nd 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 gen