The last-named is, perhaps, the finest in the series. Even though the horse's hind leg be in an impossible position, and though there be the usual lack of correct local detail, very striking and soulful is the general effect; especially so is that serene, majestic, feminine figure, standing before her terrified child and bravely facing the frenzied animal, which, by mere spiritual force, she subdues into motionless awe.

Q

VOL. I.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE JERUSALEM AND MILTON. 1804. [ÆT. 47.]

IN two letters to Mr. Butts (p. 185-7) Blake had alluded to a 'long poem' descriptive of the 'spiritual acts of his three years' slumber on the banks of Ocean.' This was entitled Ferusalem; the Emanation of the Giant Albion, 1804, Printed by W. Blake, South Molton Street; it is a large quarto volume of a hundred engraved pages, writing and design; only one side of each leaf being engraved. Most copies are printed with plain black and white, some with blue ink, some red; a few are tinted. For a tinted copy the price was twenty guineas.

The Jerusalem is prefaced by an 'Address' to the public, in a style to which the public is little accustomed :

Sheep.

To the Public.

Goats.

After my three years slumber on the banks of Ocean, I again display my giant forms to the public: my former giants and fairies having received the highest reward possible; the . . . and . . . of those with whom to be connected is to be . . . I cannot doubt that this more consolidated and extended work will be . . . as kindly received. . . &c. * Reader, what you do not approve, &c. . . . me for this energetic exertion of my talents.

**

...

Although the Ferusalem was conceived, and in great part written at Felpham, it was finished in London whilst the work of engraving for Hayley was still going on. At page 38 we find :

In Felpham I saw and heard the visions of Albion;

I write in South Molton Street what I both see and hear.
In regions of humanity, in London's opening streets

I see the awful Parent Land in light.

Behold I see!

Verulam Canterbury! venerable parent of men !
Generous immortal guardian! Golden clad; for cities

Are men, fathers of multitudes; and rivers and mountains
Are also men: everything is human! mighty! sublime!

The poem, since poem we are to call it, is mostly written in prose; occasionally in metrical prose; more rarely still it breaks forth into verse. Here is the author's own account

of the matter:

When this verse was first dictated to me, I considered a monotonous cadence, like that used by Milton, Shakspeare and all writers of English blank verse, derived from the modern bondage of rhyming, to be a necessary and indispensable part of the verse. But I soon found that, in the mouth of a true orator, such monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rhyme itself. I, therefore, have produced a variety in every line, both in cadence and number of syllables. Every word and every letter is studied, and put into its place. The terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific parts, the mild and gentle for the mild and gentle parts, and the prosaic for inferior parts all are necessary to each other.

There is little resemblance to the 'prophetic books' of earlier date. We hear no longer of the wars, the labours, the sufferings, the laments of Orc, Rintrah, Urizen, or Enitharmon. Religious enthusiasm, always a strong element in Blake's mental constitution, always deeply tinging his imaginative crcations, seems, during the time of the lonely sea-shore life, to have been kindled into over-mastering intensity. I have written this poem from immediate dicta'tion, twelve, or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time; 'without premeditation, and even against my will; thus an 'immense poem exists which seems to be the labour of a long 'life, all produced without labour or study,' he wrote in a letter already cited to Mr. Butts. Such a belief in plenary inspiration, such a deliberate abjuring of the guidance and