Part 8: Last Lines

It only remains to say something about the last few lines added to the plate, and the state in which the engraving was left.

It is remarkable that at this stage, when the inscriptions were at least fairly well balanced, Blake continued to add phrases to his engraving, squeezing them in wherever he could find room. Thus, on the left of the engraving, we find the cramped inscription "You must leave Fathers & Mothers & Houses & Lands if they stand in the way of Art" between "Or Woman who is not one of these is not a Christian" and "The Eternal Body of Man [. . .]" (figure 8a).

Between the bottom of the statue's plinth and "יה & his two Sons [. . .]" we find the tiny "If Morality was Christianity Socrates was the Saviour" (figure 8b).

Below "Art can never exist without / Naked Beauty displayed" Blake squeezed in "The Gods of Greece & Egypt were Mathematical / Diagrams / See Plato's / Works" (figure 8c).

We find Blake working around and between existing inscriptions, too, where he extends his lines "The whole Business of Man Is / The Arts" by adding "& All Things Common". Not content to leave things there, Blake proceeded to add the diminutive inscription "No Secre / sy in Art", even dividing a word (the only instance in this engraving that he does so) to fit in this statement (figure 8d).

A further oddity is the addition of the words "Antichrist Science" at the bottom right of the plate. These two words are not balanced by a similar inscription to the left. The result is a plate more densely filled to the right than it is to the left (figure 8e).

This suggests the possibility that Blake did not consider the engraving finished at this stage—that perhaps he did not know what he would next inscribe but that perceived the spaces left as spaces to be filled. That would make Blake's Laocoön an unfinished work.