Blake, William

poet, painter, and engraver, born in London, where, with rare intervals, he spent his life a mystic from his very boyhood; apprenticed to an engraver, whom he a isted with his drawings; started on original lines of his own as illustrator of books and a painter; devoted his leisure to poetry; wrote "Songs of Innocence," "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," "Gates of Paradise," and "Songs of Experience"; was an intensely religious man of deep spiritual insight, most vivid feeling and imagination; illustrated Young's "Night Thoughts," Blair's "Grave," and the "Book of Job." He was a man of stainle character but eccentric habits, and had for wife an angel, Catherine Boucher (1757-1828).