Page:The poetical works of William Blake - lyrical and miscellaneous.djvu/21

 PREFATORY MEMOIR.

1.--Preliminary

In writing a Memoir of William Blake little or no diffiulty can now arise as to the external facts--the dates, personages, and incidents. The truly valueble and so far exhaustive book of Mr. Alexander Gilchrist has settled all these points for us substntially; it barely requires to be here and there rectified or supplemented in some minor particular. Its tone moreover is as earnest and elevated as its research is true and thorough. I need hardly say that I am indebted to this book for the vast majority of my facts: any one who undertakes to write about Blake cannot be otherwise. Thus far, therefore, everything is plain: one has openly to acknowledge a genuine debt of gratitude to Mr. Gilchrist, and to run up the account freely.

The difficulty of Blake's biogrsphers, subsequent to 1863, the date of Mr. Gi]christ's book, is of a different kind altogether. It is the difficulty of stating sufficiently high the extraordinary claims

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