PREFATORY MEMOIR. 1.-PRELIMINARY. N writing a Memoir of William Blake, little or no difficulty can now arise as to the external facts-the dates, personages, and incidents. The truly valuable and so far exhaustive book of Mr. Alexander Gilchrist has settled all these points for us substantially; it barely requires to be here and there rectified or supplemented in some minor particular. Its tone moreover is as earnest and elevated as its research is true and thorough. I need hardly say that I am indebted to this book for the vast majority of my facts: any one who undertakes to write about Blake cannot be otherwise. Thus far, therefore, everything is plain: one has openly to acknowledge a genuine debt of gratitude to Mr. Gilchrist, and to run up the account freely. The difficulty of Blake's biographers, subsequent to 1863, the date of Mr. Gilchrist's book, is of a different kind altogether. It is the difficulty of stating sufficiently high the extraordinary claims b |