We must not be misled by the "scent and sound of Elizabethan times" that is upon them. It is of course interesting to the literary mind to discover Ben Jonson in _How sweet I roamed_, Beaumont and Fletcher in _My Silks and fine Array_, Webster in the _Mad Song_, and Shakespeare in _King Edward the Third_; but these intimations of kinship are only such as are found in original geniuses of the same age. That which gives life and immortality and irresistible sweetness to the songs is Blake's own child-spirit seeing with wide-eyed simplicity the simple commonplace things of this world that God made, and that are to the pure in heart the immediate revelation of Him. If in fashioning into Song the things that he saw Blake refuses the artifice of his time and catches the scent and sound of a more robust age, yet the prime inspiration was entirely his own; and we can only wonder that such inspiration should have come to him while still a mere boy. The other pieces in the collection, though of much less importance, have their interest. _Fair Elinor_ with the "silent tower," the "castle gate," the "dreary vaults," and "sickly smells," like Horace Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_ and _Castle of Otranto_, is not of the time but anticipatory of the romantic horrors that Mrs Radcliffe was to make entirely her own. _Gwen King of Norway_ and _King Edward the Third_ are remarkable for their martial language. This was no accident. Blake was a born fighter. The heroic side of War stirred his spirit, even though "The God of War is drunk with blood; The Earth doth faint and fail: The stench of blood makes sick the Heav'ns; Ghosts glut the throat of Hell!" His feeling for England recalls old John of Gaunt's speech: "Lord Percy cannot mean that we should suffer This disgrace: if so, we are not sovereigns Of the sea--our right, that Heaven gave To England, when at the birth of nature She was seated in the deep; the Ocean ceas'd His mighty roar, and fawning play'd around Her snowy feet, and own'd his awful Queen." Grim War is a means to glorious liberty: "Then let the clarion of War begin; I'll fight and weep, 'tis in my country's cause; I'll weep and shout for glorious liberty. Grim War shall laugh and shout, decked in tears, And blood shall flow like streams across the meadows, That murmur down their pebbly channels, and Spend their sweet lives to do their country service: Then shall England's verdure shoot, her fields shall smile, Her ships shall sing across the foaming sea, Her mariners shall use the flute and viol, And rattling guns, and black and dreary war, Shall be no more."