WILLIAM . BLAKE. By Osbert. Burdett. (Macmillan. net.)--L . -Too' much has been
written 'of Blake in the' past year or two. His very instability and his lack of system have been exalted into virtues. But Mr. Burdett is temperate ; his criticism is unusually well-balanced. And he is hardly to be i blamed for adding to the mass of books on Blake ; his volume 'is one of the new series of English Men of Letters, and it would be impossible to leave Blake out of the reckoning. _The chief accusation to raise against Blake is that, as he put it himself; he was " mad as a refuge from unbelief " ; that is to say, as an escape from the discouragement of the physical sciences'. :Since he had not sufficient stamina to be sane as a refuge froni unbelief, there is a baselessness to his fancy that prevents it from ranking as true imagination. But how well he chimes in with the temper of our own age
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