Page:Facsimile of the original outlines before colouring of The songs of innocence and of experience executed by William Blake.djvu/24

This page has been validated.

xviii

and then dissolved away with acid all the rest of the surface, so that the outlines stood up, and could be printed from like types. Those pages where a little shading of a mossy kind is to be seen are photographed from copies already coloured by Blake, and the result printed in monochrome. In these cases no uncoloured original was accessible for re-production. The shading is due to the fact that a little of the colour-effect always united itself to the outline.

A complete facsimile, hand-coloured, has been issued. The outlines being the same as those here printed. A very limited number have been executed. The symbolism of the illustrations is not very marked in most places. The flames on the title-page are obviously the clothing of

"——burning fires
   And unsatisfied desires."

The trees always refer to "Mystery," as that on page 3 with a serpent wound round it, hardly distinguishable from the bark, indicates. The figures on page 4 are so slight as to be almost incomprehensible; they seem to represent, if one reads them from top to bottom of the page, first on the left and then on the right:—

1. An old person teaching a child.

2. A nude girl leaping from a tree. (? Spring.)

3 and 4. Robed figures turning the leaves of very large books or rolls.

5. The lark mounting. (A subject symbolically used in the book called "Milton.")

6. A robed figure reading.

7. A woman sowing corn in a field, or feeding flying birds.

8. A shepherdess sitting holding a crook up in the right hand.

The appropriateness is clear enough, though they can hardly be said to illustrate the particular poem in every case.

The grapes on pages 6 and 7 are clearly symbolic and refer to the "vegetative happy" state of youth.

No. 9 shows the serpent round the tree again, as on the title-page. In the contrasted picture in "America" the serpent comes from the woman herself, as in the biblical figure in Revelations. No. 10 shows a scene representing youth taught beneath a tree, but here the serpent is changed into a lily, and grows upright from the root. In No. 11, the Blossoms, Sparrows and Robins all have human form, and their emotional meaning is as clear us that of the flame-like tree where they cluster. In 12, the subject is clear enough, and in 13, though the little boy lost is so like a little girl. In 14, the angel who leads him is more female than male. The figure, as already