Turnbull copy. The argument might now be put more simply. If these latter corrections do form a distinct group made at the same time (none simulates print, all are in brown ink), and if some of them are Blake’s, then it might be thought likely that they all are. Caution however demands one further comment. Whereas the full words ‘gave’, ‘still’, ‘ill’ and ‘eares’ can be fairly safely attributed to Blake on palaeographical grounds, the other two corrections are palaeographically distinct and may actually represent a third stage of correction. The evidence for such a view is not conclusive but it is highly suggestive. The Turnbull copy contains numerous pencil marks, including many alternate readings, which all seem to be quite late and unauthoritative. In the accompanying facsimile of the emendations, which have had to be reproduced by line-block, these pencil marks have not shown up. In the original, for example, the word ‘rustling’ is underlined in pencil and the words ‘Whistling nests’ written alongside. There is a faint chance that this reading might, ignorantly, have preceded Blake’s emendation of ‘beds’ to ‘birds’; in fact it is a simple-minded literal reduction of the poetic force of‘rustling’ (which also implies birds waking in their nests, and hence ‘beds’, the initial error). But more important are the words ‘And wash’. The facsimile shows the inked corrections, including an inked caret sign. What it does not show is a line in pencil beneath the words ‘And wash’ and a pencilled caret sign given to mark an insertion. It is possible of course that the pencil marks were quite idle duplications of a correction already made in ink; but the most reasonable explanation is that they preceded the inked correction. If this is so then the inked correction of ‘And wash’ to ‘wash out’, and the associated reading ‘yield’st’, must have been very late indeed and should be regarded with suspicion. 4

The Turnbull copy of the Poetical Sketches passed originally from Blake to Mrs Flaxman and was given by her to an unknown friend who inscribed the title page ‘presented from Mrs Flaxman May 15, 1784’. The book must have been still unbound at that stage although the sheets of this copy had been folded —in one case misfolded and stabbed. The collation runs: 8°: A 2 B-I 4 K 4 ((—4,K 4, blank?); [s2 signed]; 37 leaves, pp. [4] [l] 2-70. On page 8 were written the words ‘page 9 overleaf’, on page 10 the words ‘page 11 two leaves back’, on page 12 the words, ‘page 13 two leaves forward’. These notes, originally in ink, appear to be in the same hand as the title-page inscription

but they have since been erased. The notes make sense only if the original half-sheet C (which was imposed correctly) had been misfolded to give the page sequence n, 12, 9, 10, 15, 16, 13, 14. Presumably the error was corrected when the volume was rebound in its present form. As the fly-leaves were almost certainly added during binding, the manuscript poems on these leaves must have been later than binding and therefore quite a bit later than the gift of the volume in its unbound, but stabbed, state by Mrs Flaxman in May 1784. 5 (The leaves 8i,2; Ci,2; Di,2; Ei,2; Fi,2; Gi,2 do not show stab holes, although they are probably just concealed in the binding; the remainder do.) The origin of the manuscript poems, and the identity of the person who wrote them on the fly-leaves of the volume, remains a problem, for nothing certain is known about the ownership of the book before 1834. The book must have been bound, in contemporary red morocco with yellow edges, some time before 1807 for at the top of the recto of the second fly-leaf appears the note ‘Reed’s Sale 1807’. It may have been bought then by Richard Heber, the great book collector, for a note on the verso of the first fly-leaf reads ‘ex Bibliotheca Heberiana, fourth portion sold by Evans 9. Dec 1834’. The next owner is indicated by a book-plate inside the cover, which bears a shield inscribed ‘J.H.A.’. Sir Geoffrey Keynes suggests that these initials may stand for J. H. Anderdon. In 1868 R. H. Shepherd saw the volume, copied from it the manuscript poems ‘Song Ist by a Shepherd’ and ‘Song 3d by an Old Shepherd’, and printed them in his second edition of Songs of Innocence and Experience published by B. M. Pickering the same year. The volume reappeared from an anonymous source at Sotheby’s sale of 22 March 1910; it was bought by Francis Edwards for jfs2 and subsequently sold

to Alexander Turnbull.

Eleven inked emendations in the Turnbull copy of Blake’s Poetical Sketches,

r; : : REFERENCES 1 Sir Geoffrey Keynes first described the volume in his note ‘William Blake’s “Laugh- ' ing Song”: a New Version’, Notes and Queries, 24 Sep. 1910, pp. 241-2. 2 Blake Studies (1949), pp. 25-6. The total cost for such an edition would have been less than £ 6, but there is no firm evidence of the edition size. 3 They are listed in Blake Studies, pp. 29-33. 4 The long stroke of the Y is characteristic of the hand that wrote the poems on the fly-leaves. 5 Sir Geoffrey Keynes remarked, however, in his note of 1910 that the volume ‘presumably had the M.S. Songs already written on the fly-leaves’ at this time. The paper of the fly-leaves is quite distinct from that of the volume itself and there is no sign of stab holes. I therefore assume that the fly-leaves were added during binding and the songs written in some time between the date of binding and the Reed sale of 1807.

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