tree, cut down;
The breath of heaven dwelt among his leaves.

On account of the chaotic character of most of Blake's work, it is well to
begin our reading with a short book of selections, containing the best
songs of these three little volumes. Swinburne calls Blake the only poet of
"supreme and simple poetic genius" of the eighteenth century, the one man
of that age fit, on all accounts, to rank with the old great masters.[207]
The praise is doubtless extravagant, and the criticism somewhat
intemperate; but when we have read "The Evening Star," "Memory," "Night,"
"Love," "To the Muses," "Spring," "Summer," "The Tiger," "The Lamb," "The
Clod and the Pebble," we may possibly share Swinburne's enthusiasm.
Certainly, in these three volumes we have some of the most perfect and the
most original songs in our language.

Of Blake's longer poems, his titanic prophecies and apocalyptic splendors,
it is impossible to write justly in such a brief work as this. Outwardly
they suggest a huge chaff pile, and the scattered grains of wheat hardly
warrant the labor of winnowing. The curious reader will get an idea of
Blake's amazing mysticism by dipping into any of the works of his middle
life,--_Urizen, Gates of Paradise, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, America,
The French Revolution_, or _The Vision of the Daughters of Albion_. His
latest works, like _Jerusalem_ and _Milton_, are too obscure to have any
literary value. To read any of these works casually is to call the author a
madman; to study them, remembering Blake's songs and his genius, is to
quote softly his own answer to the child who asked about the land of
dreams:

"O what land is the land of dreams,
What are its mountains and what are its streams?
--O father, I saw my mother there,
Among the lilies by waters fair."
"Dear child, I also by pleasant streams
Have wandered all night in the land of dreams;
But though calm and warm the waters wide,
I could not get to the other side."

MINOR POETS OF THE REVIVAL

We have chosen the five preceding poets, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns,
and Blake, as the most typical and the most interesting of the writers who
proclaimed the dawn of Romanticism in the eighteenth century. With them we
associate a group of minor writers, whose works were immensely popular in
their own day. The ordinary reader will pass them by, but to the student
they are all significant as expressions of very different phases o