The Notebook of William Blake (also known as the Rossetti Manuscript from its association with its former owner Dante Gabriel Rossetti) was used by William Blake as a commonplace book from c. 1787 (or 1793) to 1818.
The Notebook [Butlin #201] consists of 58 leaves and contains autograph drafts by Blake of poems and prose with numerous sketches and designs, mostly in pencil. Containing two pages of preface, alongside 94 pages of sketches, each page is approximately 159 x 197mm. The original leaves were later bound with a partial copy (ff. 62–94) of 'All that is of any value in the foregoing pages' that is Rossettis' transcription of Blake's notebook (added after 1847).[1]
At first the Notebook belonged to Blake's favourite younger brother and pupil Robert who made a few pencil sketches and ink-and-wash drawings in it. After death of Robert in February 1787, Blake inherited the volume beginning it with the series of sketches for many emblematic designs on a theme of life of a man from his birth to death. Then, reversing the book he wrote on its last pages a series of poems of c. 1793. He continued the book in 1800s returning to the first pages. All together the Notebook contains about 170 poems plus fragments of prose: Memoranda (1807), Draft for Prospectus of the Engraving of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims (1809), Public Address (1810), A Vision of the Last Judgment (1810). The latest work in the Notebook is a long and elaborated but unfinished poem The Everlasting Gospel dated c. 1818.
On the page 4 is placed a short humorous poem "When a Man has Married a Wife..." and a picture above showing of a man and woman rising from bed in a sparsely furnished room that could be Blake's own. The line of text obscured by the picture "Ideas of Good & Evil" served probably as a title to 64 following picture emblems, 17 of which were used for the book "For Children: The Gates of Paradise". D. G. Rossetti,[2] A. C. Swinburne,[3] and W. B. Yeats[4] in their publications of Blake's poetry used this as a title for the series of poems from the manuscripts. In 1905 John Sampson issued the first annotated publication of all these poems and created a detailed descriptive Index to 'The Rossettt MS.'.[5] It follows by some other scholarly publications edited by Geoffrey Keynes (1935 & 1957/66), David V. Erdman (1965/82/88) & together with D. K. Moore (1977), Alicia Ostriker (1977), Gerald E. Bentley Jr. (1977), etc.
In the introduction of his publication D. G. Rossetti gave to these poems a following presentation:
“The shorter poems, and even the fragments, afford many instances of that exquisite metrical gift and rightness in point of form which constitute Blake's special glory among his contemporaries, even more eminently perhaps than the grander command of mental resources which is also his. Such qualities of pure perfection in writing verse, as he perpetually, without effort, displayed, are to be met with among those elder poets whom he loved, and such again are now looked upon as the peculiar trophies of a school which has arisen since his time; but he alone (let it be repeated and remembered) possessed them then, and possessed them in clear completeness. Colour and metre, these are the true patents of nobility in painting and poetry, taking precedence of all intellectual claims; and it is by virtue of these, first of all, that Blake holds, in both arts, a rank which cannot be taken from him."[6]
The section of c. 1793 contains 63 poems that include drafts versions of 16 poems entered the collection of Songs of Experience, which have been placed here in the following order:
Some of these drafts are significantly different from their last versions, for example "Infant Sorrow" of the Notebook is much more expanded and composed of nine quatrains instead of two that were chosen for the Songs of Experience. Also it is interesting to compare the most famous Blake's poem "The Tyger" with its two earlier Notebook versions (see: "The Tyger", 1st draft and 2nd draft).
The genre of most of the poems of this section can be defined as Songs and Ballads. Some of them reflect the political and social climate of that time:
✶✶✶
Why should I care for the men of thames
Or the cheating waves of charterd streams
Or shrink at the little blasts of fear
That the hireling blows into my ear
Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames
Tho his waters bathed my infant limbs
The Ohio shall wash his stains from me
I was born a slave but I go to be free[7]
✶✶✶
Silent Silent Night
Quench the holy light
Of thy torches bright
For possessd of Day
Thousand spirits stray
That sweet joys betray
Why should joys be sweet
Used with deceit
Nor with sorrows meet
But an honest joy
Does itself destroy
For a harlot coy[8]
Some other of these poems rather belong to the genre of Satiric verses and epigrams, like the following:
Motto to the Songs of Innocence and of Experience
The Good are attracted by Mens perceptions
And Think not for themselves
Till Experience teaches them to catch
And to cage the Fairies and Elves
And then the Knave begins to snarl
And the Hypocrite to howl
And all his good Friends shew their private ends
And the Eagle is known from the Owl[9]
This motto, which was never engraved by Blake, is not found in any copy of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
There are 10 poems in the Notebook written during Blake's life in Felpham, a village in West Sussex. Here is the one of his most characteristic poems of that period:
✶✶✶
Mock on Mock on Voltaire Rousseau
Mock on Mock on! tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind
And the wind blows it back again
And every sand becomes a Gem
Reflected in the beams divine
Blown back they blind the mocking Eye
But still in Israels paths they shine
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newtons Particles of light
Are sands upon the Red sea shore
Where Israels tents do shine so bright[10]
The most of 92 texts of this section are epigrams, gnomic verses or fragments addressed to Blake's friends and enemies, to painters and poets as well as some different historical or mythological characters and even to God. Here are typical examples:
✶✶✶
Was I angry with Hayley who usd me so ill
Or can I be angry with Felphams old Mill
Or angry with Flaxman or Cromek or Stothard
Or poor Schiavonetti whom they to death botherd
Or angry with Macklin or Boydel or Bowyer
Because they did not say O what a Beau ye are
At a Friends Errors Anger shew
Mirth at the Errors of a Foe[11]
To God
If you have formd a Circle to go into
Go into it yourself & see how you would do[12]
In the following short fragment Blake speaks of himself and his own spiritual experience in his babyhood:
✶✶✶
The Angel that presided oer my birth
Said Little creature formd of Joy & Mirth
Go love without the help of any King on Earth[13]
There is also a draft of famous Blake's motto from his poem Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion:
✶✶✶
I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heavens gate,
Built in Jerusalems wall.[14]
But there in "Jerusalem" at the beginning of the chapter 4 ("To the Christians") it is given in a combination with other 4 mysterious lines:
The Notebook is full of Blake's sketches and designs almost on every page. Here is the index of the first 25 pages (see illustrations below):
... and so on.
These sketches often serve as the sources for Blake's later works, illustrations of his books, engravings, watercolors, etc. Here are some examples:
The volume was presented by Catherine Blake (Blake's widow) in 1827 to William Palmer, brother of Blake's pupil, Samuel Palmer. It was bought from him by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 30 April 1847. Later it was purchased by F. S. Ellis (at Rossetti's sale, T. G. Wharton, Martin & Co., 5 July 1882, lot 487) and by Ellis and Scruton (at Ellis's sale, Sotheby's, 18 Nov 1885, lot 608). Sold by Dodd, Mead and Co. of New York (f. ib) to William Augustus White (d. 1928) of Brooklyn, 26 Jan 1887. Inherited by his daughter, Mrs Frances Hillard Emerson (d. 1957) of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Presented by Mrs F. H. Emerson. Now in the possession of British Library: Add MS 49460.
