William Blake: A Critical Essay

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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 .


To WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.
There are many reasons which should make me glad to inscribe your name upon the forefront of this book. To you, among other debts, I owe this one—that it is not even more inadequate to the matter undertaken; and to you I need not say that it is not designed to supplant or to compete with the excellent biography of Blake already existing. Rather it was intended to serve as complement or supplement to this. How it grew, idly and gradually, out of a mere review into its present shape and volume, you know. To me at least the subject before long seemed too expansive for an article; and in the leisure of months, and in the intervals of my natural work, the first slight study became little by little an elaborate essay. I found so much unsaid, so much unseen, that a question soon rose before me of 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 of Blake, must know better how much remains undone.