British writer, biographer of William Blake; born in Newington Green, England, in 1828. He was educated at University College, London, and was called to the bar in 1849, but never practiced. He devoted himself to literary criticism, and after collecting, in Yorkshire, materials for a life of Etty, the painter, he settled in Guildford in 1853. The Life of Etty appeared in 1855. The following year he moved to Chelsea and began work upon his Life of Blake. Before it was completed he died on the 30th of November 1861. Mrs. Blake, with the aid of W. M. Rossetti, finished the biography in 1863, and in 1880 issued a second edition, with a memoir of her husband.
