W HEN Alexander Gilchrist published, in 1863, thirty-
six years after the death of that great man, his
Life of William Blake, he found it necessary to justify
himself, in the very first paragraph, for writing a of a
painter and poet ignored by biographical dictionaries, and
passed over in silence by critics of poetry and painting alike.
Gilchrist, in quoting the opinions of Fuseli and Flaxman that
'the time would come when the finest of Blake's designs
would be as much sought after and treasured . . . as those of
Michael Angelo now' was exposing the critical reputations
of these two distinguished artists to a grave risk -- a risk, as
it happens, that they have triumphantly survived; for dur-
ing the first half of this century, Blake's reputation both as
poet and painter has so risen, that it is doubtful whether the
discovery of a new drawing by Michaelangelo could have
caused more widespread delight, than the discovery, in 1949,
of a new Blake painting, among the lumber of an English
country house in Devonshire. (Many of Blake's finest
paintings have lain as lumber for a hundred years, and many
are irretrievably lost.) The name of Michaelangelo, in-
deed, seems to recur in connexion with Blake in an odd
way; for Blake himself once described a mystical diagram
by Jacob Boehme as equal to Michaelangelo, the painter he
himself chose as his measure of supreme greatness; and if
to-day the name of William Blake stands with those of
Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton among English poets;
and occupies a place altogether unique among English
painters, it remains as difficult to explain why this should be
so, as why Boehme's diagram should be as great as Michael-
angelo. Blake, as a painter, is clearly no more the equal of
the depictor of Adam, than as a master of language, he can
be compared with Chaucer or Milton, still less with Shakes-
peare; and yet, all these strange comparisons remain just.
The genius of William Blake remains one of the most re-
markable and potent that England has ever produced. One
might go so far as to say that Blake is one of the half-dozen

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