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William Blake ill. 1 was born in London on 28 November 1757 and was christened on 11December in St. Jamess Church. His mother, born Catherine Wright, was married twice. Evidencehas recently emerged that she and her first husband, a hosier named Thomas Armitage, weremembers of the Moravian Church (Davies and Schuchard), and some readers have detected echoesof Moravian hymns in Blakes poems. After Armitage died, Catherine left the Moravians andmarried James Blake, also a hosier. The Blakes kept a shop at 28 Broad Street and were in theirmid-thirties when William arrived. Of his brothers and sisters, Robert (1762-87) was Blakesfavorite. His eldest brother, James (1753-1827), and a sister, Catherine (1764-1841), also figured

prominently in his later life.

As a child, Blake viewed the world in the light of what Wordsworth, in his Ode: Intimations ofImmortality, would later call a visionary gleam. When he was about nine, he told his parents hehad seen a tree filled with angels on one of his walks; he later reported a similar vision ofangelic figures walking in a field among workers as they gathered in the hay (Gilchrist 1: 7).Unlike the child in Wordsworths poem, however, Blake never outgrew these visions. He was past

fifty when he described seeing the rising sun as an Innumerable company of the Heavenly hostcrying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty (Erdman 566).

Blakes artistic ability also became evident while he was still a child. At age ten he was enrolled inHenry Parss drawing school, where he learned to sketch the human figure by copying from plastercasts of ancient statues. His father encouraged his interest and even bought him some casts of hisown. The influence of his early exposure to Greek and Roman sculpture can be seen in Blakes laterwork. The Farnese Hercules, for example, is the model for the figure of Giant Despair in Christianand Hopeful Escape from Doubting Castle, one of Blakes illustrations to Bunyans PilgrimsProgress(1824-27). In his last illuminated work, Laocon(c. 1826-27), ill. 2 he surrounds a well-known classical sculpture with his own commentary on art, religion, and commerce.

Besides plaster casts, the young Blake also began to collect inexpensive prints from shops andauctions. His taste ran to Raphael, Michelangelo, Giulio Romano, Albrecht Drer, and MaertenHeemskerck, artists whose work was not widely appreciated at the time. He never wavered in hisconviction that they were superior to the more fashionable painters of the Venetian and Flemishschools. In the catalogue for an exhibition of his own work in 1809, he accuses artists whoendeavour to raise up a style against Rafael, Mich. Angelo, and the Antique of attempting todestroy art (Erdman 538).

In 1772, having left Parss school, the fourteen-year-old Blake began his apprenticeship underJames Basire, engraver to the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society. Basire was best knownfor his simple line engravingsa style many of his contemporaries considered outdated, but one

that fit well with Blakes preference for the firm outlines of artists like Albrecht Drer. Basiresusual subjects were antiquities and monuments, which he reproduced with austere precision;although he occasionally took on higher-profile projects, such as Benjamin Wests Pylades andOrestes, these were the exception rather than the rule. Prominent artists like West tended to preferthe services of Basires rivals, William Woollett (who engraved Wests best-known painting, TheDeath of General Wolfe)and Robert Strange. Many years later, Blake, remembering the slight to hisemployer, would call these two men heavy lumps of Cunning & Ignorance (Erdman 573).

In Basires shop at 31 Great Queen Street in London, Blake learned the craft of copy engraving as itwas practiced in England at the end of the eighteenth century. The standard method of preparing acopperplate for etching or engraving was time-consuming and labor-intensive. The original largesheet of copper had to be cut into appropriate sizes and the edges beveled to facilitate cleaning theink off the plate and to prevent it from tearing the paper. The plate also had to be squared and itscorners rounded, because the pressure of the printing press would leave an impression of the platesedges in the paper. Next, the surface had to be polished, cleaned, and covered with an acid-resistant

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film, or ground, which was then darkened with soot to contrast with the copper. Onto this groundthe design was then transferred and traced with a needle to expose the plates surface to acid, which

bit the design into the copper (Viscomi, Blake48-50). In a shop like Basires , most of the tediouspreparatory work was carried out by apprentices like Blake.

It is difficult to know which of the works produced in Basires shop during this period Blakehimself may have engraved, because engravers apprentices were discouraged from developing their

own individual styles, and their work was usually signed by the master. Among the projects inwhich modern scholars believe Blake probably had a hand were Jacob Bryants A New System, or,an Analysis of Ancient Mythology(1774-76) and Richard Goughs Sepulchral Monuments in GreatBritain, Part I (published 1786). These books represent two subjectsmythology and Britishhistoryin which Blake never lost interest.

Bryant was an antiquarian and mythographer who, like many others in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, attempted to reconcile pagan mythology with the biblical account of history.He theorized that the original monotheism of the Old Testamenthad degenerated after the Floodinto various forms of sun worship, from which all the other pagan gods and heroes descended. Hiswork had a lasting influence on Blake, who as late as 1809 cites the authority of Jacob Bryant, and

all antiquaries in support of his claim that The antiquities of every Nation under Heaven areequally sacred (Erdman 543).

The plates for Goughs Sepulchral Monumentswere engraved after pencil sketches Blake made ofthe tombs of kings and queens in Westminster Abbey. Basire is said to have given him thatassignment in order to get him out of the shop and away from the dissension that was brewingamong the newer apprentices (Bentley, Blake Records422). Blake probably engraved a number ofthe sketches himself, including the portraits of Henry III, Eleanor of Castile, Edward III, andRichard II. ill. 3 ill. 4 Eleanor in particular seems to have appealed to Blakes imagination, for hereturned to her as a subject for the historical print Edward & Elenor ill. 5 and, much later, for oneof his Visionary Heads. Edward III, meanwhile, reappears as the protagonist of a dramatic fragment

in Blakes first volume of poetry, Poetical Sketches(1783).The earliest engraving that scholars can confidently attribute to Blake reflects his interest in earlyBritish history and legend. He later reworked and reprinted it with the title Joseph of Arimatheaamong the Rocks of Albion ill. 6 and dated it 1773, the second year of his apprenticeship. Theyoung Blakes technique in the first state of this work, though competent, does not reveal muchabout him as an artist; his distinctive imagination emerges only in the way he combines thecompositional elements. He takes the pensive, muscular figure from Michelangelos Crucifixion ofSt. Peter, but places him against a spare, brooding background of sea and rocky coast that evokes amood reminiscent of the bleak seascapes of Anglo-Saxon verse. On the later state of this engraving,Blake identifies the figure as One of the Gothic Artists who Built the Cathedrals in what we callthe Dark Ages (Erdman 671)an allusion to the legend that Joseph of Arimathea traveled toBritain and founded Glastonbury Abbey.

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In 1779, at age twenty-one, Blake completed his seven-year apprenticeship with Basire and becamea journeyman copy engraver, making his living by working on projects for London book and print

publishers like Thomas Macklin, Harrison and Co., and Joseph Johnson. Macklin would laterlaunch the Poets Gallery(1788) and the Macklin Bible(1790)commercial ventures aimed, likeJohn Boydells Shakespeare Gallery, at orchestrating a profitable combination of paintings,engravings, and literature. Blakes earliest separate prints were stipple engravings for Macklin ofscenes by the French Rococo painter Jean-Antoine Watteau, whose work was known in England

primarily through engravings. ill. 1 ill. 2 The stipple method, with its patterns of tiny dots, waswell suited for reproducing his paintings, which emphasized color and tone over line. Although henever mentions Watteau by name, Blake later expresses contempt for this emphasis on color among

painters of the Venetian school, of which Watteau was a direct heir.

The summer of 1780 was an uneasy time in England. In June, violent anti-Catholic demonstrations,the Gordon Riots, spread through London, and Blake may have witnessed the destruction firsthand.Alexander Gilchrist reports that on 6 June, the third day of the riots, Blake was involuntarily swept

along before a large mob and watched as it stormed and burned Newgate Prison (1: 35). Later thatsame summer, a sketching trip with Thomas Stothard and another friend on the River Medway

brought Blake afoul of the law when the artists, mistaken for spies, were arrested for approachingtoo near to the great naval base on the Medway near Upnor Castle.

Stothard was a versatile commercial artist and a prolific book illustrator, and Blake was one ofseveral engravers who helped to popularize his works during the 1780s; others included JamesHeath and William Sharp. The Novelists Magazine, published by Harrison and Co. in the early1780s, showcased Stothards picturesque wash drawings, which Blake, Heath, and Sharpreproduced in a uniform technique that preserved the fashionable style of the originals. ill. 3 Blakealso engraved some of Stothards illustrations for books published by Joseph Johnson, including

William Enfields The Speaker(1780), ill. 4 the mathematician John Bonnycastles Introduction toMensuration(1782), ill. 5 and Joseph Ritsons A Select Collection of English Songs(1783).

A number of Blakes other new friends in the early 1780s were professional or amateur artists. JohnFlaxman, a neoclassical sculptor whose illustrations of Homer, ill. 6 Aeschylus, and Dante wouldone day spread his fame throughout Europe, was then beginning his career as a designer for JosiahWedgwoods popular line of classically inspired pottery. John Hawkins, a connoisseur, in 1784 triedunsuccessfully to raise enough money to send Blake to Italy, where he was to have completed hiseducation in drawing by studying firsthand the works of the ancient sculptors and of Renaissancemasters like Michelangelo and Raphael. George Cumberland, the author ofThoughts on Outline(1796), ill. 7 was, like Flaxman, dedicated to reviving the classical style. I study your outlines,Blake would write to him in 1799, [. . .] just as if they were antiques (Erdman 704).

At the same time that he was working on commercial engraving projects, Blake was also preparinghimself for a career as a painter. In 1779 he was admitted as a student to the Royal Academy ofArts Schools of Design. Founded in 1769 to promote English art and artists, the Royal Academy

provided formal training and annual exhibitions. There Blake pursued his study of drawing, gainingadmission after a probationary period to the Schools collection of plaster casts of antique sculpture.

ill. 8 ill. 9 Even as a student, Blake followed his own taste in art. When the elderly GeorgeMoser, Keeper of the Royal Academy, advised him to study Lebrun and Rubens instead of thestiff and unfinished works of Raphael and Michelangelo, the young Blake balked: Thesethings that you call Finishd are not Even Begun, he later reported himself as having replied; howcan they then, be Finishd? (Erdman 639).

Blake not only studied at the Royal Academy but exhibited his work there as well, beginning in1780 with The Death of Earl Goodwin, ill. 10 one of a series of watercolor drawings on the earlyhistory of England that also included such subjects as The Landing of Brutus, The Making of

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Magna Carta, ill. 11 and The Penance of Jane Shore. In 1784, Blake exhibited a pair ofthematically related works, A Breach in a City the Morning after the Battle and War Unchaind byan Angel. Fire, Pestilence, and Famine Following, ill. 12 depicting the ravages of war. Thefollowing year, he exhibited four works: The Bard, from Grayand three drawings illustrating the

biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, the latter reflecting an increasing interest in Old Testamentsubjects. In all these drawings, Blake adheres to the prevailing neoclassical style as interpreted by

such contemporary artists as James Barry.Blakes creative activities were not confined to the visual arts during these years. The early 1780salso saw the private publication ofPoetical Sketches(1783), a collection of poems he had writtenover the previous fourteen years. These early efforts echo Blakes English precursors from Spenserto the eighteenth century but also demonstrate his willingness to experiment with form andlanguage. The series of four season poems that opens the volume suggests the range of influencesthe young poet had absorbed, drawing on sources as diverse as the Song of Solomonand thenorthern sublime popularized by James Macphersons poems ofOssian. Blakes independent viewsin both aesthetics and politics are evident even in his first book: To the Musesexplicitly critiquescontemporary verse, accusing the muses of turning their backs on poetry altogether, and the

fragmentary historical drama King Edward the Thirdexplores the problematic role of war andimperialism in English history.

The publication ofPoetical Sketcheswas financed by Flaxman and two of his friends, the Rev. A. S.Mathew and his wife Harriet, who hosted literary and artistic gatherings to which Blake hadrecently begun to be invited. One of those who attended frequently was Thomas Taylor, whoselectures on Greek philosophy, soon to be followed by translations from Plotinus, Proclus, and thePlatonic dialogues, earned him the nickname the Platonist. Blake eventually became disillusionedwith the Mathew circle; his unfinished satire An Island in the Moon(c. 1784-85) ill. 13 is a livelysendup of their social ambitions and affectations. Under names like Inflammable Gass, Sipsopthe Pythagorean, and Mrs. Nannicantipot, Blakes fellow guests gossip, philosophize, and showoff their latest inventions, bursting frequently into songand, at least once, into flame.

Blakes companion throughout these eventful years was Catherine Boucher (1762-1831), whom hehad married in 1782. He had met his future wife, the daughter of a market gardener, during a stay inBattersea. Recently rejected by another woman, Blake told Catherine the story of his unsuccessfulcourtship; she pitied him and in turn won his affection (Bentley, Blake Records517-18). The twowere married 18 August at the church of St. Mary in Battersea and moved to 23 Green Street inLondon. Their marriage was by all accounts happy; one of the few recorded exceptions occurredwhen Catherine quarreled with Blakes beloved younger brother Robert, and Blake insisted shekneel down and apologize to him (Gilchrist 1: 58-59).

In 1784, Blake set up a printing and publishing partnership at 27 Broad Street with James Parker,who had also worked as an apprentice under Basire. The business apparently did not thrive. Onlytwo prints, Zephyrus and Flora ill. 14 and Calisto, ill. 15 separate plates on mythological themesengraved by Blake after Stothard, are known to have been produced (Essick 141). The Blake-Parker

partnership appears to have broken up by the end of 1785, and the Blakes moved to 28 PolandStreet. Blake did little commercial engraving over the next two years, but 1788 was busier,culminating in a commission from the Boydells for Blakes biggest commercial project of thedecade: a large engraving of William Hogarths The Beggars Opera, Act III. ill. 16 The paintingdepicts a performance of John Gays famous ballad opera, the story of the highwayman MacHeath.The engraving took Blake nearly two years to complete.

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At the same time that he was working on these commercial projects, Blake was searching for abetter way to print and publish his own work. About 1788, he invented relief etching, a process thatwas both more efficient and potentially more expressive and autographic than traditional intaglioetching. In intaglio graphics, the design must be transferred to the metal plate: either scratchedlightly onto the waxed surface and then deepened with an engraving tool, such as a burin, or tracedwith a needle into an acid-resistant coating, the exposed pattern of lines and dots then being bitteninto the plate with acid. Blakes contemporaries usually tried to optimize quality and efficiency bycombining these techniques in mixed-method engraving. In relief etching, on the other hand, thedesign is painted directly onto the copperplate using an acid-resistant varnish. When acid is appliedto the plate, the unpainted surface, rather than the design itself, is eaten away, while the design isleft standing in relief to be inked and printed. Because the design is above rather than below thesurface of the plate, a relief etching also requires less pressure to print than a conventional intaglioetching or engraving. The printed version of a relief etching is, of course, a mirror image of theoriginal design; this means that any text to be included must be written backwards. As a trained

copy engraver, however, Blake had already had an opportunity to practice this skill.It was Blakes late brother Robert who, according to John Thomas Smith, directed Blake towardthis discovery. Robert had died in February 1787; Blake, who had remained constantly at his

bedside for two weeks and reportedly collapsed into a continuous sleep for three days and nightsafter his death (Gilchrist 1: 59), continued to see his brother in visions. The following year, Robertappeared to him in such a vision and instructed him in a new method of printing his works withoutthe expense of letter-press (Bentley, Blake Records460). Appropriately, one of Blakes firstexperiments in this medium was The Approach of Doom, ill. 1 a print based on one of Robertsdrawings. ill. 2 The real importance of relief etching for Blake, however, was not economic butaesthetic: unlike other methods of printing texts and designs available at the end of the eighteenthcentury, it did not separate invention from production. The need to keep these two activities united

became one of Blakes central tenets as an artist.

Blake continued to employ relief etching in his first two illuminated books, All Religions are Oneand There is No Natural Religion(both c. 1788). ill. 3 ill. 4 His decision to present their texts inthe form of aphorisms (or Principles, as he calls them in All Religions are One) may have beeninspired partly by the English translation of Johann Caspar Lavaters Aphorisms on Man(1788),ill. 5 for which Blake engraved the frontispiece. The two tractates are part of Blakes lifelong

quarrel with the philosophy of Bacon, Newton, and Locke. Rejecting the rational empiricism ofeighteenth-century deism or natural religion, which looked to the material world for evidence ofGods existence, Blake offers as an alternative the imaginative faculty or Poetic Genius.

Much better known is Blakes next illuminated book, Songs of Innocence(1789), ill. 6 a collectionof short lyric poems and their accompanying designs. Deceptively simple at first reading, the Songshave affinities with eighteenth-century childrens literature but go beyond the traditional childrens

book to question some of the unexamined assumptions of adult society. Every child may joy tohear such songs (Erdman 7), but some adults in Blakes audience might well have beenuncomfortable with the social critique implicit in such poems as The Chimney Sweeper, HolyThursday, orNight. The nature of illuminated printing allowed the Blakes (Catherine assisted withthe printing and hand coloring) to maintain control over the entire process of producing andmarketing Songsand subsequent illuminated books.

Later in the same year Blake produced The Book of Thel, ill. 7 an illuminated poem in unrhymedlines of fourteen syllables. Numerous allegorical interpretations have been suggested for this story

of a young shepherdess who receives advice from a lily, a cloud, and a clod of clay, only to flee inthe end from a voice of sorrow that rises from her own grave plot (Erdman 6). The designs

present her as a pale and slender figure, clothed in a wispy gown, conversing with her

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anthropomorphic mentors in a world defined by delicate watercolor washes.

A very different kind of illuminated book grew out of Blakes disillusionment with EmanuelSwedenborg, a Swedish mystic in whose work he had begun to take an interest. Blake read andannotated at least three of Swedenborgs books, and he and Catherine attended a meeting of theSwedenborgian New Jerusalem Church in April 1789. By 1790, however, interest had turned toopposition. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell(1790) ill. 8 apparently began as a four-page anti-

Swedenborgian pamphlet (Viscomi, "Lessons" 173), but it quickly grew into a full-blown satireflexible enough to accommodate a mixture of prose and verse, with settings spanning heaven andhell and a cast of characters that includes angels and devils, Old Testamentprophets, John Milton,and Swedenborg himself. The section titled Proverbs of Hellcontains some of Blakes best-knownaphorisms, such as The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom (Erdman 35).

Blake apparently intended to publish his narrative poem Tiriel(c. 1789) ill. 9 ill. 10 inconventional letterpress with intaglio engravings, but it remained in manuscript accompanied bytwelve wash drawings. Tiriel, a tyrant who curses his own children, has affinities with bothSophocless Oedipus and Shakespeares King Lear. The poems echoes of Greek tragedy and thedesigns strong classical associations may initially strike readers as derivative, but despite its

traditional elements, Tirielis noteworthy as one of Blakes earliest experiments in constructing hisown mythic world.

Another letterpress project that was never completed, The French Revolution(1791), progressed asfar as the page proofs of the first book, printed for Joseph Johnson. Although the title pageannounces A Poem, in Seven Books, only Book the Firstis known to exist. Based on the eventsof 1789, it mixes fact with fiction, though the proportion of history to myth is much higher than inlater prophetic poems like America ill. 11 and Europe. ill. 12

In addition to his own manuscripts and illuminated books, Blake continued during the 1790s toengrave illustrations for London booksellers, particularly Joseph Johnson. To the third volume ofThe Antiquities of Athens(1794), ill. 13 James Stuart and Nicholas Revetts monumental work on

classical architecture, Blake contributed four engravings after W. Pars of sculptures from theTemple of Theseus(Bentley, Blake Books624). For Erasmus Darwins scientific poem The BotanicGarden(1791-1806), he engraved designs after Fuseli (Fertilization of Egyptand Tornado) ill. 14ill. 15 ill. 16 and illustrations of the famous Portland Vase. Darwins poem and its copious notes

probably suggested some of the biological and geological imagery that appears in Blakesilluminated books of the mid-1790s.

While engraving John Gabriel Stedmans designs for his Narrative, of a Five Years Expedition,Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam(1796), a firsthand account of a slave rebellion, Blake

became a close friend of the author. Though not an abolitionist, Stedman deplored the inhumanconditions to which Africans were subjected on sugar and tobacco plantations. His graphic

descriptions and depictions of the torture inflicted by the slave owners offended some contemporaryreaders, but critics praised the quality of the illustrations. ill. 17 ill. 18 ill. 19

Blake both composed and engraved the six designs for Mary Wollstonecrafts Original Stories fromReal Life(1791), a work of didactic fiction that offers an alternative to the eighteenth-century idealof woman as an emotional creature of more sensibility than sense. Most of the illustrations depictthe rational Mrs. Masons efforts to teach her two young female students the importance of charityand compassion by exposing them to scenes of poverty and suffering. ill. 20 ill. 21

His work for Johnson during the 1790s may have given Blake an opportunity to meet some of themore prominent radical thinkers and writers in England. Besides Wollstonecraft, whose AVindication of the Rights of Woman(1792) attacked contemporary notions about womens

education and role in society, the Johnson circle included William Godwin, the author ofPoliticalJustice(1794); Thomas Holcroft, who was tried on charges of high treason in 1794 along with JohnHorne Tooke; Joseph Priestley, the prominent chemist and radical; and Thomas Paine, author of

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The Rights of Man(1791-92), who fled England in 1792 to avoid arresttipped off, it wasrumored, by Blake himself: Blake advised him immediately to fly, for he said if you are not nowsought I am sure you soon will be. Paine took the hint directly & found he had just escaped intime (Bentley, Blake Records530). The story may well be apocryphal, but it reveals the extent towhich Blakes name was associated with those of the leading radical figures of the decade.

The member of Johnsons circle who played the most important role in Blakes life, however, was

Henry Fuseli, a Swiss artist who had emigrated to England. He and Blake greatly admired eachothers work: Blake considered Fuseli a century ahead of his time (Bentley, Blake RecordsSupplement80), while Fuseli, for his part, pronounced Blake d----d good to steal from (Gilchrist1: 52). The two formed a close friendship, and Blake engraved a number of Fuselis designs, bothfor book illustrations and as separate plates. ill. 22

When Blake returned to illuminated printing in 1793 after a three-year hiatus, his new books sharedsome themes prominent among the authors Johnson published. Oothoon, the victimized heroine ofVisions of the Daughters of Albion(1793), ill. 23 adds her eloquent lament to the discourse onslavery and the rights of women. America a Prophecy(1793), the first of Blakes ContinentalProphecies, treats the American Revolution as an event with mythological as well as historical

dimensions. Paine makes an appearance here, as do Washington, Franklin, and other Americanluminaries, but so do new figures from Blakes personal mythology: Urizen, ill. 24 the wintryoppressor, and Orc, ill. 25 the fiery revolutionary, who act out the conflict on a cosmic scale. ForChildren: The Gates of Paradise, ill. 26 ill. 27 an emblem book comprising eighteen small intaglioetchings accompanied by brief inscriptions on the human condition, also appeared in 1793. Blakelater revised the work as For the Sexes(c. 1820). ill. 28 ill. 29

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Besides illuminated books, Blake designed and executed a number of separate plates in 1793.Although he produced many watercolor drawings of subjects from British history, Edward &Elenor(1793) ill. 1 is his only known engraving in that genre. It commemorates the moment when,according to legend, the queen risked her own life to suck the poison out of her husbands wound.Blakes Job(1793) ill. 2 grew out of drawings dating from the 1780s, and he revised the design forone of his Job watercolors of c. 1805. ill. 3 In Albion rose(1793), also known as Glad DayorTheDance of Albion, a triumphant young male nude stands with outstretched arms before a glorioussunburst. ill. 4 Contrasting with his open and unselfconscious posture are The Accusers of TheftAdultery Murder(1793), who, though armed, crowd stiffly together in fright. ill. 5 Both thesedesigns have affinities with the revolutionary themes ofAmerica: the vigorous young Albionsuggests the youthful revolutionary Orc, while the title of the first state ofThe Accusersechoes the

prediction in Americathat the tyrants end should come with the French Revolution(Erdman 57).

In his next Continental Prophecy, Europe: a Prophecy(1794), Blake continued to mix his personalmythology with history and the ongoing conflicts of his own times. The frontispiece design to this

book is perhaps the most familiar of all Blakes images: an old man, his long white hair and beardblown to one side, kneeling in an orb surrounded by clouds and reaching one arm down to apply apair of compasses to some unseen realm below. ill. 6 In the poem, the eighteen centuries ofChristian history become a female dream of Enitharmon(Erdman 63), whose son Orc illuminatesthe vineyards of red France with the light of revolution (Erdman 66).

In 1794, Blake produced a second collection of lyrics, Songs of Experience, ill. 7 as a companionvolume for his earlierSongs of Innocence. He intended the two sets of poems, which he combinedas Songs of Innocence and of Experience, to illustrate the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul(Erdman 7). ill. 8 In one of the most anthologized poems in the English language, The Tyger,Blake frames this opposition as a question of origins. When the child in Innocenceasks, Little

Lamb who made thee (Erdman 8), he is already sure of the answer, but the question the adultspeaker ofExperienceposes to the Tyger Did he who made the Lamb make thee? (Erdman 25)resists any such certainty.

The problem of origins is also central to the Urizen Books, a series of interrelated illuminatedpoems whose myths echoand subvertGenesis, Paradise Lost, and other traditional creationnarratives. In Blakes version, the act of creation is itself a fall into the material world, where flawedcreators struggle with each other and with the intractable elements of the cosmos. The mostambitious work in this series is The [First] Book of Urizen(1794), ill. 9 a poem in nine chaptersgenerously illustrated with relief-etched designs. Two related poems, The Book of Ahania ill. 10and The Book of Los, ill. 11 followed in 1795. These are briefer and less lavishly illustrated thanUrizen, and their texts are etched in intaglio rather than relief. In the same year, Blake produced hisfinal Continental Prophecy, The Song of Los, ill. 12 consisting ofAfricaand Asia. In these lastthree illuminated books, Blake was experimenting with color printing techniques he would employin his next major graphic project.

The twelve large color-printed drawings of 1795 represent the culmination of Blakes experimentswith a new color-printing technique using opaque, glue-based pigments. The subjects of thesedesigns range from the creation of Adam to the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, and include scenesfrom the Old Testament, Shakespeare, and Blakes own mythology. Lamech and His Two Wives,ill. 13 based on an obscure and infrequently illustrated passage in Genesis 4:23-24, pictures the

destructive passions that lead to murder and regret in the fallen world. An equally dire fate awaitsthose who come to The House of Death, ill. 14 a design based on a passage in Miltons Paradise

Lostalso illustrated by Fuseli. Nebuchadnezzar ill. 15 shows an even lower mental and physicalstatethe human reduced to the animalistic. It has been suggested recently that the color printtraditionally titled Hecate ill. 16 should actually be called The Night of Enitharmons Joy. Such a

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change in title shifts the subject of the print from the traditional witch and moon goddess Hecate toBlakes own mythological representations of the natural world as a place of joyless repression.Enitharmon, as the reigning deity of such a world, separates and casts spells upon the youthful maleand female behind her. Like the full-page designs forThe Song of Los, The Book of Los, andAhania, they were printed from a flat surface instead of a relief-etched plate.

In the same year, the bookseller and publisher Richard Edwards commissioned Blake to illustrate

Edward Youngs Night Thoughts, a long didactic poem in blank verse that had achieved greatpopularity on the continent as well as in England. It was the biggest commercial project Blakewould ever undertake. Within two years, he produced 537 watercolor designs to fit in large marginsaround rectangular blocks of Youngs text set in letterpress. ill. 17 ill. 18 For this prodigious effort,he reportedly received only twenty-one pounds. Blake engraved forty-three of his designs for thefirst of four projected volumes, which was also the last: Edwards went out of business not long afterit appeared in 1797, and the project was abandoned. ill. 19

Meanwhile, Blake had begun work on his own long poem, divided, like Youngs Night Thoughts,into nine Nights. Originally titled Vala, the epic evolved into The Four Zoas, an exploration of thefourfold division of fallen consciousness. It remained in manuscript, heavily revised and

accompanied by designs that, like his Night Thoughtsillustrations, surround the text. Blakeeventually abandoned the poem, probably around 1807, but used material from it in his two laterepics, Milton ill. 20 and Jerusalem. ill. 21 Blakes work on Night Thoughtsalso influenced a

project very different from The Four Zoas: his watercolor illustrations for the poems of ThomasGray, which Flaxman commissioned in 1797 as a present for his wife, Ann. By the following yearBlake had completed a series of 116 watercolor designs around the letterpress text of Grays poems.

ill. 22 ill. 23

After spending two years on the ill-fated Night Thoughts, Blake had difficulty finding work as anengraver. I am laid by in a corner as if I did not Exist, he complained to Cumberland in 1799;Even Johnson & Fuseli have discarded my Graver (Erdman 704). As the decade drew to a close,

he became increasingly dependent on private patrons. One of the most important of these wasThomas Butts, ill. 24 who, beginning about 1799, commissioned paintings on biblical subjects inwatercolors and in an experimental medium Blake called tempera or fresco. These commissions

provided Blake with the creative latitude he craved and the financial support he needed: between1803 and 1810, they brought in some 400 pounds (Bentley, Stranger186), one of Blakes fewreliable sources of income during those lean years.

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In 1800 Blake left London and moved to a cottage near the home of another patron, WilliamHayley, in Felpham, Sussex. Hayley was a popular poet, the author ofEssays on Sculpture(1800),for which Blake engraved three plates, including a portrait of Hayleys son Tom, a student ofFlaxman. ill. 1 The two found common ground in Toms death in May 1800; Blake, recalling his

brother Roberts death thirteen years earlier, wrote to Hayley with a brothers Sympathy for hisloss (Erdman 705). Two months later, Blake visited Hayley at Felpham and was soon making

preparations to move there. Eager to leave London and full of optimism about his new life inSussex, he wrote to Hayley in September, My fingers Emit sparks of fire with Expectations of myfuture labours (Erdman 709).

The stay at Felpham began auspiciously enough. Blake found the place more Spiritual thanLondon, as he wrote to Flaxman on his arrival: Heaven opens here on all sides her golden Gates [.. .] voices of Celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard & their forms more distinctly seen(Erdman 710). The following May, in a letter to Butts, he was still calling Felpham the sweetestspot on Earth (Erdman 715). ill. 2 Blake continued to work on commissions for Butts, while

Hayley kept him busy executing plates for his Life of Cowper, ill. 3 illustrating his Ballads(1802),ill. 4 and even decorating his library with portraits of poets.

As time went on, however, Blake began to resent Hayleys insistence that he spend his time on suchprojects at the expense of his own artistic and poetic endeavors. He came to believe that, as he laterwrote in Milton, Corporeal Friends are Spiritual Enemies (Erdman 98). Hayley was certainlytrying to be a corporeal friend, looking out for Blakes financial interests, teaching him Greek andLatin, and worrying about his mental health. This last role was a familiar one for Hayley: eightyears earlier, he had befriended the poet William Cowper and had tried unsuccessfully to intervenein his struggle with insanity. Blake, however, was not Cowper. Many years later, in his annotationsto Spurzheims Observations on Insanity(1817), he recorded a vision in which Cowper told him,

You retain health & yet are as mad as any of us all [. . .] mad as a refuge from unbelieffromBacon Newton & Locke (Erdman 663).

By 1803, Blake had decided to leave Felpham, but before he could do so an incident occurred thatredoubled his distress. On 12 August, he found a soldier, John Scolfield, in the garden and insistedthat he leave. The soldier refused, the two argued, and in the end Blake evicted him by force.Scolfield accused Blake not only of assault but of sedition, claiming he had damned the king, andBlake was indicted on the charges in October. The penalties for sedition in England during the

Napoleonic wars were severe, and Blake spent the fall of 1803 in anguish, uncertain of his fate.Hayley hired a barrister to defend him, and he was acquitted the following January. Meanwhile, heand Catherine had moved back to London, renting rooms at 17 South Molton Street.

Blakes first major commercial project after his return to London was a set of illustrations forTheGrave, a didactic blank-verse poem by Robert Blair. ill. 5 The publisher, Robert H. Cromek, paidBlake a small sum in 1805 for about twenty designs, with the understanding that he would engravefifteen for publication. After seeing Blakes etching ofDeaths Door, ill. 6 however, Cromekchanged his mind. He saw the ruggedness produced by Blakes innovative use of white-line etchingas mere carelessness (Bentley, Blake Records172) and decided to turn over the engraving ofBlakes designs to the more fashionable Louis Schiavonetti. As with Youngs Night Thoughts, Blakehad invested considerable effort and hope in a project that in the end seemed to have been pulledout from under him. Cromek also rejected Blakes dedicatory vignette To the Queen, ill. 7 but didinclude a portrait of Blake himself engraved after Thomas Phillips. ill. 8 To the extent that Blakesname was known in the early nineteenth century, it was largely as the artist of the Gravedesigns.

While The Gravewas still in progress, Blake began work on what was to become his largestoriginal separate plate, a one-by-three-foot intaglio etching ofChaucers Canterbury Pilgrims. ill. 9Blake later told Linnell that Cromek had offered him twenty-one pounds for a painting of the

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subject, with the understanding that the remuneration for the whole would be made adequate bythe price to be paid to Blake for the Engraving which Blake stipulated he should execute (Bentley,Blake Records464n). Blake became suspicious of Cromeks intentions and refused to part with the

painting; he later learned that Cromek had commissioned a similar design from his friend Stothard.Although Stothard was probably unaware of Cromeks prior arrangement with Blake, both men

became thieves in Blakes eyes. Blake engraved and attempted to market his own design, but it did

not sell well.

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In 1809, Blake exhibited Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrimsalong with fifteen other paintings in hisbrothers shop at 28 Broad Street. The Descriptive Cataloguethat he published to accompany theexhibit is as much an aesthetic manifesto as a catalogue. In it he defends his interpretation ofChaucers characters, presents his case against Venetian and Flemish painting, and argues that allgreat art must be based on the distinct, sharp, and wirey [. . .] bounding line (Erdman 558).Among the other works on display were The Bard, from Gray; Satan Calling Up His Legions; and a

pair of temperas representing the spiritual forms of Nelson and Pitt. By far the largest paintingexhibited was The Ancient Britons, a ten-by-fourteen-foot canvas (now lost) depicting threesurvivors of the last Battle of King Arthur (Erdman 542). It had been commissioned by WilliamOwen Pughe, a Welsh antiquarian described by Robert Southey as a good simple-hearted, Welsh-headed man, [. . .] whose memory is the great storehouse of all Cymric tradition and lore of everykind (Bentley, Blake Records226). The three surviving Britons in the painting, according to Blake,represent the human sublime, the human pathetic, and the human reason: They wereoriginally one man, who was fourfold: he was self-divided, and his real humanity slain on the stems

of generation (Erdman 543). This division of the fourfold man was the subject of Blakes own epicpoems: the abandoned Four Zoasmanuscript and the two illuminated books, Milton ill. 1 andJerusalem, ill. 2 that grew out of it.

The title page ofMilton a Poem(c. 1804-18) is dated 1804, but it was not until c. 1811 that Blakeproduced the first three copies, and he continued working on the fourth until c. 1818. The poem isdivided into two parts: in the first, Milton, inspired by a bards song, descends from heaven andreturns to earth in order to correct the errors he had left behind; in the second, Miltons femaleemanation, Ololon, also returns to earth, and the poem culminates in their apocalyptic union.Throughout Milton, Blake manipulates time and space in unconventional ways, and his charactersidentities change with disconcerting ease. In the designs, Blake experimented with new etchingtechniques that give the book a rough, primitive appearance. ill. 3

Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, at 100 plates Blakes longest illuminated book, tookeven longer to complete. Also dated 1804 on its title page, it was not printed in its entirety untilabout 1820. By the end of his life, Blake had hand-colored one copy, but he was unable to find a

buyer for it. The poem tells of efforts to awaken the self-divided and sleeping giant Albion andreunite him with his female portion (or emanation), Jerusalem. Albions cruel sons and daughtersand the nature goddess Vala impose obstacles and temptations, but Los (the artists imagination)eventually triumphs, with the help of Jesus, who is more prominent here than in any of Blakesother illuminated books.

While writing his epic Milton, Blake was also at work on several series of watercolor drawingsillustrating John Miltons own poems. He had already produced a set of designs forComusfor theRev. Joseph Thomas in 1801. ill. 4 Now he illustrated Paradise Lost(1807) ill. 5 and the NativityOde(1809) ill. 6 for Thomas and began producing designs for the same three poems for Butts aswell. He later added illustrations forLAllegroand Il Penseroso(c. 1816-20) ill. 7 ill. 8 andParadise Regained(1821). ill. 9 Besides much-needed income, Blakes Milton illustrations

provided him with another vehicle for interpreting the works of his predecessor as an epic poet.

Despite his efforts, the decade from 1808 to 1818 was not a profitable one for Blake. His one-manshow in 1809 had not been a success. His dealings with Cromek had left him feeling bitter andcheated. Commercial work was scarce; there is no record of his having produced any commercialengravings from 1806 to 1813. During the second half of the decade he was at work on Flaxmansillustrations to Hesiod ill. 10 as well as plates for Reess Cyclopaedia ill. 11 and Wedgwoods

catalogue of earthenware and porcelain, ill. 12 all probably at Flaxmans recommendation. For themost part, however, he remained in obscurity.

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It was at this low point in his fortunes in 1818 that Blake first met John Linnell, the friend andpatron who was to provide him with a circle of dedicated followers and a series of creative projectsfor the remaining years of his life. Linnell, then a twenty-six-year-old landscape painter, wonBlakes friendship both by bringing him workwhich he desperately neededand by attempting tounderstand him on his own terms. I never saw anything the least like madness, Linnell laterrecalled, for I never opposed him spitefully as many did but being really anxious to fathom if

possible the amount of truth which might be in his most startling assertions I generally met with asufficiently rational explanation in the most really friendly & conciliatory tone (Bentley, BlakeRecords257).

Through Linnell, Blake met John Varley, a fellow artist and avid astrologer, and in 1819 begansketching for him a series ofVisionary Heads. Varley, who would later publish a Treatise onZodiacal Physiognomy(1828), ill. 1 took literally Blakes claim that these historical and imaginaryfigures appeared and sat for him, and he encouraged Blake to record their features. By 1825, Blakehad sketched over 100 of them, including Solomon, The Man who built the Pyramids, Merlin the

magician, ill. 2 Edward I and William Wallace (king and revolutionary together on one sheet), ill. 3and Harold Killed at the Battle of Hastings. ill. 4 Cancer, ill. 5 an astrological sign associated

with Blakes birth, may be in part a caricatured self-portrait. The vigorous musculature ofOld ParrWhen Young ill. 6 might be interpreted as an embodiment of Blakes own artistic energies eveninto old age. The most famous visionary head, The Ghost of a Flea, was later engraved by Linnelland published in Varleys Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy(1828). ill. 7

Blakes professional relationship with Linnells doctor, Robert John Thornton, was somewhatrockier. Linnell introduced the two in 1819, and soon afterward Blake produced four small designsin relief etching to illustrate the third edition of Thorntons school text of Virgils Pastorals(1821).ill. 8 Thornton apparently rejected these, for Blake soon set to work on preliminary drawings for

execution in the more conventional medium of wood engraving. These engravings alsodisappointed Thornton, who decided to publish them only after hearing them praised by Linnell andother artists. ill. 9 Even then, he prefaced them with the disclaimer that they display less of artthan genius (Bentley, Blake Records271).

Thornton may not have appreciated the rough simplicity of Blakes Virgil designs, but they were tohave a profound influence on a younger generation of artists who also came to know Blake throughLinnell. One of them, Samuel Palmer, called the engravings visions of [. . .] Paradise; models ofthe exquisitest pitch of poetry (Bentley, Blake Records271). The group, which called itself TheAncients, also included Edward Calvert, George Richmond, Frederick Tatham, and others. Theyreferred to the two rooms at 3 Fountain Court in the Strand, where the Blakes lived from 1821, asthe House of the Interpreter, an allusion to a passage from Bunyans Pilgrims Progressthat Blakehad illustrated. Blake had moved there because of straitened finances, which also forced him to sellhis collection of old-master prints that same year.

Linnell was responsible for two major projects that occupied Blakes final years: illustrations to theBook of Job ill. 10 and to Dantes Divine Comedy. Between 1823 and 1825, Blake engravedtwenty-one designs based mainly on watercolor illustrations ofJobthat he had done earlier forButts. In 1824, he commenced a series of 102 watercolor illustrations of Dante, a project cut short

by his death in 1827. ill. 11 ill. 12 According to Gilchrist, Blake, though in his late sixties, beganstudying Italian at this time in order to read Dante in the original (1: 334).

In the final years of his life, Blake suffered from recurring bouts of an unknown disease that hecalled that Sickness to which there is no name (Erdman 781). The symptoms he described in hisletters Shivring Fit[s], a gnawing Pain in the Stomach, a deathly feel all over the limbsare consistent with biliary cirrhosis, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to the fumes

produced when acid is applied to copper plates (Robson and Viscomi) Blakes infernal method

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of etching his illuminated books by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal (Erdman39). In a letter to Linnell dated 3 July 1827, he mentioned a relapse brought on, he thought, by atrip to Hampstead: I find I am not so well as I thought [. . .] I have been yellow accompanied by allthe old Symptoms (Erdman 785). Blake had visited Hampstead often since Linnell had movedthere three years earlier, even though he considered the place unhealthy. When I was young, hewrote to Linnell, Hampstead Highgate Hornsea Muswell Hill & even Islington & all places North

of London always laid me up the day after & sometimes two or three days with precisely the sameComplaint & the same torment of the Stomach (Erdman 775). Despite his symptoms, Blakeexpressed hopes of a quick recovery, but they proved unfounded. A little over a month later, on 12August 1827, he died in his rooms at 3 Fountain Court.

Even in the last stages of his illness, Blake continued to work. One of his final projects was acolored print of the frontispiece ofEuropecommissioned by Tatham, Ancient of Dayscopy F, onwhich he was reportedly at work just three days before his death (Bentley, Blake Records109, 502).A set of watercolor illustrations to Bunyans Pilgrims Progressand an illuminated manuscript ofGenesiswere left unfinished. ill. 13

To the devoted circle of young artists who surrounded Blake in his final years, even his death

seemed beautiful. He died in a most glorious manner, Richmond wrote Palmer soon afterwards:He said He was going to that Country he had all His life wished to see & expressed Himself Happyhoping for Salvation through Jesus ChristJust before he died His Countenance became fairHiseyes brightend and He burst out in Singing of the things he Saw in Heaven (Bentley, BlakeRecords346-47).

Blake was buried on 17 August 1827, with The Ancients in attendance (Bentley, Blake Records22).In keeping with his own wishes as reported by Smith, he joined his parents, aunt, and brother inBunhill Fields cemetery (Bentley, Blake Records475-76). Obituaries tended to emphasize his

personal quirks at the expense of his literary and artistic achievements. The Literary Chronicle, forexample, described him as one of those ingenious persons [. . .] whose eccentricities were still

more remarkable than their professional abilities (1 September 1827, qtd. in Bentley, BlakeRecords351), a view that persisted until Gilchrists Life of William Blake, Pictor Ignotusappearedin 1863, finally securing his reputation as a major poet and artist.

After Blakes death, Catherine lived first with Linnell in Cirencester Place, then, beginning in 1828,with Tatham until shortly before her death in 1831. She continued to sell Blakes works, mostnotably The Characters in Spensers Faerie Queene, which brought a high enough price from theEarl of Egremont in 1829 to support her for the few years that remained. After her death, Blakesunsold works were left in the hands of Tatham, who reportedly destroyed many of them.

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