After writing these poems, which form the first section
of the MS. Book (i-xxxvi), Blake discontinued the use of it
as a notebook for several years. Taking it up again about
the beginning of his Felpham period, he added some new
poems, writing them, not as before from the reversed end,
but from the original beginning of the sketch - book.
On pp. 3 and 2 is the fine poem 'My spectre around
me night and day,' which, as Swinburne points out,
embodies precisely the same theme as Jerusalem (1804).
On p. 12 are the lines 'Each man is in his spectre's
power,' and the long poem 'I saw a monk of Charlemaine,'
both of which were afterwards engraved as part of Jeru-
salem. On p. 21 begins the series of epigrams which may be
dated from the end of Blake's stay at Felpham to the year
1809; they relate to his differences with Hayley, Cromek,
Stothard, and Hunt, and were obviously written down,
animnm solvere, without view to publication. To the same
period evidently belong the epigrams on art and artists,
which are probably, as Ellis and Yeats conjecture, an overflow from his marginal notes to his copy of Reynolds's
Discourses, now preserved in the British Museum. Among
the last entries in the MS. are Blake's 'Advertisement' and
'Additions to the Catalogue for the year 1810,' which are
scattered here and there throughout the book with frequent
encroachments upon the sketches. In the same category
should be placed his great unfinished poem 'The Everlasting Gospel,' the last written piece in the MS. Book.
Fragments of this are drafted or copied on blank spaces
left on the now crowded pages, part of the poem being
written, obviously after the exhaustion of other space, upon
a scrap of paper bound in at the end of the book.
The earliest dated entry in the MS. Book is the note on p. 10, 'I say I shan't live five years. And if I live one it will be a Wonder. June 1793 ' ; the latest, on p. 59, is an extract ' From Bell's Weekly Messenger, Aug. 4th, 1811.'
A few of the poems in the Rossetti MS., such as 'Fayette,' were left in an unfinished state, while others have elsewhere received Blake's revision. The lines beginning 'Three virgins at the break of day' appear in a more perfect form in the Pickering MS., where I print them with the readings from the MS. Book in footnotes. The MS. Book version of 'I saw a monk of Charlemaine' was afterwards split up by Blake into two separate poems — 'The Grey Monk' of the Pickering MS. and the 'Address to the Deists' in Jerusalem.
