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William Blake.
A Critical Essay.
BY
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
“Going to and fro in the Earth.”
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM BLAKE’S DESIGNS IN FACSIMILE,
COLOURED AND PLAIN.
LONDON:
JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY.
1868.
[All rights reserved.]
DEDICATION.
To WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.
There are many reasons which should make me glad to inscribe your nameupon the forefront of this book. To you, among other debts, I owe thisone—that it is not even more inadequate to the matter undertaken; and toyou I need not say that it is not designed to supplant or to compete withthe excellent biography of Blake already existing. Rather it was intendedto serve as complement or supplement to this. How it grew, idly andgradually, out of a mere review into its present shape and volume, youknow. To me at least the subject before long seemed too expansive for anarticle; and in the leisure of months, and in the intervals of my naturalwork, the first slight study became little by little an elaborate essay. Ifound so much unsaid, so much unseen, that a question soon rose before meof simple alternatives: to do nothing, or to do much. I chose the latter;and you, who have done more than I to serve and to exalt the memory ofBlake, must know better how much remains undone.
Friendship needs no cement of reciprocal praise; and this[Pg iv] book, dedicatedto you from the first, and owing to your guidance as much as to mygoodwill whatever it may have