Newton and “Newton”.

Throughout the 1790s, the illustrations in Blake’s prophetic books grew progressively larger, until he devised a means of making very large colour monoprints and created a pictorial cycle of twelve such prints with no text. These twelve large colour-prints are among the most problematic of Blake’s visual works. They represent the culmination of Blake's technical experiments with colour-printing. They also demonstrate the breadth of his imagination, drawing their subjects from the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton and his own invention. Although no single interpretation of these images seems convincing, nevertheless all concur that the prints allude to the fallen state of humanity.

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In 1797, the journalist and inventor, Alexander Tilloch, was trying to interest the Bank of England in his new method of printing banknotes. The selling-point of the Tilloch process was that it could combine both intersecting black lines on a white background and criss-crossing white lines on a black background. It was, it seems, a process of relief etching, and William Blake was one of eighteen engravers who signed testimonials stating that “they could not make a copy of it,” and that “they did not believe that it could be copied by any of the known arts of engraving”.  It is inconceivable that Blake could have signed a testimonial in favour of a process of relief etching—a process commonly thought unique to Blake—unless he was either aware of differences from his own process, or maybe even felt an obligation to Tilloch. I have argued that there is other evidence demonstrating that Tilloch and Blake had a friendship of many years.

I therefore suggest that Alexander Tilloch’s library (which was sold shortly after his death in 1825) was known to William Blake and provides sources for theological ideas in Blake’s work.  I shall take books in Tilloch’s library and seek to use them to explicate one of Blake’s great prints.

Certain hermeneutic rules apply to the following discussion. The quest for meaning cannot ignore the concepts of genre, decorum and intentionality and the approach I shall take is capable of extension to all twelve prints. I suggest that the images represented by the colour prints are emblematic in intent and as such all their elements are significant. Nothing is included just as decoration and any explanation of an image’s meaning should seek to include all the elements of the image. The 17th and 18th century authorities I cite would all have been found in Tilloch’s library and thus, I argue, were plausibly available to Blake.

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Let us turn specifically to Blake’s colour print “Newton”. The subject of “Newton” is very much Blake’s own. To his contemporaries Isaac Newton was “immortal” because of his discoveries concerning gravity, optics and the solar system. But Blake saw Newton’s findings and formulae as triumphs of materialism and thus errors. He chose to represent Newton in the form of Urizen, a law-making and repressive character in his private myth. His ideas of Urizen are vividly described in his poetry.

Lo, a shadow of horror is risen

In Eternity! Unknown, unprolific,

Self-clos'd, all repelling. What demon

Hath forg'd this abominable Void,

This soul-shudd'ring Vacuum? Some said

It is Urizen. But unknown, abstracted,

Brooding, secret, the dark Power hid. (E 70)

In both his poems and his paintings, Blake shows Urizen holding dividers, measuring out his domain, signalling the confidence and arrogance of Urizenic science.

What does it mean to call this print “Newton”? The advice of Dionysius the Areopagite (Bishop of Athens, writing in the late first century) that symbols should not cleave too closely to their referents found its Counter-Reformation fulfilment in the “dissimilar symbols” so characteristic of emblem books. In the 13th century Durandus had said that one may represent the Church as a harlot “because she is called out of many nations, and because she closeth not her bosom against any that return to her”.  There is another familiar example of the church-as-harlot in Donne’s sonnet “Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse”, which ends

Betray, kind husband, thy spouse to our sights,

And let mine amorous soul court thy mild dove,

Who is most true and pleasing to thee, then

When she is embraced and open to most men. (Holy Sonnet XVIII)

The relationship between some of Blake’s texts and the images that accompany them is very much that of the emblem tradition.

In Blake's colour print, Newton is shown examining a geometric diagram. This reminds us that Newton’s Principia mathematica relied very largely on geometric proofs for the laws of motion. This appears to have been his deliberately backward-looking approach. He had already devised his Method of Fluxions but was to reserve its use for the proofs of his Opticks. Newton's achievement was to have the curious effect of holding back the further development of mathematics in England for fifty years or more after his death. Advances in eighteenth-century mathematics took place largely in Continental Europe, for example by Gauss and Euler in developing non-Euclidean geometries. The Royal Society insisted on the exclusive use of Newton's fluxion notation instead of the more elegant notation for the differential and integral calculus devised by Leibnitz. Newton the supreme scientific genius overwhelmed his contemporaries and his successors. Nothing would grow in his shadow.

In a letter to his friend George Cumberland in Bristol, Blake writes

… I know too well that a great majority of Englishmen are fond of The Indefinite which they Measure by Newtons Doctrine of the Fluxions of an Atom. A Thing that does not Exist. (E 783)

William Blake critiques Isaac Newton's fluxions and, generally, materialist science, which he sees as reducing reality to infinite, lifeless subdivisions ("fluxions of an atom") rather than embracing divine, holistic vision. Blake recognises that both Newton's Method of Fluxions and Leibniz's Calculus embody profound logical contradictions. It took the genius of Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789-1857) to reformulate calculus in a rigorous form. Throughout his life the physicist and philosopher of science, Ernst Mach (1838-1916), still thought of atoms as a convenient fiction without any physical basis in nature and sought to displace the Newtonian paradigm with one based upon developmental orientations.

Blake’s image of a young man, who is naked and has cast off a linen robe or mantle, raises many still-unanswered questions. Who is this young man, measuring a geometric design on a scroll? It is clearly not intended as in any sense a depiction of the historical Isaac Newton. Possibly the image is a “Spiritual Form of Newton” analogous to Blake’s tempera-paintings of Pitt and Nelson. These, like the lost “Spiritual Form of Napoleon” form a sort of private political commentary on public events: visions of apocalyptic times. Pitt is Daniel’s angel (a “man clothed with linen”), Nelson the angel of Revelation. In both paintings a contemporary political or military figure is turned into an Angel of Destruction. Were then Pitt, Nelson and Newton three English “heroes” who became for Blake three angels of God’s wrath?

Blake is seeing in apocalyptic terms the wars of his own time, for which he viewed Pitt at least as responsible as Napoleon:

he is that Angel who, pleased to perform the Almighty’s orders, rides on the whirlwind, directing the storms of war: He is ordering the Reaper to reap the Vine of the Earth and the Plowman to plow up the Cities and Towers. (E 530).

Blake scholars disagree even in describing what they see in "Newton". The young man’s body is set in an extremely uncomfortable position, his back stretching forward as he completes his measurements. Is the figure sitting under water on a rock?

The rock, covered with multi-coloured growth, harbours two tentacled creatures at its base. Blunt, like many other commentators, insists that

the figure of Newton is shown seated at the bottom of the sea and holding the compasses, both details which relate the figure to Blake’s own repressive, law-making figure of Urizen, one to his appearance on the frontispiece to Europe, holding dividers as he measures out his domain, the other to the plate in Urizen which shows him submerged in the waters of materialism.

The oft-repeated contention that “Newton” is an underwater scene is as difficult to substantiate beyond reasonable doubt as it is hard to dismiss. The eerie blues and greens of the background, the growths on the rock, and the polyps with their tentacles streaming from them as if pushed by a current all suggest an aquatic environment.

Now “Newton” bears a date 1795 in Blake’s hand, but the version in the Tate Gallery is executed on paper watermarked 1804, and was one of four large colour prints which Blake’s patron Thomas Butts bought from the artist on 7 September 1805 for one guinea each. Could Blake have seen examples of underwater life in 1795? I can find no reference to aquariums or similar underwater displays in eighteenth-century London. The London Zoo added fish and mollusca to its collection as late as 1853.  Or is the setting a reminiscence of the rock pools of Felpham after 1800? Does the 1795 date refer to Blake’s initial conception of this emblem and the “underwater” aspect of the completed work point to a much later date of execution?

Throughout his life Newton was highly interested in theological, chronological, and alchemical studies. It is estimated that he wrote some two million words on these subjects, a total far surpassing that of his writings in mathematics and physics. Newton himself seems to have hinted that his real interest lay in the wide and comprehensive knowledge that he hoped to acquire through alchemy and theology, and that he viewed his scientific studies only as amusing diversions. Since he could never be accused of excessive humility, we may have to understand in another light a well-known remark he made toward the end of his life: “I do not know what I may appear to the world,” he said to his nephew, “but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of Truth lay all undiscovered before me.” I think that in this sea-side view Blake satirises the mock-modesty of the great scientist:

The Atoms of Democritus

And Newtons Particles of light

Are sands upon the Red sea shore. (E 478)

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Newton’s interpretation of the prophecies of Daniel and of the Apocalypse brings out even more clearly his mystical tendencies, oddly combined with his love of practical detail, than does his Chronology (1728). In his interpretations of mystical and prophetic writers, he sought to verify their vague statements by intricate chronological tables, and to support their philosophy by mathematical analysis. There is sufficient contemporaneous evidence for this opinion. William Law stated that Newton “did but reduce to mathematical form the central principles of nature revealed in Behmen”. Henry More thought he was misled in his interpretation of Daniel by his mathematical genius. And there is also the anecdote of his anger when Bentley accused him of expounding the prophecies, as he would demonstrate a mathematical proposition.

The young man holds a pair of dividers. These are not compasses—not a drawing instrument—but dividers which are used for measuring. I identify the dividers with the reed of REVELATION 11: 1 that is used to measure the Temple:

And there was given unto me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.

John James Bachmair, in his The Revelation of St. John Historically Explained (1788) comments:

Whenever we measure any edifice or place, the intention must be either, first, simply to know its extent; or, secondly, to serve as a plan for erecting a similar edifice; or, thirdly, that the space thus measured should be separated and reserved for some particular purpose, or for persons, who, excluding all others, should occupy the same, and appropriate it to themselves. The things to be measured here were, the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship before the altar in the temple. This is truly the meaning of the text.

Just as science and alchemy offered shelter and solace from a world which, at the root of his being, he did not much care for, Newton also found a home within religion. The clearest manifestation of this desire is the enormous effort he poured into his reconstruction of the plan of the Temple of Solomon, seeing this as a paradigm for the entire future of the world.

In his Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) and between his account of the empires of the Babylonians and the Medes, and that of the Persians, Newton inserts “A Description of the Temple of Solomon”, offering no further justification than the observation that, since the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, a description “may not be thought amiss”.  For Bennett and Mandelbrote, “There could scarcely be a clearer demonstration of the significance of the Temple and other Biblical themes to the pursuit of natural knowledge in the seventeenth century than that provided by its most famous proponent, Newton.”  In fact he adds little to the subject, but his interest is worth acknowledging, if for no other reason than to illustrate the currency of such questions even among some of the leading mathematicians of the seventeenth century.

Just as Blake’s colour print of “Nebuchadnezzar”, an illustration to DANIEL 4: 31-33, is an emblem of the destroyer of the Temple and of the eschatological vision of the Book of Daniel, so too “Newton” must signify both the historic figure who included a plan of the Temple in his book on Biblical chronology and a harbinger of forthcoming Apocalypse inscribing on the unravelling scroll the plan of a new Temple announced in DANIEL 9: 25

Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.

The antiquarian, William Stukeley  (1687-1765), a one-time friend of Newton, notes

In Christmas 1725, upon a visit I [Stukeley] made him, we had some discourse about Solomon’s temple: a matter I had study’d with attention, and made very many drawings about it, which I had communicated to my Lord Pembroke (Thomas), to Mr Folkes and more of my friends. I found Sir Isaac had made some drawings of it, and had consider’d the thing. Indeed he had study’d every thing. We did not enter into any particular detail, but we both agreed in this, that the architecture was not like any design or descriptions yet publick. No authors have an adequate notion of antient and original architectire. Sir Isaac rightly judged it was older than any other of the great temples mention’d in history; and was indeed the original model which they followed. He added that Sesostris in Rehoboams time, took the workmen from Jerusalem, who built his Egyptian temples, in imitation of it, one in every Nomos, and that from thence the Greeks borrow’d their architecture, as they had a good deal of thir religious rites, thir sculpture and other arts.

Here Blake would have been much in agreement with Sir Isaac:

They stole them from the Temple of the Lord (E501)

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What significance has the linen mantle? John the Baptist wears animal skins: that seems to be very important. MARK 1: 6-8 records:

And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and with a girdle of skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;
And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.
I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.

When Jesus is mocked and tortured, he is made to wear a purple emperor’s robe, to satirize what they think are his pretensions to being a ruler. But otherwise, he wears linen. Angels wear linen: animals have not been slaughtered to make it. Thus, in the prophecy of DANIEL 10: 5, 6:

Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz:
His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude

And at the tomb on Easter morning, the women see linen, flashing white, pure. The gospel writers record the adolescent naked except for a piece of linen in the arrest, the angel at the tomb at Easter. Linen represents purity. Fine linen was used to wrap Christ’s body (MARK 15: 46). Linen also stands for destiny: a man dressed in linen, with an ink-horn, went through Jerusalem to mark the righteous for protection (EZEKIEL 9).

What significance has the whiteness of the robe or mantle? The Revelation of St. John (REVELATION 15: 6) refers to

angels clothed in pure and white linen.

And Blake in a line from the Four Zoas that he repeats verbatim in Jerusalem

Of living gold, pure, perfect, holy; in white linen he hover’d. (E 191; 327)

According to Charles Daubuz, A Perpetual Commentary of the Revelation of St. John (1730):

Colour which is outwardly seen of the Habit of the Body, is symbolically us’d to denote the true State of the Person, or Subject to which it is applied, according to the Nature of it. ...
White—The Symbol of Beauty, Comeliness, Joy, and Riches.
White—is the Colour of Garments not spotted with any Uncleanness: And therefore white Garments were the Attire of such as offer’d Sacrifice; to shew the Holiness of their Lives, and the Purity of their Conscience; their being free from Pollution, and their being in God’s Favour.

Daubuz also commented, using the rare word "Bysse" (Latin byssus, Greek βίσσος : flax, and the fine linen made from it), that

Bysse is a Plant of which was made the finest and most shining white Linen.It grew chiefly in Egypt and Palestine: and the Linen Garments of the Jewish Priests were made of it. Bysse Garments were also worn by the Egyptian Priests. And
Hence a white Bysse Garment, as being the most valuable, denotes symbolically, the highest and most perfect Holiness and Prosperity.

And in the earlier (1720) edition of his Perpetual Commentary:

Again, it is said, that these Confessors wore white Robes, or Stoles; and that this signifies an Honour, Freedom, Immunities, and a publick Consecration of the Persons wearing it to God’s Service.

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Why is the young man naked? And what does it symbolize? We so commonly take nudity to be heroic that it comes as a surprise to read in Daubuz that

Nakedness signifies Sin or Folly.

Thus in GEN. iii. 7. it is taken for Sin in general; and in EXOD. xxxii. 25. EZEK. xvi. 36. and 2 CHRON. xxviii. 19. for Idolatry. And so elsewhere in the Scriptures—all kind of Vice, more or less, but in the highest Sense, Idolatry—the main Act of Rebellion and Apostasy against God—and all the Degrees and Acts of it, or dependant and consequent upon it, come under the Notion of Filthiness or Nakedness or Sores: And therefore to be in the highest Degree naked, is to be guilty of Idolatry. This Sin, and that of Fornication, which is often in Holy Writ modestly called the uncovering of the Shame or Nakedness, are a-kin; the idolatrous Rites of the ancient Times being performed with not only Fornication, but all the lascivious Postures imaginable, and shewing what Modesty requires to be hidden.

Nakedness signifies also Guilt, Shame, Poverty, or Misery any way, as being the Consequence and Punishment of Sin and of Idolatry in particular— a Crime which God never leaves unpunished.

But this is not Blake’s view, rather:

To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration

To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albions covering

To take off his filthy garments, & clothe him with Imagination. (E 142)

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Finally, why this constellation of youth and nakedness and linen? I should like to propose that the naked young man of “Newton” is linked to two of the most enigmatic passages of the passion and resurrection narratives in Mark’s gospel, the flight of the naked young man (MARK 14: 51-2) and his reappearance in the Marcan ending (16: 5). At the moment of Jesus’ arrest, say the gospel writers, all the disciples forsook him and fled. His captors then led him to the high priest. But Mark inserts another incident:

καὶ νεανίσκος τις συνηκολούθει αὐτῶ περιβεβλημένος σινδόνα ἐπὶ γυμνοῦ, καὶ κρατοῦσιν αὐτόν·.
ὁ δὲ καταλιπὼν τὴν σινδόνα γυμνὸς ἔφυγεν

And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him:
And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked (MARK 14: 51, 52).

These two verses are unique to Mark’s account.

A parallel with the Joseph story in GENESIS 39: 12 has been observed (Potiphar’s wife “caught him by his garment ... but he left his garment in her hands, and fled. ...”). Mark may be looking back to AMOS 2: 16, where the prophet describes a day of judgment so terrible that “he who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day”. The arrest of Jesus invites the crushing judgment announced by Amos, and not even the valiant shall be able to withstand that day.

Mark uses the word νεανίσκoς (neaniskos : not the most usual word for a young man) only for the young man who fled, and for the young man (an angelic messenger, perhaps) who, at the end of the gospel, greets the women at Jesus’s empty tomb. The term νεανίσκoς occurs also in the Septuagint and in Josephus, where the term designates young men who are exceptional in some way. Where νεανίσκoς designates an angel, there is some detail in the context which makes this plain. In MARK 16: 5 this detail seems to be the element of revelation. It may be that a Joseph typology is intended. The contrast between the fleeing Joseph, who leaves behind his clothes and is unjustly disgraced on the one hand, and the exalted Joseph, who wears splendid garments and is exalted to viceregent on the other, is matched and reproduced by MARK 14:51-2 and MARK 16:5. The reference is to Jesus in his humiliation and exaltation.

The young man sheds his garment (σινδών) at the moment of failure. Jesus dies alone, and it is he who is wrapped in a “linen cloth” (σιvδώv) in MARK 15:46.

We may link the story of MARK 14: 51-2 with the other young man (here too a vεαvίσκoς) dressed in a white garment who announces Jesus’s resurrection in MARK 16:5:

καὶ εἰσελθοῦσαι εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον εἶδον νεανίσκον καθήμενον ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς περιβεβλημένον στολὴν λευκήν, καὶ ἐξεθαμβήθησαν.

And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.

In both narratives there is a νεανίσκoς περιβεβλημένoς; (neaniskos periblemenos ; a conspicuous young man wearing [something]).  Here he wears a σινδών, while in MARK 14: 46 this unusual word is used to denote the sheet in which Jesus is to be wrapped. The youth (vεαvίσκoς) who flees in his linen cloth (σινδών) forms a parallel with the youth (also vεαvίσκoς), the women find in the tomb. A σινδών is a garment made of fine linen; not precisely a shirt, rather something you might put on for a summer evening, or wrap a dead body in, if you were rich enough. The first youth deserted Jesus; the second has evidently been with him since he rose from the dead. Furthermore, the linen in which Joseph of Arimathea wraps the body is called a σιvδώv, so there seems to be an intricate relationship between the vεαvίσκoς in his σιvδώv and the body in the tomb, now risen. This, then, is a reading in which the young man of MARK 14: 51-2 is an angel, who later appears to instruct the women. Angels act as intermediaries between the heavenly and earthly realms and take a decisive share in the temptation of man to transgress the decrees of God. The figure in MARK 14: 51 and that in 16: 5 are both described in the same threefold way—a conspicuous young man (vεαvίσκoς περιβεβλεμέvoς), and the description of the garment worn. But a transformation has taken place. The figure who failed abysmally in the face of death is now restored as the messenger of resurrection. And with Blake in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

the Angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes (E 034)

The major components of apocalypticism include angelology, the periodization of history, the future days of redemption, vision, and knowledge. Angelology implies that angels are an active presence as guides in apocalyptic visions. Apocalyptic writings contain descriptions of visions of the heavenly domains; the visionary sees himself transported to heaven so as to see God there. The knowledge of nature and of history is granted the visionary through the mediation of angels of what he sees in heaven.

Tilloch’s library included one comprehensive work of angelology. George Hamond’s Άγγελoγραφία or, A Discourse of Angels (1701) stressed the fearfulness of an angelic apparition:

The Jews were wont to entertain the Apparition of an Angel with very great awfulness, and trembling, it being (it seems) a vulgar Opinion among them, that if any Person had the Vision of an Angel, either Death, or some great Evil, would suddenly befal them, so tremendous was the Presence of an Angel accounted. Wherefore when Manoah perceived it was an Angel that had been with him, he said to his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God. And Gideon (in the like case) said, Alas O Lord God, for because I have seen an Angel of the Lord face to face. And the Lord said unto him, Peace be unto thee, fear not, thou shalt not die. It seems he was in a great Fear. Some think this Opinion was taken up from EXOD. 13. 20. where ‘tis said, There shall no man see me, and live: Now he that did see an Angel, was counted to see God, there being no appearance of God more glorious than by an Angel. No doubt they were in such a fear, because they judged themselves unworthy of such a sight. Great Reverence is therefore due to the visible Presence of an Angel of God.

Catholic doctrine had long accepted the role of angels in the Divine plan, as in John Salkeld, A Treatise of Angels (1613).  Lot 310 in Tilloch’s sale, its contents include Chap. XV. Whether many Angels can be at one time in one and the same place together. and Chap. XLVI. Of the particular Angelicall custodie of Paradise, and what is to be understood by the Cherubin and fiery Sword, which is said to keepe the entrance of Paradise.

But the Protestant Reformation had led to a hesitancy in any discussion of intermediaries between God and man. This hesitation was refuted by Joseph Mede:

It is hard to keep a mean; which as it appears in many things else, so in the Doctrine and Speculation of Angels, whereunto men were heretofore so much addicted, as they pursued it not only to vain and ungrounded Theories, but even to Idolatry and Superstition. There were in the Apostles times who intruded into things they had not seen: There were then who beguiled men with a voluntary humility in worshipping of Angels, COL. 2.18. What after-times brought forth, I shall not speak. That ancient and high-soaring (though counterfeit) Dionysius describes the Hierarchy of Angels as exactly as if he had dwelt amongst them, delivering unto us nine Orders of them out of nine words found partly in the Old, partly in the New Testament … But we, who together with divers Superstitions have justly rejected also these vain and ungrounded curiosities, are fallen into the other extreme, having buried the Doctrine of Angels in silence, making little or no enquiry at all, what God in his Word hath revealed concerning them: which yet would make not a little for the understanding of Scripture, wherein are so many passages having reference to them, and therefore questionless something revealed concerning them.

Another seventeenth-century theologian, Benjamin Camfield, wrote

The Angels also (as I have shewn) preach Christ’s Resurrection to those that sought him in his Sepulchre, Saint LUKE 24. and testifie from heav’n the verity of his Ascension thither, and his second coming thence, ACTS 1.—An Angel signifies the Revelations of Christ to John the Divine, REVEL. 1.1.-22.16 &c.

This way of God’s communicating his Mind and Will, occasionally to Men by Angels, seems pointed at in that of Elihu, JOB 33.14, 15, 16, 17. and was commonly acknowledged among the Jews; whence that speech of theirs concerning Saint Paul, We find no evil in this man, but, if a Spirit or Angel have spoken to him, let us not fight against God.

Blake sometimes associated the angelic with goodness, but increasingly as the years went by, he connected it with a kind of hypocritical self-righteousness. John Flaxman and Thomas Butts were both among Blake’s “Angels”, the right-thinking souls who had his best interest at heart. Butts wrote to him at Felpham

... you cannot but recollect the difficulties that have unceasingly arisen to prevent my discerning clearly whether your angels are black, white or grey, and that on the whole I have rather inclined to the former opinion and considered you more immediately under the protection of the blackguard.

Blake replied: “ ... thank you for your reprehension of follies by me foster’d. ... in future I am the determined advocate of Religion & Humility, the two bands of Society”. Mark Schorer comments: “What guile there is in this jargon! ... Blake apparently thought that ‘angels’ (who lied to themselves) deserved lies”.

The Greeks had believed in the Good Genius or Αγαθoδαίμωv. An agathodaemon was a guardian angel, who was assigned to each mortal. Invincible, they would guide their charges throughout their lives, and die with them. Socrates had a daimon who was famous for always saying “No”. It did not enter into rational discourse with Socrates; it merely warned him when he was about to do something wrong (especially something displeasing to the gods), like the prompting of conscience. Guardian angels entered Christian belief from Neoplatonism and, along with the other classes of angels, became part of Christian dogma at the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325).

Benjamin Camfield, in his Theological Discourse of Angels and Their Ministries (1678), presented a firmly Protestant theology of guardian angels, when he wrote:

When God asked of Satan, that had been walking his rounds, and compassing the Earth to and fro, whether he had consider’d of his servant Job, upright and good Job, he readily replies, as to him, upon it, Hast thou not made an hedg about him, and about his house, and about all he hath on every side? JOB 1.10. which Hedg is conceived by Expositors to be the Guard of Angels, as hath been said before. And Satan can do nothing against Job, or other good men, so long as this Hedg remains, the Angels of God encamping round about them, and taking charge of them to keep and defend them.

Is the young man of MARK 14: 51 then Jesus’s angel. Is “Newton” the angel who abandoned Jesus? At that terrible moment even His guardian angel runs away. The young man’s desertion stands for all who desert Jesus, all those who by baptism have been reborn and received into the Kingdom and nevertheless flee in terror. The young man’s failure to accept the Passion contrasts with Jesus’s willingness so to do. Mark equates fear and unbelief.

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This exegesis depends in part on a recognition that Mark’s account uses distinctive Greek expressions. Blake’s knowledge of Greek arguably dated from his years in Felpham. He wrote in a letter to his brother James in 1803:

I go on Merrily with my Greek & Latin; am very sorry that I did not begin to learn languages early in life as I find it very Easy; am now learning my Hebrew א ב ג . I read Greek as fluently as an Oxford scholar & the Testament is my chief master: astonishing indeed is the English Translation, it is almost word for word, & if the Hebrew Bible is as well translated, which I do not doubt it is, we need not doubt of its being translated as well as written by the Holy Ghost. (E727)

As with the underwater setting, if my interpretation of “Newton” is correct, this suggests a date of execution of the print much later than the 1795 written against Blake’s monogram on the print. As a young artisan, Blake would scarcely have been trained in the classical languages, but, when living in Felpham, Sussex, in 1800-1803, under the patronage of William Hayley, a notable linguist, he began studying Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Hayley wrote on 3 February 1802 that "Blake ... is just become a Grecian & literally learning the Language". Or else Blake had picked up a certain amount of Greek from browsing in Tilloch’s library, long before his lessons with Hayley.

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There is little place for Jesus in Newton’s understanding of prophecy and fulfilment. His Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733) made only passing reference to Jesus as Messiah. For Blake, Sir Isaac Newton crouches naked as an emblem of unbelief. Or, as Sir Isaac himself wrote:

When a man is taken in a mystical sense, his qualities are often signified by his actions, and by the circumstances of things about him. So a Ruler is signfied by his riding on a beast; a Warrior and Conqueror, by his having a sword and bow; a potent man, by his gigantic stature; ... righteousness, by white and clean robes; wickedness, by spotted and filthy garments; affliction, mourning, and humiliation, by clothing in sackcloth; dishonour, shame, and want of good works, by nakedness; ...

Blake has turned Newton’s words back on him.

If I have used books in Tilloch’s library to explicate Blake’s great colour print “Newton”, I would argue that through his friendship with Tilloch, Blake not only had access to a remarkable theological library (more than 50 commentaries on the Apocalypse!), but, perhaps more importantly, had the opportunity of conversation with a man (Tilloch) of considerable theological learning whose publications on the Apocalypse among other topics were well-received.

Even in those of Blake’s works where the Bible is not explicitly cited, resonances with appropriate Biblical passages can be detected. The warrant for searching for such resonances is provided by Blake’s firm commitment to the Bible and his intimate knowledge of its text. Blake combines various Biblical incidents in one image to make an exegetical point. It’s Blake’s image that recontextualizes the biblical citations and dispels what would have been ambiguous without it. It’s my contention therefore, that the colour-print that bears the title “Newton” brings together a biblical grouping of youth, nakedness, and white linen, and that such a constellation can be derived from Old Testament apocalyptic texts particularly the Book of Daniel, is echoed in the Revelation of St. John, but is found in complete form only in the Gospel of Mark. The relationship between some of Blake’s titles—such as “Newton”—and the image they accompany is very much that of the emblem tradition. This emblem of “Newton”, then, sets out a whole series of attributes that insert Isaac Newton into an eschatological narrative.

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Note.

Tilloch’s Library was sold in May 1825:

A Catalogue of the Library of Alexander Tilloch … Together with a Collection of Cabinet and other esteemed Paintings, Prints, Coins, Medals, Philosophical and Mathematical Instruments … Which will be sold by auction, … by Mr. Saunders, at his Great Room, “The Poets’ Gallery,” 39, Fleet Street, on Tuesday, May 10th, 1825, and six following days.—London : Published by Robert Saunders, 1825.

There are copies in

Cambridge. University of Cambridge, Library: Munby c.10415

London. British Library: S.C. HODGSON 1825, vol.1

Works from Tilloch’s library cited in this paper are as follows:

John James Bachmair.—The Revelation of St. John Historically Explained; Not Compiled from Commentators and Other Authors, but an Original, written by John James Bachmair.—London : sold by J. Dodsley, T. Sewell, and A. Hogg, 1788.
Lot 795 in the Tilloch sale.

Benjamin Camfield.—A Theological Discourse of Angels and Their Ministries Wherein Their Existence, Nature, Number, Order and Offices Are Modestly Treated of: with the Character of Those, for Whose Benefit Especially They Are Commissioned, and Such Practical Inferences Deduced, as Are Most Proper to the Premises. Also an Appendix Containing Some Reflections Upon Mr. Webster’s Displaying Supposed Witchcraft.—London : printed by R. E. for Hen. Brome, 1678.
Lot 310 in the Tilloch sale.

Charles Daubuz.—A Perpetual Commentary on the Revelation of St. John ... With A Preliminary Discourse Concerning the Certainty of the Principles Upon Which the Revelation of St. John is to Be Understood.—London : printed for Benj. Tooke, 1720.
Lot 946 in the Tilloch sale.

Charles Daubuz.—A Perpetual Commentary on the Revelation of St. John; with A Preliminary Discourse Concerning the Principles Upon Which the Said Revelation is to be Understood.—New modell’d, abridg’d, and render’d plain to the meanest capacity by Peter Lancaster.—London : printed for the Author and sold by W. Innys, 1730.
Lot 1131 in the Tilloch sale.
Pages 21-143 consist of “A Symbolical Alphabetical Dictionary. In which, agreeably to the Nature and Principles of the Symbolical Character and Language of the Eastern Nations in the First Ages of the World, the General Signification of the Symbols Used in the Revelation of St. John, is laid down and prov’d from the most Ancient Authorities Sacred and Profane.”

George Hamond, ed.—Άγγελoγραφία sive Πvείματα Λειτυργυά, Πvευματoλoγια: or, A Discourse of Angels: Their Nature and Office, or Ministry. Wherein is Shewed what excellent Creatures They are, and That They are the Prime Instruments of God’s Providence, and are Imploy’d about Kingdoms, and Churches, and Single Persons, and That under Jesus Christ, Who is the Head of Angels As Well As Men, and by Whose Procurement Angels Are Ministering Spirits for Sinful Men. Also Something Touching Devils and Apparitions, and Impulses, with A Practical Improvement of the Particulars Handled, and of the Whole Doctrine of Angels, Especially for The promoting of an Angelical Life. Here Such Speculations As Some Would Seem Wise in, Above What is Written, Are Declined: and Such things Only Are Handled As the Holy Scriptures Give Us Light in, and Have Been Taught by Sober Divines.—London : Printed for Thomas Parkhurst, 1701.
Lot 934 in the Tilloch sale.

Joseph Mede.—The Works of the Pious and Profoundly-Learned Joseph Mede. Corrected and enlarged according to the author’s own manuscripts.—London : printed by Roger Norton for Richard Royston, 1672.
Lot 1191 in the Tilloch sale.
40: “DISCOURSE X. ZACHARIAH 4. 10. These Seven are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth”.

Sir Isaac Newton.—The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended. To which is Prefix’d a Short Chronicle from the First Memory of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great.—London : printed for J. Tonson, 1728.
Lot 704 in the Tilloch sale.
Chap. V (pages 332-346) is “A Description of the Temple of Solomon” with three folding plates with plans of the Temple.

Sir Isaac Newton.—Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John.—In two parts.—London : sold by J. Roberts, [and others], 1733.
Lot 450 in the Tilloch sale.

John Salkeld.—A Treatise of Angels: of the Nature, Essence, Place, Power, Science, Will, Apparitions, Grace, Sinne, and All Other Proprieties of Angels. Collected Out of the Holy Scriptures, Ancient Fathers, and Schoole Divines, by John Salkeld, Lately Fellow of the Jesuites Colledges in the Universities of Conimbra, Corduba, and Complutum, Assistant in Studies to the Famous Jesuites Franciscus Suarius and Michael Vasquez.—London : printed by T. S. with authoritie of superiours for Nathaniel Butter, 1613.
Lot 310 in Tilloch’s sale.

Alexander Tilloch.—Dissertations introductory to the study and right understanding of the language, structure, and contents of The Apocalypse.—London : printed for the author... and sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown [and others], 1823.
Lot 878 in the Tilloch sale (355 copies).

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Acknowledgments.

A version (with the title “Blake, Newton and Apocalypse”) of this paper was read at Romantic Revelations, the British Association for Romantic Studies 6th International Conference, Keele University, 29 July-1 August 1999.

A revised version (with the title “Newton and ‘Newton’”) was read at a Tate Britain seminar in March 2002.

The fullest version is Chapter V : ”Isaac Newton: the context of a private library”, on pages 187-224 of my PhD thesis : William Blake in contexts: family, friendships, and some intellectual microcultures of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century England.—University of Surrey, 2003.

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Sources and Further Reading.

Richard D. Altick.—The Shows of London.—Cambridge MA : Harvard University Press, 1978).

Jim Bennett & Scott Mandelbrote.—The Garden, the Ark, the Tower, the Temple : Biblical Metaphors of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe.—Oxford : Museum of the History of science, 1998.

G.E. Bentley, Jr.—Blake Records : Documents (1714-1841) concerning the life of William Blake (1757-1827) and his Family : incorporating Blake Records (1969), Blake Records Supplement and extensive discoveries since 1988.—2nd ed.—New Haven CT ; London : Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2004.

Anthony Blunt.—The Art of William Blake.—London : Oxford University Press, 1959.

Geoffrey Keynes, ed.—Letters from William Blake to Thomas Butts, 1800-1803; printed in Facsimile with an Introductory Note.—London : Oxford University Press, 1928.

Sir Geoffrey Keynes, ed.—The Letters of William Blake with Related Documents.—3rd ed.—Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1980.

Louis Trenchard More.—Isaac Newton: a Biography, 1642-1727.—New York : Scribner’s, 1934.

Mark Schorer.—William Blake: the Politics of Vision (New York NY : Henry Holt, 1946).

William Stukeley.—Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life 1752: being Some Account of his Family and Chiefly of the Junior Part of his Life; edited by A. Hastings White.—London : Taylor & Francis, 1936.
The original manuscript is preserved in the Royal Society.

Michael White.—Isaac Newton: the Last Sorcerer.—London : Fourth Estate, 1997.

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Brother Blake and Sister Blake and the lost Moravian history of William Blake's family

This paper (read at the Bentley Birthday Celebrations in Toronto in 2010) explores the links, some speculative, between William Blake’s extended family and the Moravian Church congregation in London.

In the first decades of the eighteenth century, there were thirty or forty Anglican religious societies in the City of London and its suburbs. One, the "Fetter Lane Society", met at the house of James Hutton in Little Wild Street, off Fetter Lane. In 1738, four Moravian Brethren, led by Peter Boehler, arrived in London on their way to the British colonies. The Brethren could not proceed immediately to Georgia, and came into contact with members of the Fetter Lane Society (Podmore 1988, especially pp. 133-36).

Boehler enrolled eight of the Society, including Hutton, John Wesley, and others, into a Moravian-style band or religious fellowship group (Lockwood, 1868, p.35). By mid-October it had grown to 56 members, mostly small tradesmen and artisans—though the membership included some clergymen and a handful of mercantile and gentry families (Podmore, 1992, p.1). Growing disagreements within the Society came to a head in July 1740, when John Wesley withdrew. Wesley’s departure precipitated a mass withdrawal of nearly all the women and a considerable number of the men, leaving the Society close to collapse.

The lost Moravian history of William Blake’s family (2006)

This is the text of a lunch-time talk given at Swansea University many years ago. Similar talks were given at Nottingham Trent University, and a few years later at Bishop Grosseteste. It's a little longer than my usual blogposts but I think its length is necessary as I survey how my research stood in 2006 and how it was documented..

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Over the last five years [this was in 2006], we have seen important new discoveries relating to Blake's biography, to the circles of friendship in which he moved, and the circles of connoisseurship that defined his earliest audience. Today I shall discuss my pursuit through a number of archives what I call the lost Moravian history of William Blake’s family. I’d better begin by explaining who the Moravians were. The Moravian Church claims descent from followers of Jan Hus, martyred in Konstanz (traditionally known as Constance in English), in 1415. From the Hussites descend the Unity of the Brethren, or Unitas Fratrum, a church which was largely destroyed in the Thirty Years’ War. In 1722, a surviving remnant of the Unity took refuge on the estate of a German nobleman, Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Out of this group of religious refugees developed the Renewed Church of the Brethren, with Zinzendorf at its head. The Renewed Church, commonly known as the Moravian Church from its origins in the Czech lands of Moravia and Bohemia, developed into a Pilgrim Church, a world-wide missionary body. The church still exists today with just a few thousand members in England, but with an important presence in the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica and Antigua, in North America, and remarkably, with its largest group of adherents in Tanzania (a quarter of a million members).

Good morning, Doctor Haydn.

 

In a recent Global Blake event, a symposium, Blake and Music, on the musical reception of William Blake, Camila Oliveira gave a paper “William Blake & Visionary Cover Arts”, that drew attention to the use of Blake’s images on the covers of classical recordings. Of note was the fondness of record companies to use Blake for recordings of works by Haydn, even when there was no obvious link between the composer’s work and William Blake himself.

“O Nancy’s hair is yellow as gowd”: Blake, Border ballads, and the reinvention of relief etching.

In a prospectus addressed To the Public, and dated 10 October 1793, William Blake described his invention of “illuminated printing” in these words:

The Labours of the Artist, the Poet, the Musician, have been proverbially attended by poverty and obscurity; this was never the fault of the Public, but was owing to a neglect of means to propagate such works as have wholly absorbed the Man of Genius. Even Milton and Shakespeare could not publish their own works.
    This difficulty has been obviated by the Author of the following productions now presented to the Public, who has invented a method of printing both Letter-press and Engraving in a style more ornamental, uniform, and grand, than any before discovered, while it produces works at less than one-fourth the expense.
    If a method of Printing which combines the Painter and Poet is a phenomenon worthy of public attention, provided that it exceeds in elegance all former methods, the Author is sure of his reward. (E 692; see NOTE at end.)

George Whitefield, the Moravians, and “Andrew the Negro boy”

A version of this paper was presented to the Bethlehem Conference on Moravian History & Music in Bethlehem PA in October 2010. It was my second attempt at a Bethlehem Conference paper; I had tried to get to the history conference of 2008, but a broken ankle kept me away. On that earlier occasion a paper on Moravians and Swedenborgians in 18th-century London was read on my behalf by Lorraine Parsons, archivist to the Moravian Church Centre in Muswell Hill. The 2008 paper was later published in a collection of essays issued by the Swedenborgian Society in London. It, coincidentally, incorporates some account of the Moravian minister Francis Okely, also referred to in the following.

This second conference paper represents a first tentative exploration of the vexed issue of George Whitefield and the Moravians. It examines an incident in the career of the evangelist George Whitefield, the eighteenth century’s most sensational preacher—the incident of “Andrew the Negro boy” and the Moravian Church. (On his return to England from the American colonies in 1742, Whitefield brought with him a twelve-year old black boy, Andrew, whom he left with the Moravians to bring up and educate until Andrew was twenty-one. “Negro” was the term most often used by Whitefield in speaking of enslaved blacks. In this paper it is employed only within the context of his and his contemporaries’ discourses.)

Another Engraver in South Molton Street

I recently purchased the engraved trade-card of John Claude Nattes, (c 1765-1839), topographical draughtsman, drawing master, print dealer, and occasional print-maker, who lived in South Molton Street from c 1787 to some time after 1795. The card  shows a monument with two hooded figures on top flanking a group of art-related objects including a palette and brushes, a pyramid behind; trees in the foreground to the left. The plinth of the monument is inscribed "Mr Nattes, 49 South Molton Strt.".

The card has been trimmed to the image  (50 x 79 mm.) but other copies now in the British Museum supply an imprint: "C.N. [i.e. Claude Nattes] del.    W. Angus sc.".