BLAKE AND MS POETRY.t Tins is a useful addition to
a series which supplies students of the English Poets with poetry and biography in the same volume and at a popular price. Being a late one of a series it does Lot contain, as one expects, any particularly striking news, literary or psychological, but is competent and well informed and refers its readers to a good bibliography for further study of Blake. A preface by the general editor promises that
" attention will be specially directed to the poet's personality as it expressed itself in his poetry and to the influences and con- ditions which counted most as formative factors in the growth of his genius."
Mr. Allardyce Nicoll, the particular editor, fulfils the promise to a certain point, giving, for instance, a short summary of Blake's
• Merchant Seamen : Their Diseases and their Welfare Needs. By W. B. Horne. London : John Murray. [Ss. net.] t Blake and his Poetry. By Allardyce Nicoll. London : Harrap. lid.]
fourfold system, en which the symbolism of the prophetic books is founded. He comments :-
" The value of knowing this philosophic system of his even for the reading of what seem like simple lyrics could not be better illustrated than by taking the Motto from The Book of Thel :- `Does the Eagle know what is in tho pit ?. Or wilt thou go ask tho Mole Y
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod, Or Love in a golden bowl ? '
On the outside that seems a fairly simple little four-verse [sic] stanza, but if one refers to the tabula (given opposite) ono will find that silver is the metal of the East, of Luvah and of Love ; whereas gold is the metal of the South, of Urizen and of Reason. What Blake means to say, then, is : Can wisdom be compressed into the region of the emotions and of love, or can Love be transferred from its own realm into the realm of the under- standing ? Unless we know at least a fragment of the System the full meaning of this and of other works of Blake cannot possibly be fathomed."
So far so good, but afterwards, in treating of the more difficult Prophetic Books, the tone changes considerably :-
" What, after all, we have to remember is that Blake as a poot must be studied emotionally for the pure beauty of his verso and for such symbolic message as ho is able to give us without having recourse to huge depressing tabulae of well-nigh meaning- less names."
This idea that an emotional understanding of the beauty of Blake's poetry can be attained without reference to the philo- sophic workings of his mind is the good old " I don't know any- thing about poetry, but I do know what I like " in another form : and contradicts the preface. I fear that Mr. Nicoll wants it both ways. Can he explain the motto to Thel in terms of the tables compiled for him by Messrs. Ellis and Yeats ? Yes. Very well, then ; those tables (or " tabulae ") are absolutely necessary for the understanding of the verse. Do the longer prophecies conform to those tables ? Not as well as he would like. Then he adopts alternative lines of defence: (a) "poetry and vision cease to be poetry and vision and become cryptic philosophy," or (b) explanations are unnecessary because the important thing is this motional appreciation of the pure beauty of Blake's verse.
As a matter of fact, we may shortly expect a lot of new light
on these " well-nigh meaningless names " when Mr. Edward O'Brien, the American poet, publishes his recent simple discovery that these are for the most part—except for a few instances where Blake's private quarrels invade his spirit-world of huge abstractions—quite simple anagrams and telescopic compounds from a polyglot New Testament in Latin, Greek and Hebrew to which Blake had access. Thus Ore and Los are the Latin Cor and Sol, Enitharmon is the Greek Enarithmon, the tyrannic Urizen is compounded from the Greek words Ouranos and
Horizein, and represents the inverted bowl of the Heavens enclosing and cramping creation ; Lethe becomes Thel, because it could hardly be Ethel ; and so on, working out very nicely.
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