ABSTRACT
Blake has not hitherto been regarded as belonging to the Greek Revival, even though several of his closest friends-Flaxman, Fuseli, and Cumberland – were among its moving spirits. Blake may have met Taylor through Cumberland, who knew both men well, or through Flaxman, at whose house Taylor delivered twelve lectures on Platonism, presumably before 1787, when Flaxman departed for Italy, there to remain for several years. The living spirits of light and water, reborn in their everlasting youth from Blake’s imagination, are age-old. They enact the perpetual cycle of the descent and return of souls between an eternal and a temporal world, and the journey through life, under the symbol of a crossing of the sea. There may be a recollection of the group of three figures in Blake’s illustration to Gray in the group of three who ply the shuttles in the later composition.
