hillips recognizes that the two-pull theory has consequences extending well beyond the exposition of Blake’s graphic practices. As we noted earlier, he does not pursue the matter; we accept his implicit invitation to do so. Let us assume that Blake did use two pulls to produce each of his color prints. What sort of Blake, as an artist and as a writer on the arts, would this assumption lead us toward? We would encounter a man who favored precision over variation, for two-pull printing relies heavily on the former and bars the printer from the latter. He would base his activities on the arts of memory rather than imagination, for no printing technique provides a better externalization of returning to a prior activity (first pull) and repeating it (second pull). He would emphasize the mechanical over the autographic. He would be much concerned with the division of images and labor into discrete segments at the expense of any notions of a seamless unity between invention and execution. Fitting plate to the bed of the press and paper to plate would be among his major endeavors. In that pursuit, freedom would have to be restrained, as it must be in all crafts that emphasize imitating/repeating over creating.

As readers of Blake’s comments on art and epistemology will recognize, the foregoing characterization of his activities and their implications reverses every one of Blake’s own values when he considers the same choices. We round up below a few of the usual quotations in which Blake is explicit on these issues (to which we can also add the epigraph at the beginning of this essay):

If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character. the Philosophic &
Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things & stand still,
unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again
                              (There is No Natural Religion, E 3)

Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
                              (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, E 36)

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without
            Improvement, are roads of Genius.
                              (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, E 38)

I know. that the Genius that produces. these Designs can execute them
in any manner. notwithstanding the pretended Philosophy which
teaches that Execution is the power of One & Invention of Another
                              (letter to George Cumberland, 6 Dec. 1795, E 699)

For measurd out in orderd spaces the Sons of Urizen
With compasses divide the deep; they the strong scales erect
That Luvah rent from the faint Heart of the Fallen Man
And weigh the massy Cubes, then fix them in their awful stations
                              (The Four Zoas, E 318-19)

All that is Valuable in Knowledge[s] is Superior to Demonstrative
Science such as is Weighed or Measured  
                              (Annotations to Reynolds, E 659)

Execution is only the result of Invention    
                              (“Public Address,” E 576)

…their Effects are in Every Picture the same Mine are in Every Picture
different    
                              (“Public Address,” E 579)

To Imitate I abhore           
                              (“Public Address,” E 580)

Mathematic Form is Eternal in the Reasoning Memory. Living Form
is Eternal Existence.            
                              (On Homers Poetry [and] On Virgil, E 270)

Imagination has nothing to do with Memory
                              (Annotations to Wordsworth’s Poems, E 666)

Two-pull printing would have harnessed Blake to a dull round of fitting plate to paper again and again, measuring both with minute precision, and deploying mechanical equivalents of memory and imitation to convert the crooked roads of his genius—indeed, his literally crooked plates—to roads straighter than those ever created by any other printmaker. The expressive energies with which he invented and etched his images would have been divided from the final, encompassed and restricted, stages of their execution.

Advocates of the two-pull theory of Blake’s color printing will no doubt wish to draw their own portrait of Blake according to the implications of their views and to the incompatibility between those implications and the statements quoted above.We believe that our investigations of Blake’s techniques in light of the facts provided by the illuminated prints themselves can lead only to the abandonment of the two-pull theory and to a renewed appreciation of Blake’s art of one-pull color printing.