This little book has had for its object, not the imparting of any new facts about him, nor the technical discussion of his works, but the reverent and sympathetic meditation on our own National Blake treasures, with a view to understanding the great spirit who projected them. I have attempted to point out their essential beauties and value, not from the vantage-ground of the connoisseur, but from the point of view of the sympathetic observer. I have sought to explain, to justify, the affinity felt for them by those to whom the doctrine of "Art for art's sake" is not an all-satisfying thesis, who would fain find in plastic art a language expressive of spiritual intuitions and revelation. Blake's mission undoubtedly was to discover in his representations of visible phenomena the spiritual cause, or correspondence, of which it appeared to him to be merely a type. How far his ideas are consistent with the conditions and scope of an art which must necessarily concern itself with surfaces and appearances, it is hard to say. His view of art's function was largely, but not wholly true, yet in its special application was profoundly noble and salutary. Exaggerated, perhaps, in his recoil from the materialism and preoccupation with physical and natural beauties as ends in themselves which characterized the art of his day, he set to work to liberate one hitherto unsuspected aspect of art's functions, at the expense of belittling the recognized and practised articles of belief recited in her honour by the masters of his time. The innerness of art; that is what he was concerned about. Impetuously, passionately he stormed along the rugged track he had set himself to explore, ignoring much of beauty and truth to either side of him, because his eyes were so steadfastly fixed on his goal. To-day we acclaim him as the heroic and devoted priest of a new and yet old altar to Art, the flame of which has been kept burning since his time by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites, and Mr. G. F. Watts. INDEX Academy, Royal, Blake attends the schools of, 6, 50. Academy, Royal, Exhibits at, 8, 14, 43. Academy, Royal, A grant from, 50. _Accusers, The Three_, 121. _Ahania, The Book of_, 23, 120. _America_, 23; described, 107; a cancel-sheet for, 121. _Ancient of Days, The_, 56, 112. Apprenticeship to Basire, 5, 20. _Atonement, The_, 191. _Ballads on Animals_, illustrations to Hayley's, 31, 137. _Bard, The_, 164. Basire, Blake apprenticed to, 5; his influence, 150. _Bathsheba at the Bath_, 167. Blake, Robert, 4, 15, 133; his death, 15.