allied, however, to heaven than to earth,-a kind of spiritual abstractions, and indicating a better world and fuller happiness than mortals enjoy. The picture of Innocence is introduced with the following sweet verses.

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me-
Pipe a song about a lamb;

So I piped with merry cheer.
Piper, pipe that song again—
So I piped-he wept to hear.
Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe,
Sing thy songs of happy cheer-
So I sung the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.
Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book that all may read-
So he vanished from my sight:
And I plucked a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,

And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear."

Another song, called "The Chimney Sweeper, is rude enough truly, but yet not without pathos. “When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry-weep! weep! weep!
So your chimneys I clean and in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curl'd like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,
Hush, Tom, never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.

And so he was quiet-and on that very night,
As Tommy was sleeping, he had such a sight;
There thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

And by came an Angel, who had a bright key,
He opened the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green vale, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river, and shine like the sun.

Then, naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise up on pure clouds and sport in the wind:
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father and never want joy.
And so Tommy awoke and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work;
Though the morning was cold, he was happy and warm,
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm."

In a higher and better spirit he wrought with his pencil. But then he imagined himself under spiritual influences; he saw the forms and listened to the voices of the worthies of other days; the past and the future were before him, and he heard, in imagination, even that awful voice which called on Adam amongst the trees of the garden. In this kind of dreaming abstraction, he lived much of his life; all his works are stamped with it; and though they owe much of their mysticism and obscurity to the circumstance, there can be no doubt that they also owe to it much of their singular loveliness and beauty. It was wonderful that he could thus, month after month, and year after year, lay down his graver after it had won him his daily wages, and retire from the battle for bread, to disport his fancy amid scenes of more than earthly splendour, and creatures pure as unfallen dew.

In this lay the weakness and the strength of

Blake, and those who desire to feel the character of his compositions, must be familiar with his history and the peculiarities of his mind. He was by nature a poet, a dreamer, and an enthusiast. The eminence which it had been the first ambition of his youth to climb, was visible before him, and he saw on its ascent or on its summit those who had started earlier in the race of fame. He felt conscious of his own merit, but was not aware of the thousand obstacles which were ready to interpose. He thought that he had but to sing songs and draw designs, and become great and famous. The crosses which genius is heir to had been wholly unforeseen-and they befel him early; he wanted too the skill of hand, and fine tact of fancy and taste, to impress upon the offspring of his thoughts that popular shape, which gives such productions immediate circulation. His works were therefore looked coldly on by the world, and were only esteemed by men of poetic minds, or those who were fond of things out of the common way. He earned a little fame, but no money by these speculations, and had to depend for bread on the labours of the graver.

All this neither crushed his spirit, nor induced him to work more in the way of the world; but it had a visible influence upon his mind. He became more seriously thoughtful, avoided the company of men, and lived in the manner of a hermit, in that vast wilderness, London. Necessity made him frugal, and honesty and independence prescribed plain clothes, homely fare, and a cheap habitation. He was thus compelled more than ever to retire to worlds of his own creating, and seek

solace in visions of paradise for the joys which the earth denied him. By frequent indulgence in these imaginings, he gradually began to believe in the reality of what dreaming fancy painted-the pictured forms which swarmed before his eyes assumed, in his apprehension, the stability of positive revelations, and he mistook the vivid figures, which his professional imagination shaped, for the poets, and heroes, and princes of old. Amongst his friends, he at length ventured to intimate that the designs on which he was engaged, were not from his own mind, but copied from grand works revealed to him in visions; and those who believed that, would readily lend an ear to the assurance that he was commanded to execute his performances by a celestial tongue!

Of these imaginary visitations he made good use, when he invented his truly original and beautiful mode of engraving and tinting his plates. He had made the designs of his Days of Innocence, and was meditating, he said, on the best means of multiplying their resemblance in form and in hue; he felt sorely perplexed. At last he was made aware that the spirit of his favourite brother Robert was in the room, and to this celestial visitor he applied for counsel. The spirit advised him at once : "write," he said, "the poetry, and draw the designs upon the copper with a certain liquid (which he named, and which Blake ever kept a secret); then cut the plain parts of the plate down with aquafortis, and this will give the whole, both poetry and figures, in the manner of a stereotype. plan recommended by this gracious spirit was adopted; the plates were engraved, and the work

The

printed off.
beauty of his own.
and the verse with a variety of colours, amongst
which, while yellow prevails, the whole has a rich
and lustrous beauty, to which I know little that
can be compared. The size of these prints is four
inches and an half high by three inches wide. The
original genius of Blake was always confined,
through poverty, to small dimensions. Sixty-five
plates of copper were an object to him who had
little money.
The Gates of Paradise, a work of
sixteen designs, and those exceedingly small, was
his next undertaking. The meaning of the artist
is not a little obscure; it seems to have been his
object to represent the innocence, the happiness,
and the upward aspirations of man. They bespeak
one intimately acquainted with the looks and the
feelings of children. Over them there is shed a
kind of mysterious halo which raises feelings of
devotion. The Songs of Innocence, and the Gates
of Paradise, became popular among the collectors
of prints. To the sketch-book and the cabinet
the works of Blake are unfortunately confined.

The artist then added a peculiar
He tinted both the figures

If there be mystery in the meaning of the Gates of Paradise, his succeeding performance, by name URIZEN, has the merit or the fault of surpassing all human comprehension. The spirit which dictated this strange work was undoubtedly a dark one; nor does the strange kind of prose which is intermingled with the figures serve to enlighten us. There are in all twenty-seven designs, representing beings human, demoniac, and divine, in situations of pain and sorrow and suffering. One character -evidently an evil spirit-appears in most of the