by the artist in a prismatic and ethereal fashion peculiarly his
own. Stitched and bound in boards by Mrs. Blake, a certain number
of these leaflets--twenty-seven in the case of the first issue--made
up a tiny octavo of a wholly exceptional kind. Words indeed fail to
exactly describe the flower-like beauty--the fascination of these
"fairy missals," in which, it has been finely said, "the thrilling
music of the verse, and the gentle bedazzlement of the lines and
colours so intermingle, that the mind hangs in a pleasant
uncertainty as to whether it is a picture that is singing, or a song
which has newly budded and blossomed into colour and form." The
accompanying woodcut, after one of the illustrations to the "Songs
of Innocence," gives some indication of the general composition, but
it can convey no hint of the gorgeous purple, and crimson, and
orange of the original.

Of the "Illustrations to the Book of Job," 1826, there are excellent
reduced facsimiles by the recently-discovered photo-intaglio
process, in the new edition of Gilchrist's "Life." The originals
were engraved by Blake himself in his strong decisive fashion, and
they are his best work. A kind of deisidaimonia--a sacred awe--
falls upon one in turning over these wonderful productions of the
artist's declining years and failing hand.


"Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new,"


sings Waller; and it is almost possible to believe for a moment that
their creator was (as he said) "under the direction of messengers