The son of a hosier, William Blake had little formal education and no money; but nonetheless became in the eyes of critics, one of the very greatest English poets and painters - a modern prophet. Blake came of age as an artist during the French Revolution, and his pictures of gloating serpents and fiery figures are some of the earliest of the great romantic statements.

Blake was sent to drawing shool at the age of ten, and then was apprenticed to an engraver. When the apprenticeship ended, he studied briefly at the Royal Academy for painting. He pored over the work of Michelangelo, whom he admired for his discovery of an ideal spirit clothed in human form. His other love was for the Middle Ages. Many of Blake's lines curl in Romanes...