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In his own time, James Parker was probably as well known an engraver as his old friend and partner William Blake.[3] From the time when the two men were fellow-apprentices under James Basire, their careers were significantly parallel until Parker's early death in 1805. They went on a sailing expedition with Thomas Stothard about 1780 and were arrested as spies; they were married within a few days of one another in 1782; they lived in the same house at 27 Broad Street and shared a print-selling business in 1784 — 85; they made engravings for some of the same works;[4] and in the last year of Parker's life Blake was still consulting him about professional matters. Theirs was clearly a life-long and close professional friendship.

James Parker's career probably conforms a good deal more closely to what Blake's parents hoped for him when they apprenticed him in 1772 than Blake's did. Parker was a quiet, orderly, dependable man,[5] whose engravings

were delivered when he said they would be,[6] and who became a leader among his peers, particularly in helping to found the Society of Engravers in 1802. Flaxman's sketch of him shows a solid, self-confident, prosperous man, whose hair is cut close enough to enable him to wear a wig (see Plate 1). By contrast, Blake was seen as an eccentric solitary, an "insane genius" whose poetry and visions interrupted his proper business of engraving, and whose portrait by Phillips shows him as an artist with a brush rather than as an engraver (see Plate 2). Indeed, so unbusinesslike was Blake that his wife scarcely liked to mention that the cupboard was bare and merely served him at dinner with an empty plate.

An outline of the career of James Parker may help to indicate what William Blake might have become had he been a mere journeyman rather than a genius.

James Parker was born in 1750 and was thus seven years older than William Blake. The earliest record of him is when on 3 August 1773,

Like William Blake, Parker was the son of a London tradesman, and, also like Blake (presumably), he had shown more aptitude for art than for commerce. Like William Blake, who had been bound apprentice to Basire at the same fee just a year earlier, on 4 August 1772,[8] James Parker did not, on the completion of his apprenticeship, take up the freedom of the city which would have entitled him to take apprentices and set up a business of his own — though he was prepared to do the former and did do the latter.

Note that Parker was apprenticed not as an adolescent but as a young man of about twenty-three. The difference in age between sixteen (Blake's age in 1773) and twenty-three is, of course, immense; when (presumably) Parker and Blake first met in 1773, Blake was in the throes of adolescence, writing poetry and envious of his elders, while Parker was a young man. On the other hand, Blake was an artistic genius and had already had a year of training as an engraver when Parker began his apprenticeship. Each may have had something to learn from the other.

When William Blake completed his apprenticeship in 1779, he enrolled at the Royal Academy to study further as an artist, but Parker did not.

It was probably about 1780, when Parker was free of his apprenticeship, that he went with Blake and the rising young artist Thomas Stothard on a sketching expedition sailing up the Medway. Stothard made a sketch of their camp by the riverside, with the sail stretched over the boat for a tent, and with a print of it is a note:

Such shared experiences are likely to have cemented the friendship between the three men. In later years, when Stothard was becoming the most prolific book-illustrator of his time, his designs were often engraved by Blake (more than 30) and Parker (more than 57), and doubtless Stothard occasionally directed commissions to them — on 24 March 1805 Parker wrote that he was "obliged to his friend M.r Stothard, for having 'so often recommended Mr Parker to Mr Du Roveray's notice'" as an engraver (see below).[10]

According to his Marriage Allegation of 17 August 1782, James Parker (aged 25 and up [i.e., 32]), Stationer of the Parish of St Dunstan in the West, was to marry Ann Serjeantson of Long Preston in the County of York (aged 21 and up) at Long Preston.[11] One wonders how he had met a young woman from as far away as Yorkshire. Can there be a connection with Blake's friend John Flaxman, whose family came from Yorkshire?

On 13 August 1782 "William Blake a Batchelor and Catharine Butcher [or Boucher] a Spinster" took out a license so that they "may solemnize Marriage together", and on 18 August they were married in the church of St Mary, Battersea, just south of London.

Ann Serjeantson Parker became of importance to Blake and his wife, for they all four lived together for more than a year — and perhaps their marriages so close together were a deliberate prelude to this household-sharing.

In 1784 the Blakes and the Parkers set up a print-shop together at 27 Broad Street, Golden Square, Westminster, next door to where Blake had been born and where he was brought up until he went to live with Basire's

family when he was fifteen. This was a somewhat bold enterprise, for print-shops were then uncommon. Only twenty-six years later, on 2 July 1800, Blake wrote: "We remember when a Print shop was a rare bird in London", though "There are now [1800], I believe, . . . as many Printshops as of any other trade" [p. 1535].

Blake's father died in July 1784, and Blake may have inherited enough money to pay for his share of the print-shop partnership with James Parker. He probably acquired then the printing-press with which he was still printing in 1800 and indeed 1827, while Parker may have provided prints for their stock-in-trade. At this time Blake was attending the literary salons of Mrs Harriet Mathew, a minor blue-stocking, and her husband the Reverend Anthony Stephen Mathew had joined John Flaxman in paying for the printing of the little collection called Poetical Sketches by W. B. (1783), A. S. Mathew writing the apologetic preface to it. A year or so later, Blake "continued to benefit from Mrs. Mathew's liberality, and was enabled to continue in partnership, as a Printseller, with his fellow-pupil, Parker, in a shop, No. 27, next door to his father's, in Broad-street".[12]

According to records for payments of the Paving Rates for Golden Square Ward, Westminster, in 1784, "Parker & Blake" replaced William Neville in the last house [No. 27] in Broad Street North before it meets Marshall Street East, next door to James Blake's haberdashery shop at 28 Broad Street, and, on the basis of a rent of £16, they paid a Rate of 16s. 8d.;[13] in 1785 "Jas Parker & Wm Blake [on a rent of £] 18 [paid Poor Rates of £]2..2.. — ",[14] but in fact Blake had moved out in the last quarter of the year.[15]

We do not know how the business was run, or indeed much of what they sold, but it seems likely that Parker and Blake made and printed engravings, while their wives ran the shop itself. At any rate, according to an early biography of Blake, "His wife attended to the business, and Blake continued to engrave, and took Robert, his favourite brother, for a pupil. This speculation did not succeed — his brother too sickened and died; he had a dispute with Parker — the shop was relinquished [by Blake]".[16]

The only prints known to have been published by the firm of Parker & Blake were Blake's oval engravings after their friend Stothard of "Zephyrus

and Flora" and "Calisto" (only six copies known of each) which were "Published as the Act directs Decr 17. 1784 by Parker & Blake N° 27 Broad St Golden Square".[17] It seems likely, however, that they sold prints by other engravers and print-sellers, and perhaps Parker too made some engravings for the firm of Parker & Blake.

The print-firm of Parker & Blake apparently lasted only a little more than a year at 27 Broad Street, from early 1784 through late 1785. We do not know the cause of the dissolution of the partnership, but the "dispute", if there was one, apparently did not disrupt the long friendship of Parker and Blake. As both men were keen print-collectors, there may have been some difficulty as to which prints were for sale and which were parts of their private collections.

When the firm was dissolved, Blake probably took with him the printing-press, leaving Parker in the shop-premises at 27 Broad Street and perhaps with the stock of prints they had accumulated.

Parker continued paying the Paving Rates at 27 Broad Street in 1787 — 1794,[18] and he probably continued to sell prints there as well. While he was living there, in 1788, "James Parker N° 27 Broad Street Engraver" voted for Townsend (not Hood),[19] and in 1790 he voted for Fox (not Hood or Tooke) and wasted one of his votes.[20] Note that William Blake did not vote in any election when he was qualified to do so by having paid the rates, though his father and brother did.

During the 1790s, both Blake and Parker were comparatively prosperous; about 1795 Blake received the largest commission he was ever to be given, for a hundred and fifty quarto-size engravings in illustration of Young's Night Thoughts (Part One with 43 plates was published in 1797), and Parker was prosperous enough to think of taking an apprentice. On 27 August 1795 John Flaxman wrote to William Hayley saying that Hayley's friend Weller, a carver (like Flaxman's father), wished to apprentice his son to an engraver. "M:r Sharpe is not inclined to take a pupil", but Flaxman's old friend Parker is; "he is one of those Steady, persevering men, who is constantly advancing in the best pursuits of his art, he is besides, religious, mild & conscientious". He would ask £210 for five years.[21] Notice the size of the premium Parker is asking: exactly four times what he and Blake had paid — and for five years rather than seven. He must indeed have been in a prosperous way if he felt he

had enough engraving work, and enough room in his house, to share them with an apprentice.

During these years, Parker worked on some of the most ambitious illustrated books of that or any other time in England: For Robert Bowyer's magnificent folio edition of Hume's History of England (1793 — 1806) he made thirteen plates from 1795 through 1805, including particularly fine ones of "Balliol Surrendering his Crown to Edward I" after Opie (1799 — see Plate 3) and "Charles II. and Sir William Temple" after Stothard (1805); and for the most splendid of them all, John Boydell's Dramatic Works of Shakspeare (1791 — 1802) he engraved eleven folio plates,[22] including an admirable one after Fuseli for Midsummer-Night's Dream (1799) and, even more impressive, an atlas folio plate of Lady Macbeth with the letter after Westall (1800). However, he engraved no plate for Thomas Macklin's equally magnificent The Old [and New] Testament, Embellished with Engravings, from Pictures and Designs by the Most Eminent English Artists (1791 — 1800), though he did make other engravings for Macklin — and was handsomely paid for them: "Fainasollis Borbar & Fingal" (for which he was paid £80 — see Plate 4) and "The Fall of Agandecca" (£180) after J. Barralet and "Cymbeline" (£80) and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (£70) after S. Harding;[23] they are listed in Macklin's Poetic Description of Choice and Valuable Prints (1794), and the copper-plates were offered in Macklin's posthumous auction 31 March — 4 April 1808 (Peter Coxe).

During these years William Blake's professional career was changing in direction. He had been commissioned about 1795 by Richard Edwards to make 537 large watercolours for Young's Night Thoughts, 150 of which he was to engrave himself, and in 1799 by Thomas Butts to make fifty watercolour illustrations of the Bible. (So far as we know, James Parker made no original designs, though of course he had to copy designs by others in reduced size in order to engrave them.) Further, in 1800 — 1803, Blake largely withdrew from the London engraving market to live as the protegé of William Hayley in the little sea-side village of Felpham in Sussex, making designs and engravings for Hayley's popular poetry and biographies. When he returned to London, he found that the booksellers ignored him. On 7 October 1803 he wrote to Hayley: "Art in London flourishes. Every Engraver turns away work that he cannot execute from his superabundant Employment, yet no one brings work to me. . . . Yet I laugh & sing for if on Earth neglected I am in heaven a Prince among Princes & even on Earth beloved by the Good as a Good Man . . .". And two years later, on 11 December 1805, he wrote again to Hayley: "I was alive & in health & with the same Talents I now have all the

time of Boydells Macklins Bowyers & other Great Works. I was known by them & was lookd upon by them as Incapable of Employment in those Works . . .". And in a disingenuous little verse he asked: Blake was not employed in those "Great Works" except for one plate for Shakspeare,[24] whereas Parker engraved twenty-four plates for them. In terms of standing with the great illustrated-book publishers of the 1790s, there can be little doubt that James Parker was thought much more reliable than William Blake.

During these difficult years for Blake, he clearly remained on close terms with Parker, for one of the very small number of the complete collection of four Designs to a Series of Ballads (June — August 1802) by William Hayley engraved and published by Blake has on the original blue paper covers the name in old brown ink of "J. Parker".[25]

About 1801 the engravers who were working on the plates after Robert Smirke's designs for The Arabian Nights (1802), including Heath, Fittler, Anker Smith, Neagle, Parker, Warren, Armstrong, and Raimbach, began to meet monthly at one anothers' houses, and from these meetings grew the Society of Engravers.[26] Clearly Parker was a member of the group, and a "SET OF Engraver's PROOFS [was] PRESENTED TO MR. PARKER by his compeers in this beautiful work".[27] Indeed, he became one of the twenty-four Governors of the Society of Engravers[28] and was influential in the conduct of the profession.

During the brief Peace of Amiens of 1802 — 1803, the amateur illustrated-book publisher F. J. Du Roveray proposed that he should employ French engravers for his next book to foster a rivalry between French and English engravers. The implication that their work needed such a stimulus so incensed the English engravers that they refused for a time to work for Du Roveray — and when England renewed the war with France in 1803 the French engravers were no longer accessible to him. Du Roveray appealed to many English engravers, and particularly to James Parker, to make plates for him. On 24 March 1803 Parker replied to him:

This letter exhibits eloquently what his obituary in The Gentleman's Magazine] described as "his equanimity of temper, his suavity of manners, and integrity".

To this Du Roveray drafted a reply:

• 25 March 1803 I should have no objection to leave the point or points at issue to the decision of Mr Stothard, or any other impartial person[.]

Five weeks later Parker responded:

And a year later he wrote again in a letter postmarked 15 June 1804:

About the same time, William Blake was appealing to Parker for his professional opinion. He wrote to Hayley on 22 June 1804 about the prices Hayley should expect to have to pay for engravings in his life of Romney:

And six months later, on 28 December 1804, Blake wrote again to Hayley about the price of his engraving of Romney's "The Shipwreck":

Others too were praising Parker at the time. Bryan Froughton Jr wrote to F. J. Du Roveray on 19 March 1805 that in the print for Pope's Essay on Man in Du Roveray's edition of Pope's Poetical Works (1804),

But Parker's engravings for Pope's Poetical Works were the last he ever engraved for Du Roveray, for "He died after a short illness, aged about forty-five [i.e., 55]".[33] According to the obituary of James Parker, in The Gentleman's Magazine, 75 (June 1805), 586, James Parker, "an eminent portrait and historical engraver", died on 20 May and was buried in St Clement Danes, and his fellow Governors of the Society of Engravers "attended him to the grave". One would like to think that his old fellow-apprentice and partner William Blake was also among those at the graveside.

Both Parker and Blake had been notable collectors of prints, though Parker's were by contemporaries and Blake's were by 16th-Century masters.[34] About two years after Parker's death and presumably on behalf of his widow there was published

Probably no sale since that time has included so many engravings by Parker — or so many copies of the prints Blake had engraved for the firm of Parker & Blake.

It is possible to make some very rough comparisons between the careers of James Parker and William Blake as engravers. In terms of commercial engravings[36] finished in each year, the pattern is:

                                                           

Year	Parker	Blake
unknown	9	--
1780	1	3
1781	1	11
1782	1	19
1783	3	16
1784	1	8
1785	1	1
1786	3	1
1787	2	1
1788	1	5
1789	1	2
1790	--	--
1791	--	17
1792	6	9
Year	Parker	Blake
1793	7+	5
1794	11	6
1795	8[*]	6
1796	12[*]+	25[**]
1797	7[*]+	32[**]
1798	1[*]	--
1799	4[*]	4[*]
1800	3[*]	5
1801	3[*]	1
1802	6[*]+	18
1803	2[*]	6
1804	3[*]	5
1805	31[*]+	8
TOTAL	136+	224

In comparing these totals, however, one must remember in the first place that engravings by Blake have been assiduously sought since 1861, and most of his plates have probably already been discovered, whereas this, the first record of Parker's engravings, is certainly incomplete.

And in the second place, Parker was probably on the average better remunerated than Blake for his engravings. For his octavo plates, Parker was often paid £8.8.0 or £10.10.0 (Hayley, Old Maids [1793], Armstrong, Preserving Health [1795], Green, The Spleen [1796], Somervile, The Chace [1796], and Collins, Poetical Works [1802]), which was probably about what Blake was paid for similar work, and we know that they were paid £5.5.0 for each plate they engraved in outline for Flaxman's Iliad (1805). However, Parker

made a large number of folio plates (1795 — 1802) for Boydell's Shakspeare (1802) and Bowyer's Hume (1806) which were probably very well remunerated. James Heath was paid £420, or a hundred guineas each, for his four folio plates for Boydell's Shakspeare[37] (after Peters for Macbeth, III, i, after Smirke for Much Ado About Nothing, IV, ii, and after Northcote for Richard III, IV, iii, and Romeo and Juliet, V, iii), and Isaac Taylor was paid £500 for his atlas engraving after Stothard for Henry VIII.[38] Other engravers for Boydell and Bowyer were virtually certainly remunerated at similar rates. An engraver could earn enough from a single large line-engraving for Boydell or Bowyer or Macklin to live for a year and more.

On the other hand, Blake made only one plate for the Shakspeare and none at all for Hume. Further, Blake's own great series of folio plates for Young's Night Thoughts (1797) were made chiefly for glory rather than for cash — we do not know what he was paid for his folio Night Thoughts engravings, but for his 537 folio Night Thoughts drawings he was paid only £21.[39] While Parker was being entrusted with more responsible and remunerative folio plates, Blake was largely restricted to plates of smaller dimensions and value — and in 1800 he moved to a country village far from the booksellers who had such commissions in their gift. For most of his commercial folio plates, those for the Night Thoughts, Blake was probably paid only a small fraction of what Parker was receiving for work of similar size.

Of course, the differences between James Parker and William Blake are far more important than the similarities, and Blake had modest sources of income to which Parker had no access. Blake had a small but significant and steady income as a painter in water-colours, and he invented a method of Illuminated Printing in which all his published poetry appeared — though apparently no one else has ever used it — and from it he derived some income, though probably less than his time was worth as a professional engraver. And of course Blake was a genius as a painter and a poet. Not only that, but his greatest accomplishments in engraving, such as his Illustrations of The Book of Job (1826) and Dante, were far beyond anything James Parker achieved or attempted.

Blake was a solitary visionary, who did not join with others, who did not vote, who went his own way, content with his visions and his genius. The only collaboration he attempted with another man, in the firm of Parker & Blake, collapsed after only a few months. By contrast, James Parker worked very well in harness, he was a worthy and reliable member of his profession, and indeed he proved himself to be a leader in the organization of his fellow engravers. The two men were extraordinarily different — but clearly they were good friends. Today, the senior partner of the firm of Parker & Blake is scarcely known, whereas the junior member is famous wherever English is spoken.

The career of James Parker demonstrates what that of William Blake might have been like had he been a steady, reliable workman like Parker — and had he not been a genius.