NOTES.

The Poetical Sketches. Page 1.-The original edition has the following preface:

'ADVERTISEMENT.

'The following Sketches were the production of untutored youth, commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the author till his twentieth year; since which time, his talents having been wholly directed to the attainment of excellence in his profession, he has been deprived of the leisure requisite to such a revisal of these sheets as might have rendered them less unfit to meet the public eye.

'Conscious of the irregularities and defects found on almost every page, his friends have still believed that they possessed a poetical originality which merited some respite from oblivion. These opinions remain, however, to be now re-proved or confirmed by a less partial public.'

Mr. Dante Rossetti endeavoured to make some, at any rate, of the corrections which Blake could not-or, one is inclined to suspect, would not-make, and made a number of metrical emendations in the selection of the Sketches' given in Gilchrist's 'Life and Works of William Blake.' He made these with admirable judgment, but when they were made, the poems, taken as a whole, were well nigh as irregular as at the

outset.

There seems no logical position between leaving the poems as they are, with all their slips of rhythm, and making alterations of a very sweeping nature, which would be out of place in a working text like the present. The present editor has accordingly simply reprinted Blake's own text, not even retaining the very small number of emendations made by Mr. W. M. Rossetti. He has, however, to economize space, left out several poems altogether, holding them mere boyish experi

ments, with here and there some line or passage of beauty. The poems left out are 'Fair Elenor,' 'Gwin, King of Norway,' 'Prologue to Edward the Fourth,' and four prose poems called 'Prologue to King John,' 'The Couch of Death,' 'Contemplation,' and 'Samson,' respectively. 'A War Song,' though scarce worthy of a place in the body of the book, is interesting enough for quotation here.

A WAR SONG:

TO ENGLISHMEN.

Prepare, prepare the iron helm of war,
Bring forth the lots, cast in the spacious orb;
The Angel of Fate turns them with mighty hands,
And casts them out upon the darkened earth!
Prepare, prepare!

Prepare your hearts for Death's cold hand! prepare
Your souls for flight, your bodies for the earth!
Prepare your arms for glorious victory!
Prepare your eyes to meet a holy God!
Prepare, prepare!

Whose fatal scroll is that? Methinks 'tis mine!
Why sinks my heart, why faltereth my tongue?
Had I three lives, I'd die in such a cause,
And rise, with ghosts, over the well-fought field.
Prepare, prepare!

The arrows of Almighty God are drawn!
Angels of Death stand in the low'ring heavens!
Thousands of souls must seek the realms of light,
And walk together on the clouds of heaven!
Prepare, prepare!

Soldiers, prepare! Our cause is Heaven's cause;
Soldiers, prepare! Be worthy of our cause:

Prepare to meet our fathers in the sky:

Prepare, O troops that are to fall to-day!

Prepare, prepare!

Alfred shall smile, and make his heart rejoice;
The Norman William and the learned Cleik,
And Lion-Heart, and black-browed Edward with
His loyal queen, shall rise, and welcome us!
Prepare, prepare! .

'Samson' is seen at its best in this direction to Delilah: 'Go on, fair traitress; do thy guileful work; ere once again the changing moon her circuit hath performed, thou shalt overcome and conquer him by force unconquerable, and wrest his secret from him. Call thine alluring arts and honest-seeming brow, the holy kiss of love and the transparent tear; put on fair linen that with the lily vies, purple and silver; neglect thy hair, to seem more lovely in thy loose attire; put on thy country's pride deceit and eyes of love decked in mild sorrow; and sell thy lord for gold.'

The Songs of Innocence and Experience. Pages 47 to 85.Messrs. Dante and William Rossetti, in the second volume of Gilchrist's Life of Blake, and in the Aldine edition of the poems respectively, have made several grammatical and metrical emendations. The original text is here restored. The Nurse's

Song' and 'The Little Boy Lost' are to be found imbedded in that curious prose narrative, 'The Island of the Moon,' in slightly different form from that in The Songs of Innocence;' and 'The Cloud and the Pebble,' 'The Garden of Love,' 'The Poison Tree,' 'Infant Sorrow,' 'Earth's Answer,' 'London,' 'The Lily,' 'Nurse's Song,' 'The Tiger,' 'The Human Image,' The Sick Rose,' 'The Little Vagabond,' 'Holy Thursday,' The Angel,' 'The Fly,' and a part of 'The Chimney-Sweeper,' from the Songs of Experience,' are to be found in a more or less different shape in a note-book usually spoken of by Blake's biographers and editors as the MS. book.'

'The Songs of Innocence' were latterly bound together by Blake under the title of The Songs of Innocence and Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. The MS. book' gives the following verses with the note that they are a 'motto for the Songs of Innocence and Experience.'

'The Good are attracted by men's perceptions,
And think not for themselves,
Till Experience teaches them to catch

And to cage the Fairies and Elves.

'And then the Knave begins to snarl,

And the Hypocrite to howl;

And all his good friends show their private end,
And the Eagle is known from the Owl.'

Strange lines that are clear enough to the student of Blake's philosophy; but at most a perspicuous gloom to the rest of man. kind. The excision of 'his' from the last line but one would make them a little more intelligible. The third and fourth lines should be compared with "Opportunity," page 120.

The Tiger. Page 74.-The MS. book contains the following first draft for 'The Tiger.' The editor has restored, where Inecessary for the sense, occasional words which were crossed out by Blake. The poem will be found exactly as it is in the MS. book with the crossed out words in italics, and several alternative readings, at page 92, vol. iii., of 'The Works of William Blake.' He is at present merely anxious to give it in the form pleasantest for the eye and the memory without the interruption of italics and alternative readings.

THE TIGER.

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burned the fire within thine eyes?
On what wings dared he aspire?
What the hand dared seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet

in which 'laugh' is substituted for 'smile.'

Mr. Gilchrist and Mr. Rossetti give a version slightly different from the one found by Mr. Ellis and the present editor in the MS. book, and claim for it also MS. authority.

When Blake altered and copied out the poem for engraving he altogether omitted the unfinished fourth verse, and forgot to make the last line of the third a complete sentence. Mr. D. G. Rossetti did this for him by substituting 'formed' for 'and; but Malkin, who probably had Blake's authority, prints 'forged.'

The Garden of Love. Page 76.-Mr. Rossetti inserts at the beginning of this poem two verses, which are here printed in 'The Ideas of Good and Evil,' as a separate poem called 'Thistles and Thorns.' He found them in the MS. book, and forgot to notice the long line which Blake had drawn to divide them from 'The Garden of Love' which followed.