English Blake

REVIEW.S 445 he tries to discount its value. "This system [the ius teutonicum] was, of course, not German, but an adaptation of the old-time Roman municipal system" (p. 28) . Lucus a non-lucendo? Though the author himself utters a word of warning against reading "back into the past meanings that were at the tin1e not valid or understood" (p. 2, n. I), he has not escaped this very danger.· He is not altogether unaware of the "unhealthy" and "unbalanced" character of Polish nationalism (p. 102). But he does not seem to have developed a sufficient immunity against that communicable disease. Professor Rose relates with obvious satisfaction Poland's vast economic gains in the "new ·west," i.e. in the areas detached from Germany in 1945. But he discreetly fails to mention the outrage committed against the inhabitants of these newly acquired provinces. Surely the reader, who is told that "the value of the material wealth ... gained in the west" "has been put by experts ... at $9,500 million" (p. 279), would have been entitled to know that the transfer of territory was accompanied and followed by the expulsion of no less than 6Y2 million Germans!! However, an oblique reference to "the still remaining Germans" who are to be "sent home to the Reich'' (p. 279; my italics) is all that Professor Rose has to offer by way of comment on one of the weatest collective tragedies of our times. This reticence contrasts curiously with the author's passionate protest against the Yalta agreements which 1nade the Curzon Line the eastern frontier of the new Poland, ''a decision that made mock. of the Atlantic Charter" (p. 276). These critical remarks should not obliterate the merits of a book which, after all, contains a good deal of reliable information. Dissemination of knowledge about Europe's "marginal" countries should go some way towards preventing a repetition of that singularly unfortunate argument by which the Prime Minister of a great nation declined responsibility for the fate of "a far-away country of which we know nothing.." ENGLISH BLAKE* P. F. FISHER \Vhatever approach writers have taken to the works of Blake during the ]ast thirty years, they have all agreed. in the words of Bernard Blackstone, that he is a "writer of great significance for our time." This modest tribute to their own acumen in choosing him for the subject of a book may also indicate among lSee Eugene M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-47 (New York, 1948), 285. *Engli$h Blake. By BERNARD BLACKSTONE. Cambridge: at the University Press [Toronto: Macmillan Co. of Canada]. 1949. Pp. xviii, 455. ($5.25) 446 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY the literate a growing distrust of the mystical eclectic. Such an eclecticism cultivates a taste for a universal symbolism-with archetypal equations between one tradition and another-which can finally be reduced to a common meaning. This has been called the perennial philosophy, but it usually proves unsatisfactory and its advocate frequently settles for an ecclesiastical framework of belief. Others may move in the direction of natural simplicity of heart and a disdain for the intellect. Mr. Blackstone. sees clearly that Blake was none of these. He says what has been said befoTe-but may easily be repeated wit~! profit-that Blake was an original, without being an isolated, phenomenon. The originality of his doctrine made his works the index to a point of view and not a distilled pot of message. This point of view which is original in the sense that it is derived from the individual's perception, and not merely his powers of reflection and collation, is expressed in a way which has always attracted the reader by its energy and repelled hitn by its apparent con1plexity. The complexity is partly explained by Mr. Blackstone when he emphasizes Blake's dissatisfaction with the Lockean etchings on the surface of the tabula rasa as an adequate revelation of the workings of the human mind. Blake combatted the earnest search for the simple solution in all things) and sought to indicate the depths and heights of the spirit of man by an elaborate but, to him, exact...