are throughout accompanied by tremendous elemental commotion'red clouds and raging fire;' black smoke, thunder,' and Plagues creeping on the burning winds driven by flames of Orc, through which chaos the merely human agents show small and remote, perplexed and busied in an ant-like way. Strange to conceive a somewhile associate of Paine producing these Prophetic' volumes! The America now and then occurs coloured, more often plain black, or occasionally blue, and white. The designs blend with and surround the verse; the mere grouping of the text, filled in here and there with ornament, often forming, in itself, a picturesque piece of decorative composition. Of the beauty of most of these designs, in their finished state, it would be quite impossible to obtain any notion, without the necessary adjunct of colour. The specimens given in this chapter and elsewhere can at best only show form and arrangement-the groundwork of the pages; the frames as it were in which the verses are set; Blake never intending any copies to go forth to the world until they had been coloured by hand. We are compelled also to substitute our formal type for the author's flowing hand-written poetry. Facing page 112, however, we give the fac-simile of a whole page from the America, an exact fac-simile both as regards drawing and writing (though reduced to about half the size of the original), and in a colour as near as possible to that frequently used by Blake for the groundwork, as we said before, of his painted leaves. Similar examples we shall give when we come to other books of the same character, -the Europe, and that yet more remarkable, the Jerusalem. Whatever may be the literary value of the work, the designs display unquestionable power and beauty. In firmness of outline and refinement of finish, they are exceeded by none from the same hand. We have more especially in view Mr. Monckton Milnes's superb copy. Turning over the leaves, it is sometimes like an increase of daylight on the retina, so fair and open is the effect of particular pages. The skies of sapphire, or gold, rayed with hues of sunset, against which stand out leaf or blossom, or pendant branch, gay with bright plumaged birds; the strips of emerald sward below, gemmed with flower and Some of the illustrations are of a more sombre kind. There is one in which a little corpse, white as snow, lies gleaming on the floor of a green overarching cave, which close inspection proves to be a field of wheat, whose slender interlacing stalks, bowed by the full ear and by a gentle breeze, The terror like a canet or more like the That once vecpsd the terrible wandering powers in its sphere the temple From AMERICA. bend over and inclose the dead infant. The delicate network of stalks (which is carried up one side of the page, the main picture being at the bottom), and the subdued yet vivid green light shed over the whole, produce a lovely decorative effect. Decorative effect is in fact never lost sight of, even when the motive of the design is ghastly or terrible. As for instance at page 13, which represents the different fate of two bodies drowned in the seathe one, that of a woman, cast up by the purple waves on a rocky shore; an eagle, with outstretched wings, alighting on her bosom, his beak already tearing her flesh: the other, lying at the bottom of the ocean, where snaky loathsome things are twining round it, and open-mouthed fishes gathering greedily to devour. The effect is as of looking through water down into wondrous depths. One design in the volume was an especial favourite of Blake's: that of an old man entering Death's door. It occurs in the Gates of Paradise (Plate 15); in Blair's Grave (1805), and as a distinct engraving. There are also two other subjects repeated subsequently, in the Grave and the Job. But one more design (we might expatiate on all) shall tempt us to loiter. It heads the last page of the book, and consists of a white-robed, colossal figure, bowed to the earth; about which, as on a huge snow-covered mass of rock, dwarf shapes are clustered here and there. Enhancing the weird effect of the whole, stand three lightning-scathed oaks, each of which, as if threatening heaven with vengeance, holds out a withered hand.' An exquisite piece of decorative work occupies the foot of the page. In all these works the Designer's genius floats loose and rudderless; a phantom ship on a phantom sea. He projects himself into shapeless dreams, instead of into fair definite forms, as already in the Songs of Innocence he had shown that he could do; and hereafter will again in the tasks so happily prescribed by others :the illustrations to Young, to Blair's Grave, to Job, to Dante. In I |