stinguished from his fellows. With the publication of the _Songs of
Experience_ Blake's poetic career, so far at least as ordinary readers
are concerned, may be said to close. A writer of prophecy he continued
for many years, but the works by which he is best known in poetry are
those earlier and simpler efforts, supplemented by a few pieces taken
from various sources, some of which were of later production. But
although Blake the poet ceases in a general sense at this date, Blake
the artist is only just entering upon his career. In the _Songs of
Innocence_ and _Experience_, and even in some of the earlier _Books of
Prophecy_, the two gifts worked together in perfect balance and harmony;
but at this point the supremacy of the artistic faculty asserts itself,
and for the remainder of his life Blake was pre-eminently a designer and
engraver. The labour of poetical composition continues, but the product
passes beyond the range of general comprehension; while, with apparent
inconsistency, the work of the artist gains steadily in strength and
coherence, and never to the last loses its hold upon the understanding.
It may almost be said without exaggeration that his earliest poetic
work, _The Songs of Innocence_, and nearly his latest effort in design,
the illustrations to _The Book of Job_, take rank among the sanest and
most admirable products of his genius. Nor is the fact, astonishing
enough at first sight, quite beyond a possible explanation. As Blake
advanced in his poetic career, he was gradually hindered and finally
overpowered by a tendency that was most serviceable to him in design.
His inclination to substitute a symbol for a conception, to make an
image do duty for an idea, became an insuperable obstacle to literary
success. He endeavoured constantly to treat the intellectual material of
verse as if it could be moulded into sensuous form, with the inevitable
result that as the ideas to be expressed advanced in complexity and
depth of meaning, his poetic gifts became gradually more inadequate to
the task of interpretation. The earlier poems dealing with simpler
themes, and put forward at a time when the bent of the artist's mind was
not strictly determined, do not suffer from this difficulty; the
symbolism then only enriches an idea of no intellectual intricacy; but
when Blake began to concern himself with profounder problems the want of
a more logical understanding of language made itself strikingly
apparent. If his