What Is the Price of Experience?: William Blake and the Economics of Illuminated Painting

G.E. BENTLEY, JR What Is the Price of Experience? William Blake and the Economics of Illuminated Painting The word 'Economics' has rarely been used in the context of William Blake.1 In a way, this is as it should be, for Blake never used the words I economics' or I economy' in his surviving writings, and some of his friends plainly thought that he did not know what 'economy' meant. One should not expect that the man who wrote 'Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth' and 'Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity'2 would have much sympathy with the rich, ugly balance sheets and prudent bottom lines of the Dismal Science. But of course 'Economics' has many meanings, and with a number of them Blake would have been very comfortable. The term has been used in some surprising contexts, or at least contexts which rarely feature very substantially in the curricula of university Economics Departments. In 1697 Dryden wrote of 'the economy of a poem,' by which he meant its structure. In 1660 Jeremy Taylor described 'the method and Oeconomy of Heaven,' and in 1814 Chalmers described the 'scheme of the divine economy which is revealed to us in the New Testament.' With these senses of Economy, , Blake would have been very much at ease. In 1796 Edmund Burke said: 'I do not impute falsehood to the government , but I think there has been considerable economy of truth.' Doubtless Burke was motivated here in part by the consideration that most governments are pleased to be identified with economy, while calling a minister a liar could get him expelled from Parliament. Burke also managed to associate econ~:mlists with the late Queen of France in a surprising way: I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Earlier forms of this essay were given as lectures at The Toronto Centre for the Book (3 March 1998) and the Blake and the Book Conference at Strawberry Hill (18 April 1998). I am grateful to Professors Robert Essick and Joseph Viscomi for generous advice about the essay. 1 The only economic essays on Blake ofwhich I am aware are Todd and Heinzelman (on'the figurative portrayal of economic issues in Blake's poetry' [Economics, 101)). 2 Marriage ofHeaven and Hell (1790?), plate 7 (William Blake's Writings, 81). UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 68, NUMBER 2, SPRING 1999 618 G.B. BENTLEY, JR My favourite contextfor the word 'economy' comes in stanza 13 of Lord Byron's Vision ofJudgment, which was stimulated by the puling panegyrics published on the death of George III in 1840: 'God save the king!' It is a large economy In God to save the like; but if He will Be saving, all the better; for not one am I Of those who think damnation better still; I hardly know too if not quite alone am I In this small hope of bettering future ill By circwnscribing, with some slight restriction, The eternity of hell's hot jurisdiction. But it is not these entrancing senses of Economy with which I choose to dally. I want to talk about the economics of the method of publishing in Illuminated Printing which Blake invented and in which he published all his poetry. BLAKE'S ECONOMY Wilham Blake was similar to most honest academics, or at least to most scholars in the humanities, in thinking that his chief role was in communicatinginformation and beauty and in beingwilIing to be underpaid or even occasionally unpaid in order to be given this privilege.3 It is, to be sure, an odd view, but it is not an uncoinmon one. The oddity is not so much that Blake held these eccentric views for most of his life as that for a time, at any rate, he thought that he could navigate successfully upon what he called the Ocean of Business and garner gold as well as glory. Blake was, of course, by...