SOURCE: Shroyer, R. J. “Introduction.” In Aphorisms on Man, by Johann Caspar Lavater, pp. v-xxxii. Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1980.

In the following introduction to a facsimile reprint of William Blake's annotated copy of Aphorisms on Man, Shroyer recounts the publication history of Lavater's work and discusses its influence on Blake.

Had Laurence Sterne undertaken another sentimental journey to the continent, he might have encountered a living representative of Shandeism in the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, Citizen of Zürich. A cleric noted for his unaffected piety and unrelenting efforts on behalf of the poor, Lavater was as benevolent and as courageously patriotic as Uncle Toby, and as compulsive an observer and recorder of human affairs as Tristram. Above all Sterne would have delighted to find Lavater riding an extraordinary hobbyhorse—physiognomy, or the reading of character in countenance—worthy of Walter Shandy's theory of names and...