Who didn't kill Blake's fly: moral law and the rule of grammar in 'Songs of Experience.' - William Blake - Rhetoric and Poetics

Style, Summer, 1996 by Michael Simpson

Would you have a Wise Son, teach him to reason early. Let him read, and make him understand what he reads. No Sentence should be passed over without a strict Examination of the Truth of it; and though this may be thought hard at first, and seem to retard the Boy in his Progress, yet a little Practice will make it familiar, and a Method of Reasoning will be acquired, which will be of use to him all his Life after. (58)

It is just such a practice of not passing over any sentence without "a strict Examination of the Truth of it" that "The Fly" is here being said to invite.

A modification of this scenario of reading, in which the juvenile reader is assisted by an adult, is proposed by Maria Edgeworth's Harry and Lucy Concluded; being the Last Part of Early Lessons. Repeating a proposal featured in other examples of children's literature written by the Edgeworths and that seems thereby to be elevated into a principle, the "PREFACE; ADDRESSED TO PARENTS" makes this recommendation:

Much that would be tiresome and insufferable to young people if offered by preceptors in a didactic tone, will be eagerly accepted when suggested in conversation, especially in conversations between themselves. . . . The great preceptor, standing on the top of the ladder of learning, can hardly stretch his hand down to the poor urchin at the bottom looking up to him in despair; but an intermediate companion, who is only a few steps above, can assist him with a helping hand, can show him where to put his foot safely; and now urging, now encouraging, can draw him up to any height within his own attainment. (11-13)

This hierarchy of pedagogy, plotted on a vertical axis, is especially pertinent to the tableau depicted in the poem's illustrated plate where the nurse bends down towards the small child, apparently in order to elevate his arms, and the older child aims upwards in an effort to elevate the descending projectile. Whether by means of the bipolar hierarchy characterized in Newbery's preface or by means of the more mediated stratification typical of the Edgeworths' prefaces, children's chapbooks of the eighteenth century invoke a dual audience. Even if we read Blake's poem as a parody of these structural conventions of the chapbook rather than as simply instantiating them, the text still implies a bipartite audience. It is not that Blake's Songs in general and this poem in particular invoke these readers literally, but rather that they figure such reading positions symbolically. By identifying itself as a version of the chapbook Blake's Songs structurally projects these reading positions.

That these poems formally address themselves both to a juvenile persona and to an adult figure is indicated not only by their often patronizing tone and the simplicity of their vocabulary, which might in any case be purely ironic elements of the text, but also in that earlier instances of the chapbook explicitly target children as a substantial component of their audience. So many pieces of popular literature throughout the eighteenth century and earlier address themselves to children, at least rhetorically, that they seem to compose a fairly stable genre. William Sloane's Checklist catalogues 261 such publications, excluding primers designed specifically for use in schools, between 1557 and 1710. The most influential texts of this kind published after 1710 include William Ronksley's The Child's Week's Work of 1712, Isaac Watts's Divine and Moral Songs for Children, appearing in 1715, and Charles Wesley's Hymns for Children of 1763. Significant instances of this genre that appear more immediately before Blake's Songs and that might consequently be read as its direct antecedents include the Edgeworths' Practical Education: The History of Harry and Lucy, first published in 1780, Mrs Barbauld's Lessons for Children from Two to Three Years Old of 1780, and her Hymns in Prose for Children of 1781, Thomas Day's The History of Sandford and Merton: A Work Intended for the Use of Children, and the prolific John Newbery's The History of Tommy Playlove and Jacky Lovebook: wherein is shown the Superiority of Virtue over Vice, both published initially in 1783. Since many of these works incorporate a preface evidently addressed to adult readers, along with a text that seems specifically targeted on children, the eventuality of co-reading seems to be structurally implied by this form. Even if Blake's Songs, and especially "Songs of Experience," is, as I have started to suggest, a parody of the children's chapbook, ironizing its pieties and certitudes by complicating the moral that it is supposed to communicate unproblematically, this parody nonetheless employs the device of team reading that is a feature of the form being satirized. The parody is, therefore, an intimate one. Moreover, such a parody may emphasize this dual readership, because it works by implying both a literal and an ironic reading of the text that might each be correlated with the innocent and more experienced readers invoked by the text's generic identity.