WILLIAM BLAKE
WILLIAM BLAKE
BY
ARTHUR SYMONS
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1907
PREFACE
It was when Mr. Sampson's edition of Blake came into my hands in the winter of 1905 that the idea of writing a book on Blake first presented itself to me. From a boy he had been one of my favourite poets, and I had heard a great deal about him from Mr. Yeats as long ago as 1893, the year in which he and Mr. Ellis brought out their vast cyclopaedia, The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical. From that time to this Blake has never been out of my mind, but I have always hesitated to write down anything on a subject so great in itself, and already handled by great poets. Things have been written about Blake by Rossetti which no one will ever surpass; and in Mr. Swinburne's book Blake himself seems to speak again, as through the mouth of a herald. I read these, I read everything that had been written about him; gradually I got to know all his work, in all its kinds; and when I found, in Mr. Sampson's book, the rarest part of his genius, disentangled at last from the confusions of the commentators, I caught some impulse—was it from the careful enthusiasm of this editor, or perhaps straight from Blake?—and began to write down what now filled and over-flowed my mind. Having begun on an impulse, I laid my plans as strictly as I could, and decided to make a book which would be, in its way, complete. There was to be, first, my own narrative, containing, as briefly as possible, every fact of importance, with my own interpretation of what I took to be Blake's achievements and intentions. But this was to be followed by a verbatim reprint of documents. These documents were the material of Gilchrist, but, even after Gilchrist's use of them, they remain of primary and undiminished importance: they are the main evidence in our case.
The documents which form the second part of my book contain every personal account of Blake which was printed during his lifetime, and between the time of his death and the publication of Gilchrist's Life in 1863, together with the complete text of every reference to Blake in the Diary, Letters, and Reminiscences of Crabb Robinson, transcribed for the first time from the original manuscripts. All these I have given exactly as they stand, not correcting their errors, for even errors have their value as evidence. The only other document of the period which exists was written by Frederick Tatham, within two years of the appearance of Cunningham's Life, and bound up at the beginning of a coloured copy of Blake's Jerusalem, now in the possession of Captain Archibald Stirling. This manuscript was consulted by Mr. Swinburne and afterwards by Mr. Ellis and Mr. Yeats; but though many extracts have been made from it, it was printed for the first time by Mr. Archibald G. B. Russell in his edition of The Letters of William Blake (Methuen, 1906), This very important volume completes the task which I have here undertaken: the reprint of every record of Blake from contemporary sources.
The mere contact with Blake seems to awaken the natural generosity of those who have concerned themselves with him. To Mr. John Sampson, the editor of the only accurate edition of Blake's poems, I am indebted for more help and encouragement than I can hope to express in detail; and particularly for prompting me to a search among birth and marriage and death registers, by which I have been enabled to settle several disputed points of some interest. To Mr. A. G. B. Russell I owe constant personal help, and the very generous loan of the proofs of his edition of Blake's Letters, and of Tatham's Life, with free leave to use them in the narrative which I was writing at a time when his book had not yet appeared. Through this favour I have been able to take such facts as Tatham is responsible for directly from Tatham, and not at second-hand. I am also indebted to Mr. Russell for reading my proofs and saving me from some errors of fact. I have to thank Mr. Buxton Forman for allowing me to read and describe the unpublished manuscript in Blake's handwriting in his possession. Finally, my particular thanks are due to the Librarian of Dr. Williams's Library, Mr, Francis H. Jones, for permission to copy and print the full text of all the references to Blake in the Crabb Robinson Manuscripts.
London, April 1907.
LIST OF BOOKS CONSULTED
2. William Blake: A Critical Essay. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. John Camden Hotten, 1868. New edition, Chatto & Windus, 1906.
3. The Poetical Works of William Blake. Edited by W. M. Rossetti. Aldine Edition. Bell & Sons, 1874.
4. The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer. By A. H. Palmer. Seeley & Co., 1892.
5. The Life of John Linnell. By Alfred T. Story. Two volumes. Bentley, 1892.
6. A Memoir of Edward Calvert. By his third son [Samuel Calvert]. S. Low & Co., 1893.
7. The Works of William Blake: Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical. Edited, with lithographs of the illustrated Prophetic Books, and a Memoir and Interpretation, by Edwin John Ellis and William Butler Yeats. Three volumes. Quaritch, 1893.
8. The Poems of William Blake. Edited by W. B. Yeats. 'The Muses' Library.' Lawrence & Bullen, 1893.
9. William Blake: his Life, Character, and Genius. By Alfred T. Story. Sonnenschein & Co., 1893.
10. William Blake: Painter and Poet. By Richard Garnett. 'Portfolio,' 1895.
11. Ideas of Good and Evil. By W. B. Yeats. (William Blake and the Imagination, William Blake and his Illustrations to the Divine Comedy.) A. H. Bullen, 1903.
12. The Rossetti Papers (1862 to 1870); a Compilation by W. M. Rossetti. Sands & Co., 1903.
13. The Prophetic Books of William Blake: Jerusalem. Edited by E. R. D. Maclagan and A. G. B. Russell. Bullen, 1904.
14. The Poetical Works of William Blake. Edited by John Sampson. Oxford, 1905.
15. The Letters of William Blake; together with a Life by Frederick Tatham. Edited by Archibald G. B. Russell. Methuen, 1906.
16. The Poetical Works of William Blake. Edited and annotated by Edwin J. Ellis. Two volumes. Chatto & Windus, 1906. (The only edition containing the Prophetic Books.)
17. William Blake. Vol. 1. Illustrations of the Book of Job, with a general Introduction by Laurence Binyon. Methuen, 1906.
18. The Real Blake. A Portrait Biography. By Edwin J. Ellis. Chatto & Windus, 1907.