minute particular
begin page 89 | ↑ back to top2. “Blake and Tradition”
I read with great interest the review of Blake and Tradition in your issue of December 15th by Professor Daniel Hughes. In this review Professor Hughes states that Keynes does not agree with my interpretation begin page 90 | ↑ back to top of the Arlington Court Tempera as an illustration of Porphyry’s de Antro Nympharum, translated by Thomas Taylor. This is not so. Sir Geoffrey Keynes was one of the first Blake scholars to assent to this view, which he holds to be conclusive. I remember his asserting - as a doctor he was well able to judge - to my description of the gesture of the kneeling figure as that of “throwing with averted face,” attributed to Odysseus in this work. He has since confirmed in writing his agreement with my interpretation.
I may add that he caught me out badly on another anatomical error - the sex in the figure in the lower panel of Jerusalem Plate 33!