Plate 76
[Incised below figures in the picture:]
Albion Jesus
From posthumous copies we can see that the names "Albion" and
"Jesus" below the figures in this full-page engraving are cut into the plate
in about equal strength. But in some copies Blake, by selective inking,
deleted the name "Jesus", in some both names. Both are clear in the British
Museum copy. "Jesus" is deleted in the Rinder and Morgan copies but
"Albion" is clear, being touched with white in the latter copy. Both names
are hidden in the Harvard and Mellon copies.
Wicksteed (p. 220) explains: "The name ALBION appears in most
prints . . . below the youthful figure who might otherwise be mistaken for
LOS. The name JESUS is less necessary, but is also found in many
copies." Compare, however, the deletion of allusions to Jesus in Plate 3.
Wicksteed's "many" and the Census generalization (see next
footnote) obscure the
fact that "Jesus" is deleted in all copies made by Blake except the British
Museum copy. (The posthumous should not count.)
The apples on the tree, four on each side, go through a different
evolution: barely visible in the British Museum copy, and hidden in the
Rinder and Harvard copies, they are retouched in white in the Morgan
copy, in black and gold (and increased to six on the left side) in the
Mellon.
It took careful inking, or retouching, to bring out these fine-line
elements. All copies were printed from the same state of the plate.[28] (The nail heads are outlined in
black in
the Mellon copy, as they are not on Plate 51.) (In the Harvard copy the
apples are outlined in black on black, with ambiguous effect: probably to
cover white lines left after printing, but possibly to assert the apples' muted
outlines.)
