Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/92

 68 IV

lived in Poland Street for five years, and issued from it the Songs of Innocence (1789), and, in the same year, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in 1790, and, in 1791, the first book of The French Revolution: a Poem in Seven Books, which Gilchrist says was published anonymously, in ordinary type, and without illustrations, by the bookseller Johnson. No copy of this book is known to exist. At this time he was a fervent believer in the new age which was to be brought about by the French Revolution, and he was much in the company of revolutionaries and freethinkers, and the only one among them who dared wear the 'bonnet rouge' in the street. Some of these, Thomas Paine, Godwin, Holcroft, and others, he met at Johnson's shop in St. Paul's Churchyard, where Fuseli and Mary