On the subject of Celts and the Celtic, Blake maintains a voluble reticence. That is to say, nowhere in his writings does he mention them by name; yet we know, from a whole panoply of intratextual and extratextual sources, of his close involvement with speculative antiquarianism, with the ‘matter of ancient Britain’, with the whole issue of historical explanation, especially as intertwined with a particular tradition of Biblical exegesis.

For example, there is throughout his work a continuing and evolving topos that links the history of Britain with the twelve tribes of Israel, making of Britain a nation that is at the same time an inalienable homeland and an unending diaspora, a foreign body in and to itself, an envelope for displacement that is at the same time a fons et origo, a partially obscured hieroglyph, the challenge of which for the interpreter is to restore it to its putative previous legibility. There is, to take a more specific example, the lost painting ‘The Ancient Britons’, the account of which in the exhibition advertisement of 1809 begins with a verse that has been shown to be a translation from the Welsh Trials: