Some Books of the Week INTERPRETATIONS of the symbolism of
Blake go busilyforward ; each as a rule cancelling out that which came immediately before. Mr. Denis Saurat, however, in his beautifully pro- duced volume, Blake and Modern Thought (Constable, 14s.), brings fresh and very important considerations to bear on this enticing problem. He points out on the one hand striking parallels between the ideas of the Prophetic Books and those which eighteenth century explorers of Gnostic and Kabalistic literature had popularized in those Swedenborgian and theosophical circles where Blake was at home; and thus greatly enriches his cultural background. On the other hand, he brings an enormous amount of evidence to prove the genesis of many of the most characteristic and bewildering of the Blakean ideas and images, in the legendary history of the Celtic race as it was imagined by the eighteenth century " Celtomaniacs." Under his analysis, such a poem as " Jerusalem " yields entirely fresh meanings, and is found to be—like everything Blake wrote or drew—at once precise and fantastic in its significance. By his industrious explora- tion of these queer byways of thought, and the insight with which he has applied his extraordinarily interesting dis- coveries, Mr. Saurat has produced a work of scholarship which no Blake student can afford to ignore.
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