He did, upon the other hand, hold that Innocence' or the state of youthful poetic imagination was none other than to 'see a world in a grain of sand' and 'a heaven in a wild flower.' Neither Mr. Rossetti nor Mr. Shepherd believed Blake to use words with philosophical precision, but held him a vague dreamer carried away by his imagination, and may well have never given two thoughts to anything except the imagi native charm of the title. We have already seen how Mr. W. M. Rossetti tacked on to The Garden of Love' two verses which Blake had clearly marked off as a separate poem. In this case, too, there was probably a line drawn between the first quatrain and the rest of the poem, and even if there were not, the internal evidence is itself conclusive. The editor has, therefore, printed the 'Auguries of Innocence' as a poem by itself, and called the lines thus separated from them 'Proverbs,' as that is a title used by Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' for short gnomic sayings of the kind.

In a Myrtle Shade. Page 103.-The poem printed is the final version chosen by Blake, but the MS. book contains two other versions which are not uninteresting. The first should be compared with the poem quoted in the notes to 'Infant Sorrow." It is as follows:

To a lovely myrtle bound,
Blossoms showering all around

O how weak and weary I
Underneath my myrtle lie,
Like to dung upon the ground,
Underneath my myrtle bound.

Why should I be bound to thee,
O my lovely myrtle tree?
Love, free love, cannot be bound
To any tree that grows on ground.

Oft my myrtle sighed in vain,
To behold my heavy chain;

Oft my father saw us sigh,
And laughed at our simplicity.

TO MY MYRTLE.

Why should I be bound to thee,
O my lovely myrtle tree?

Love, free love, cannot be bound
To any tree that grows on ground.
To a lovely myrtle bound,
Blossom showering all around,
Underneath my myrtle bound,
O how weak and weary I
Underneath my myrtle lie.

There is written beside these versions in pencil a stanza, now almost illegible, of which the following words can be made

We give this fragment because it was the origin of a stanza interpolated in Gilchrist's book in the middle of the poem I call 'Freedom and Captivity.' It was no doubt more legible than at present when Mr. D. G. Rossetti copied it out, and the word that looks more like 'seeming' may perhaps be really 'secrecy.' His reading, too, of the lines, which are now quite illegible, is probably to be trusted. His version is as follows:

'Deceit to secrecy inclined

Moves, lawful, courteous and refined,
To everything but interest blind,
And forges fetters for the mind.

The Two Thrones. Page 104.-This poem, which is given no title by Blake, is called Mammon,' and is much edited in Mr. W. M. Rossetti's edition. It is here given exactly as in

the MS. book.

The Two Kinds of Riches. Page 105.—The MS. book gives no title.

The Grey Monk. Page 109.-This poem was originally intended, as the MS. book shows, to have been the latter half of a poem of fourteen stanzas, which began with the line, 'I saw a monk of Constantine. Blake changed this first line into 'I saw a monk of Charlemagne,' made a few other alterations here and there, and divided the poem into two parts. To the first half of four stanzas he added three stanzas, and printed it in the preface to chap. iii. of Jerusalem' (see page 201). The second half he left without change or addition. The arrangement of the verses in the Aldine edition is quite arbitrary. Mr. Rossetti has made the second stanza in Blake's MS. the third in his version, and the third the fourth, and the fourth the fifth, and the fifth the seventh, and the seventh the ninth, and left out Blake's own ninth stanza altogether. He has also imported a stanza from The Monk of Charlemagne,' and made it the second stanza, Mr. Rossetti made no secret of his transposition and suppression. so that no great blame attaches to him in this matter. He had to introduce Blake to an unwilling generation, and thought it best to lop off many an obtrusive knot and branch.

The Everlasting Gospel. Page 110.-Mr. Rossetti has by a slip of the pen claimed to give this poem 'in full' (see Aldine edition, page 144), at has not only not done so, but has given passages out of the order intended by Blake, and printed words here and there which are not in Blake at all. The poem is not given in full in the present book; for it is not possible to do so without many repetitions, for Blake never made a final text. The MS. book contains three different versions of a large portion of the poem, and it is not possible to keep wholly to any one of these without sacrificing many fine passages. Blake left, however, pretty clear directions for a great part of the text-making, and these directions were ignored by Mr. Rossetti. The short fragment which begins the poem both in the present and in the Aldine text was probably intended to be a private dedication apparently to Stothard, and not a part of the poem at all. The present editor

follows Mr. Rossetti in leaving out two ungainly lines about the length of Stothard's nose and the shortness of Blake's (see 'Works of William Blake,' vol. ii., page 44). Had Blake ever printed the dedication he also would doubtless have sup ..pressed these lines. The poem was intended by him to begin with the lines which open 'Was Jesus humble, or did He give any proofs of humility?' for he has written the title above them. Mr. Rossetti puts these lines almost at the very end. There are two other versions of the first part of the poem, and passages are here added from one of these versions. There still remain two fragments, the one is marked by Blake as containing '94 lines,' though later additions slightly increased its length, and the other contains 48 lines, and is printed on a slip of paper at the end of the book. There is a mark at the foot of the '94 line' fragment signifying that it is to follow the lines over which Blake had written the title. It begins, 'Was Jesus chaste,' and ends, 'For dust and clay is the serpent's meat, That never was meant for man to eat.' The 48 line fragment begins, 'Was Jesus born of a virgin pure,' and ends, 'God's righteous law that lost its prey.' There still remains a couplet, 'I am sure this Jesus will not do Either for Christian or for Jew.' Blake marks it to follow the '94 lines,' but this mark may have been made before the writing of the lines beginning 'Was Jesus born of a virgin pure,' for certainly its place is at the end of all. There are also a few fragmentary lines here and there of whose place no indication is given. All the fragments are given separately in 'The Works of William Blake.'

To Nobodady. Page 120.-Printed by Mr. Rossetti without Blake's quaint title. In a later version Blake changed the last line to 'Gains females' loud applause.'

Cupid. Page 122.-The MS. book gives the following fifth

stanza:

"Twas the Greeks' love of war

Turned Cupid into a boy,

And woman into a statue of stone:
Away flew every joy.

Spectre and Emanation. Page 129.-Mr. Dante Rossetti read this as primarily a love poem, and was led by this mistake into calling it 'Broken Love.' Blake gives no title, but

'Spectre and Emanation' is his technical expression for reason. and emotion, active and passive, masculine and feminine, past and future, body and soul, and all the other duads of his complex system. Both Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Gilchrist's Life of Blake, and Mr. W. M. Rossetti in the Aldine, adopt an arrangement of the verses not to be found in the MS. book.

The verses in the text are those numbered by Blake as part of the poem. There are, however, certain other verses which were apparently rejected by him. They are as follows :—

O er my sins thou dost sit and moan,
Hast thou no sins of thine own?
O'er my sins thou dost sit and weep,
And lull thy own sins fast asleep.

What transgressions I commit
Are for thy transgression fit:
They thy harlots, thou their slave;
And thy bed becomes their grave.

Poor, pale, pitiable form

That I follow in a storm!

Iron tears and groans of lead

Bind around my aching head.

Los the Terrible. Page 136.-This extract from a letter to Mr. Butts, dated November, 1802, and described as having been 'composed above a twelve month ago, while walking from Felpham to Levant, to meet my sister,' has no title in the original. Los the Terrible' describes the subject of the poem, which is Los in his malevolent rather than in his more usual benevolent aspect.

Tiriel. Page 147.-The style of the poem, which resembles. rather that of The Mental Traveller' than the more vehement and broken style of the later prophetic poems, makes it clear that Tiriel' belongs to an earlier period than any other of the prophetic books. It was probably followed by 'The Ghost of Abel!' Mr. Rossetti says: 'the handwriting appears to me to belong to no late period of his life. This character of handwriting prevails up to near the close of the poem. With the words (in section 8), "I am Tiriel, King of the West," a new and less