FOGG MUSEUM EXHIBITS BLAKE ILLUSTRATIONS

An exhibition of original watercolour drawings. done by William Blake to illustrate Young's "Night Thoughts", will open at the Fogg Museum this morning. Owing to the fact that the drawings are destined for the British Museum, they will not be exhibited in this country again.

The illustrations to be shown were among the great treasures in the library of the well-known collector and Blake student, the late W. A. White '63.

Blake mounted the leaves of the first edition of the "Night Thoughts" in large sheets of Whatman paper and on the broad margin thus gained he painted a series of imaginative designs. He unhesitatingly rejected the ordinary mode of printing, and evolved a method which, in some of its technical details, was entirely new. It is possible that his first experiments were made in 1788.

Young's book leaves much to the imagination and Blake has taken the some what dry material and formed it into the image of true poetry.

The Fogg Museum, as the result of the generosity of Mr. White, has just published facsimiles of a selected number of the illustrations. Geoffrey Keynes, the distinguished Blake scholar, has contributed a critical introduction to the plates. The exhibition will close on January 10.