University of Virginia Library

Conclusion

Blake was widely and deeply read in some subjects, and, as a result, critics sometimes expect of him the thoroughness of a modern scholar. In this instance, however, he evidently undertook a major project of literary illustration using a grievously outdated edition, relying upon it almost entirely.[9] If this fact reflects poorly on his scholarship, it does him credit as a reader of Middle English, for those using 1687 Speght were pretty much on their own in construing the text. Although the Speght editions had much better supporting apparatuses than did the immediately preceding Thynne and Stow editions, the lists of "hard words" that appear in them are based on such questionable lexicographical principles as the notion that Elizabethan speakers of Northern dialects could explain Chaucerian vocabulary; further, the 1687 glossary is only fitfully alphabetized (mostly by the first two letters), and, because the several texts and glossary had been set and reset independently by free-spelling Renaissance compositors, the orthography of a given word in a text often varies wildly from that in the glossary. The explanatory notes that appear here and there in the glossary of 1687 are sparse and hobbyhorsical, and its critical apparatus as a whole is much less helpful than that in the Urry or Tyrwhitt editions.

Knowing that Blake copied his Chaucer quotations from the 1687 edition makes it possible to see exactly what he faced as an editor and reader and how he responded. Some of his decisions are not easily accounted for, such as his decision to omit "Christ" in the lines from the Wife of Bath's Prologue, but in general Blake performed competently and sensibly under the circumstances. This is not to say that he improved the text as he found it; indeed, he often exacerbated the eccentric rhythms introduced by the modernizing compositors of the Speght editions, and made some bad guesses, usually in places where the glossary was unhelpful. For instance, he appears to have decided that "Chivauchy" was a place in France once visited by the Squire:

Speght's text reads: The 1687 glossary offers only "chiuancie, . . . chivalry, riding," which is not close enough in spelling to be easily recognizeable, and not obviously appropriate in meaning. Blake's guess may be wrong, but it isn't unreasonable.

Another line in the description of the Squire was no doubt modified because it bore an implication that Blake was trying to suppress. He changed the 1687 "Curteis he was, lowly, and servisable," to "Curteis he was, and meek, and serviceable." In a letter to Stothard's publisher Cromek, Blake had condemned Stothard's version of the Pilgrims for being "low" (Keynes 129), and a major theme of his Descriptive Catalogue is that Chaucer's subject is exalted. By making this change, Blake avoided implications that the Squire was "lowly" in the modern sense. Given these purposes, "and meek" is the best possible solution, satisfying both metrical and critical requirements.

But Blake's scholarship is less at issue than is our own. Those who want to understand Blake's perspective on Chaucer in the Descriptive Catalogue and in the pictures themselves should continue to consult all the editions that might have been available to him between 1806 and 1825, not to mention other works commenting on the subject, but they should look first in 1687 Speght, Blake's Chaucer.