William Blake

William Blake would have been the first to understand that the biography of anybody ought really to begin with the words, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” If we...

The chief movement of Blake either in art or literature was the first publication of the batch of his own allegorical works. “The Gates of Paradise” came first, and was followed...

Stothard, the elegant gentleman, the man of sensibility, the eighteenth century æsthete, cast his condescending eye upon the Middle Ages. He was of that age and school that only...

BUT when we have reached this point--that this ugly element in Blake was an intrusion of Blake’s mere theory of things--we have come, I think, very close to the true principle t...

GIVEN these three principles, the epoch we discuss can be defined. The eighteenth century was primarily the return of reason--and of Rome. It was the coming to the top of the st...

This explanation is really essential to the understanding of Blake, because to the modern mind it is so easy to understand him in the opposite sense. In the ordinary modern mean...

Now it is in this sense that we may truly say that Blake (upon one side of his mind) was something worse than a maniac--he was a faddist. He did permit aspirations or prejudices...

Nevertheless, I do not accept this dull definition by locality; I think it is a spirit in Asia, and even a spirit that can be named. It is approximately described as an insane s...