WILLIAM BLAKE
BY
ARTHUR SYMONS
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1907
TO
AUGUSTE RODIN
whose work is the
marriage of
heaven and hell
PREFACE
PART I
INTRODUCTION
WILLIAM BLAKE
PART II - RECORDS FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES
(I.) EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY, LETTERS, AND REMINISCENCES OF HENRY CRABBROBINSON, TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ORIGINAL MSS. IN DR. WILLIAMS'S LIBRARY (1810-1852)
(1) FROM CRABB ROBINSON'S DIARY
(2) FROM A LETTER OF CRABB ROBINSON TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
(3) FROM CRABB ROBINSON'S REMINISCENCES
(II.) FROM 'A FATHER'S MEMOIRS OF HIS CHILD,' BY BENJAMIN HEATH MALKIN (1806)
(III.) FROM LADY CHARLOTTE BURY'S DIARY (1820)
(IV.) BLAKE'S HOROSCOPE (1825)
(V.) OBITUARY NOTICES IN THE LITERARY GAZETTE' AND 'GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE' (1827)
(VI.) EXTRACT FROM VARLEY'S ZODIACAL PHYSIOGNOMY (1828)
(VII.) BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF BLAKE BY J. T. SMITH (1828)
(VIII.) LIFE OF BLAKE BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM (1830)
PREFACE
It was when Mr. Sampson's edition of Blake came into my hands in thewinter of 1905 that the idea of writing a book on Blake first presenteditself to me. From a boy he had been one of my favorite poets, and Ihad heard a great deal about him from Mr. Yeats as long ago as 1893, theyear in which he and Mr. Ellis brought out their vast encyclopaedia,The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical. Fromthat time to this Blake has never been out of my mind, but I have alwayshesitated to write down anything on a subject so great in itself, andalready handled by great poets. Things have been written about Blake byRossetti which no one will ever surpass; and in Mr. Swinburne's bookBlake himself seems to speak again, as through the mouth of a herald.I read these, I read everything that had been written about him; graduallyI 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 fromthe confusions of the commentators, I caught some impulse—wasit from the careful enthusiasm of this editor, or perhaps straight fromBlake?—and began to write down what now filled and overfl