Satan going to and fro in the Earth, and another figure

This drawing is unpublished. The main figure, seen from behind, is close to the minute figure seen in the margin above the main composition in the finished engraving of Blake's illustration to the Book of Job, pl. 4 (fig. 1), 'And I only am escaped alone to tell thee' (D. Bindman, The Complete Graphic Works of William Blake, London, 1978, pl. 629); the small figure in the margin illustrates the lines near the beginning of the Book of Job, 'And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence cometh thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it'; the concluding words are engraved each side of the small figure.

Another drawing by Blake possibly related to this figure, seen from behind and holding a sword but without wings, is catalogued by M. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, New Haven and London, 1981, p. 593, no. 824, illustrated pl. 1071. A similar figure of a devil, standing with slightly more contraposto appears in the centre of one of Blake's illustrations to Dante, The Schismatics and Sowers of Discord: Mosca de' Lamberti and Bertrand de Born (Butlin, op. cit., no. 812 57; illustrated in A.S. Roe, Blake's Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, Princeton, 1953, pl. 57, and D. Bindman, The Divine Comedy: William Blake, Paris, 2000, colour pl. 60).

The other figure on the sheet, on the left and seen from the front, is of a piratical looking man with drooping moustache and a mass of upstanding hair, perhaps an invention akin to Blake's Visionary Heads. It is difficult to date these drawings but the possible relationship of the main figure to the latest stage of Blake's illustrations to the Book of Job and to one of his Dante illustrations suggests the mid 1820s. In addition there are also similarities to the pencil drawing of A Male Figure Spearing an Object on the Ground, tentatively dated to circa 1825 (Butlin, op.cit., no. 781 verso, illustrated pl. 1023).