Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/149

Rh It also indicates what Boelimen calls "three dark creations." Bat the examination of this closely would lead to the study of a mysticism other than Blake's, and not endorsed by him in its absolute completeness. The number seven is the number of manifestation. It will always be found at the head of a stanza in which development reaches a point of characterization or imaginative visibility not arrived at before. The number nine always indicates birth. It is the number of the months of gestation. By comparing the ninth with the seventh stanza of such chapters as contain both the difference between the symbolic use of the idea of generation and that of manifestation will be clear.

The number ten, as in Swedenborg's account of the biblical numbers, always indicates completeness, even the completeness of numberlessness in the case of multitudes. Twelve is the double six, and emphasizes the cadence by repetition.

Fourteen, the double seven, introduces a second manifestation of some self-hood, some signalized character.

The numbering of the chapters has the same significance as that of the stanzas. The difference in length of the chapters is introduced to enable them to contain the number of stanzas appropriate respectively to the significance of each.

It will be noticed that Blake thought of beginning the third chapter after the tenth stanza of the second, but saw that the second needed fourteen stanzas, and took out the word. He forgot to alter IV. into III. at the beginning of the true Chapter III., and so in his own copies there are always two Chapters IV. The error is an oversight of no consequence when a consideration of the significance of the numbers enables us to be certain of the true reading.