URIZEN IN CHAINS 106 LOS 108 MIRTH AND HER COMPANIONS 124 ALBION 144 THE PRAYER OF THE INFANT JESUS 166 JOB SERIES, DESIGN V 182 JOB SERIES, DESIGN XIV 184 FROM DANTE SERIES 186 WILLIAM BLAKE: THE MAN CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD AND APPRENTICESHIP William Blake was born on November 28th, 1757, at 28 Broad Street, Carnaby Market, Golden Square. To-day a large house stands in Broad Street numbered 28, to which is attached a blue disk announcing that William Blake, Poet and Artist, was born there. The house looks old and shabby, and may well have stood a hundred years; but on inquiry one finds that it is a recent erection, and that of Blake's actual house not one stone has been left upon another. One walks through Broad Street and its neighbouring streets hoping to see at least one group of buildings as Blake saw them. But all has changed, and except for a block of houses on one side of Golden Square, there is nothing to remind one of the sharp transitions that a few years can effect. Even the sounds have changed. From the doors and windows of Number 28 is heard day and night the whir of machinery ceaselessly at work to supply the inhabitants of Pall Mall and St James's with electric light. Carnaby Market has vanished, and its glowing colours have reappeared in Berwick Street, where fruits are displayed on public stalls, and where from time to time titled ladies are known to explore in search of a pair of boots, or some other indispensable article of clothing. Great ugly buildings--a brewery, an infirmary given up during the war to Belgian refugees, warehouses--afflict the eye at every turn; and through the open windows of the upper stories the social regenerator may detect the countless bent backs and expert fingers of tailor hands turning out perfect equipments for noblemen all over the country who come to Regent Street, Maddox Street, and Conduit Street to be measured and fitted and tried. In Blake's day the transitions in Broad Street were more clearly defined. It had been a fashionable quarter, and still retained a vivid memory of its past glory. The new buildings were shops of a good solid kind, which struck the eye like vivid green paint as they sprang up side by side with the older private houses that time had softened and mellowed.