250 CRITICAL STUDIES of this song, as it stands in Blake's earliest volume or in manuscript, should be given at any rate in an appendix if not in the body of the work. For this chant belongs to the whole British people ; it is one of the most precious among the most precious heir- looms bequeathed to us by our forefathers; it is a national jewel of such magnificence that no one man, however honest and skilful, can be trusted to cut it and set it in accordance with his private opinion. We English are surely a strange people. Pictures beyond price are bequeathed to us, and our first step towards disposing of them satisfactorily is to bury them away where they cannot be seen. A song is chanted for us which should thrill and swell every native heart with patriotic pride, a song great with the grandeur of our national life and history for three millenniums of legends and annals and journals, a song heroic as Cressy, sublime as Trafalgar; and for fourscore years we leave it to that oblivion of oblivions which has never had any remembrance. The poet lives forty years after giving this glorious song to his people, devotedly loyal to his highest inspirations, pure, poor, obscure ; and when he dies, it is here and there casually remarked that a clever madman has at length reached the sanity of the grave. Again forty years come and go ere a few admirers worthy of him they admire can venture with much diffidence (surely but too well founded ! ) to bespeak the favour of his people for this song, in which he has added a great and burning light to their illustrations the most splendid, and for other songs in which he has given them the seed whose harvest is likely to be
