Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/20

xiv for him in the same manner as the Descriptive Catalogue, possibly by the same printer, D. N. Shury, and that a copy may still be discovered, preserved perhaps, as is so often the case, by being bound up with contemporary tracts. Among other lost works of Blake may be mentioned the first book of the French Revolution, said to have been published by Johnson in 1791, and the engraved Book of Outhoon. Works referred to by Blake himself, but of which no trace is known, are The Book of Moonlight, and Barry: a Poem.

It is to Blake's singular mode of publication that we must attribute the scanty recognition accorded to his poetic genius during his own lifetime, as his public was necessarily restricted to the few friends or patrons who had obtained copies of his works from 'the Author and Printer.' The circumstances under which he first conceived the idea of producing his books by his invention of relief engraving possess therefore much more than the merely technical interest attaching to a new and curious art process.

According to the commonly received account it was in consequence of his failure to secure a publisher for the Songs of Innocence in the ordinary way, and of his extreme indigence which prohibited him from bringing out the book in letterpress at his own cost, that Blake was driven to resort to the laborious expedient of engraving and printing the Songs by his own hand. Verisimilitude is added by the picture of the poet's wife 'going out with their last half-crown to buy the necessary materials,' a detail of but little relevance when it is remembered that the engraving, printing, and colouring of the first issue occupied an entire year. I believe this story, which may be traced to a loose statement of Gilchrist's, to be without foundation.

In the first place it may be observed that the supposition