Page:William Blake, painter and poet.djvu/30

 uncoloured copy in the library of the British Museum. There is frequently a great difference in the colouring of the copies. That in the Museum Print Room is in full rich colour, while others are very lightly and delicately tinted.

It is of course much easier to convey an idea of the merits of Blake's

From a coloured copy of the "Songs of Innocence and Experience." British Museum.

verse than of his painting, for the former loses nothing by transcription, and the latter everything. The merit of the latter, too, is a variable quantity, depending much upon the execution of the coloured plates. The uncoloured are but phantoms of Blake's ideas. The general characteristics of his art in these books may be described as caressing