ABSTRACT
The titlepage date, 1797, probably indicates the year of beginning the poem; in its first form it probably dates from 1797-1800, but B. worked on the poem for many years. How long is much disputed (see esp. Erdman and Bentley), but the consensus is that most of what we have dates between 1797 and 1803, with alterations at least until 1807, perhaps to 1810. The phrases in Greek on page 3 must date after 1802; he mentioned his studies of Greek and Hebrew in a letter of Jan. 1803. The latest additions to Vala, including the change of title to The Four Zoas (see page 1n), and the addition of the name ‘Jerusalem’ to the text, reflect the poem Jerusalem, which Blake was writing 1804-11 and later, from which, for example, the lines ix 98ff seem to be borrowed. Yet Hand, the spiritual form of Robert
21. ii. A comment on the reference by Malone (Reynolds’s editor) to ‘the ferocious and enslaved republic of France!’, quoting Pope on those who ‘thought that all but savages were slaves’. Cp. also Pope’s Epistle To Augustus, 263-4: ‘We conquer’d France, but felt our captive’s charms; / Her Arts victorious triumph’d o’er our Arms’ (from Horace, Ep.II i 156-7).
