Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/181

Rh pages has here been copied out. D. G. C. R.' Rossetti's transcript (in my footnotes referred to as R1) contains a number of emendatory readings, some of which he subsequently rejected in his version of the poems printed in Gilchrist's Life. This transcript, bound in at the end of the MS. Book proper, consists of 33 leaves, of which 5 (evidently containing Epigrams 1-19) have been cut out. Part of the paper bears the watermark 1844. The volume is bound in half-calf and labelled ' Blake MS.'

The MS. Book covers a period of at least twenty years of Blake's life. He first used it for sketches only, and when it had served this purpose, converted it into a note-book for poetry, and, still later, for prose. The sketches include two drawings of the figure of Nebuchadnezzar which Blake afterwards engraved in the undated Marriage of Heaven and Hell, all the designs for The Gates of Paradise (engraved 1793), most of those for the Visions of the Daughters of Albion (engraved 1793), and some for the Songs of Experience, Urizen, and America (all engraved 1794). As there are no designs for Blake's earlier works, the Songs of Innocence and The Book of Thel (both engraved 1789), we may infer that his use of the sketch-book began not earlier, but probably not much later, than the year 1789. Some of the sketches are full page, a few are in colour or sepia, but the greater number are small finished or rough pencil drawings occupying the centre of the page.

About 1793, when most of the leaves were thus filled, Blake began to use the sketch-book for the transcription of some of his poems, reversing the volume and beginning on the three blank pages at the end of the book. Here he copied, in most cases apparently from earlier rough drafts, certain of the Songs of Experience, besides other lyrical poems which he himself never published. These pieces, as our facsimile shows, were neatly written in two columns in a small, but fairly clear hand; separation lines being drawn between the different poems. In most cases the titles were afterthoughts. Vertical pencil lines are drawn through those poems which Blake engraved as part of the Songs of Experience. Avoiding at first the pages on which sketches of any importance appeared, Blake continued to write from the reversed end as far as p. 98. All the poems in this section of the book — Songs of Experience or lyrics of the same character — must have been written before the end of the year 1793.