Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/312

 being acquired by Mr. Locker Lampson. There is no note of the last-named owner to indicate how it was obtained.

Differing in this respect from the larger MS. Book, where most of the poems are found in rough draft, with numerous deletions, corrections, and re-arrangements of stanzas, the Pickering MS. is obviously a fair copy of pieces already written in approved form. There is not a single alteration on the first seventeen pages, and the few corrections which occur are mostly in the use of capitals, which Blake here as elsewhere employs for the sake of emphasis. It is noteworthy that all the poems have titles, which with Blake are generally afterthoughts. As in the Rossetti MS. there is no punctuation. None of the poems are dated. There is no title-page, ascription or other indication of the circumstances under which, or the person for whom, this special collection was transcribed. The pages are without illustrations and contain no prose matter of any kind.

Unlike the Rossetti MS., the literary contents of which extend over a period of nearly twenty years, the poems of the Pickering MS. convey the impression of having been written at one time. Whether of pure lyrical loveliness like 'The Golden Net' and 'The Land of Dreams,' uncouth and grotesque like 'Long John Brown,' obscure as 'The Mental Traveller' and 'The Crystal Cabinet,' or outwardly simple as 'Mary'—all alike are characterized by a strain of profound mysticism which is not quite the same as that of the Prophetic Books, though each helps to explain the other. Verses such as the two couplets (11. 67-70) in the 'Auguries of Innocence ' —

or the figure in 'The Mental Traveller' of the 'Woman Old' who nails the babe down on a rock, and ' Catches his Shrieks in Cups of gold,' are only to be understood by reference to parallel allusions in The Four Zoas, Milton, or Jerusalem. Mere allegorical interpretations such as W. M. Rossetti 's of 'The Mental Traveller,' however acceptable to readers eager for any light thrown upon Blake's darkness, are not warranted by the poet's theory or practice. The light may be there, but 'the illumination'—as Swinburne observes of a similar attempt—'is none of the author's kindling.' Blake himself disdained the use of mere allegory of this sort. 'Fable or