could show you about Shelley is at Euston SquareI have for instance a piece of his blackened skull, given me by Trelawney, who picked it out of the furnace, and the regard in which I hold this relic makes me understand the feelings of a Roman Catholic in parallel cases. Possibly you would be at the opposite pole of feeling in this matter. Also I am doing with much diligence another Shelley job I have long contemplated—collection (with elucidatory notes, &c.) of every scrap of his poetry or prose personal to himself—principally letters, so far as prose is concerned. I like the Witch of Atlas better than Epipsychidion, and in a limited sense I think it the more satisfactory poem of the two. I am far however from considering it the greater poem, or the one which sustains Shelley's general position as a poet at the loftier level. As regards considerations of this class, I think Epipsychidion hardly yields to Prometheus. I have sometimes felt inclined-if you would at all like it to forward to Notes and Queries the most important of your Shelley emendations: of course confessing whose they are: not that I could pledge myself to obtaining insertion by the Editor, but I think it probable my object would partly be to express my high opinion of your capacities as a poet-which really ought not to be bottled up for the sole benefit of readers of the National Reformer. I would do this at leisure, if at all-being greatly occupied. Perhaps you would let me know whether you like the notion at all, and how far. Believe me, Very truly yours, DEAR SIR, 12. II. 73. Towards the end of July last I sent you rough notes on the Minor Poems and Fragments, excepting the Triumph of Life. On this I herewith enclose some remarks. It is a Poem which has always been a particular favourite of mine, and suggests questions which nothing less than an essay could indicate. Here I touch only on the text. It has been pure pleasure to follow again the unique terza rima; liquid, sinuous, continuous, a full-flowing river of music and light. I think with a piece left unfinished like this you might venture upon obvious metrical rectifications, which do not affect the sense, just as you have ventured upon obvious grammatical ditto. I hope you enjoyed your Italian holiday. I thoroughly enjoyed Navarre; but was recalled too soon because Republicans and Monarchists wouldn't kill each other wholesale, the unfeeling wretches! THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE.* "I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance, and not action. . . . 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." "The angel who presided at my birth Said: Little creature, formed of joy and mirth, EFORE the publication of these volumes I knew Form, or Divine Image, quoted by James John Garth Wilkinson in his great work. The wisdom and the celestial simplicity of this little piece prepared one to * Life of William Blake, “Pictor Ignotus," with selections from his poems and other writings. By the late Alexander Gilchrist, author of the "Life of William Etty." Illustrated from Blake's own works, in fac-simile, by W. J. Linton, and in photolithography, with a few of Blake's original plates. In 2 vols. London: Macmillan and Co., 1863. I give the full title, in recommending the work to all good readers. The first volume contains the Life and a noble supplementary chapter by Mr. D. G. Rossetti; the second volume contains the Selections, admirably edited by Mr. D. G. Rossetti, with the assistance of Mr. W. M. Rossetti. There is magnificent prose as well as poetry in the selections, and the engravings in themselves are worth more than most books. love the author and all that he had done; yet the selections from his poems and other writings were a revelation far richer than my hopes. Not only are these selections most beautiful in themselves; they are also of great national interest as filling up a void in the cycle of our poetic literature. I had long felt, and probably many others had felt, that much of the poetry of the present and the last age must have had an antecedent less remote in time than the Elizabethan works, and less remote in resemblance than the works of Cowper and Burns. Yet, since Macaulay's essay on Byron appeared, Cowper and Burns-and in general these two only-had been continually named as the heralds of that resurrection of her poetry which makes glorious for England the crescent quarter of the nineteenth century. A third herald of that resurrection was undoubtedly William Blake; and although he was scarcely listened to at all, while his colleagues held in attention the whole kingdom, the fact may at length be recognised that by him, even more clearly than by them, was anticipated and announced both the event now already past and the event still in process of evolution. If it be objected that one who was scarcely listened to at all could not exercise much influence, the reply is that we are concerned not with the influence, but with the accuracy and period of the presage. It is written that mankind did not heed Noah, or heeded only to mock, during the six-score years in which he foretold the Flood and built the Ark ready for it; if the Flood really came as he foretold, it attested the truth of his inspiration; but no one now would think that his prophecies were instrumental in accomplishing their own fulfilment, although this opinion must have been general among those who were being submerged. Or we may answer, applying a metaphor which has been with good reason much used, that the mountain-peaks which in any district first reflect the rays of the dawn exercise little or no influence on the dawn's development, even in relation to the country around them; they cast some glimmer of light into obscure valleys below (whose obscurity, on the other hand, their shadows make trebly deep when the sun is sinking), they prophesy very early of the coming noontide, we may judge as to their positions and altitudes by the periods of their reflection; but the dawn would grow and become noon, and the noon would sink and become night just the same if they were not there. So the Spirit of the Ages, the Zeitgeist, is developed universally and independently by its own mysterious laws throughout mankind; and the eminent men from whom it first radiates the expression of what we call a new aspect (the continuous imperceptible increments of change having accumulated to an amount of change which we can clearly perceive, and which even our gross standards are fine enough to measure), the illustrious prototypes of an age, really cast but a faint reflex upon those beneath them; and while pre-eminently interesting in biography, are of small account in history except as prominent indices of growth and progress and decay, as early effects not efficient causes. They help us to read clearly the advance of time; but this advance they do not cause any more than the gnomon of a sundial causes the procession of the hours which it indicates, or a tidal-rock the swelling of the seas whose oncoming is signalled in white foam around it and in shadowed waters over it. The message of Cowper has been heard (it was not a |