Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/35

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In a work involving much reference to material not lying ready to hand in any public library an editor is necessarily dependent upon the goodwill and co-operation of the owners of precious books and manuscripts. It is with gratitude that I acknowledge the invaluable aid rendered me in various ways by collectors and students of the works of Blake.

My debt to Mr. W. A. White, of Brooklyn, New York, the owner of the Rossetti MS., the Pickering MS., and other Blake originals, can best be made clear by an explanation of his share in the work. Entering into my desire to produce an accurate and final text of Blake's poems, Mr. White has for the past three years collaborated with me in this endeavour by furnishing me with exact transcripts of the poems in the MS. Book, and answering a very great number of questions of detail. I owe also to Mr. White the correct text of the smaller Pickering MS., which after a disappearance of over thirty years was opportunely rediscovered while this edition was in the press. I should not omit to explain that it was Mr. White's conjecture that The Gates of Paradise belonged to a later date than had been previously supposed, which led me, after a study of the symbolic references in the couplets explanatory of the plates, to form the conclusion that the two issues 'For the Sexes,' in which the poems first appear, must have been produced, not in 1793, but somewhere nearer 1810. Lastly, I am indebted to Mr. White for the two facsimiles of the MS. Book given in this edition.

To Mr. John Linnell, junior, I owe the correct text of the songs, and passages quoted in the footnotes from The Four Zoas, as well as the description of this MS., and details of copies of The Gates of Paradise, The Ghost of Abel, and other Blake originals in the possession of the Linnell family. Mr. Linnell has also furnished me with photographs of obscurely written lines in The Four Zoas,