Plate 51
[Inscribed beneath pictures, in separate prints
only:]
Vala Hyle Skofield
[Incised in lower left corner, and visible in British Museum,
Morgan,
and posthumous copies and separate prints:]
W B [in monogram] inv & s
Blake evidently put his monogram on this pictorial plate for issuing
as a separate print (several examples of which are alluded to in Keynes's
Blake Studies, p. 115; Census p. 113). He let
the
ink cover it when printing the Rinder, Harvard and Mellon copies; yet it
can be detected in the Harvard.
The Census reports an impression now in the collection
of Sir Geoffrey Keynes with the names "Vala Hyle Skofield" "in white
line" and the signature, quoted as "W B inv." The posthumous copies prove
that the names were never on the plate; they do not appear in any copies of
Jerusalem; "white line" must mean white ink, not incision;
the
Census statement that "this lettering is present in some
copies,
though mostly obliterated by heavy inking", ought perhaps to read: "present
in some (or one) separate print(s) but not visible elsewhere."
