Innocence: but on this ground we dismiss them—repeating the words before applied to them, only with no anger or disdain—that they are 'Ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.' But not shelving nor ignoring the illuminated pages themselves; their inventive power remains, and they may be regarded as a repository of winged and fiery imagery which will be useful to us in our attempts to realise things invisible, in so far as the elements of matter may bridge over for our conceptive faculties the gulfs between the seen and unseen; and in so far as they may be made to illustrate phases of thought to which they were not, in the first instance, intended to apply. There are many such designs, and we are thankful to see the woodcuts in Chapter XII. given as specimens of what we mean. Take them one by one, suppose no further relation than each has to its significant title, and we are wholly satisfied. We will not say how often, and with what fine effect, one of these rude but noble squares enters before the inner eye, and allies itself with the current stream of thought.
'Alas!'—that is the simple title of one of them,—a boy chasing winged loves, which he kills with his catching; need we move farther to seek our goal of meaning? 'What is Man?' That caterpillar, huge and spectral, crawling over the oak leaf under which the baby-faced chrysalis lies, expecting its life and its wings—to be 'crushed before the moth' in due time. Can we not find our own sufficient application of such a wondrous image. 'I want! I want!' Here is 'the globe's last verge' which both Dryden and Blake contrived (but with very different faculties and success) to see; where, according to Dryden, we may behold 'the ocean leaning on the sky.' Here Blake, on this hint, boldly heaves his ladder to the hollow bosom of 'our rolling neighbour,' the crescent moon, and begins to climb, fearless as Blondin, and cross the star-sown abyss to satisfy his 'want.' So with each of these precious little bold and grand designs—the last of which is almost appalling. A white, unearthly figure with
