The fool is either Vasari, for his anecdote, or Reynolds, for making an absurd deduction. A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar Water, And divers other Subjects connected together and arising from one another. Blake's notes in pencil were inked over, probably by H. Crabb Robinson, who owned the volume-and who may have put the X's in the list of contents before he lent it to Blake. PAGE 375 opinions of . . . Begin Page 888 Annotations to the Preface to The Excursion, being a portion of The Recluse, A Poem , by William Wordsworth.
Some pages lack numbers, and the leaves are loose, easily getting out of order.
For the present edition the inferred sequence and pagination have been corrected, and some readings have been corrected, thanks to the scrutiny of Robert N. Essick. But there is simply nothing in that book that could have inspired a remark about the Pope and the Virgin. The book is devoted to materials and methods throughout. But Ellis was notoriously inaccurate. Knowing of the Cennini book and confusing a tractate by Cellini with a tractate by Cennini, he can easily have attributed the marginal note to the wrong work.