Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/311

 For over thirty years nothing further was heard of the Pickering MS. It was lost sight of presumably about the date of Pickering's death in 1878, and, though occasional attempts to trace its subsequent ownership were made by the two or three students who realized that this MS. constituted the sole authority for the text of some of Blake's loveliest and most extraordinary poems, their efforts were unsuccessful. Messrs. Ellis and Yeats and later editors were thus obliged to follow the versions of these poems given by D. G. Rossetti and Shepherd, the only two editors who had made use of the original autograph. The MS. was thought to be permanently lost, and the present editor had accordingly decided to reproduce Shepherd's as the best available text. This portion of the work was indeed in proof, when the opportune reappearance of the original MS. enabled him to print this section also with the literal fidelity observed in the rest of the poems. The Pickering MS., the great importance of which would seem to have been overlooked by its last owner, had lain perdu for years in the Rowfant Library. On the purchase of the Locker Lampson collection in June, 1905, by Messrs. Dodd, Meade & Co. of New York, several Blake originals and other works were bought en bloc by Mr. W. A. White, who was surprised to find among them the long-missing Pickering MS. I owe to Mr. White's kindness the rectification of my text, as well as the following details respecting this undescribed MS.

The Pickering MS. is a foolscap quarto volume (6x8 inches), of 11 leaves of writing or drawing paper, without water-mark, paginated consecutively by Blake 1-22. Mr. W. M. Rossetti, who saw the MS. when in his brother's hands, describes it, in one of his letters to me, as being then, to the best of his recollection, stitched into a darkish olive-tinted cover. Traces of this simple binding may be observed in the three punctured holes, about 1½ inches apart, through which a cord had evidently once been laced. The original covers, which, it is to be presumed, bore no inscription, must have been removed when, as the binder's stamp shows, the volume was bound by F. Bedford for B. M. Pickering. The leaves were trimmed down somewhat in binding, the top and bottom lines of pages 17 and 18 being slightly grazed by the binder's knife. Inserted on the inside of the cover is the armorial book-plate of Mr. William Mitchell, into whose possession the MS. must have passed after the death of Pickering and before