ABSTRACT
William Blake on a number of occasions expressed extravagant admiration for Paine, comparing him on one occasion to Jesus and claiming him to be a 'worker of miracles'. The obvious starting point for a discussion of Blake's attitudes towards the Revolution is the letterpress volume The French Revolution dated 1791, 'a poem in seven books' of which only the first is known in a single copy in the Huntington Library. The idea of Paine as a demonic spirit moving from country to country setting each one ablaze has certain logic if one also brings into account Paine's role in the American Revolution. The imposition of rational principles was the key to the post-revolutionary world; for Blake the triumph of rationalism represented the last gasp of the old order itself. The man-created gods of Volney and Paine may also have contributed to Blake's account of Urizen in The First Book of Urizen.
