few instances of permanent success apart from the quality of patient elaboration. In our own days we may quote Rossetti and Thackeray as instances of this alliance of gifts, though in the case of the latter such artistic success as he achieved was the result rather of natural facility than technical excellence. Michael Angelo's sonnets, Henry VIII.'s music, Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, Mr. Lecky's poetry, Archbishop Sumner's water-colour drawings, Mr. Gladstone's Homeric studies, Mr. Arthur Balfour's philosophical works, are dependent for their interest not so much upon the qualities of the work, as on the revelation in an unfamiliar medium of great personalities. Sometimes, it is true, we have instances such as Spohr's autobiography— a singularly unimpressive book-Lord Tennyson's dramas, Milton's Paraphrase of the Psalms, which seem to prove that excellence in one line is apt to be a limited, almost a mechanical faculty -that the artist is, so to speak, ahead of his own personality in one respect, and that in such cases the art is not the casual efflorescence of a vivid nature, but the concentrated bloom of an otherwise unproductive or mediocre stock. Blake, in spite of the extravagant claims made for him by his admirers, must be held to have been primarily an artist. If he had not been an artist his poems could hardly have survived at all. Mr. D. G. Rossetti says of the Songs of Innocence that they are almost flawless in essential respects. But few will be found to endorse this verdict. The fact is, that those who are carried off their feet by the magnificent originality of Blake's artistic creations, read in between the lines of his delicate and fanciful, but faulty and careless verse, an inspiration to which he laid no claim. Blake's poetry is, from beginning to end, \childish; it has the fresh simplicity, but also the vapid deficiences of its quality—the metre halts and is imperfect; the rhymes are forced and inaccurate, and often impress one with the sense that the exigencies of assonance are so far masters of the sense, that the word that ends a stanza is obviously not the word really wanted or intended by the author, but only approximately thrown out at it. This may be illustrated by a line from the Nurse's song in the Songs of Experience, where he says Your spring and your day are wasted in play, where the sense requires some such word as "disgust or weariness." Again, his use of single words is often so strained and unnatural as to rouse a suspicion that really he did not know the precise meaning of some word employed. We may cite such an instance as the following from "London" (Songs of Experi ence)— I wander thro' each chartered street Near where the chartered Thames doth flow. And also in the "Ideas of Good and Evil," the first two lines of "Thames and Ohio " ? Why should I care for the men of Thames And the cheating waters of chartered streams Whatever the word 'chartered' means, it is obvious, from its iteration, that Blake attached some importance to it; but what does it mean? In ordinary speech the word of course means 'licensed,' in a metaphorical sense, 'enjoying some special immunity,' as 'chartered buffoon.' Is it possible that Blake confused it with 'chart,' and meant 'mapped out' or 'defined'? Conjecture is really idle in the case of a man who maintained that many of his poems were merely dictated to him, and that he exercised no volition of his own with regard to them. His rhymes too are incredibly careless-we have 'lambs' rhyming with 'hands,' 'face' with 'dress,' 'peace' with 'distress,' 'vault' with 'fraught,' 'Thames' with limbs,' and so forth, in endless measure. It may be urged that it is hypercritical to note these defects in a poet like Blake; it may be said that he was a child of nature, and that it is in the untamed and untrained character of his poems that his charm lies. "I regard fashion in poetry," he wrote, "as little as I do in painting." But Blake was a foe to slovenliness in the other branch of his art; in his trenchant remarks upon engraving, in the "Public Address," he is for ever insisting on the value of form; he is for ever deploring the malignant heresy that engravers need not, nay ought not to be draughtsmen. He maintains that this degrading of the engraver into a mere mechanical copyist has killed the art; so had he devoted himself scientifically to poetry, he would have been the first to realise and preach that it is the duty of the artist to acquire a technical precision, so sure, so instinctive, that it ceases to hamper thought. Blake's work in literature may be roughly divided into three periods: (1) his early Elizabethan period, (2) his original lyrics, (3) his prophetic writings. The Elizabethan lyrics are to some the most attractive; they are penetrated with the spirit of the Shakesperean age; but when one has said that they are exquisite imitations one has classified them: no imitations, however perfect, can rank with original work; poetry must develop in natural and orderly sequence; the recovery of earlier traditions, however perfect the workmanship, however intimate the insight, is within the grasp of talent. As Tennyson exquisitely says, "All can raise the flower now, for all have got the seed." In the present century we have often encountered what may be called the neo-Jacobean play. Its characteristics are strikingly Shakesperean : isolated lines would be referred by critics unhesitatingly to the Shakesperean outburst of dramatic poetry; but the knack is one that is capable of being learnt, and not an original gift. "My silks and fine array," "How sweet I roamed from field to field," "Memory hither come," and the delicate poem to the muses which ends with the well-known line, "The sound is forced, the notes are few," are worthy of a place in anthologies, but they are not Blake. Such expressions as "fired my vocal rage" are not what the Romans would call ingenuus-they are not native but exotic. Even these poems published in 1783 contain strange lapses characteristic of Blake's later manner: "where white and brown is our lot" is a monstrous line, alluding, I believe, to bread. Among this collection, however, are included two poems which are interesting as containing the germ (it is hard to believe otherwise) of Keats' "Ode to Autumn," where the poet sees the merry sun-browned summer smiling under the oak. To this period also belongs the unfinished play of Edward III., with some beautiful lines, but wholly incoherent; yet we may linger in pleasure over such a couplet as "The eagle that doth gaze upon the sun, Fears the small fire that plays |