Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 | Page 9

seem to have no soul, and whose chequered vicissitudes may be contemplated rather with curiosity for the lessons they convey, than with personal sympathy. Among contemporary biographers, Mr Hepworth Dixon has already established for himself a name of some distinction by his popular lives of William Penn and John Howard; nor will his credit suffer a decline in the instance of the memoir now before us--that of the gallant and single-minded patriot, Robert Blake. Of this fine old English worthy, republican as he was, the Tory Hume freely affirms, that never man, so zealous for a faction, was so much respected and even esteemed by his opponents. 'Disinterested, generous, liberal; ambitious only of true glory, dreadful only to his avowed enemies; he forms one of the most perfect characters of the age, and the least stained with those errors and vices which were then so predominant.'[3] Yet hitherto the records of this remarkable man have been scanty in matter, and scattered in form--the most notable being Dr Johnson's sketch in the Gentleman's Magazine, and another in the Encyclop?dia Britannica. Mr Dixon has consulted several scarce works, of genuine though obsolete authority, and a large mass of original documents and family papers, in preparing the present able and attractive memoir; not omitting a careful examination of the squibs, satires, and broadsides of that time, in his endeavour to trace, in forgotten nooks and corners, the anecdotes and details requisite, as he says, to complete a character thus far chiefly known by a few heroic outlines. We propose taking a brief survey of his life-history of the great admiral and general at sea--the 'Puritan Sea-King,' as Mr Dixon more characteristically than accurately calls his hero. A sea-king he was, every inch of him; but to dub him Puritan, is like giving up to party what was meant for British mankind. To many, the term suggests primarily a habit of speaking through the nose; and Blake had thundered commands through too many a piping gale and battle blast for that.
Robert Blake was born at Bridgewater, in August 1599. His father, Humphrey Blake, was a merchant trading with Spain--a man whose temper seems to have been too sanguine and adventurous for the ordinary action of trade, finally involving him in difficulties which clouded his latter days, and left his family in straitened circumstances: his name, however, was held in general respect; and we find that he lived in one of the best houses in Bridgewater, and twice filled the chair of its chief magistrate. The perils to which mercantile enterprise was then liable--the chance escapes and valorous deeds which the successful adventurer had to tell his friends and children on the dark winter nights--doubtless formed a part of the food on which the imagination of young Blake, 'silent and thoughtful from his childhood,' was fed in the 'old house at home.' At the Bridgewater grammar-school, Robert received his early education, making tolerable acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and acquiring a strong bias towards a literary life. This penchant was confirmed by his subsequent career at Oxford, where he matriculated at sixteen, and where he strove hard but fruitlessly for scholarships and fellowships at different colleges. His failure to obtain a Merton fellowship has been attributed to a crotchet of the warden's, Sir Henry Savile, in favour of tall men: 'The young Somersetshire student, thick-set, fair complexioned, and only five feet six, fell below his standard of manly beauty;' and thus the Cavalier warden, in denying this aspirant the means of cultivating literature on a little university oatmeal, was turning back on the world one who was fated to become a republican power of the age. This shining light, instead of comfortably and obscurely merging in a petty constellation of Alma Mater, was to become a bright particular star, and dwell apart. The avowed liberalism of Robert may, however, have done more in reality to shock Sir Henry, than his inability to add a cubit to his stature. It is pleasant to know, that the 'admiral and general at sea' never outgrew a tenderness for literature--his first-love, despite the rebuff of his advances. Even in the busiest turmoil of a life teeming with accidents by flood and field, he made it a point of pride not to forget his favourite classics. Nor was it till after nine years' experience of college-life, and when his father was no longer able to manage his res angusta vit?, that Robert finally abandoned his long-cherished plans, and retired with a sigh and last adieu from the banks of the Isis.
When he returned to Bridgewater, in time to close his father's eyes, and superintend the arrangements of the family, he was already remarkable for that 'iron will, that grave demeanour, that free and dauntless spirit,' which so distinguished his after-course.