William Blake, a London hosier's son, began having mystical visions at the age of eight and came to see his life as a revelation of eternity. While eking out a living as an engraver, he offered, quite unsuccessfully, his great series of prophetic books, Songs of Innocence and Experience. For Ackroyd, biographer of both Charles Dickens and T. S. Eliot, Blake was a visionary, who long before Freud saw warfare as a form of repressed sexuality and believed there were eternal states of rage, desire and selfhood through which a man passes, keeping his soul intact. The tragedy was that he had the capacity to become a great public and religious poet, but instead turned in upon himself, gaining neither reputation nor influence in his lifetime.
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