SWEDENBORG

 First posted June 2022

Library of Congress

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 3

 Quote from an earlier post by Larry:

"In the 18th century Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish scientist, philosopher and religionist, had a very high reputation. In London a 'new church' sprang up espousing his values. William Blake's parents were members of the New Church. That probably explains several interesting things about Blake's early life. For example his father appeared to be about as permissive as the average modern father in our culture today, but very atypical for his generation.

Blake was imbued with a great many of the famous man's values, particularly his esoteric religious ones. As a young adult Blake found many of the same ideas among the great thinkers of the ages. He thus became less dependent on Swedenborg's thought forms. With MHH Plates 21 and 22 he declared his independence of his childhood teacher.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, (E 42)

"Plate 21
  I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of
themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident
insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning:
  Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho' it
is only the Contents or Index of already publish'd books"

Plate 22

 "Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new
truth: Now hear another: he has written all the old falshoods.
  And now hear the reason.  He conversed with Angels who are
all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion,
for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions.
  Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all
superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no
further."

Perhaps the chief objection of the mature Blake was that Swedenborg had a positive demeanor re the established church. But one of the things that stayed with Blake was Swedenborg's concept of the Divine Humanity." 

____________________

Here is a section of An Interview Conducted with Kathleen Raine on July 12, 1993 by Donald E. Stanford:

interview 

"Stanford: Why did he leave the Church of the New Jerusalem? 

Raine: Ah, that’s a good question. He wasn’t a churchman really. But he remained to the end of his life a Swedenborgian. This is this much-disputed Blake system. The scholars all scratch their heads about this; but it’s no problem. If you read the “Everlasting Gospel,” which is one of his latest works, it is in fact a point-by-point summary of the five leading beliefs of the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem, and in his interviews with Crabb Robinson, Robinson asked him about Swedenborg, and Blake said that he was a sent and inspired man, and then added, “but sometimes inspired men go beyond their commission from God.” He followed the Swedenborgian teaching. In fact, we’re all deeply familiar with the phrase “Divine Humanity,” but this phrase is not Blake’s invention; this is Swedenborg. And the Grand Man of the heavens, the one in many, and many in one, of all human souls — this is Swedenborg, and Blake uses this concept in a very beautiful passage in the Four Zoas in which he talks about man contracting our exalted senses with the multitude and expanding what we hold as one, as one man, all the universal family. Swedenborg’s greatest idea, I think, was this of the one in many, and many in one, and the divine presence in man. It was a really very wonderful idea because for him, the Divine Humanity was the eternal Christ, not the historical Christ. That was the Divine Humanity of whom Blake speaks and writes and speaks of as “Jesus the Imagination.” This is purely Swedenborgian. He disagreed with Swedenborg only in one respect: He said Swedenborg put all the good in heaven and the sinners in hell and didn’t realize that both the good and the evil are included in the Divine Humanity who transcends good and evil. That is what The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is about. Point-by-point, it’s quite a funny book. It takes up Swedenborg and his memorable experiences—it’s a running discussion with Swedenborg in semi-satirical terms, but although he poked fun at Swedenborg in certain respects, nevertheless, his system is pure Swedenborgian. I’m sure the only reason why everyone doesn’t know this is that the works of Swedenborg are so boring to read that none of the academics have read them, and I don’t blame them."

Descriptive Catalogue,(E 544)

   "Reasons and opinions concerning acts, are not
history.  Acts themselves alone are history, and these are
neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire,
Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus.  Tell me the Acts, O
historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away
with your reasoning and your rubbish.  All that is not action is
not [P 45] worth reading.  Tell me the What; I do not want you to
tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well
as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that
you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable or
impossible.  His opinions, who does not see spiritual agency, is
not worth any man's reading; he who rejects a fact because it is
improbable, must reject all History and retain doubts only."

Annotations to Reynolds,(E 658) 

 "The Ancients did not mean to Impose when they  affirmd 
their  belief  in Vision & Revelation  Plato was in Earnest. 
Milton was in Earnest.  They believd that God did Visit Man
Really & Truly & not as Reynolds pretends" 

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 3, (E 34)
  "As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years
since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is
the Angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes folded up. 

Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return of Adam into
Paradise; see Isaiah XXXIV & XXXV Chap:
  Without Contraries is no progression.  Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to
Human existence.
  From these contraries spring what the religious call Good &
Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active
springing from Energy.
  Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell." 

Milton, Plate 22 [24], (E 117)

"O Swedenborg! strongest of men, the Samson shorn by the Churches!
Shewing the Transgresors in Hell, the proud Warriors in Heaven:
Heaven as a Punisher & Hell as One under Punishment:
With Laws from Plato & his Greeks to renew the Trojan Gods,
In Albion; & to deny the value of the Saviours blood.
But then I rais'd up Whitefield, Palamabron raisd up Westley,    

And these are the cries of the Churches before the two Witnesses' 
Faith in God  the dear Saviour who took on the likeness of men:
Becoming obedient to death, even the death of the Cross
The Witnesses lie dead in the Street of the Great City
No Faith is in all the Earth: the Book of God is trodden under Foot:       
He sent his two Servants Whitefield & Westley; were they Prophets
Or were they Idiots or Madmen? shew us Miracles!
Plate 23 [25]
Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote
Their lifes whole comfort to intire scorn & injury & death
Awake thou sleeper on the Rock of Eternity Albion awake
The trumpet of Judgment hath twice sounded: all Nations are awake
But thou art still heavy and dull: Awake Albion awake!" 

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 546) 

 "The spiritual Preceptor, an experiment Picture.

THIS subject is taken from the visions of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Universal Theology, [P 53] No. 623.  The Learned, who strive to
ascend into Heaven by means of learning, appear to Children like
dead horses, when repelled by the celestial spheres.  The works
of this visionary are well worthy the attention of Painters and 
Poets; they are foundations for grand things; the reason they 
have not been more attended to, is, because corporeal demons 
have gained a predominance; who the leaders of these are, will 
be shewn below.  Unworthy Men who gain fame among Men, 
continue to govern mankind after death, and in their spiritual 
bodies, oppose the spirits of those, who worthily are famous; 
and as Swedenborg observes, by entering into disease and 
excrement, drunkenness and concupiscence, they possess
themselves of the bodies of mortal men, and shut the doors of
mind and of thought, by placing Learning above Inspiration, O
Artist! you may disbelieve all this, but it shall be at your own
peril."

TITLE PAGE MHH

Fitzwilliam Museum

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Copy I,  Plate 1

Printed 1827

Insight From The Unholy Bible: Blake, Jung and the Collective Unconscious, 

by June Singer

"Blake serves notice that in this little book we must expect the unexpected."  

Page 43

June Singer begins her sturdy of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by describing the title page of his book. At the top of the page is a scene which includes the first three words of the title and images of two couples under leafless trees. The woman of the couple to the right is prone on the ground, the man is kneeling beside her with a babe in his arms. Singer calls this scene the Earth. She states that "Blake gives less space to the earth than to the underworld because to him the daily activity of conscious life was the palest part of existence." She sees that the figures in this space "approch precariously close to the rim of the bottomless depths from which individual consciousness emerges." 

The middle section of the picture is divided into the left side representing the "sinister, dark, or hidden side", covered with flames of Hell. On the right side are dark and bright clouds of Heaven. This section symboizes the abyss into the pairs of opposites, represented as couples, have fallen from the earth above.

In the lower section we enter "the limitless underground regions below the threshold of consciousness." This is the area Blake felt compelled to enter:

"When Blake comes to a place in his life where his understanding of the world about him - the problems of nations in their struggle for freedom from tyranny, the travail of the working people of his own England trying to maintain themselves against the incursion of the machine - and the lack of satisfaction in his personal life and especially in his marriage, bring him to the point of despair, he sinks his own roots deeper into a place of quiet darkness where he can hope to find restoration." He was led to explore Heaven and Hell and "the archetypal opposites from which they sprang."

The lowest part of the picture in which the word HELL appears, contains male and female figures embracing. Singer postulates that Blake "consciously identifies" with the male figure on the right, the side of consciousness. The darker unconscious side of his personality is represented by the female on the left. Singer states that the embrace "is in reality a confrontation between the male ego and the 'other,' between the male who sees himself as a rational being able to perform successfully in the manner prescribed by the social order and the female afire with energy which knows no bounds or limitation...Reason and Energy are seen as the two contraries which struggle within Blake, and whose interaction so deeply concerns him in this work."  

Blake's Poetry

 From Chapter Two of Ram Horn'd with Gold  by Larry Clayton..

                                Style

Poetry by its nature yields meaning at more than one level. Most of Blake's poetry has significance at three primary levels: political or historical, personal or psychological, and religious or metaphysical. Blake would have denied these distinctions because life to him was all one. He saw the political spiritually, the historical metaphysically. This means that the reader may encounter an initial confusion, but if he perseveres in the face of the complexities of symbols and thought forms, he eventually discovers a wealth of meaning. Once again the guiding principle is that everything points to and converges upon the eternal reality underlying what Blake called the shadows of life.

To think and speak eternally is no small achievement for him or for us. Pursuing this aim he floundered for many years (See CHAPTER ONE). The words of Los in 'The Four Zoas' record the moment when Blake got a firm grip on what he sought for himself and for us:

..."I already feel a World within
Opening its gates, & in it all the real substances
Of which these in the outward World are shadows which
pass away."

After twenty years in the visionary wilderness that "World within" opened its gates into the mind of the mature artist and poet. Then he began to exercise the greatest freedom in his artistic use of the shadows. They served him in every conceivable way to elucidate the real world within. All the shadows, all natural phenomena, all historical events, all works of art, his own included, he treated as fluctuating insubstantials which illustrate or point to the eternal reality.

Blake thought so much of Infinity that he learned to take great liberties with time and space. In this he followed the style of the most imaginative books of the Bible. As a young man sitting at the feet of Swedenborg he had learned the doctrine of correspondences which had come down from the Bible through the heterodox tradition. As Blake applied it, every material thing has a spiritual or eternal referrent. In the words of the alchemical tradition, "As above, so below". In the Book of Revelation for example Babylon, a code word for Rome, more generally connotes the citadel of worldly power and evil. Blake of course used it in the same way. He used geographical locations of all sorts to point to spiritual realities. Africa symbolizes slavery in all its forms, particularly the "mind forg'd manacles" of the moral law. America symbolizes the hope of freedom.  

He often succeeded in translating historical events and personages into spiritual realities. Constantine and Charlemayne symbolize war with religion as its handmaid. Albion is Blake's master symbol for Man, but sometimes Moses symbolizes Man; Michael and Satan then symbolize the forces of light and darkness in contest for Man. 

Harvard Art Museums

"Angel Michael Binding Satan"

Beginning with the traditional language of symbolic discourse Blake learned to translate every facet of man's experience into a symbol of the ultimate:

Letters, To Thomas Butts, (E 712)

                      ..."Each grain of Sand,
                      Every Stone on the Land,
                      Each rock & each hill,
                      Each fountain & rill,
                      Each herb & each tree,
                      Mountain, hill, earth & sea,
                      Cloud, Meteor & Star,
                      Are Men Seen Afar."

          And two years later, in another letter poem:

Letters, To Thomas Butts, (E 721)
            "For double the vision my Eyes do see,
            And a double vision is always with me.
            With my inward Eye 'tis an old Man grey;
            With my outward, a Thistle across my way."

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 85, ( E 368)

Los speaking to Spectre

"If we unite in one, another better world will be  
Opend within your heart & loins & wondrous brain
Threefold as it was in Eternity & this the fourth Universe 
Will be Renewd by the three & consummated in Mental fires
But if thou dost refuse Another body will be prepared
PAGE 86 
For me & thou annihilate evaporate & be no more
For thou art but a form & organ of life & of thyself
Art nothing being Created Continually by Mercy & Love divine

Los furious answerd. Spectre horrible thy words astound my Ear
With irresistible conviction I feel I am not one of those 
Who when convincd can still persist. tho furious.controllable
By Reasons power. Even I already feel a World within
Opening its gates & in it all the real substances
Of which these in the outward World are shadows which pass away
Come then into my Bosom & in thy shadowy arms bring with thee   
My lovely Enitharmon. I will quell my fury & teach
Peace to the Soul of dark revenge & repentance to Cruelty

So spoke Los & Embracing Enitharmon & the Spectre 

Clouds would have folded round in Extacy & Love uniting"

Larry's MHH

Blake Archive

Original in Library of Congress

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 1, Copy D

From Larry's Blake book:

          

Blake wrote a strange document called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in which he stood the dominant consciousness on its head.

          The Marriage of Heaven and Hell embodies new communicative skills which Blake used to raise consciousness, not among his contemporaries, few of whom ever saw it, but among later generations.  In Marriage of Heaven and Hell and in subsequent prophecies he describes a world of thought, imagination and reality foreign to the socially conditioned mind.  He deconditions us and reprograms us, or in his language he attempts to raise us "into a perception of the infinite." (Cf Blake's conversation with Ezekiel in Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Erdman p. 39)

          Marriage of Heaven and Hell celebrates Blake's discovery of his identity as a prophet and of the use of irony, which he likely learned from Isaiah.  He called himself a devil, but that does not have the satanic implications that simpletons have ascribed to it; all his life Blake showed implacable enmity to Satan.  Still perhaps his greatest weapon was the ability to turn conventional ideas upside down and let us see another reality beside the prevailing group-think. "Without Contraries is no progression". (Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 3; Erdman p. 34)

          For example laws are for the protection of society - or sometimes for the advantage of those who make them.  Wealth is virtue - or sometimes thievery.  Worship is life giving - unless it's idolatrous. War is terrible - but also profitable.  These are called antinomies.  Blake called them contraries, and the "Proverbs
of Hell" in Marriage of Heaven and Hell express his realization that much of the world's thinking is illegitimately one sided. In a strange way Blake's vision showed him the other side of the coin.  This is what he shared in the decades when he fought back.

 Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 22, (E 43)

"A Memorable Fancy

  Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire. who arose before an
Angel that sat on a cloud. and the Devil utterd these words.
  The worship of God is.  Honouring his gifts in other men
each according to his genius. and loving the [PL 23] greatest men
best, those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there
is no other God.
  The Angel hearing this became almost blue but mastering
himself he grew yellow, & at last white pink & smiling, and then
replied,
  Thou Idolater, is not God One? & is not he visible in Jesus
Christ? and has not Jesus Christ given his sanction to the law of
ten commandments and are not all other men fools, sinners, &
nothings?
  The Devil answer'd; bray a fool in a morter with wheat. yet
shall not his folly be beaten out of him: if Jesus Christ is the
greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now
hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten
commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the
sabbaths God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn
away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of
others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making
a defence before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples,
and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against
such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist
without breaking these ten commandments: Jesus was all virtue,
and acted from im[PL 24]pulse: not from rules.
  When he had so spoken: I beheld the Angel who stretched out
his arms embracing the flame of fire & he was consumed and arose
as Elijah.

  Note.  This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my
particular friend: we often read the Bible together in its
infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they
behave well  
  I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have
whether they will or no.

  One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression"

MEMORABLE FANCY

Harvard University, Houghton Library

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 4, Copy G

The overall goal of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was to break down habitual patterns of thought which orthodox teachings instill. Blake used unorthodox techniques to tear down our paradigns of thinking which limit and restrict our ability to develop out imaginations. How better to teach us to think imaginatively than to display his own ability to create a work which introduces fresh and shocking means of writing poetry. He identified himself with the Devils instead of with the Angels; he provided the Proverbs of Hell to give question to traditional good advice; he created scenarios which invert accepted roles with which we identify. We may be left a bit confused but willing to consider whether "every thing that lives is Holy."

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 6, (E 35)

"A Memorable Fancy.                        

   As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the 
enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and
insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as
the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs
of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any
description of buildings or garments.
   When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a
flat  sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty
Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock,
with cor[PL 7]roding fires he wrote the following sentence now
percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth. 

   How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
   Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?"

In Blake's Apocalypse Harold Bloom sheads light on Blake's statements in the above passage. On page 82 he states:

"To walk among those fires is to compose a poem or engrave a picture, and to collect the Proverbs of Hell, as Blake proceeds to do, is to express the laws of artistic creation in a series of aphorisms.  When Blake came home from his proverb-collecting "...on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds: hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.    

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,   

Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?"

Bloom, on page 83, continues to expand our understanding of Blake's poetic
language:

"The Devil is the artist William Blake, at work engraving the Marriage, and the 
corroding fires refer metaphorically both to his engraving technique and the satiric 
function of the Marriage. The flat sided steep, frowning over the present world, is 
fallen human consciousness... The stony cavern of the mind has been broken open 
by Blake's art; the imagination rises from the mind's abyss and seeks the more 
expanded senses than the five making up that abyss.
...The idea of raising our intensity of perception and so triumphing over nature 
through nature is the central idea of the Proverbs of Hell."

SATAN REVEALED

First Posted  February 2012

LEVIATHAN & BEHEMOTH

Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job
Butts Set 1805
From Wikipedia Commons


Northrop Frye gives an explanation of the roles played by Leviathan and Behemoth in the chapter Blake's Reading of the Book of Job in Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake, edited by Angela Esterhammer. On Plate 15 Job is shown the monstrous forms of Leviathan and Behemoth. Frey's key to extricating oneself from the control of these forces is a change of perspective. Accepting the view of the world from within these monsters distorts vision. Seeing them for what they are is achieved by distancing oneself and looking from outside the system at the sources of destruction.

Page 377
... "The next step is to realize that Satan is the enemy of God, that his rule is not inevitable but is to be fought by God's creative power, and that this creative power exists nowhere at present except in man's creative power. At that point we pass into plate 15, where there are only two levels, God and Job united on top, and below them the cycle of nature inhabited by Behemoth and Leviathan.

"These monsters are identical with Satan, except that, being Satan revealed instead of Satan mysterious and disguised as God, they represent, not so much the natural miseries of drought and famine and pestilence, as the social and political miseries symbolized mainly, in the Bible, by Egypt and Babylon, and in the Book of Job itself by the Sabean Raiders. Ezekiel (chapter 29) identifies the Leviathan with the Pharaoh of Egypt, and Daniel (chapter 4) tells how Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon turned into Behemoth, the subject of several Blake pictures. The political aspect of the monsters is brought out in the phrases emphasized by Blake on Plate 15: Behemoth is 'chief of the ways of God' and Leviathan is 'King over all the Children of Pride' [Job 40:19, 41:34]. As the power in man that makes for tyranny rather than civilization, they can be, if not destroyed, at least brought under some measure of control, like the Blatant Beast in Spencer. At the same time the root of tyranny, for Blake, is still natural religion, the establishing of the order of nature, whether theistically or atheistically regarded, as the circumference of human effort (the original meaning of 'Urizen'). Hence we are all born inside the belly of Leviathan, the world of stars and indefinite places, but those who can see Leviathan for what he is have been placed outside him, like Jonah, and like Job in plate 15. After Job has attained this enlightenment, the prophecy of Jesus is fulfilled and Satan falls from heaven (pl. 16)."

Marriage of Heaven & Hell, Plate 17, (E 41)
"So I remaind with him sitting in the twisted [PL 18] root of
an oak. he was suspended in a fungus which hung with the head
downward into the deep:
By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke
of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun,
black but shining[;] round it were fiery tracks on which revolv'd
vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather
swum in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals
sprung from corruption. & the air was full of them, & seemd
composed of them; these are Devils. and are called Powers of the
air, I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said,
between the black & white spiders
But now, from between the black & white spiders a cloud and
fire burst and rolled thro the deep blackning all beneath, so
that the nether deep grew black as a sea & rolled with a terrible
noise: beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest,
till looking east between the clouds & the waves, we saw a
cataract of blood mixed with fire and not many stones throw from
us appeard and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent.
at last to the east, distant about three degrees appeard a fiery
crest above the waves slowly it reared like a ridge of golden
rocks till we discoverd two globes of crimson fire. from which
the sea fled away in clouds of smoke, and now we saw, it was the
head of Leviathan. his forehead was divided into streaks of green
& purple like those on a tygers forehead: soon we saw his mouth &
red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep
with beams of blood, advancing toward [PL 19] us with all the
fury of a spiritual existence.
My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill;
I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found
myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon light
hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was, The man
who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds

reptiles of the mind." 

PROVERBS OF HELL

Blake Archive 

Original in Fitzwilliam Museum

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 Plate 10, Copy H

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was an early production of William Blake. It was begun in 1789, the year Songs of Innocence was completed. There are twelve known copies, all but one in museums or libraries. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is Blake's only satiric work among his Illuminated Books. 

Sir Geoffrey Keynes provided an Introduction and Commentary for a volume of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell produced by The Trianon Press, Paris. This useful book contains the text, images of all pages, and a respected scholar's insights into the text and illustrations 'keeping the meaning related as closely as possible to Blake's personal standpoint.'

Here are some of Keynes' comments on the image on Page 10, which is shone above:

"The scene shows three figures at the foaming edge of the Sea of Time and Space. In the center the Devil is kneeling with a scroll lying across his knees and presumably carrying the Proverbs. He is pointing impatiently to the first lines to instruct a slow-witted Angel industriously writing them down in a book, while probably misunderstanding them. Behind the Devil is a kind of throne or judgement seat from which he seems to have descended in his impatience. Sprouting from his back are spiky wings, their points directed respectively to the words 'Enough' and 'Too Much'. To his left and behind him is seated a contrasted figure, alert and interested, with his own script nearly finished across his knees while he looks to see how the stupid Angel is progressing. Erdman suggests that this is 'an apprentice Devil', perhaps Blake himself... The design seems to imply that the stupid Angel must receive and understand the evil Devil's Proverbs if he is to be saved."

Above the illustration are these nine proverbs:

"The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the
     hands & feet Proportion.

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the
     contemptible.

The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing

     was white.

Exuberance is Beauty.

If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.       

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without
     Improvement, are roads of Genius.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires 

Where man is not nature is barren.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be
     believ'd."

On pages 7-10 there are 70 Proverbs of Hell.