MINUTE PARTICULARS
Blake’s Illustrations to Paradise Lost
May I point out a small error in Joseph Wittreich’s article on Blake and Fuseli in your Summer issue 1969 (III, i)? In the note on the differences between Blake’s first two sets of illustrations to Paradise Lost it is stated that the second, large set of 1808 lacks any illustrations to Milton’s first two books. This is incorrect. Although only nine of the series are in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts three more exist, bringing the total up to twelve as in the small Huntington Library set of 1807, though “Satan spying on Adam and Raphael’s Descent into Paradise” was replaced by “Adam and Eve sleeping”. The large version of “Satan arousing the Rebel Angels”, illustrating Book I, lines 300-334, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and both small and large versions of “Satan comes to the Gates of Hell”, Book II, lines 645-734, are in the Huntington Library. The third of the dispersed 1808 watercolours, “The Judgment of Adam and Eve: ‘So judged the Man’”, is in the Houghton Library.