Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/19

Rh an overflow from Blake's marginalia to Reynolds' ' Discourses, ' the Pickering MS., the letters to Butts, and some portion at least of Jerusalem and Milton had been written. Lastly, as the third section, we have the fragments of 'The Everlasting Gospel'—the latest of Blake's surviving poems with the possible exception of 'The Keys of the Gates.'

In the bibliographical prefaces to the various sections I have tried to give fairly full and accurate accounts of printed books or manuscripts which have hitherto been somewhat slightly or incorrectly described. All accessible copies of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience have been collated, and Blake's successive arrangements tabulated and classified. A complete index of the contents of the Rossetti MS. is given; and the Pickering MS., or 'smaller autograph collection,' is described for the first time. I have also supplied brief bibliographical descriptions of the manuscript and engraved Prophetic Books, and have made some corrections in the dates of their composition or publication. Comparison of a number of copies has established the fact that there were three several editions of The Gates of Paradise, the two later only including the verses which distinguish the issue 'For the Sexes.' In my notes to this book I have drawn attention to a hitherto ignored publication of Blake, his History of England for Children, a companion volume to The Gates of Paradise; and possibly the list of its contents recovered from the MS. Book may be the means of bringing this lost work to light. The attention of the curious bibliophile may also be directed to the entry in the Rossetti MS. (p. 56) that 'This day is Publish'd Advertizements to Blake's Canterbury Pilgrims from Chaucer, containing anecdotes of Artists.' This may of course have been merely an experimental draft of a notice for insertion in the newspapers in case he thought fit to publish as a pamphlet with this title the paragraphs jotted down in his notebook. On the other hand, it is not improbable that it may have been printed