Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/166

 CHAPTER XIV.

To the Songs of Experience succeeded from Lambeth the same year (1794) volumes of mystic verse and design, in the track of the Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and the America. One of them is a sequel to the America, and generally occurs bound up with it, sometimes coloured, sometimes plain. It is entitled Europe, a Prophecy: Lambeth, printed by William Blake, 1794; and consists of seventeen quarto pages, with designs of a larger size than those of America, occupying the whole page often. The frontispiece represents the 'Ancient of Days,' as shadowed forth in Proverbs viii. 27: 'when he set a compass upon the face of the earth;' and again, as described in Paradise Lost, Book vii. line 236: a grand figure, 'in an orb of light surrounded by dark clouds, is stooping down, with an enormous pair of compasses, to describe the world's destined orb;' Blake adopting with childlike fidelity, but in a truly sublime spirit, the image of the Hebrew and English poets. This composition was an especial favourite with its designer. When colouring it by hand, he 'always bestowed more time,' says Smith, 'and enjoyed greater pleasure in the task, than from anything else he produced.' The process of colouring his designs was never to him, however, a mechanical or irksome one. Very different feelings were his from those of a mere copyist. Throughout life, whenever for his few patrons filling in the colour to his