Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/93

 the watermarks show, the other half of the sheet on which the work begins, there are no grounds for Messrs. Ellis and Yeats' conjecture that the MS. at one time possessed a first leaf containing a title-page.

The brochure itself, which may be described as a somewhat incoherent and pointless precursor of the Headlong Hall type of novel, was perhaps intended by the author as a satire on the little coterie of distinguished personages which met at Mrs. Mathews' salon in Rathbone Place; but, if so, the originals of the portraits are not now to be identified, though Quid the Cynic may possibly stand for Blake himself. I am unable to agree with Mr. Yeats' surmise that An Island in the Moon preceded and even led to the publication of the Poetical Sketches in 1783, and that Blake's gratitude for Mr. Mathews' share in defraying the cost of printing the little volume caused the author to leave the present work unfinished. This is to attach unnecessary importance to a trifle evidently dashed off by Blake for his own amusement without thought of publication; nor, as we know from the epigrams in the MS. Book, was it the poet's wont to allow social patronage or material assistance to interfere with his Celtic privilege of free satire. The MS., moreover, contains the first drafts of 'Holy Thursday' and the 'Nurse's Song,' and had these beautiful lyrics been written in 1783 it is difficult to believe that Blake would not have included them in his first published work. The doggerel lines on Dr. Johnson are more likely to have been written before than after Johnson's death. We may therefore, with tolerable certainty, date it between the publication of the Poetical Sketches in 1783, and December 20, 1784, probably in the latter year, when, as J. T. Smith tells us, Blake's relations with the Mathews and their circle had become somewhat strained. In chapters 5 and 7 there are references to the Chatterton controversy, which reached its height in 1782, and would seem, when Blake wrote, to have been still a topic of conversation.

Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have given a synopsis of the chapters, with copious though rather inaccurately printed extracts, from this MS. in their edition of Blake's works, vol. i. pp. 186-201; and Mr. Lawrence Housman, who dates the MS. circa 1789, has reprinted three chapters as specimens of his prose, while, strangely, placing one of the songs among the 'Later Poems.' The work has never been printed as a whole; nor, were this done, would it