Critical Response
Robinson wrote an essay about Blake's works in 1810 and described Europe and America as "mysterious and incomprehensible rhapsody". Blake's fame grew in 1816 with an entry in A Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland, which included Europe among the works of "an eccentric but very ingenious artist".
Northrop Frye regarded it as Blake's "greatest achievement" in "a kind of 'free verse' recitativo in which the septenarius is mixed with lyrical meters." According to John Beer: "The drift of the argument in Europe is to show how a Christian message that has been veiled, and cults exalting virginity, have together fostered the so-called Enlightenment philosophy which left no place for the visionary."
Read more about this topic: Europe A Prophecy
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