ANCIENT BRITONS

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Jerusalem 

Plate 70

Blake wrote his Descriptive Catalogue in conjunction with his exhibition of paintings in 1809. His major painting of The Ancient Britons has been lost as has his History of England which is noted in the Descriptive Catalogue. However Blake left a detailed description of what he intended to represent in his large fresco.

Advertisement of the Exhibition, (E 526)
                     "Exhibition of Paintings in Fresco,
                  Poetical and Historical Inventions,
                             BY. Wm.  Blake.
PAGE 1
  THE ANCIENT BRITONS--Three Ancient Britons overthrowing the
Army of armed Romans; the Figures full as large as Life--From the 
Welch Triades.

In the last Battle that Arthur fought, the most Beautiful was one
That return'd, and the most Strong another: with them also return'd 
The most Ugly, and no other beside return'd from the bloody Field.

The most Beautiful, the Roman Warriors trembled before and worshipped: 
The most Strong, they melted before him and dissolved in his presence: 
The most Ugly they fled with outcries and contortion of their Limbs."

The symbolic nature of the figures in The Ancient Britons is explained by Northrop Frye in Some British Romantics: A Collection of Essays. He relates the figures which Blake described to the arch of three stones which typify Druid architecture, and he points out the parallel with Blake's Three Classes of Men. 

"The central form of druid architecture is the trilithic cromlech or dolmen, the arch of three stones. According to Blake, the two uprights of this arch symbolize  the two aspects of creative power, strength and beauty, or sublimity and pathos, as he called them in the Descriptive Catalogue, the horizontal stone being the dominant Urizenic reason. Human society presents this arch in the form of an 'Elect' class tyrannizing over the 'Reprobate,' the unfashionable artists and prophets who embody human sublimity, and the 'Redeemed,' the gentler souls who are in the company of the beautiful and pathetic. This trilithic structure reappears in such later militaristic monuments as the Arch of Titus: in the 'Druid' form, it is illustrated with great power in Milton, Plate 6, and in Jerusalem, Plate 70...To pass under this arch is to be subjugated, in a fairly literal sense, to what is, according to the Descriptive Catalogue, both the human reason and the 'incapability of intellect,' as intellect in Blake is always associated with the creative and imaginative. Another form of tyrannical architecture characteristic of a degenerate civilization is the pyramid, representing the volcano or imprisoning mountain under which Orc lies. Blake connects the pyramids with the servitude of the Israelites among the brickkilns and the 'furanaces of iron' (1 Kings 8:51) applied to Egypt in the Bible. The association of the pyramids with fire is as old a Plato..." (Page 20)

---

Jerusalem, Plate 27, (E 171)
" Albion was the Parent of the Druids; & in his Chaotic State of
Sleep   Satan & Adam & the whole World was Created by the Elohim."

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 542)
" NUMBER V. 
          The Ancient Britons
In the last Battle of King Arthur only Three Britons escaped,
these were the Strongest Man, the Beautifullest Man, and the
Ugliest Man; these three marched through the field unsubdued, as
Gods,
...
 The three general classes of men who are represented by the
most Beautiful, the most Strong, and the most Ugly, could not be
represented by any historical facts but those of our own country,
the Ancient Britons; without violating costume.  The Britons (say
historians) were naked civilized men, learned, studious, abstruse
in thought and contemplation; naked, simple, plain, in their acts
and manners; wiser than after-ages."

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 543)
"The Strong man represents the human sublime.  The Beautiful 
man represents the human pathetic, which was in the wars of Eden 
divided into male and female.  The Ugly  man represents the human 
reason.  They were originally one man, who was fourfold; he was 
self-divided, and his real humanity slain on the
stems of generation, and the form of the fourth was like the Son 
of God.  How he became divided is a subject of great sublimity 
and pathos.  The Artist has written it under inspiration, and 
will, if God please, publish it; it is voluminous, and contains 
the ancient history of Britain, and the world of Satan and of 
Adam.
  In the mean time he has painted this Picture, which supposes
that in the reign of that British Prince, who lived in the fifth
century, there were remains of those naked Heroes, in the Welch
Mountains; they are there now, Gray saw them in the person of his
bard on Snowdon; there they dwell in naked simplicity; happy is
he who can see and converse with them above the shadows of
generation and death.  The giant Albion, was Patriarch of the
Atlantic, he is the Atlas of the Greeks, one of those the Greeks
called Titans.  The stories of Arthur are the acts of Albion,
applied to a Prince of the fifth century, who conquered
Europe, and held the Empire of the world in the dark age, which
the Romans never again recovered."

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 544)
"The Beauty proper for sublime art, is lineaments, or
forms and features that are capable of being the receptacles of
intellect; accordingly the Painter has given in his beautiful
man, his own idea of intellectual Beauty.  The face and limbs
that deviates or alters least, from infancy to old age, is the
face and limbs of greatest Beauty and perfection.
  The Ugly likewise, when accompanied and annexed to
imbecility and disease, is a subject for burlesque and not for
historical grandeur; the Artist has imagined his Ugly man; one 
approaching to the 
beast in features and form, his forehead small, without frontals; 
his jaws large; his nose high on the ridge, and narrow; his chest 
and the stamina of his make, comparatively little, and his joints 
and his extremities large; his eyes with scarce any whites, 
narrow and cunning, and every thing tending toward what is truly 
Ugly; the incapability of intellect.
  The Artist has considered his strong Man as a receptacle of
Wisdom, a sublime energizer; his features and limbs do not
spindle out into length, without strength, nor are they too large
and unwieldy for his brain and bosom.  Strength consists in
accumulation of power to the principal seat, and from thence a
regular gradation and subordination; strength is compactness, not
extent nor bulk.
  The strong Man acts from conscious superiority, and marches
on in fearless dependance on the divine decrees, raging with the
inspirations of a prophetic mind.  The Beautiful Man acts
from duty, and anxious solicitude for the fates of those for whom
he combats.  The Ugly Man acts from love of carnage, and delight
in the savage barbarities of war, rushing with sportive 
precipitation into the very teeth of the affrighted enemy."
  
Descriptive Catalogue, (E 545)
  "The Roman Soldiers rolled together in a heap before them:
'Like the rolling thing before the whirlwind;' each shew a
different character, and a different expression of fear, or
revenge, or envy, or blank horror, or amazement, or devout wonder
and unresisting awe.
  The dead and the dying, Britons naked, mingled with armed
Romans, strew the field beneath.  Among these, the last of the
Bards who were capable of attending warlike deeds, is seen
falling, outstretched among the dead and the dying; singing to
his harp in the pains of death.
  Distant among the mountains, are Druid Temples,
similar to Stone Hedge.  The Sun sets behind the mountains,
bloody with the day of battle."


Milton, Plate 5, (E 100)
"Thus they sing Creating the Three Classes among Druid Rocks    
Charles calls on Milton for Atonement. Cromwell is ready
James calls for fires in Golgonooza. for heaps of smoking ruins  
In the night of prosperity and wantonness which he himself Created
Among the Daughters of Albion among the Rocks of the Druids
When Satan fainted beneath the arrows of Elynittria
And Mathematic Proportion was subdued by Living Proportion"

Milton, Plate 6, (E 100)
"The Web of Life is woven: & the tender sinews of life created
And the Three Classes of Men regulated by Los's hammer.   
Plate 7
The first, The Elect from before the foundation of the World:  
The second, The Redeem'd. The Third, The Reprobate & form'd
To destruction from the mothers womb: follow with me my plow!  

Of the first class was Satan: with incomparable mildness;
His primitive tyrannical attempts on Los: with most endearing love" 

Milton, Plate 25 [27], (E 222)
"The Ancient Man upon the Rock of Albion Awakes,
He listens to the sounds of War astonishd & ashamed;
He sees his Children mock at Faith and deny Providence          
Therefore you must bind the Sheaves not by Nations or Families
You shall bind them in Three Classes; according to their Classes
So shall you bind them. Separating What has been Mixed
Since Men began to be Wove into Nations by Rahab & Tirzah
Since Albions Death & Satans Cutting-off from our awful Fields;  
When under pretence to benevolence the Elect Subdud All
From the Foundation of the World. The Elect is one Class: You
Shall bind them separate: they cannot Believe in Eternal Life
Except by Miracle & a New Birth. The other two Classes;
The Reprobate who never cease to Believe, and the Redeemd,       
Who live in doubts & fears perpetually tormented by the Elect
These you shall bind in a twin-bundle for the Consummation--
But the Elect must be saved [from] fires of Eternal Death,
To be formed into the Churches of Beulah that they destroy not the Earth
For in every Nation & every Family the Three Classes are born
And in every Species of Earth, Metal, Tree, Fish, Bird & Beast"