Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/34

xxviii 'Keys of the Gates' prefixed in ordinary typography to his facsimile of The Gates of Paradise. Admirable as facsimiles of Blake's coloured illustrations, these reproductions cannot be followed with any certainty for the text of the poems.

11. EY. The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical. Edited with Lithographs of the Illustrated 'Prophetic Books,' and a Memoir and Interpretation by Edwin John Ellis and William Butler Yeats. In three volumes. Bernard Quaritch, London. 1893. Large 8°.

In this edition the somewhat confusing arrangement of the Poems may perhaps be due to the editors' scheme of interpretation. For some of their text apparently Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have trusted to the Aldine edition, while part has been derived from Mr. Ellis' transcripts of the MS. Book and The Four Zoas. These editors, in expounding Blake's system, lay claim to special knowledge 'produced by the evocations of symbolic magic' (i. 288 and passim); and some of their remarks (e.g. ii. 299) would seem to suggest their belief that the possession of these occult powers enables them to produce a text through which Blake's mind is reflected more accurately than in the MSS. left by himself.

12. WBY. The Poems of William Blake. Edited by W. B. Yeats. [The Muses' Library.] Lawrence and Bullen, London. 1893. 8°.

In some respects a more correct text than the preceding. Reprinted by Routledge (1905).

13. LH. Selections from the writings of William Blake with an introductory essay by Lawrence Housman. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co. 1893. 8°.

I quote this edition only for the variant reading in the song taken from An Island in the Moon, since this MS. was in Mr. Housman's hands.

14. Russell and Maclagan. The Prophetic Books of William Blake. Jerusalem. Edited by E. R. D, Maclagan and A. G. B. Russell [on cover A. G. B. Russell and E. R. D. Maclagan]. Bullen, London. 1904. 4°.

Apparently intended as the first of a series of typographical reprints of Blake's Prophetic Books. Purports to be a verbatim and literatim reprint, but contains such misreadings as 'course' for 'race,' and 'By his own hand shall surely die' for 'By his own law shall surely die.'