Plate 40[36]
. . . .
Gloucester and Exeter and Salisbury and Bristol; and benevolent
Bath [61]
The word "Bath" at the end of Plate 40 is repeated as the first word
of Plate 41. It stands where it might seem to be a catchword yet can equally
well represent the final word of line 61, crowded below the line for lack of
space. Sloss and Wallis pass over it as a true catchword; Keynes ("rightly,"
says Wicksteed) treats it as the true ending of the line.
Keynes and Wicksteed are right, but the evidence is not easy to
evaluate. "Bath" is not separated from the rest of the text, by ornament or
spacing, as are the true catchwords in Jerusalem (this is, I
think, the most decisive point); yet Blake himself appears to have mistaken
it for a catchword when he was inking or retouching this plate. In the
British Museum copy "Bath" is legible enough; in the Rinder copy it is
deleted, apparently by underinking. The posthumous copies show that it was
not deleted on the plate, but then a catchword that still worked would not
have been deleted there, either. In the Morgan copy "Bath" is retouched,
in the same greyish ink used to mend other words in this copy, including
some nearby catchwords.[24] In the
Harvard copy the word is retouched, but carelessly, the B
written as a D, perhaps from confusion of this plate with
Plate
44, where the word
"Death" is in the same position — and is not a catchword. In the
Mellon
copy one can see that the lower parts of the "th" did not print clearly and
have not been retouched; also a line of border has been drawn so close as
to scathe these letters — yet "Bath" has not been drawn over with
loops,
as have some true catchwords in that copy.
If we reject "Bath" as a catchword, however, we cannot continue to
argue that one of the plates beginning with that word had to follow.
