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he addition of two works, one of which has never you gut beyond the MS. stage of existence : -L TIN » the Death and Judgment of the Incene In Train of Vne Nights, which Mr. anned ossesses, but which perhaps no human wing wer read: 2 Outioun, which appears to NAVE TEKsted as an engraved and illustrated york, but which remains as yet totally untrace

With the excention this very extraordinary and a madour it must be added very unreadJams į viris ne edtion presents the yur I Say pou It includes the

De Sinus ir Zanocence and of EzTre, the verses thinly scattered

KUNNE KANE was een by Blake, or in his de svelazects poems that

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i liters stumes, the whole body of it except was xitas, amitted here a grounds of copyright. FRIKA TMNsom balat named Long John Re al respects at unregrettable me sughi songs. By a Shepherd, and

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others had been omitted from Mr. Gilchrist's, as not being of sufficient value or substance to figure in that selection of Blake's best things. In the present complete edition, however, it seems only reasonable to include them, as they are, in my judgment, good enough or curious enough for preservation. There are still some others in the same MS. book which, for one reason or another, are not inserted here,―mostly because they are loose, scrappy, unfinished jottings, not to be numbered, even by lax indulgence, among the works that can represent Blake to the present and future generations of readers. One of these, entitled The Marriage Ring, has been printed by Mr. Swinburne: to me it appears a performance of too much tenuity and caprice for reproduction here. The same gentleman has given a second previously unpublished scrap, from a different source, beginning

"A fairy leapt upon my knee:'

this also I omit, for a like reason. Another specimen of the compositions that I miss out from the text is the epigram on Hayley quoted on p. xciii. of this memoir. As a poem, it is not worthy of preservation; but it has its use in the way of elucidating Blake's mental peculiarities.

In reproducing the Poetical. Sketches in the present volume, I have followed the reprint which was published by Mr. Pickering in 1868, under the editorship of Mr. R. H. Shepherd. I thus forego certain emendations which were introduced by my brother into that earlier reprint which appears in Mr. Gilchrist's book, vol. 2, of some selected

2

smmendations mayees, and they rectify

EL DEVISEDe artes in point KIER I expression. ED VI FEsimde “inance that I nemia has the Esservice of again

- Var der Kr brother Fat the lead them is served in # TEST VE VEI DE in the slightest Lee en de mif the tent": nor imrad u cress has ay çizion to the Det & kverer, I ocpceive, a and in of ciferore berween the treatment VIC DAY 1 Amcat stond to extracted wems senedi ir de is me, and serving DAT Da mi adım a biographical reari i te same poems when they form a paran i un einum off the sabor's works, simply AT ALT TAE as the compositions in preston bare been already reproduced at a date intermediate between that of my brother's editing and of the present roizme, and were then printed in their original share which term includes their occasional original shapelessness), I have not felt justified in recurring to another form of the same poems, which, if better, as it assuredly is, is also less absolutely exact.

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Let me but hope that Blake's spirit, if conscious of what is here being done for the maintenance of his name and fame, would not resent this damaging adherence to authenticity. Blake at times (as we may remember), when limning his visionary sitters, had to exclaim, "He frowns— he is displeased with my portrait of him." He in his turn might now perchance frown and be

displeased at finding that the present re-issue of the Poetical Sketches furnishes a "portrait" of himself—a reflex of his "spiritual form "-less advantageous than another which is already current among readers and admirers of his work. But I am fain to hope the reverse; with which trust, and the preceding faint elucidations, I commit to public regard this first collected edition of Blake's Lyrical Poems.

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