box-wood--he was really a practised copper engraver--and the effects he produced are wonderful. What could be more powerful in such a tiny space than the moon eclipse and the black forest illustrating the lines, "Or when the moon, by wizard charm'd, foreshows Bloodstained in foul eclipse, impending woes!" And the dim sunsets, the low, friendly sky in the other plates! Blake's gospel of art may be given in his own words: "The great and golden rule of art, as of life, is this: that the more distinct, sharp and wiry the boundary line the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and bungling." He abominated the nacreous flesh tones of Titian, Correggio, or Rubens. Reflected lights are sinful. The silhouette betrays the soul of the master. Swinburne in several eloquent pages has instituted a comparison between Walt Whitman and William Blake. (In the first edition of "William Blake: A Critical Essay," 1868.) Both men were radicals. "The words of either strike deep and run wide and soar high." What would have happened to Blake if he had gone to Italy and studied the works of the masters--for he was truly ignorant of an entire hemisphere of art? Turner has made us see his dreams of a gorgeous world; Blake, as through a scarce opened door, gives us a breathless glimpse of a supernal territory, whether heaven or hell, or both, we dare not aver. Italy might have calmed him, tamed him, banished his arrogance--as it did Goethe's. Suppose that Walt Whitman had written poems instead of magical and haunting headlines. And if Browning had made clear the devious ways of Sordello--what then? "What porridge had John Keats?" We should have missed the sharp savour of the real Blake, the real Whitman, the real Browning. And what a number of interesting critical books would have remained unwritten. "Oh, never star was lost here but it arose afar." What Coleridge wrote of his son Hartley might serve for Blake: "Exquisitely wild, an utter visionary, like the moon among thin clouds, he moves in a circle of his own making. He alone is a light of his own. Of all human beings I never saw one so utterly naked of self." Naked of self! William Blake, unselfish egoist, stands before us in three words. III FRANCIS POICTEVIN