number of other parallels in which there is so little similarity that he could hardly have had them in mind while making his "translation." Compare, for example, his "rustling winds roar in the distant wood" with Milton's or his "the gloom of battle poured along; as mist that is rolled on a valley," with the picture of the cherubim descending a hill in Eden, As evening mist Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel Macpherson must have read Milton, - his notes alone show that, and his imagination may well have been stimulated by the reading; yet he can hardly have been influenced in any vital way by a poem so remote from the vague, romantic rhapsodies or the short, simple declarative sentences he put into the mouth of Ossian. About the time the vogue of Fingal and Temora was nearing its height, their influence touched a young man whose work was destined to have none of the immediate, meteoric popularity of Macpherson's, but to gain steadily in favor long after the Scottish forgeries had ceased to be read. William Blake, who painted, engraved, saw visions, consorted with revolutionists, piped songs of innocence, and thundered prophetic books, offers many a troublesome problem to the student over whom he casts his spell, for the majority of persons find his "definition of the most sublime poetry" "allegory altogether hidden from the corporeal understanding" —only too applicable to all his longer works. One of the most interesting of the problems which the corporeal understanding finds baffling in Blake is that of his debt to Paradise Lost. 3. As to his knowledge of Milton's poetry and the importance of the part it played in his thoughts, there can be no question. Over ninety of his paintings and engravings deal with the work of the earlier poet, some forty-two with Paradise Lost, twelve with Paradise Regained, 1 1 Fingal, i (Laing, i. 29); P. L., ii. 285-6. The previous line of each work contains the word "murmur," to which Macpherson does not call attention. In Ossian, however, the murmur "rolls along the hill" and is actually caused by the "rustling winds"; in Milton it fills Pandemonium and is like "the sound of blustering winds." * Fingal, ii (Laing, i. 69); P. L., xii. 629-32. In the first edition "poured" and "rolled" change places. 'Letter to Thomas Butts, July 6, 1803. thirteen with Allegro and Penseroso, seventeen with Comus, seven with the Nativity; one is a portrait of the poet himself, and one was suggested by a line in the Death of a Fair Infant.1 His published writings, his letters, and the records of his conversations also contain numerous references to Milton, who came to him frequently in visions and who furnished the title and principal character for one of his most important prophetic books. Three times in the course of his prose Public Address he refers enthusiastically to the author of Paradise Lost, and in his vigorous and astonishing Marriage of Heaven and Hell he gives his interpretation of the poem. Satan, he tells us, represents desire, and the Messiah reason or "the restrainer" - really the Evil One, for "those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling." In a characteristic note there is the added information, "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it." In speaking of the things for which he was particularly grateful, Blake said, Flaxman hath given me Hayley his friend to be mine, such my lot upon Earth. Now my lot in the Heavens is this, Milton lov'd me in childhood and shew'd me his face.3 A little later he wrote Hayley, "In the meantime I have the happiness of seeing the Divine countenance in such men as Cowper and Milton more distinctly than in any prince or hero." In Vala (or 1 These figures are taken from W. M. Rossetti's "Descriptive Catalogue" (appended to the second volume of Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, new ed., 1880) and from the Grolier Club catalogue of Blake's works (1905). While not exact, they are probably not far wrong and err through understatement. Of some of the pictures, such as the frontispiece to Europe (suggested by Paradise Lost, vii. 224-31, as the British Museum copy indicates), Blake made a number of replicas. 2 Gilchrist, ii. 168, 172. Letter to Flaxman, Sept. 12, 1800. Ezra, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Paracelsus, and Jacob Böhme are mentioned in the lines that follow. Letter of May 28, 1804. He also referred to Milton in letters to Dr. Trusler, Aug. 16 and 23, 1799 (see p. 222 below), and to Thomas Butts, Nov. 22, 1802, first letter ("Perhaps picturesque is somewhat synonymous to the word taste, which we should think improperly applied to Homer or Milton, but very well to Prior or Pope"), April 25 and July 6, 1803. It will be remembered that, when Butts surprised Blake and his wife sitting unclad in their summer-house, they "had been reciting passages from Paradise Lost" (Gilchrist i. 112). In the "Descriptive Catalogue,” no. v (Gilchrist, ii. 155), Blake writes (speaking of himself in the third person), "The stories of Arthur are the acts of Albion. . . . In this Picture, believing with Milton the ancient British History, Mr. B. has," etc. According to M. Denis Saurat (Blake and Milton, The Four Zoas) there is a sort of genealogy which "represents the whole history of the human race beginning with Los, the spirit of poetry, descending through various spiritual forms to Adam, the materialized 'natural man,' and ascending through Solomon, Charlemagne, Luther, and others to Milton, the last named and hence intended to be the greatest man who has yet appeared on earth." 1 Of the references that Crabb Robinson noted down from Blake's conversation, the most interesting is this: As he spoke of frequently seeing Milton, I ventured to ask... which of the... portraits... is the most like. He answered, "They are all like, at different ages. I have seen him as a youth and as an old man with a long flowing beard. He came lately as an old man - he said he came to ask a favour of me. He said he had committed an error in his Paradise Lost, which he wanted me to correct, in a poem or picture; but I declined. I said I had my own duties to perform. . . . He wished me to expose the falsehood of his doctrine, taught in the Paradise Lost, that sexual intercourse arose out of the Fall.” 2 Such an inexplicable misunderstanding of Paradise Lost shows how subjective, how indifferent to details, was Blake's manner of reading, Bordeaux, 1920, p. 36), he here "refers to Milton's History of Britain as his covering authority"; but is the reference not rather to Milton's plan for an epic on Arthur? In the Island in the Moon, chap. vii (pp. 73-4 of E. J. Ellis's Real Blake, 1907), Blake gives as the remark of the complacently imbecile Quid, "Homer is bombast, and Shakespeare is too wild, and Milton has no feelings." In his marginal notes to Reynolds's Discourses he refers four times to Milton (pp. 372, 376, 381, 392, of the Real Blake), quoting from the Reason of Church Government in one place, and writing in another, "The Neglect of such as Milton in a Country pretending to the Encouragement of Art is Sufficient Apology for my Vigorous Indignation." In the climax of Jerusalem (98: 9) "Bacon & Newton & Locke" (the three scientists) and "Milton & Shakspear & Chaucer" (the three poets) appear in heaven along with "innumerable Chariots of the Almighty." 1 In the list of women's names that follows this genealogy, the last is "Mary," the greatest of women (see Vala, viii. 357-9). The quotation in the text is from a manuscript note furnished me by Mr. S. Foster Damon of Newton, Massachusetts, who has generously given me the advantage of his extensive study of Blake and allowed me to read a chapter in his forthcoming book, The Philosophy and Symbols of William Blake. * Robinson's "Reminiscences," under the date "26/2/52", as quoted in Arthur Symons's William Blake (1907), 295-6. This is the fuller but later account and may contain recollections of other talks with Blake. Robinson's original notes on this conversation (which are also given by Symons, pp. 263-4, Dec. 17, 1825) do not differ materially. Instead of "sexual intercourse," the original diary has "the pleasures of sex"; but either is inconsistent with Paradise Lost, iv. 741-70, viii. 510–20, 579–600. Blake probably had in mind the distinction (which he thought false) made in the epic between love and lust. The other references to Milton that Robinson noted are on pages 262, 265, 273, 274, 294, of Symons's book. Gilchrist (i. 362) cites as typical of Blake's "familiar conversations with Mr. Palmer and other disciples": Milton the other day was saying to me' so and so. 'I tried to convince him he was wrong, but I could not succeed.' 'His tastes are Pagan; his house is Palladian, not Gothic."" 666 a point that comes out still more clearly in his Imitation of Spenser, where no two stanzas use the same meter, none follow Spenser exactly, and where the number of lines in a stanza varies from eight to ten. Whatever his powerful imagination seized upon was likely to be so transformed as to be scarcely recognizable. He presumably read with his mind's eye, paying relatively little heed to words, phrasing, or style. "I do not behold the outward creation," he asserted, "... to me it is hindrance. . . . I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it and not with it." 1 Such a man, even without the intense originality which is averse to borrowings of any kind, was not likely to take many words or expressions from the authors he read. Blake's frequent use of Biblical language is a not unnatural exception, but he also adopted more phrases from Shakespeare and Milton than would be anticipated. Some of these may have slipped from his pen without thought of their source, but hardly these opening lines of Europe, which are indebted to the stanza, the phrasing, and the subject-matter of the Nativity: The deep of winter came; What time the secret child Descended thro' the orient gates of the eternal day: War ceas'd, & all the troops like shadows fled to their abodes.2 Perhaps in writing "when early morn walks forth in sober grey," "human form divine," "when vocal May comes dancing from the East," "effluence Divine," "Eternity expands Its ever during doors," Blake did not think of Milton; possibly he did not even in saying "a cavern shagged with horrid shades," and "englobing, in a 1 Sequel to his description of the "Last Judgment" (Ellis's Real Blake, 327). Mr. Damon mentions as an example of his indifference to details his six spellings of the name of a soldier with whom he quarrelled, - Scofield, Schofield, Skofeld, Skofield, Scofeld, and Scholfield (Jerusalem, 5:27, 7:25, 8:41, 17:59, 43:51; and letter to Butts, Aug. 16, 1803). 2 Cf. Nativity, 29-30, 48, 53-4, 232-3. Note also how many of the heathen deities mentioned in Milton, 37: 20-29, are found in lines 197-213 of the Nativity. For Blake's enthusiasm for the poem, see below, p. 228, n. 1. 3 Song, "When early morn," I (cf. Lycidas, 187, P. R., iv. 426–7); Divine Image, 15, also Milton, extra page 32, line 13 (cf. P. L., iii. 44); Vala, ix. 193 (cf. May Morning, 2-3); Milton, 31:35 (cf. P. L., iii. 6); ib. 48–9 (cf. P. L., vii. 205-6). One of these parallels and several of those given later were called to my attention by Mr. Damon, who feels that the names of the twelve daughters of Albion, in Vala, ii. 61–2, and Jerusalem, 5: 41-4, together with the way some of these names are spelled, indicate a familiarity with Milton's History of Britain. He likewise believes that the exaltation of the Bible at the expense of Greek and Latin writers in the preface to Milton, may have been suggested by Paradise Regained, iv. 331-42. mighty globe self-balanced;" but he must have had Paradise Lost in mind when he referred to Satan as "the father of Sin and Death,' and when he wrote, and, I came forth from the head of Satan: back the Gnomes recoil'd In pits & dens & shades of death: in shapes of torment & woe. 1 Vala, iii. 124 (cf. Comus, 429), i. 123 (cf. P. L., vii. 239–42). 2 Milton, 10:38-9 (cf. P. L., ii. 755-61); 24:33-4 (cf. P. L., ii. 621). Other passages that may owe something to Milton are: "the pendulous earth" (Urizen, ix. 8, cf. P. L., iv. 1000); "collected in himself in awful pride (Vala, i. 322, cf. vi. 298, "collected, dark, the spectre stood," and P. L., ix. 673, iv. 986); “spirits of flaming fire on high governed the mighty song" (ib. i. 368, cf. P. L., vii. 30, to which Blake refers in a letter quoted on p. 222 below); "pangs smote me unknown before" (ib. iv. 93, cf. P. L., ii. 703); "threw his flight" (ib. vi. 2, 161, vii. 3, cf. P. L., iii. 741, of an angel in each case); "redounding smoke" (ib. vii. 9, cf. "cast forth red smoke and fire" eight lines farther on, also 601, and P. L., ii. 889); "chaos & ancient night" (Milton, 10:21, 15:24-5, 18:33, cf. P. L., ii. 970, etc.); He formed golden compasses, And began to explore the Abyss (Urizen, vii. 8, cf. Vala, ii. 29, 142, and P. L., vii. 225–9); Ten thousand thousand were his hosts of spirits on the wind, (Vala, i. 328-9, cf. P. L., vi. 767-70); The Harrow cast thick flames, & orb'd us round in concave fire, (Milton, 10:22-3, cf. P. L., ii. 635, vi. 750-51); Loud Satan thunder'd... Coming in a Cloud with Trumpets and with Fiery Flame, to imitate The Eternal Great Humanity Divine (ib. 40:22–7, cf. P. L., ii. 508-15). The similarities in the following are more dubious: "the Prince of Light with splendour faded" (Vala, iii. 46, and Jerusalem, 29:35, cf. P. L., iv. 870–71); "the Prince of thunders... Fell down rushing, ruining" (Vala, iii. 141-3, cf. P. L., vi. 868); "warping upon the winds" (ib. iv. 186, cf. P. L., i. 341); "in serpents and in worms stretched out enormous length" (ib. vi. 114, cf. P. L., i. 209); "the Chariot Wheels filled with Eyes rage along" (Jerusalem, 63:11, cf. P. L., vi. 749–55); But infinitely beautiful the wondrous work arose In sorrow and care, a golden world whose porches round the heaven, A wondrous golden building, many a window, many a door, (Vala, ii. 240-53, cf. P. L., i. 710-30). Another possible borrowing is given on p. 224 below. The expressions "adamantine doors" (To Winter, 1), “adamantine chains" |