'Bravo, bravo, my old friend!' said Girodet, as, after a warm embrace from him, he turned to examine the picture: 'I never expected to hear of your changing your style, and turning Flemish sign-painter. But it is no shame for David to end as Rembrandt began.'
ADMIRAL BLAKE.[1]
A good biography is ever welcome; and if it be the biography of a good and a great man, the cordiality of the bienvenu is doubled. Mr Prescott remarks,[2] that there is no kind of writing, having truth and instruction for its main object, which, on the whole, is so interesting and popular as biography: its superiority, in this point of view, to history, consisting in the fact, that the latter has to deal with masses—with nations, which, like corporate societies, 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 Encyclopædia 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 vitæ, 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. His tastes were simple, his manners somewhat bluntly austere; a refined dignity of countenance, and a picturesque vigour of conversation, invested him with a social interest, to which his indignant invectives against court corruptions gave distinctive character. To the Short Parliament he was sent as member for his native town; and in 1645, was returned by Taunton to the Long Parliament. At the dissolution of the former, which he regarded as a signal for action, he began to prepare arms against the king; his being one of the first troops in the field, and engaged in almost every action of importance in the western counties. His superiority to the men about him lay in the 'marvellous fertility, energy, and comprehensiveness of his military genius.' Prince Rupert alone, in the Royalist camp, could rival him as a 'partisan soldier.' His first distinguished exploit was his defence of Prior's Hill fort, at the siege of Bristol—which contrasts so remarkably with the pusillanimity of his chief, Colonel Fiennes. Next comes his yet more brilliant defence of Lyme—then a little fishing-town, with some 900 inhabitants, of which the defences were a dry ditch, a few hastily-formed earth-works, and three small batteries, but which the Cavalier host of Prince Maurice, trying storm, stratagem, blockade, day after day, and week after week, failed to reduce or dishearten. 'At Oxford, where Charles then was, the affair was an inexplicable marvel and mystery: every hour the court expected to hear that the "little vile fishing-town," as Clarendon contemptuously calls it, had fallen, and that Maurice had marched away to enterprises of greater moment; but every post brought word to the wondering council, that Colonel Blake still held out, and that his spirited defence was rousing and rallying the dispersed adherents of Parliament in those parts.' After the siege was raised, the Royalists found that more men of gentle blood had fallen under Blake's fire at Lyme, than in all the other sieges and skirmishes in the western counties since the opening of the war. The details of the siege are given with graphic effect by Mr Dixon, and are only surpassed in interest by those connected with Blake's subsequent and yet more celebrated defence of Taunton, to which the third chapter of this biography is devoted.
The hero's fame had become a spell in the west: it was seen that he rivalled Rupert in rapid and brilliant execution, and excelled him in the caution and sagacity of his plans. He took Taunton—a place so important at that juncture, as standing on and controlling the great western highway—in July 1644, within a week of Cromwell's defeat of Rupert at Marston Moor. All the vigour of the Royalists was brought to bear on the captured town; Blake's defence of which is justly characterised as abounding with deeds of individual heroism—exhibiting in its master-mind a rare combination of civil and military genius. The spectacle of an unwalled town, in an inland district, with no single advantage of site, surrounded by powerful castles and garrisons, and invested by an enemy brave, watchful, numerous, and well provided with artillery, successfully resisting storm, strait, and blockade for several months, thus paralysing the king's power, and affording Cromwell time to remodel the army, naturally arrested the attention of military writers at that time; and French authors of this class bestowed on Taunton the name of the modern Saguntum. The rage of the Royalists at this prolonged resistance was extreme. Reckoning from the date when Blake first seized the town, to that of Goring's final retreat, the defence lasted exactly a year, and under circumstances of almost overwhelming difficulty to the besieged party, who, in addition to the fatigue of nightly watches, and the destruction of daily conflicts, suffered from terrible scarcity of provisions. 'Not a day passed without a fire; sometimes eight or ten houses were burning at the same moment; and in the midst of all the fear, horror, and confusion incident to such disasters, Blake and his little garrison had to meet the storming-parties of an enemy brave, exasperated, and ten times their own strength. But every inch of ground was gallantly defended. A broad belt of ruined cottages and gardens was gradually formed between the besiegers and the besieged; and on the heaps of broken walls and burnt rafters, the obstinate contest was renewed from day to day.' At last relief arrived from London; and Goring, in savage dudgeon, beat a retreat, notwithstanding the wild oath he had registered, either to reduce that haughty town, or to lay his bones in its trenches.
Blake was now the observed of all observers; but, unlike most of his compeers, he abstained from using his advantages for purposes of selfish or personal aggrandisement. He kept aloof from the 'centre of intrigues,' and remained at his post, 'doing his duty humbly and faithfully at a distance from Westminster; while other men, with less than half his claims, were asking and obtaining the highest honours and rewards from a grateful and lavish country.' Nor, indeed, did he at any time side with the ultras of his party, but loudly disapproved of the policy of the regicides. This, coupled with his influence, so greatly deserved and so deservedly great, made him an object of jealousy with Cromwell and his party; and it was owing, perhaps, to their anxiety to keep him removed from the home-sphere of action, that the hero of Taunton was now appointed to the chief naval command.
Hitherto, and for years afterwards, no state, ancient or modern, as Macaulay points out, had made a separation between the military and the naval service. Cimon and Lysander, Pompey and Agrippa, had fought by sea as well as by land: at Flodden, the right wing of the English was led by her admiral, and the French admiral led the Huguenots at Jarnac, &c. Accordingly, Blake was summoned from his pacific government at Taunton, to assume the post of 'General and Admiral at Sea;' a title afterwards changed to 'General of the Fleet.' Two others were associated with him in the command; but Blake seems at least to have been recognised as primus inter pares. The navy system was in deplorable need of reform; and a reformer it found in Robert Blake, from the very day he became an admiral. His care for the well-being of his men made him an object of their almost adoring attachment. From first to last, he stood alone as England's model-seaman. 'Envy, hatred, and jealousy dogged the steps of every other officer in the fleet; but of him, both then and afterwards, every man spoke well.' The 'tremendous powers' intrusted to him by the Council of State, he exercised with off-handed and masterly success—startling politicians and officials of the ancien régime by his bold and open tactics, and his contempt for tortuous bypaths in diplomacy. His wondrous exploits were performed with extreme poverty of means. He was the first to repudiate and disprove the supposed fundamental maxim in marine warfare, that no ship could attack a castle, or other strong fortification, with any hope of success. The early part of his naval career was occupied in opposing and defeating the piratical performances of Prince Rupert, which then constituted the support of the exiled Stuarts, and which Mr Dixon refuses to interpret in such mild colours as Warburton and others. Blake's utmost vigilance and activity were required to put down this extraordinary system of freebooting; and by the time that he had successively overcome Rupert, and the minor but stubborn adventurers, Grenville and Carteret, he was in request to conduct the formidable war with Holland, and to cope with such veterans as Tromp, De Witt, De Ruyter, &c. Of the various encounters in which he thus signalised himself, his biographer gives most spirited descriptions, such as their length alone deters us from quoting. On one occasion only did Blake suffer a defeat; and this one is easily explained by—first, Tromp's overwhelming superiority of force; secondly, the extreme deficiency of men in the English fleet; and thirdly, the cowardice or disaffection of several of Blake's captains at a critical moment in the battle. Notwithstanding this disaster, not a whisper was heard against the admiral either in the Council of State or in the city; his offer to resign was flatteringly rejected; and he soon found, that the 'misfortune which might have ruined another man, had given him strength and influence in the country.' This disaster, in fact, gave him power to effect reforms in the service, and to root out abuses which had defied all his efforts in the day of his success. He followed it up by the great battle of Portland, and other triumphant engagements.