Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/146

 One more extract shall suffice:—

The poem has no distinctly seizable pretensions to a prophetic character, being, like the rest of Blake's 'Books of Prophecy,' rather a retrospect, in its mystic way, of events already transpired. The American War of Independence is the theme; a portion of history here conducted mainly by vast mythic beings, 'Orc,' the 'Angels of Albion,' the 'Angels of the thirteen states,' &c.; whose movements are throughout accompanied by tremendous elemental commotion—'red clouds and raging fire;' 'black smoke, thunder,' and

through which chaos the merely human agents show small and remote, perplexed and busied in an ant-like way. Strange to conceive a somewhile associate of Paine producing these 'Prophetic ' volumes!

The America now and then occurs coloured, more often plain black, or occasionally blue and white. The designs blend with and surround the verse; the mere grouping of the text, filled in here and there with ornament, often forming, in itself, a picturesque piece of decorative composition. Of the beauty of most of these designs, in their finished state, it would be quite impossible to obtain any notion, without