William Blake's "Paradiso Canto 19" Inscription Derives from Misprints in the 1819 Edition of Cary's Vision

David Ross McIrvine (Independent Scholar, Monticello, Arkansas)

Dante Notes / March 21, 2016

This paper solves a puzzle--William Blake's handwritten inscription (“Paradiso Canto 19”) on one of his illustrations, done for John Linnell circa 1824-27, to Dante’s Commedia. This untitled pencil drawing (Butlin #812.91[1]) in the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings (1918,1012.11) is online at The William Blake Archive.[2] This drawing does not obviously pertain to any of Dante’s subject-matter in Paradiso Canto 19: I argue here that Blake was looking up a passage in Paradiso Canto 21, when he made this inscription. I discovered misprinted headers on two facing pages in the 1819 second edition of Henry Francis Cary’s English translation of the Commedia:[3] this bibliographic data clarifies how Blake came to write “19” in the inscription for his drawing, and establishes a conclusive proof of which passage in Cary’s English translation of Paradiso Blake was consulting when he wrote his inscription.

William Michael Rossetti, in his 1863 “Annotated Lists” of Blake’s art,[4] was baffled by Blake’s canto inscription (which is the only writing in Blake’s hand on the drawing). Rossetti wondered if “perhaps” the drawing “symbolizes” some general ideas pertinent to Paradiso 19--a suggestion afflicted by the fact that there are unquestionably no steps, stairs, or ladder in that canto; indeed, as Rossetti noted, Paradiso 19 “does not contain anything closely corresponding with” Blake’s design.[5]

Later explanations associate Blake's drawing with poetry in Paradiso where Dante does mention or describe “scale” or a “scaleo” or “scala” (usually translated as “steps,” “stairs,” or “ladder”) along which beings ascend, and descend from, on high—specifically, with passages in Canto 10, Canto 22, and Canto 21. The problem with these alternatives has heretofore been Blake's puzzling numeral "19" in his inscription.

The first printed assertion that this drawing is keyed to the “scaleo” (Par. 21.29) in Paradiso 21 seems to belong to Guy Eglinton. His 1924 article, "Dante Alighieri and Blake,"[6] mentions Blake’s design of “the stairway leading up into the Empyrean from Paradiso 21” (Eglinton 116) but does not address the problem of the inscription.

In 1954, Ernest Hatch Wilkins, in “Blake’s Drawing of Dante’s Celestial Scaleo,”[7] stated that Blake's design represents the scaleo or scala in “Cantos XXI and XXII of the Paradiso” (Wilkins 39) and concluded that Blake’s “canto inscription is erroneous.” (Wilkins 42) Blake’s canto number is erroneous, but I have discovered that the error originates with a compositor for the third volume of the 1819 edition of Cary’s Vision.

Blake (1757-1827) was reported to have owned and favored the Dante translation of Henry Francis Cary--who was “personally acquainted” with Blake,[8] and who bought art from Blake’s widow Catherine.[9] An 1827 obituary of Blake[10] mentions a “Bible, a Sessi Velutello’s Dante, and Mr. Carey’s translation”[11] atop the pile of books in Blake's death room. On December 17, 1825, Henry Crabb Robinson’s diary records his visit to Blake, who was “at work on Dante. The book (Cary) & his sketches both before him.”[12] In 1828, John Thomas Smith wrote that Blake had thought Cary’s “translation superior to all others”[13]

Blake’s handwritten "19” on this drawing exactly transcribes, into Arabic numerals, misprints in the Roman numerals of the canto-headers on two facing pages (3:190-91) in the second edition (1819) of Cary’s translation. These headers are printed "CANTO XIX." but they occur atop two pages of translation from Canto 21 of Dante’s Paradiso. [14]

In the 1819 edition, “CANTO XXI." of "PARADISE." begins on page 189 of “Volume III.”[15] Headers on pages 189, 192, 193, 194, 195, and 196 are printed "CANTO XXI.”;[16] the misprint "CANTO XIX." only occurs on pages 190 and 191. Pages 190-191 contain forty-four lines of English verse, which comprise lines 12-55 (12-31 on the verso, 32-55 on the recto page) of Cary’s translation of the canto: these lines are an English version of Paradiso 21.13-61.

In the first seventeen lines (Cary’s lines 22-38) of an indented verse paragraph that begins near the middle of page 190 and ends near the middle of page 191, Cary translates into English the passage from Dante (Par. 21.25-42) that describes the scaleo (first visible to Dante the pilgrim here, in the heaven of Saturn) that ascends into the Empyrean.

The misprint “CANTO XIX.” occurs only on these crucially significant facing pages: it is extremely strong bibliographic evidence that Blake’s inscription was intended to key the drawing to Paradiso 21.25-42. Blake just wrote out what he saw in his book--the printer's error "XIX" becomes "19" in Blake's handwritten inscription.[17]

The 1814 first edition of Cary’s Vision[18] has no headers--and nothing to provoke Blake to write “19”: Blake, then, inscribed this Commedia illustration (and probably the others) using the 1819 edition, the second and last edition containing Cary's translation of Paradiso to be published in England during Blake's life.[19]

Blake’s Dante inscriptions rarely cite more than one canto number,[20] so this drawing might have a complex, multiple, or synthetic textual reference. Blake’s pencil drawing of this spiral stair in Paradiso is, as Albert Roe noticed,[21] similar to Blake’s 1808 painting, illustrating Genesis 28, of a spiral "Jacob's Ladder” (Butlin #438); but Roe, Wilkins argues, failed to mention Paradiso 22.68-72, where St. Benedict identifies the scala (Par. 22.68) as Jacob's Ladder. (Wilkins 39) Roe does note the passage in Paradiso 10 where St. Thomas Aquinas uses the word scala (Par. 10.86) to refer to the graduated way of descent from, and ascent to, heaven. (Roe 178n2)

Other passages than these may also be relevant. But at some point, Blake consulted his book for a citation to use in the inscription: opening, certainly, an 1819 Cary edition to facing pages (3:190-91) containing English translation (which Blake may, as in other books, have marked or underlined) of Dante’s description of the scaleo in Paradiso 21.25-42.[22] So, whether we think Blake’s drawing relates to only one canto, to several cantos, or to a complex or synthetic idea, Paradiso 21 should not be neglected.

I hope this discovery helps establish a foundation for future discussions and interpretations of this suggestive and complex drawing. Nowadays we can get on with that work minus one old puzzle. We know which passage, in which edition, Blake consulted for the inscription on this drawing. Finally, while I believe that Blake, for this series of illustrations to the Commedia, relied on the 1819 edition of Cary’s Vision for English translation of Dante’s poem, of course all editions through 1827 deserve bibliographic attention.[23]




[1] “Butlin numbers” from Martin Butlin’s catalogue raisonné, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale, 1981).

[2] Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, eds., “The Spiral Stairway,” in Illustrations to Dante's "Divine Comedy.”  The William Blake Archive. Web. Accessed March 7, 2016. http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=but812.1.wc.93

The inscription is in the upper right corner of the drawing: to view a scalable image of the whole sheet, select “Image Enlargement” from the pull-down menu at the lower left of the webpage. This will open in a new browser window the webpage for the enlargement, which is at

http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/enlargement.xq?objectdbi...

[3] The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante Alighieri, 2nd ed., trans. Henry Francis Cary, 3 vols. (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1819).

[4] For Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, 2 vols. (London: MacMillan, 1863).

[5]  Gilchrist, Life (1863), 2:222. “A Design of Circular Stairs” is item 103(b) in "LIST No. 1./Works in Colour./Section A.--Dated Works” within Set 103 "The Paradise.” (In the 1880 Life (2:234), item 125(b), “A design of Circular Stairs”--with an identical annotation.)

[6] “Dante and Blake,” Chapter 8 of Reaching for Art (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1967 reprint of 1931 ed.), 106-20. The quotation is identical in Guy Eglinton, “Dante Alighieri and Blake,” International Studio 80, no. 331 (December 1924): 239-48.

[7] Ernest H. Wilkins, “Blake’s Drawing of Dante’s Celestial Scaleo,” Sixty-Eighth to Seventy-Second Annual Reports of the Dante Society with Accompanying Papers (Cambridge, Mass: 1954), 35-42. Wilkins mentions the now-famous error in the canto inscription (“Hell Canto 18” on Butlin #812.34) of “Drawing 34” (Wilkins 42) as an example of another error.

[8] Morton Paley, The Traveller in the Evening (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 111n33.

[9] Gilchrist, Life (1863), 1:366.

[10] "William Blake; The Illustrator of the Grave, &c." unsigned notice in The Literary Gazette; and Journal of Belles Lettres, no. 552 (Saturday, August 18, 1827): 540-41. Blake died on August 12, 1827.

[11] Literary Gazette 541. Blake’s copies of these three books are untraced. “Sessi Velutello’s Dante”--as Wilkins (39n6) noticed--apparently refers to one of the Sessa brothers’ Venetian editions, with Alessandro Vellutello’s (and Cristoforo Landino’s) commentary--Giovanni Battista and Melchior Sessa’s 1564  or 1578 editions, or Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Bernardo Sessa’s 1596 edition.

[12] Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary in Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Etc., ed. Edith J. Morley (London: Longmans, 1922), 8.

[13] J.T. Smith, Nollekens and His Times, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1828), 2:486. Henry Boyd’s The Divina Commedia, 3 vols. (London: Cadell and Davies, 1802), contains the other complete English translation of Paradiso in print during Blake’s life. Whether Blake read Boyd’s translation of Paradiso is unclear. Blake may have compared Inferno translations: Volume 1 of Boyd’s A translation of the Inferno of Dante Alighieri, 2 vols. (Dublin: P. Byrne, 1785), with Blake’s handwritten annotations to the “Historical Notes” and first line, is in the Cambridge University Library Keynes.U.4.13.

[14] https://www.dropbox.com/s/3uz5xywni1m56u3/190%20191.jpg?dl=0

[15] https://www.dropbox.com/s/mze3dptmivpwvlm/189.jpg?dl=0

[16] https://www.dropbox.com/s/qzy16g4u5u20by3/192.jpg?dl=0

[17] Blake, by then a professional engraver for nearly half a century, had experience and expertise in accurately rendering letters and numbers, including Roman numerals. But he did not “catch” the misprint, which suggests that Blake had imperfect recall of events in Paradiso by canto.

[18] The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante Alighieri, trans. H. F. Cary, 3 vols. (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1814).

[19] An American edition (Henry Francis Cary, trans., The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante Alighieri, The Works of the British Poets, with Lives of the Authors, vols. 45-46, Ezekiel Sanford and Robert Walsh, Jr., eds. (Philadelphia: Samuel Bradford, 1822)) also lacks misprinted canto numbers in Paradiso 21 (46:293-98).

[20] Butlin ##812.58,75,76,88 have a dual canto inscription, 17 and 45 a cancelled alternate single inscription. All his dual inscriptions refer to consecutive canto numbers, which may provide a negative inference: had Blake meant to key his inscription to precisely two cantos—Paradiso 21 and 22—in this drawing, he might have sought to do so (thereby looking up the adjacent canto, and discovering the misprint himself), having precedent in his inscriptions to Inferno and Purgatorio.

[21] Albert S. Roe, Blake’s Illustrations to the Divine Comedy (Princeton University Press, 1953), 178. Roe thought the drawing “probably illustrates” Paradiso 19, but called attention to Cantos 10 and 21 (Roe 178 & n2).

[22] For Blake to consult--and cite--an unintended, marked, passage would be extravagantly uncharacteristic carelessness.

[23] Thanks, for indispensable resources, to Daniel Boice, Linda Forrest, and the University of Arkansas at Monticello library.