SOURCE: “An Antinomian Born for Glory,” in Cross Currents, Vol. 47, No. 1, Spring, 1997, pp. 114-17.

In the following review, Bauer offers a positive evaluation of Blake.

William Blake remains, for many readers, a distant, imposing figure. Those who enjoy his poetry are usually familiar with the early work, the seemingly simple Songs of Innocence and of Experience or The Book of Thel. The later prophetic books, Milton or Jerusalem, for example, with their declamatory tone and private mythology, may seem virtually impenetrable. It is one of the great virtues of his new biography, Blake, that Peter Ackroyd assumes the accessibility of all Blake’s work. Ackroyd does not brush away the difficulties and, at times, admits that Blake’s complexities have never been and may never be fully unraveled. Yet he argues that “much of [Blake’s] prophetic symbolism can actually be understood without undue difficulty, but it requires...