Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/22

xvi light of a happy accident than as a deliberate attempt to deal with a clearly realized artistic difficulty. According to the account derived from Smith, this mode of engraving was revealed to him in a vision by the spirit of his favourite brother Robert, and there is no particular reason to doubt that, in a dream or daydream, Blake may have solved a problem which had long occupied his thoughts. Striking confirmation of the fact that at least five years before the publication of the Songs of Innocence he had contemplated—and not entirely, it may be noted, without a view to the superior profits of such a work— some new kind of illuminated printing is found in the early MS. known as An Island in the Moon. This passage begins, imperfectly, at the head of the recto of the ninth leaf: '…"Illuminating the Manuscript"—"Ay," said she, "that would be excellent." "Then," said he, "I would have all the writing Engraved instead of Printed, & at every other leaf a high finished print, all in three Volumes folio, and sell them a hundred pounds a piece. They would Print off two thousand." "Then," said she, "whoever will not have them, will be ignorant fools & will not deserve to live."…"I was at Mrs. Sicknakers, & I was speaking of my abilities, but their nasty hearts, poor devils, are eat up with envy—they envy me my abilities, & all the Women envy your abilities, my dear; they hate people who are of higher abilities than their nasty filthy Selves."'

The unfortunate loss of one or more leaves preceding the last page may have deprived us of a description of the literary contents of the book which the speaker Quid the Cynic (or Blake) designed to bring out in this manner. But since three of the most characteristic of the Songs of Innocence appear in rough draft in this MS., it seems not unlikely that Blake may have had already in view the completion of a series of songs for children; perhaps suggested by Dr. Watts' Divine and Moral Songs for Children. In the preface to that popular book Watts