IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL

Summary

In the MS. Note-book, to which frequent reference has been made in the Life, a page stands inscribed with the heading given above. It seems uncertain how much of the book's contents such title may have been meant to include; but it is now adopted here as a not inappropriate summarizing endorsement for the precious section which here follows. In doing so, Mr. Swinburne's example (in his Essay on Blake) has been followed, as regards pieces drawn from the Note-book.

The contents of the present section are derived partly from the Note-book in question, and partly from another small autograph collection of different matter, somewhat more fairly copied. The poems have been reclaimed, as regards the first-mentioned source, from as chaotic a mass as could well be imagined; amid which it has sometimes been necessary either to omit, transpose, or combine, so as to render available what was very seldom found in a final state. And even in the pieces drawn from the second source specified above, means of the same kind have occasionally been resorted to, where they seemed to lessen obscurity or avoid redundance. But with all this, there is nothing throughout that is not faithfully Blake's own.

One piece in this series (The Two Songs) may be regarded as a different version of the Human Abstract, occurring in the Songs of Experience. This new form is certainly the finer one, I think, by reason of its personified character, which adds greatly to the force of the impression produced. It is, indeed, one of the finest things Blake ever did, really belonging, by its vivid completeness, to the order of perfect short poems, — never a very large band, even when the best poets are ransacked to recruit it.