Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 / A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

My antiquarian tendencies bring me acquainted with many neglected and obscure individuals connected with our earlier English literature, who, after fretting their hour upon life's stage, have passed away; leaving their names entombed upon the title-page of some unappreciated or crotchetty book, only to be found upon the shelves of the curious.
To look for these in Kippis, Chalmers, Gorton, or Rose would be a waste of time; and although agreeing to some extent with the Utilitarians , that we have all that was worth preserving of the Antediluvians , there is, I think, here and there a name worth resuscitating, possessing claims to a niche in our Antiquary's Newspaper; and for that distinction, I would now put in a plea on behalf of my present subject, William Blake.
Although our author belongs to the eccentric category , he is a character not only deserving of notice, but a model for imitation: the bee in his bonnet having set his sympathies in the healthy direction of a large philanthropy for the spiritual and temporal interests of his fellow men.
This Hospital at Highgate, called the Ladies' Charity School, was erected by one W. Blake, a woollen-draper in Covent Garden; who having purchased Dorchester House, and having fooled away his estate in building, was thrown into prison.
Even here, and under such circumstances, our subject was nothing daunted; for the same authority informs us, that, still full of his philanthropic projects, he took the opportunity his leisure there admitted to write another work upon his favourite topic of educating and caring for the
poor; its title is, The State and Case of a Design for the better Education of Thousands of Parish Children successively in the vast Northern Suburbs of London vindicated, &c. Besides the above, there is another remarkable little piece which I have seen, beginning abruptly, Here followeth a briefe exhortation which I gave in my owne house at my wife's funerall to our friends then present, by Blake, with the MS. date, 1650; and exhibits this original character in another not less amiable light:— I was brought up, says he, by my parents to learne Hail Mary , paternoster, the Beliefe, and learne to reade; and where I served my apprenticeship little more was to be found. He attributes it to God's grace that he fell a reading the Practice of Piety , by which means he got a little persuading of God's love to his soul:— Well, my time being out, I set up for myselfe; and seeking out for a wife, which, with long waiting and difficulty, much expence and charge, at last I got. Four children God gave me by her; but he hath taken them and her all again too, who was a woman of a thousand. Mr. B. then naturally indulges in a panegyric upon this pattern of wives, and reproaches himself for his former insensibility to her surpassing merits: relating with great naïveté some domestic passages, with examples of her piety and trials, in one of which latter the enemy would tempt her to suicide:— There lie your garters, said he; but she threw them aside, and so escaped this will of the Devil.