478
PARTISAN IUVIEW
with his classical handling of structure, light, and color in the first and his
approach to Gothic forms in the second. He provides an informed sum–
mary of the development of Blake's graphic style, from the linearity of the
early engravings through the tactile exuberance of the color prints of 1795
to the tonal richness of the 1825
fliustrations to the Book
of
Job.
He mentions
Blake's uncomfortable relationship with the Royal Academy, though
hardly suggesting the extent of his lifelong ambition to be recognized by
the Academy and his bitterness at being rejected. He recounts at length the
sorry story of Blake's falling out with his agent Robert Cromek and his
old friend Thomas Stothard, whom he accused (unjustly, as has recently
been shown) of stealing his idea for the painting of Chaucer's "Canterbury
Pilgrims." Ackroyd's description of individual works, however, remains
mostly on the surface: he does not really explain why, for instance, the fig–
ure of Job had such central importance in Blake's art frol11 his 1785
drawing "The Complaint ofJob" to the 1825
Illustrations,
or how his inter–
pretation of the story challenged the orthodox view of Job's repentance,
or how it deepened over the years with his changing conception of God.
By and large Ackroyd is not as much interested in Blake's poetry as in
his art. His cliscussion of the
Poetical Sketches,
the vol ume of Blake's juve–
nilia, is too brief and all usive to give a clear sense of the range and virtuosity
of Blake's earliest poems, from Elizabethan limpidity and bardic vigor to
Shakespearean heroics and Spenserian pastoralism. So also with the
Songs oj
Illnocence and oj Experience:
he offers generalities about Blake's style rather
than exploring the significant contrasts between the two sets-the joyous
world of childhood Innocence, suffused with trust and love, counterpointed
to the troubled world of Experience, of adolescent protest against the
restrictions of adult authority. In two short chapters examining two of the
Songs more closely, he discusses "The Chimney Sweeper" of
IlIlIocence
largely in terms of the cruel exploitation of the hapless children sold into
the trade, and relates "The Tyger" of
Experiellce
chiefly to real or symbolic
tigers Blake might have met in menageries or in books or paintings or even
in newspaper reports comparing the French revolutionaries to a "tribunal
of tigers." The central question of the poem, what kind of Creator can have
made such a creature, is not considered, while "The Chimney Sweeper"
with its arresting and ironic conclusion "So if all do their duty, they need
not fear harm," is clisrnissed as sanctimonious or "destructive and ignorant
innocence." Blake once defended the seeming obscuri ty or indirection of
his work because it "rouzes the faculties to act": yet Ackroyd rarely moves
the reader to reflect on the deeper meaning of the samples of Blake's poet–
ry that he quotes. In discussing the autobiographical prophecy
Miltoll
he
makes a number of pertinent conUl1ents on Blake's lifelong sympathy with
Milton, the contemporary vogue of Miltonic painting and recitation, the
