Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/45

Rh ordinary type. As we learn from Cunningham, it was printed at the expense of Flaxman and Mathew, who handed the unbound sheets to the author to dispose of for his own advantage. The size of the edition is not stated; but it was probably a small one, and of it Blake seems to have issued a few copies only. The Preface, which was the composition of Mathew, runs:—

'The following Sketches were the production of untutored youth, commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the author till his twentieth year; since which time, his talents having been wholly directed to the attainment of excellence in his profession, he has been deprived of the leisure requisite to such a revisal of these sheets, as might have rendered them less unfit to meet the public eye.

'Conscious of the irregularities and defects to be found in almost every page, his friends have still believed that they possessed a poetical originality, which merited some respite from oblivion. These their opinions remain, however, to be now reproved or confirmed by a less partial public.'

While the book contains a few obvious misprints, such as 'cares' for 'ears' in 'An Imitation of Spencer,' and 'her' for 'his' in the fourth stanza of the 'Song' on p. 12; yet its general inaccuracy is far less than has been represented, and by no means warrants such violent changes as D. G. Rossetti's 'rustling birds of dawn' for 'rustling beds of dawn' in the 'Mad Song.' The printer, while generally respecting Blake's use of 'd or ed where the latter is to be pronounced as a separate syllable, has evidently corrected Blake's spelling, omitted capitals, and supplied his own punctuation, frequently a faulty one. See 'Gwin, King of Norway,' where the lines,

are printed :

In the present edition punctuation is amended and the indented lines of the printer abandoned in favour of Blake's own invariable and more artistic alinement. In every other respect the text of the original edition is exactly reproduced.

The lyrics in Poetical Sketches include the whole of the poems on pp. 1-28, to which Blake, or perhaps Mathew, gives the title 'Miscellaneous Poems.' The other pieces