Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/274

 ABOUT "MILTON."

Of the "Milton" wo only know that it was planned as a work in twelve "books," and finished in two. We surmise that this was due to the events of the years succeeding Blake's Felpham period. We know that such books as "Milton" and "Jerusalem" were not written all at once,  or engraved all at once. Whichever of these two was actually the great poem suggested by the acts of the enemies of Blake's "spiritual" life alluded to in his letters from Felpham, dated April 25th and July 6th, 1803, what he says about the printing being "progressive" was true of both works, and the date on the title-page does not apply to every page of the one any more than of the other.

Both should belong to 1804, were this the case, but he alludes obscurely to one of them in the passage from the Public address which refers to the Examiner attacks that did not begin till August, 1808. Even then the poem is said to bo one which he "would soon publish."

It may possibly be that the poem referred to in the letters was "Milton," and that intended to be understood in the sentence from the "Public Address" was "Jerusalem." It is almost certain that a great deal of matter intended for Milton was never used in that work, and some of it may have gone to "Jerusalem." "None can know," Blake wrote to Butts, "the spiritual acts of my three years' slumber on the banks of the ocean unless he has seen them in the spirit or unless he should read my long poem." The most interesting part of the allusion in the letter is the phrase — "Unless he has seen them in the spirit." This matter-of-course reference to what is still a rare faculty, sometimes called Thought-reading, says more for the peculiarly clairvoyant quality of Blake's mental organism than many allegories. In alluding to the mortals who represented the States of Spiritual Enmity with which he struggled, he would often write regardless of