WILLIAM BLAKE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 09, 11 January 1908, Page 13

WILLIAM BLAKE.

» Appreciation of William Blake and interest in his work are steadily growing and tho number of -elaborate andcostly volumes that have appeared on the subject during tho last year or two is remarkable. One of the latest is by Edwin J. Ellis, who collaborated with Yeats in. the monumental three-volume edition issued by Quaritch some fourteen years ago — the book in which the theory was first given forth that Blaks's father was an Irishman whose real family name was O'Neill. The New York Evening Post is severe on Mr. T-Jllis'r, new book, accusing the author, apparently with juetice, of "inordinate use of inference," a fault to be noted in the earlier work ; and says "he has produced a book that is almost a model of what a biography ought not to be." The reviewer goes on to say :— " 'The Eeal Blake,' however, is not altogether destitute of profit. Here is printed in full for the first time 'The Island in the Moon,' that youthful satire, grotesquely dull but not without significance in estimating " Blake's literary training. More important is a complete transcription of his marginal, notes to the 'Angelic Wisdom" of Swedenborg, together with the passages of Swedenborg concerned, and even more interesting " are Lavater's 'Aphorisms' with Blake's illuminating comments. And other valuable documents arc given. Little by little we are getting the whole of Blake. When shall we have all his writings in uniform style, edited with the accuracy and understanding displayed \>y Mr. Sampson inhis-edition of the lyrical poems ? That is now the real desideratum, rather than these- yeasty enthusiasms over Blake's Last Judgment as 'tha mo3t bpautiful, poetic, and decorative picture tho world contains,' over BUko himself as holding "a supreme place among fho world's artists,' and over his boyish and fragmentary drama as having the e^sy aud complete vitality of Shakespeare's work. It is a pity that a critic should give himself up to these exaggerations j Blake is great e-nough not to need them, Mr. Ellis tells us more about the debt of Blake to Swedenborgianism than any other writer has yet dono. It ho had worked out that connection in detail he would have performed a service to letters thqt is still to do. It cannot be denied that he knows his Blake thoroughly, and is as familiar with the Zoas, Zelophahads, Ores, Valaa, Optb-pons, Luvahs, efc id genus omne, as any map living ; again, if he had collected and co-ordiiiated his interpretations o£| Blake's mysticism, and had subdued the vanities of, his own ' imagination he might ha,ve produced a work of indisputable value.''