partly exalted by it, and sometimes giving forth in fiery aphorism some of the most precious words of existing literature."[1]
That the poems of William Blake should have been long neglected was but the natural consequence both of the vitiated taste of his contemporaries and of the unusual manner of their publication—if publication it can, indeed, be called.
"It consisted," says Mr. Gilchrist, "in a species of engraving in relief both words and designs. The verse was written, and the designs and marginal embellishments outlined on the copper with an impervious liquid, probably the ordinary stopping-out varnish of engravers. Then all the white parts or lights, the remainder of the plate that is, were eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the outline of letter and design was left prominent as in stereotype. From these plates he printed off in any tint, yellow, brown, blue, required to be the prevailing, or ground colour in his facsimiles; red he used for the letterpress. The page was then coloured up by hand in imitation of the original drawing, with more or less variety of detail in the local hues."[2]
It is not extraordinary that a book appearing in
- ↑ John Ruskin, "The Eagle's Nest" (1872), p. 23.
- ↑ Gilchrist's Life of Blake (Lond. 1863), i 69.
