Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/32

xxvi readings given might for this reason be understood to possess some authority.

1. Malk. A Father's Memoirs of his Child. By Benj. Heath Malkin, Esq., M.A., F.A.S. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, London. 1806. 8°.

Contains five songs from Poetical Sketches and Songs of Innocence and of Experience, printed presumably from copies supplied by Blake to the author. Malkin's version of 'The Tyger' contains an interesting variant reading of l. 12.

2. Cunn. The Lives of the most eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, by Allan Cunningham. John Murray, London. 1829-1833. 6 vols. 16°.

Volume ii contains poems from Poetical Sketches and Songs of Innocence and of Experience. To Cunningham's corrupt version of 'The Tyger' may be traced the second or later version 'on MS. authority,' which has deceived so many of Blake's editors.

3. Wilk. Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Shewing the two Contrary States of the Human Soul. (Dedication of the Poem of the Grave.) W. Pickering and W. Newbery, London. 1839. 8°.

The first letterpress edition of the Songs. Edited with a short but excellent preface by J. J. Garth Wilkinson, the translator of Swedenborg. In the Dictionary of National Biography and elsewhere, the text of this edition is described as 'much altered,' but as a matter of fact Wilkinson's emendations are somewhat fewer than those of later editors.

4. R1. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's original transcript of a portion of Blake's MS. Book. See Bibliographical Preface to 'Poems from the Rossetti MS.' This transcript was probably made about 1847, when Rossetti was still a youth.

These readings, furnished me by Mr. White, are here quoted for the first time.

5. Gil. Life of William Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus,' with Selections from his poems and other writings by the late Alexander Gilchrist.… Illustrated from Blake's own works in facsimile by W. J. Linton and in Photolithography; with a few of Blake's original plates. In two volumes. Vol. i. Macmillan, London. 1863. 8°.

Poems quoted by Gilchrist in the first volume of the Life