BOOKS.
DIXON'S LIFE OF BLAKE..
OF English naval worthies after Nelson, Drake is perhaps the most popularly famous; for he was, as Southey, has remarked, the last hero to whom something of a mythic character was attached : he was supposed to work by witchcraft. In solid estimation, Blake probably ranks next to Nelson : in the judgment of a re- mote posterity, which looks at men and events apart from the fear and vanity that agitate contemporaries, he may possibly take an equal place : he was opposed to greater commanders than Nel- son ever encountered, and in his successful attacks upon land fortifications he developed a new principle of naval warfare.
Blake, like Cromwell, is one of those rare examples where a man after reaching the maturity of middle age snatches distinction per saltum in a mode of life differing from all his previous ha- bits. He was born in August 1599. His own expressed vo- cation was towards learning; which his father, a man of some family and landed property, as well as an extensive merchant, gra- tified by sending him to Oxford. Robert Blake remained at the University for nine years ; applying himself to study, and taking the degree of Master of Arts, but missing a Fellowship, either from ill luck, or from personal distaste to himself, and to his li- beral politics and strictly religions principles, both of which were early displayed. In his twenty-seventh year, Blake was recalled home on account of the failing health and embarrassed circum- stances of his father. Speculation had been the merchant's bane; and he soon died, leaving his widow and nine children to the care of Robert. Over the next epoch of Blake's career there would appear to be some degree of obscurity; for he could hardly have educated and placed the family on the wreck of the paternal fortunes with- out some additional source of income. Be this as it may, the Ox- ford scholar, in the prime of manhood, at once applied himself to the task imposed upon him, and settled down at Bridgewater, " to i do his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him."
When Charles the First raised his standard atNottingham in Au- gust 1642, the future Admiral was still residing in the family house at Bridgewater, in the position of a highly respectable resident of a country town. The civil war at once called him into action ; and every step of his career developed his extraordinarygenius for affairs. He was one of the first to raise a body of men in the neighbour- hood by his own influence and exertions. At the siege of Bristol he commanded a post, and held it for more than twenty-four hours after Flames had surrendered the city ; when he successfully retired, on learning that the place had really fallen. Blake's defence of Lyme against Prince Rupert's brother, Maurice, with a large army, may fully vie with Clive's celebrated defence of Arcot. His daring seizure of Taunton, and the resolution with which he held it, was a remarkable example of instinctive strategy ; for he placed himself on the very centre of the Royalist line of route, interrupting their communications. His first important naval business was the difficult task of opposing the freebooting Princes Rupert and Maurice, who under a commission from Charles the Second were sweeping the seas as corsairs. Of practical seaman- ship Blake could know little or nothing; but it was the established custom in those days to intrust warlike operations at sea to land- officers ; and the theory still survives inour modern distinction of the captain (or commander) who fights and the " master " who sails the ship. But though he was fifty years old before he took the command of a vessel, Blake exhibited an intuitive perception of naval tactics. He blockaded Rupert in his head-quarters of Kinsale : when the Prince escaped him during the storms of coming winter, the Re- publican Admiral chased him from port to port with the vivacious activity of Nelson, till he drove the brother Princes to the West Indies, despoiled of nearly all their ships, and reduced to the des- perate condition of buccaneers. Despite a rock-bound coast, a dangerous navigation, and a stormy sea, he forced the strongholds of the Royalists to surrender at Scilly and Jersey. He displayed the skill of a naval administrator, the zeal of a naval reformer at every opportunity, and may be said to have roughly fashioned the modern naval system of Great Britain. When, two years after his first appearance as a nautical commander, he encountered the most renowned Dutch Admirals—Von Tromp, De Rafter, and others—the Englishman displayed no want of seamanship. In two years more, he had by a series of desperate battles nearly destroyed the navy of Holland and compelled the Dutch to sue for peace. The remaining five years of his life were oc- cupied in the Mediterranean and the Spanish war. It is, from Anti-Papal feelings, about the best known part of his career. He compelled the Grand Duke of Tuscany to pay for his seizure of English vessels, and the Pope for allowing their Bale in his ports ; he attacked Tunis, burned the pirate fleet under the guns of the castles, and terrified the rest of the piratical states into submission. His crowning glory was the attack of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe. In spite of the castles commanding the entrance, and batteries erected along the shore of the harbour, and the Spanish treasure fleet ranged to support itself and them, Blake stood in, " burned, sank, and destroyed" every vessel, and withdrew with- out the loss of a ship and with that of very few men. The stanch- est Royalists admitted the greatness of the deed. Clarendon calls it " miraculous." Heath says, " of all the desperate attempts that were ever made in the world against an enemy by sea, this of noble • Robert Blake, Admiral and General at Sea. Based on Family and State Papers. By Hepworth Dixon. Published by Chapman and Hall. Blake's is not inferior to any." Other writers, from Sir Philip Warwick downwards, have attributed -Blake's escape after the action to luck—to the change of wind, which enabled him to leave the harbour : upon this Mr. Dixon remarks— "To these criticisms it would probably be a sufficient answer to say, that during his whole naval career the great Admiral never made a serious mis- take : even his unequal and disastrous encounter with Tromp in the Downs was defensible on political grounds. The best proof, however, that he could i bring his fleet out of the harbour when its work was done, is the fact that he did bring it out ; had it appeared to him desirable for the ships to remain at anchor under the castle guns, there is no reason to believe that they would have been unable to hold their position. Masters of the harbour for twelve hours, it would have been easy to remain masters for twelve days. Nor is it clear that the change of wind took place before the fleet quitted the bay, as accounts written on the spot represent that change at occurring after the muster in the offing, when a speedy return to Spain, not an escape from Santa Crus, figures as the great object of providendal intemoaition." This was Blake's last great exploit. It was late in life when he be to " suffer a sea change"; his exertions for eight or nine years had. been incessant ; his confinement to the ship great throughout the whole period, and long-continued towards its dose. Naval sanitary reform was reserved for Cook, and scurvy was then rife in all navies ; Blake had not escaped it; his system was irritated by a wound imperfectly cured ; and he was approaching sixty. Perhaps his mind might be disturbed by the affair of his favourite brother, Humphrey, who had gone to sea for the first time in com- mand of a ship, and was backward at Santa Cruz. The genial dis- position of Humphrey had made him a personal favourite, and the captains entreated that he might be sent home quietly : but Blake was inexorable. The Court was compelled to find him guilty; but they sent in a petition to the Admiral praying him to remit the sentence and allow the favourite to proceed to England in his own ship. This prayer was granted ; but Blake appended to the docu- ment, "He shall never be employed more." The final business in which Blake was engaged:was the release of some captives of the Sallee rovers. That act of humanity done, the Admiral turned his_thoughts towards the home he was never to see.
"This crowning act of a. virtuous and honourable life accomplished, the dying Admiral turned his thoughts anxiously towards the green hills of his native land. The letter of Cromwell, the thanks of Parliament, the jewelled ring sent to him by an admiring country, all reached him together out at sea. These tokens of grateful remembrance caused him a profound emotion. Without after-thought, without selfish impulse, he had served the Common- wealth day and night, earnestly, anxiously, and with rare devotion. Eng- land was grateful to her hero. With the letter of thanks from Cromwell a new set of instructions arrived, which allowed him to return with part of his fleet, leaving a squadron of some fifteen or twenty frigates to ride before the Bay of Cadiz and intercept its traders : with their usual deference to his judgment and experience, the Protector and Board of Admiralty left the appointment to the command entirely with him ; and as his gallant friend Stayner was gone to England, where he received a knighthood and other well-won honours from the Government, he raised Captain Steaks, the hero of Porto Ferino and a commander of rare promise, to the responsible position of his Vice-Admiral in the Spanish seas. "Hoisting his pennon on his old flag-ship the St. George, Blake saw for the last time the spires and cupolas, the masts and towers, before which he had kept his long and victorious vigils. When he put in for fresh water at Cascaes road he was very weak. beseech God to strengthen him,' was the fervent prayer of the English resident at Lisbon, as he departed on the homeward voyage. While the ships rolled through the tempestuous waters of the Bay of Biscay, he grew every day worse and worse. Some gleams of the old spirit broke forth as they approached the latitude of England. He inquired often and anxiously if the white cliffs were yet in sight. He longed to behold once more the swelling downs, the free cities, the goodly churches of his native land. But he was now dying beyond all doubt. Many of his favourite officers silently and mournfully crowded round his bed, anxious to catch the last tones of a voice which had so often called them to glory and victory. Others stood at the poop and forecastle, eagerly examining every speck and line on the horizon, in hope of being first to catch the welcome glimpse of land. Though they were coming home crowned with laurels, gloom and pain were in every face. At last the Lizard was announced. Shortly afterwards the bold cliffs and bare hills of Cornwall loomed out grandly in the distance. But it was now too late for the dying hero. He had sent for the captains and other great officers of his fleet to bid them farewell ; and while they were yet in his cabin, the un- dulating hills of Devonshire, glowing with the tints of early autumn, came full in view. As the ships rounded flame Head, the spires and masts of Ply- mouth, the wooded heights of Mount Edgecombe, the low island of St. Ni- cholas, the rocky steeps at the Hoe, Mount Batten, the citadel, the many picturesque and familiar features of that magnificent harbour rose one by one to sight. But the eyes which had so yearned to behold this scene once more were at that very instant closing in death. Foremost of the vic- torious squadron, the St. George rode with its precious burden into the- Sound ; and just as it came into full view of the eager thousands crowding the beach, the pier-heads, the walls of the citadel, or darting in countless boats over the smooth waters between St. Nicholas and the docks, ready to catch the first glimpse of the hero of Santa Crus, and salute him with a true English welcome, he, in his silent cabin, in the midst of his lion-hearted comrades, now sobbing like little children, yielded up his soul to God. " The mournfulnews soon spread through the fleet and in the town. The melancholy enthusiasm of the people knew no bounds, and the national love and admiration expressed itself in the solemn splendour of his funeral rites. The day of his death the corpse was left untouched in its cabin, as something sacred; but next morning skilful embalmers were employed to open it ; and in presence of all the great officers of the fleet and port the bowels were taken out and placed in an urn, to be buried in the great church in Ply- mouth. The body, embalmed and wrapped in lead, was then put on board again and carried round by sea to Greenwich; where it lay in state several days, on the spot since consecrated to the noblest hospital for seamen in the world."
He was carried thence withregal pomp to the sepulchres of kings, his grave being near that of Henry the Seventh; but his body was exhumed after the Restoration.
" To their eternal infamy, the Stuarts afterwards disturbed the hero's grave. It was a mean revenge in them to touch the bones of Cromwell; but in his case they could urge the plea of moral and political retribution.. The great usurper had been the chief cause of their father's tragic death ; he had hunted them for years from land to land ; he had shot *dr. most
faithful followers and confiscated their richest estates. But Blake had ever been for mild and moderate councils. He had opposed the late King's trial. He had disapproved the usurpation. When he found the sword prevail against law and right, he abandoned politics, like Sidney, Vane, and other of his illustrious compeers, giving up his genius to the service of his country against its foreign enemies. Surely, after a life of the most eminent ser- vices, the ashes of such a man might have been allowed to rest in peace. The House of Lords, in their ardent zeal for the restored family, gave orders that the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw should be dug out of their graves and treated with gross indignity; but even these zealots did not deem it decent to include the remains of Blake in their order. That infamy was reserved for Charles himself. In cold blood, nearly seventeen months after his landing at Dover from the deck of the Naseby, a royal command was issued by this prince to tear open the unobtrusive vault, drag out the embalmed body, and cast it into a pit in the Abbey yard. Good men looked• aghast at such an atrocity. But what could the paramour of Lucy Walters, Barbara Palmer, Kate Peg, and Moll Davies, know of the stern virtues of the illustrious sailor? What sympathy could a royal spendthrift have with the man who, after a life of great employments and the capture of uncounted millions, died no richer than he was born ? How could the prince who sold Dunkirk and begged a pension from Versailles, feel any regard for a man who had humbled the pride of Holland, Portugal, and Spain, who had laid the foundation of our lasting influence in the Mediterranean, and in eight years of success had made England the first maritime power in Europe ? "A hole was dug for the reception of these hallowed bones near the back- door of one of the prebendaries of Westminster; and the remains of Crom- well's mother, of the gentle Lady Claypole, and of sturdy John Pym, were all east into the same pit. How lightly Englishmen should tread that ground !"
Magnanimity is rarely the virtue of kings : the spite of Charles might originate in the defeat of Rupert, which had stopped his own supplies. In point of subject, Blake is the most favourable of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's biographies; but it wants the novelty of Howard or of Penn, whose lives were popularly unwritten, whereas that of Blake has appeared in various forms. What Mr. Dixon's individual exer- tions, prompted by the modern spirit of research, could do, it would appear has been done. He has visited Bridgewater, Taunton, &o., the scenes of the Admiral's nativity and first warlike exploits ; he statesthat he has successfully applied to the representatives of the fa- mily, has examined the most likely public records, explored the British Museum, and perused the published works that bear upon the subject. By these means, he has collected a great many parti- culars ; but those particulars refer to the public actions of the Admiral rather than to the personal life of the man, or they relate to archaeological facts, or features of local landscape. If Mr. Dixon has extracted all the really biographical matter from the authorities he has consulted, a fuller life of Blake is not likely to be attained ; and he has done his best to give spirit and relief by. pictures of contemporary manners, and a brief outline of the his- tory of the time. His style is somewhat changed without being improved. Mr. Dixon has substituted for the artificial force and condensation of the platform, the ihowmanlike manner of an in- ferior school of rhetoric.
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