through space, like troops of angels in the sunlight? This title-page of the Book of Thel is exactly typical of Blake's poetry at this period. We know that all these things do not belong to the earth, but we can understand what they are. We have dreamed of them and desired them. Our prophets and priests have assured us that they shall be ours when the bitterness of death is past; and our poets have already enjoyed them. We can admire them and recognise in them our most cherished dreams and hopes.

Why must we so soon find ourselves on the rocky shore of the sons of Albion, where unknown Titans are imprisoned, or in the subterranean darkness where Urizen is coming to birth, or among the strange spectral beings of the Jerusalem, in worlds where men melt away and become trees, where the stars are woven in the limbs of Albion, where that weird figure of a man with a cock's head sits waiting and gazing into the unknown, where the beasts of the Apocalypse mingle with men and with strange spirits, and where only the mythical and the allegorical have any existence? Here indeed mysticism has made of Blake's poetry and his pictures a book sealed with seven seals that only the initiated can open.

Why could not Blake remain upon the earth? He had beautified our world by sending his angels to it, and making it radiant with celestial colours. He had peopled it with visions so bright that they make us feel as if the illuminated pages of some old missal had suddenly come to life, or as if the haloed and many-coloured saints from some cathedral window had come down to walk in our midst. Why need he have sought to go further, and transport us into that heaven of his own, where we find nothing of all that we have loved upon earth, and where our only pleasure lies in the glimpses he still sometimes allows us of our poor lost world?

But it is useless to complain. Blake himself would have regarded such a reproach as high praise. His poetry was the food of angels and Eternals, not milk for children like ourselves. We, however, are men ; and it is as men that we must judge him. And therefore we cannot do otherwise than deplore this mysticism of his, which transformed all his imaginative powers, attacked all his poetic faculties, and— like the poison upon which flowers are sometimes nourished for this purpose-made them blossom for a time with unnatural brilliance, only to kill them, as far as we are concerned, in the end.

XVIII: CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY OF HIS WORK

T

(1) PROSE WRITINGS

HE history of Blake's work, even if it be condensed into a bare chronological list of titles, is inextricably involved in the gradual development of that mystical tendency which permeated and finally destroyed all his poetic faculties, and which becomes more and more clearly visible as our study of him progresses.

The entire body of his work may be divided into four groups, corresponding roughly with the four periods of his life.

In the first group, we may place all his prose work, written for the most part at the beginning of his literary career, but continued, in the form of letters, up to the last years of his life. He himself would not have classed these writings among his literary work at all, except in the case of one or two quite short pieces.

The second group comprises the lyrical poems, written during his youth, and without any expressed" prophetic " intention. The chief of these are King Edward III, the Poetical Sketches, the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and various lyrical poems taken from the MS. Books and published separately, as a rule under some such heading as Shorter Poems.

In the third group may be classed all the lesser “prophetical works: Thel, Tiriel, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, The French Revolution (a fragment), the books of Urizen, Los and Ahania, and the tetralogy-Europe, Asia, Africa and America-two sections of which (Asia and Africa) are included in the Song of Los. These were written at various times, but almost all between the early, or purely lyrical, period and the final period of the great Prophetic Books.

The fourth and last group, and the most important in Blake's own eyes, consists of the three great Prophetic Books Vala, Jerusalem and Milton, which represent the whole poetic output of the second half of his life.

1 See Chronological Table at the end of this volume.

FIRST GROUP: PROSE WRITINGS

A complete list of the prose writings would include:

(1) The letters, written for the most part to Flaxman, the " Dear Sculptor of Eternity," to Mr. Butts, the purchaser of so many of Blake's pictures, to Hayley, the poet's sometime "protector and friend, and to John Linnell, the generous patron of his last years. These letters are chiefly biographical in their interest. Some of them were published by Gilchrist; and in 1906 appeared The Letters of William Blake, edited by A. G. B. Russell, a collection which is of genuine value to all students of the poet.

(2) Certain detached notes written in pencil on the margins of books in Blake's possession. There are three series of these notes; the first (which is of considerable length) containing Blake's comments upon the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and giving incidentally a great many of the poet's views on the subject of art. Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have published these notes in their William Blake, and they are also printed in Mr. Ellis's The Real Blake. The second series, which is much shorter, consists of notes written in a copy of Swedenborg's Divine Love and Wisdom. These remained unpublished until 1907, when they appeared almost simultaneously in The Real Blake, and in the original edition of the present work. The third series—the notes on Lavater's Aphorisms—may also be found in The Real Blake.

(3) The prose passages in the unfinished MS. entitled The Island in the Moon, which Mr. Ellis printed at full length in The Real Blake. This fragment, which in no way adds to Blake's literary reputation, is apparently an attempt to satirise various people whom the poet had met with at the house of Mr. Mathew.

(4) The Descriptive Catalogue, the Public Address and the Account of the "Last Judgment," in all of which, in addition to describing his own pictures, Blake gives expression to his views upon art, inspiration and mystical vision.

(5) The prose works properly so called, comprising (1) a single leaflet entitled The Ghost of Abel; (2) another single sheet, On Homer's Poetry; (3) The collection of aphorisms called There is no Natural Religion, and (4) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, with its Memorable Fancies, which describe several visions of the supernatural, its Proverbs of Hell, and the Song of Liberty.

In these writings are to be found almost every known detail that Blake himself has given us regarding his own life and character, as

well as the material required for a reconstruction of his artistic and philosophical theories, and, above all, the fundamental principles of his mysticism. Numerous extracts from them have been given in the course of this work, and we need not further allude to them in this relation. But for the literary critic, these prose writings have another and an even greater value. They show us the writer apart from the mystic; the man speaking in his ordinary language. They therefore help us to determine what were his chief mental characteristics, apart from his faculty of vision and his mysticism. In these writings he is clear, concise and, above all, energetic. He has no feeling for the finer shades, and troubles himself very little about the terms he uses. But he is always careful to express his meaning in the most forcible way. Strength is the dominant feature of his prose style, and his dogmatism and his horror of anything like logical argument help to produce this effect. It is not that he could not argue in a logical way-his series of theorems designed to disprove the existence of natural religion show that he could-but he preferred to proceed by way of affirmation, often paradoxical affirmation, without proof and without excuse. He does not give us time to wonder or dispute, but carries us along on the torrent of his thought, disregarding all obstacles.

This indicates a certain narrowness of mind; and indeed, on many subjects, Blake held views that were the reverse of liberal. But this only made them the more forcible. Blake's habitual style is a weapon of offence he seeks only to vanquish his opponent, no matter by what means. He does not shrink from the most violent and unmeasured terms of expression." Why should Titian and the Venetians be named in a Discourse on Art? Such Idiots are not Artists " "A polished Villain, who Robs and Murders!": "The Man who says that Genius is not Born but Taught, is a Knave": such phrases, together with interjections like "Never! Never!" and "Damned Fool!" are frequent in the notes on Reynolds. Of himself he speaks with the utmost enthusiasm. "Mr. Blake defies competition in colouring." And he pronounces judgment on his fellow-artists, as one having divine authority. "O Artists, you may disbelieve all this, but it shall be at your own peril." 2 All this is in bad taste, of course; but it is at least strenuous; and that is what he always desired to be." Away with your reasoning and your rubbish! All that is not action is not worth reading.” 3

1 Descriptive Catalogue, No. V. Descriptive Catalogue, No. V.

Descriptive Catalogue, No. VIII.

3

The very violence of his mode of thought often made him write concisely, hammering and condensing what he wished to say into a few words. His notes abound in examples of this. " All Equivocation is Self-Contradiction." 1" Genius has no Error. It is Ignorance that is Error." 2" A fool's Balance is no criterion, because though it goes down on the heaviest side, we ought to look what he puts into it." 3 "Error is created. Truth is Eternal." "There is no good will. Will is always evil." 5 Sometimes his enthusiasm carries him away in a sustained flight, and he gives us pages of which every line is full of striking and original thought. Of this kind is his Canterbury Pilgrims, which discovers a wealth of meaning in Chaucer's various characters that had never been shown before. Had he confined himself to literary or artistic criticism, his work would have been a mine of valuable suggestions, and his opinions would have impressed themselves indelibly upon men's minds. But passages of this sort are rare. He could neither write a coherent chapter, nor connect the different sections of an argument, nor put together his thoughts so as to form a whole. He was content to fling out his forcible assertions as they occurred to him, and let them do their work as best they could. Single sentences of this sort, each expressed in very remarkable words, are scattered like pearls throughout his work. In one place he has gathered together a whole sheaf of them: the Proverbs of Hell, a collection of aphorisms from which I have already quoted. And finally, in the Memorable Fancies, he has for once succeeded in imitating the ease, the clearness and simplicity of Swedenborg's homely narrative style. One quality, that of humour, was entirely lacking in him. All his attempts at humorous writing have been pitiable failures. The Island in the Moon is full of almost childish efforts in this direction. It requires very little wit to call one's characters " Obtuse Angle or "Inflammable Gas," to make one of them say to a lady "I thought I had read of Phoebus in the Bible," or to write of a preacher, " Mr. Huffcap would kick the bottom of the the pulpit out with passion -would tear off the sleeve of his gown and set his wig on fire, and throw it at the people." All this is, at best, only caricature or farce of the lightest kind. This want of humour has often been noticeable in poets who possess the largest share of passion and imagination ; but it is not a result of those qualities. Shakespeare, Dickens, Heine, Byron and de Musset are all proofs to the contrary. Want of humour

Notes on Reynolds.