medievalism in a work of Giotto or Cimabue; or Mr. Leighton to improve some flaw in the flesh-colour of Correggio. The duty of an editor, in such a case as that of Blake's "Poetical Sketches," is confined to the silent correction of obvious clerical errors, and to the rectification of faulty orthography or punctuation, due either to the lax and uncertain spelling of the time, or to the ignorance and carelessness of the printer.
Having spoken this word in season, we pass on to the pleasanter duty of examining these poems separately.
Of the opening poems addressed to the four Seasons, we may say that the first three, though marred here and there by irregularities of metre, have a wealth of imagery and felicity of expression worthy of some of the finest things in Keats and Shelley and Tennyson.[1] There are lines too in them which stand out rememberable for ever, and haunt the ear with their melody. The "Winter," though it opens vigorously, soon falls
- ↑ In the Verses to Autumn we meet with the line,
- "And all the daughters of the year shall dance."
