rue Warses ov. Wrenase Buaxe"
Volumes," Nonesuch Press, 5 17s.
aited ey, Geoifrey Keynes. Three
os No book that has been published by the Nonestich Press is likely to be sought after more ardently by collectors in future generations than the new Blake. It is not only an extremely beautiful book in appearance, but it is as nearly a complete edition of Blake as we are ely to get in our time, Mr. Geoffrey Keynes tells us that he aimed at presenting "the first complete edition of Blake's aim impossible as yet of ment-—and that no collected edi tion of Blake's prose works has ever before been attempted." One of the prase " "An Island in the Moon." has' only once been printed, and then in a very inaccu: rate form." Now that it has been published in full, it will, perhaps, be hailed as the great' precursor of the chaotic school of! literature which finally exhausted self in "Ulysses.
For Blake was a writer who in ired moments wrote? four of the chaos at the back of a mind, and was content to let it remain chaos. At one moment he creates a star, and at another he revels in the uncreated.
Some of his work seems to come from some place where the words. "Let there be light," had never been uttered. Yet even thos? parts of his work fascinate us because of the supreme beauty of these other poems in which became a creator, and subjected his imagination to form.—Crities discuss the question whether he was mad, and he was certainly half-mad' according to ordinary _standards. But there is no. sign of madness in the precise and powerful use of words in the "Proverbs of Hell" or in the musie of his songs. It is only that in his imagination he was not an inhabitant of the solid earth, but a citizen of the universe not quite at home among'
The Heretic Hence he was a rebel and here an well as a ties of Hell" are quated. more often than his songs. ithe rund of excess leads. to. the palace of wisdom." "Prudence Isa rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity." "The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruc-ion!" These great half-truths have earned him praise in our time ind a Nieteschean before Nietasche and apostle of the gospel of living dangerously. Blake himself war a curious mixture of a wrathful ophet and m childish-hearted man in love with joy and laughter. In his annotations to other writers, he is full of "dams" and "hell," and the, same time quotes with de lit such a saying as "Keep inn at least three paces distant who huntes' bread, music, and the laugh of a child." His "annotations" to Sir Joshua Reynolds are largely a hymn of hate. "This man was hived to depress Art, This the opinion of Will Blake'" So his notes begin.
'Another paragraph agi "allaying' spent the vigour off my youth under the oppression of Sir Joshua and his gang of conning hired. knaves. without employment and, as much as could possibly be, without bread—" And even over Josha's corpse he sang:
When Sir Joshua Reynolds, Ail Nature was degraded; Tie kite douped teat the And ull his pictures laded.
Blake, indeed, was a man with a grievance, and took, his revenge on Sir Joshua, whom he described as being "hired by the Satans."
Tris only for the sake. of the ther Blake, however, that. this Blake interests us. itis. hatreds and eccentricities indeed, provide only. with comic. gorcip about inspired scer whose work it one of the greatest miracles in the his. tory of English literature. "Bore amid the conventions of the 18th feentury, che wax' the" forerunner of all those poets of s later age who brought back the simplicity isto poetry. Few Teen a¢ independent of hich they sere born.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.