"We must thus admit," he says, "amidst our eulogies and applauses, that the great, the wise, and the valiant Blake was once betrayed to an inconsiderate and desperate enterprise, by the resistless ardour of his own spirit, and a noble jealousy of the honour of his country."
I will quote here some words which I have used in another place[1]:—
"From the time of the expulsion of the Long Parliament by Cromwell, if we except Blake—who continued to fight the foreign enemies of England, but who never, in any sense, became the creature of Cromwell[2]—none of the great spirits whose fixedness of purpose, intensity of will, and fierce yet single-minded and unselfish enthusiasm, had fought the great fight for liberty in the hall of debate as well as on the field of battle, had borne down before them the opposition alike of adverse opinions and of hostile armies, and extorted even from enemies a reluctant admiration, ever more acted with Cromwell. … Whatever vices or infirmities those men might have had, they had not the vices and infirmities of slaves or cowards—of quacks, of liars, of renegades."
- ↑ "History of the Commonwealth of England," vol. ii., pp. 478, 479 (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1867).
- ↑ "Neither Blake himself, nor his brother Benjamin, nor his nephew Robert, ever set their hands to the declaration of approval of Cromwell's expulsion of the Parliament, to which Cromwell obtained the signatures of Deane, Monk, Penn, and many of the captains of the ships" (Ibid., p. 478). See the declaration in Granville Penn's "Memorials of Sir Wm. Penn," vol. i., pp. 489-491 (London, 1833).
