Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/504

 of poems for which a ghost, and not even your own ghost, is alone responsible?) many passages and indeed whole compositions of a remote and charming beauty, or sometimes of a grotesque figurative relation to things of another sphere, which are startlingly akin to Blake's writings, could pass, in fact, for no one's but his. Professing as they do the same new kind of authorship, they might afford plenty of material for comparison and bewildered speculation, if such were in any request.

Considering the interval of seventeen years which has now elapsed since the first publication of this Life, it may be well to refer briefly to such studies connected with Blake as have since appeared. This is not the place where any attempt could be made to appraise the thanks due for such a work as Mr. Swinburne's Critical Essay on Blake. The task chiefly undertaken in it—that of exploring and expounding the system of thought and personal mythology which pervades Blake's 'Prophetic Books' has been fulfilled, not by piecework or analysis, but by creative intuition. The fiat of Form and Light has gone forth, and as far as such a chaos could respond it has responded. To the volume itself, and to that only, can any reader be referred for its store of intellectual wealth and reach of eloquent dominion. Next among Blake-labours of love let me here refer to Mr. James Smetham's deeply sympathetic and assimilative study (in the form of a review article on the present Life), published in the London Quarterly Review for Jan. 1869. As this article is reprinted in our present Vol. II., no further tribute to its delicacy and force needs to be made here: it speaks for itself. But some personal mention, however slight, should here exist as due to its author, a painter and designer of our own day who is, in many signal respects, very closely akin to Blake; more so, probably, than any other living artist could be said to be. James Smetham's work—generally of small or moderate size—ranges from Gospel subjects, of the subtlest imaginative and mental insight, and