Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 4, Slice 1 Part 11

After again cruising for a time off Cadiz, his health failing more and more, he was compelled to make homewards before the summer was over. He died at sea, but within sight of Plymouth, on the 17th of August 1657.

His body was brought to London and embalmed, and after lying in state at Greenwich House was interred with great pomp and solemnity in Westminster Abbey. In 1661 Charles II. ordered the exhumation of Blake's body, with those of the mother and daughter of Cromwell and several others. They were cast out of the abbey, and were reburied in the churchyard of St Margaret's. "But that regard," says Johnson, "which was denied his body has been paid to his better remains, his name and his memory. Nor has any writer dared to deny him the praise of intrepidity, honesty, contempt of wealth, and love of his country."

Clarendon bears the following testimony to his excellence as a commander:--"He was the first man that declined the old track, and made it apparent that the science might be attained in less time than was imagined. He was the first man that brought ships to contemn castles on the sh.o.r.e, which had ever been thought very formidable, but were discovered by him to make a noise only, and to fright those who could be rarely hurt by them."

A life of Blake is included in the work ent.i.tled _Lives, English and Foreign_. Dr Johnson wrote a short life of him, and in 1852 appeared Hepworth Dixon's fuller narrative, _Robert Blake, Admiral and General at Sea_. Much new matter for the biography of Blake will be found in the _Letters and Papers Relating to the First Dutch War_, edited by S.R. Gardiner for the Navy Records Society (1898-1899.)

BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827), English poet and painter, was born in London, on the 28th of November 1757. His father, James Blake, kept a hosier's shop in Broad Street, Golden Square; and from the scanty education which the young artist received, it may be judged that the circ.u.mstances of the family were not very prosperous. For the facts of William Blake's early life the world is indebted to a little book, called _A Father's Memoirs on a Child_, written by Dr Malkin in 1806.

Here we learn that young Blake quickly developed a taste for design, which his father appears to have had sufficient intelligence to recognize and a.s.sist by every means in his power. At the age of ten the boy was sent to a drawing school kept by Henry Pars in the Strand, and at the same time he was already cultivating his own taste by constant attendance at the different art sale rooms, where he was known as the "little connoisseur." Here he began to collect prints after Michelangelo, and Raphael, Durer and Heemskerk, while at the school in the Strand he had the opportunity of drawing from the antique. After four years of this preliminary instruction Blake entered upon another branch of art study. In 1777 he was apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver of repute, and with him he remained seven years. His apprenticeship had an important bearing on Blake's artistic education, and marks the department of art in which he was made technically proficient. In 1778, at the end of his apprenticeship, he proceeded to the school of the Royal Academy, where he continued his early study from the antique, and had for the first time an opportunity of drawing from the living model.

This is in brief all that is known of Blake's artistic education. That he ever, at the academy or elsewhere, systematically studied painting we do not know; but that he had already begun the practice of water colour for himself is ascertained. So far, however, the course of his training in art schools, and under Basire, was calculated to render him proficient only as a draughtsman and an engraver. He had learned how to draw, and he had mastered besides the practical difficulties of engraving, and with these qualifications he entered upon his career. In 1780 he exhibited a picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition, conjectured to have been executed in water colours, and he continued to contribute to the annual exhibitions up to the year 1808. In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a market-gardener at Battersea, with whom he lived always on affectionate terms, and the young couple after their marriage established themselves in Green Street, Leicester Fields.

Blake had already become acquainted with some of the rising artists of his time, amongst them Stothard, Flaxman and Fuseli, and he now began to see something of literary society. At the house of the Rev. Henry Mathew, in Rathbone Place, he used to recite and sometimes to sing poems of his own composition, and it was through the influence of this gentleman, combined with that of Flaxman, that Blake's first volume of poetry was printed and published in 1783. From this time forward the artist came before the world in a double capacity. By education as well as native talent, he was pledged to the life of a painter, and these _Poetical Sketches_, though they are often no more than the utterances of a boy, are no less decisive in marking Blake as a future poet.

For a while the two gifts are exhibited in a.s.sociation. To the close of his life Blake continued to print and publish, after a manner of his own, the inventions of his verse ill.u.s.trated by original designs, but there is a certain period in his career when the union of the two gifts is peculiarly close, and when their service to one another is unquestionable. In 1784 Blake, moving from Green Street, set up in company with a fellow-pupil, Parker, as print-seller and engraver next to his father's house in Broad Street, Golden Square, but in 1787 this partnership was severed, and he established an independent business in Poland Street. It was from this house, and in 1787, that the _Songs of Innocence_ were published, a work that must always be remarkable for beauty both of verse and of design, as well as for the singular method by which the two were combined and expressed by the artist. Blake became in fact his own printer and publisher. He engraved upon copper, by a process devised by himself, both the text of his poems and the surrounding decorative design, and to the pages printed from the copper plates an appropriate colouring was afterwards added by hand. The poetic genius already discernible in the first volume of _Poetical Sketches_ is here more decisively expressed, and some of the songs in this volume deserve to take rank with the best things of their kind in our literature. In an age of enfeebled poetic style, when Wordsworth, with more weighty apparatus, had as yet scarcely begun his reform of English versification, Blake, unaided by any contemporary influence, produced a work of fresh and living beauty; and if the _Songs of Innocence_ established Blake's claim to the t.i.tle of poet, the setting in which they were given to the world proved that he was also something more. For the full development of his artistic powers we have to wait till a later date, but here at least he exhibits a just and original understanding of the sources of decorative beauty. Each page of these poems is a study of design, full of invention, and often wrought with the utmost delicacy of workmanship. The artist retained to the end this feeling for decorative effect; but as time went on, he considerably enlarged the imaginative scope of his work, and decoration then became the condition rather than the aim of his labour.

Notwithstanding the distinct and precious qualities of this volume, it attracted but slight attention, a fact perhaps not very wonderful, when the system of publication is taken into account. Blake, however, proceeded with other work of the same kind. The same year he published _The Book of Thel_, more decidedly mystic in its poetry, but scarcely less beautiful as a piece of illumination; _The Marriage of Heaven and h.e.l.l_ followed in 1790; and in 1793 there are added _The Gates of Paradise_, _The Vision of the Daughters of Albion_, and some other "Prophetic Books." It becomes abundantly clear on reaching this point in his career that Blake's utterances cannot be judged by ordinary rules.

The _Songs of Experience_, put forth in 1794 as a companion to the earlier _Songs of Innocence_, are for the most part intelligible and coherent, but in these intervening works of prophecy, as they were called by the author, we get the first public expression of that phase of his character and of his genius upon which a charge of insanity has been founded. The question whether Blake was or was not mad seems likely to remain in dispute, but there can be no doubt whatever that he was at different periods of his life under the influence of illusions for which there are no outward facts to account, and that much of what he wrote is so far wanting in the quality of sanity as to be without a logical coherence. On the other hand, it is equally clear that no madness imputed to Blake could equal that which would be involved in the rejection of his work on this ground. The greatness of Blake's mind is even better established than its frailty, and in considering the work that he has left we must remember that it is by the sublimity of his genius, and not by any mental defect, that he is most clearly distinguished from his fellows. With the publication of the _Songs of Experience_ Blake's poetic career, so far at least as ordinary readers are concerned, may be said to close. A writer of prophecy he continued for many years, but the works by which he is best known in poetry are those earlier and simpler efforts, supplemented by a few pieces taken from various sources, some of which were of later production. But although Blake the poet ceases in a general sense at this date, Blake the artist is only just entering upon his career. In the _Songs of Innocence_ and _Experience_, and even in some of the earlier _Books of Prophecy_, the two gifts worked together in perfect balance and harmony; but at this point the supremacy of the artistic faculty a.s.serts itself, and for the remainder of his life Blake was pre-eminently a designer and engraver. The labour of poetical composition continues, but the product pa.s.ses beyond the range of general comprehension; while, with apparent inconsistency, the work of the artist gains steadily in strength and coherence, and never to the last loses its hold upon the understanding.

It may almost be said without exaggeration that his earliest poetic work, _The Songs of Innocence_, and nearly his latest effort in design, the ill.u.s.trations to _The Book of Job_, take rank among the sanest and most admirable products of his genius. Nor is the fact, astonishing enough at first sight, quite beyond a possible explanation. As Blake advanced in his poetic career, he was gradually hindered and finally overpowered by a tendency that was most serviceable to him in design.

His inclination to subst.i.tute a symbol for a conception, to make an image do duty for an idea, became an insuperable obstacle to literary success. He endeavoured constantly to treat the intellectual material of verse as if it could be moulded into sensuous form, with the inevitable result that as the ideas to be expressed advanced in complexity and depth of meaning, his poetic gifts became gradually more inadequate to the task of interpretation. The earlier poems dealing with simpler themes, and put forward at a time when the bent of the artist's mind was not strictly determined, do not suffer from this difficulty; the symbolism then only enriches an idea of no intellectual intricacy; but when Blake began to concern himself with profounder problems the want of a more logical understanding of language made itself strikingly apparent. If his ways of thought and modes of workmanship had not been developed with an intensity almost morbid, he would probably have been able to distinguish and keep separate the double functions of art and literature. As it is, however, he remains as an extreme ill.u.s.tration of the ascendancy of the artistic faculty. For this tendency to translate ideas into image, and to find for every thought, however simple or sublime, a precise and sensuous form, is of the essence of pure artistic invention. If this be accepted as the dominant bent of Blake's genius, it is not so wonderful that his work in art should have strengthened in proportion as his poetic powers waned; but whether the explanation satisfies all the requirements of the case or not, the fact remains, and cannot be overlooked by any student of Blake's career.

In 1796 Blake was actively employed in the work of ill.u.s.tration.

Edwards, a bookseller of New Bond Street, projected a new edition of Young's _Night Thoughts_, and Blake was chosen to ill.u.s.trate the work.

It was to have been issued in parts, but for some reason not very clear the enterprise failed, and only a first part, including forty-three designs, was given to the world. These designs were engraved by Blake himself, and they are interesting not only for their own merit but for the peculiar system by which the ill.u.s.tration has been a.s.sociated with the text. It was afterwards discovered that the artist had executed original designs in water-colour for the whole series, and these drawings, 537 in number, form one of the most interesting records of Blake's genius. Gilchrist, the painter's biographer, in commenting upon the engraved plates, regrets the absence of colour, "the use of which Blake so well understood, to relieve his simple design and give it significance," and an examination of the original water-colour drawings fully supports the justice of his criticism. Soon after the publication of this work Blake was introduced by Flaxman to the poet Hayley, and in the year 1801 he accepted the suggestion of the latter, that he should take up his residence at Felpham in Suss.e.x. The mild and amiable poet had planned to write a life of Cowper, and for the ill.u.s.tration of this and other works he sought Blake's help and companionship. The residence at Felpham continued for three years, partly pleasant and partly irksome to Blake, but apparently not very profitable to the progress of his art.

One of the annoyances of his stay was a malicious prosecution for treason set on foot by a common soldier whom Blake had summarily ejected from his garden; but a more serious drawback was the increasing irritation which the painter seems to have experienced from a.s.sociation with Hayley. In 1804 Blake returned to London, to take up his residence in South Moulton Street, and as the fruit of his residence in Felpham, he published, in the manner already described, the prophetic books called the _Jerusalem_, _The Emanation of the Giant Albion_, and _Milton_. The first of these is a very notable performance in regard to artistic invention. Many of the designs stand out from the text in complete independence, and are now and then of the very finest quality.

In the years 1804-1805 Blake executed a series of designs in ill.u.s.tration of Robert Blair's _The Grave_, of much beauty and grandeur, though showing stronger traces of imitation of Italian art than any earlier production. These designs were purchased from the artist by an adventurous and unscrupulous publisher, Cromek, for the paltry sum of 21, and afterwards published in a series of engravings by Schiavonetti.

Despite the ill treatment Blake received in the matter, and the other evils, including a quarrel with his friend Stothard as to priority of invention of a design ill.u.s.trating the Canterbury Pilgrims, which his a.s.sociation with Cromek involved, the book gained for him a larger amount of popularity than he at any other time secured. Stothard's picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims was exhibited in 1807, and in 1809 Blake, in emulation of his rival's success, having himself painted in water-colour a picture of the same subject, opened an exhibition, and drew up a _Descriptive Catalogue_, curious and interesting, and containing a very valuable criticism of Chaucer.

The remainder of the artist's life is not outwardly eventful. In 1813 he formed, through the introduction of George c.u.mberland of Bristol, a valuable friendship with John Linnell and other rising water-colour painters. Amongst the group Blake seems to have found special sympathy in the society of John Varley, who, himself addicted to astrology, encouraged Blake to cultivate his gift of inspired vision; and it is probably to this influence that we are indebted for several curious drawings made from visions, especially the celebrated "ghost of a flea"

and the very humorous portrait of the builder of the Pyramids. In 1821 Blake removed to Fountain Court, in the Strand, where he died on the 12th of August 1827. The chief work of these last years was the splendid series of engraved designs in ill.u.s.tration of the book of Job. Here we find the highest imaginative qualities of Blake's art united to the technical means of expression which he best understood. Both the invention and the engraving are in all ways remarkable, and the series may fairly be cited in support of a very high estimate of his genius.

None of his works is without the trace of that peculiar artistic instinct and power which seizes the pictorial element of ideas, simple or sublime, and translates them into the appropriate language of sense; but here the double faculty finds the happiest exercise. The grandeur of the theme is duly reflected in the simple and sublime images of the artist's design, and in the presence of these plates we are made to feel the power of the artist over the expressional resources of human form, as well as his sympathy with the imaginative significance of his subject.

A life of Blake, with selections from his works, by Alexander Gilchrist, was published in 1863 (new edition by W.G. Robertson, 1906); in 1868 A.C. Swinburne published a critical essay on his genius, remarkable for a full examination of the Prophetic Books, and in 1874 William Michael Rossetti published a memoir prefixed to an edition of the poems. In 1893 appeared _The Works of William Blake_, edited by E.J. Ellis and W.B. Yeats. But for a long time all the editors paid too little attention to a correct following of Blake's own MSS. The text of the poems was finally edited with exemplary care and thoroughness by John Sampson in his edition of the _Poetical Works_ (1905), which has rescued Blake from the "improvements" of previous editors. See also _The Letters of_ ~~ _William Blake, together with a Life by Frederick Tatham_; edited by A.G.B. Russell (1906); and Basil de Selincourt, _William Blake_ (1909).

(J. C. C.)

BLAKELOCK, RALPH ALBERT (1847- ), American painter, was born in New York, on the 15th of October, 1847. He graduated at the College of the City of New York in 1867. In art he was self-taught and markedly original. Until ill-health necessitated the abandonment of his profession, he was a most prolific worker, his subjects including pictures of North American Indian life, and landscapes--notably such canvases as "The Indian Fisherman"; "Ta-wo-koka: or Circle Dance"; "Silvery Moonlight"; "A Waterfall by Moonlight"; "Solitude"; and "Moonlight on Long Island Sound."

BLAKENEY, WILLIAM BLAKENEY, BARON (1672-1761), British soldier, was born at Mount Blakeney in Limerick in 1672. Destined by his father for politics, he soon showed a decided preference for a military career, and at the age of eighteen headed the tenants in defending the Blakeney estate against the Rapparees. As a volunteer he went to the war in Flanders, and at the siege of Venlo in 1702 won his commission. He served as a subaltern throughout Marlborough's campaigns, and is said to have been the first to drill troops by signal of drum or colour. For many years after the peace of Utrecht he served unnoticed, and was sixty-five years of age before he became a colonel. This neglect, which was said to be due to the hostility of Lord Verney, ceased when the duke of Richmond was appointed colonel of Blakeney's regiment, and thenceforward his advance was rapid. Brigadier-general in the Cartagena expedition of 1741, and major-general a little later, he distinguished himself by his gallant and successful defence of Stirling Castle against the Highlanders in 1745. Two years later George II. made him lieutenant-general and lieutenant-governor of Minorca. The governor of that island never set foot in it, and Blakeney was left in command for ten years.

In 1756 the Seven Years' War was preluded by a swift descent of the French on Minorca. Fifteen thousand troops under marshal the duc de Richelieu, escorted by a strong squadron under the marquis de la Gallisonniere, landed on the island on the 18th of April, and at once began the siege of Fort St Philip, where Blakeney commanded at most some 5000 soldiers and workmen. The defence, in spite of crumbling walls and rotted gun platforms, had already lasted a month when a British fleet under vice-admiral the Hon. John Byng appeared. La Gallisonniere and Byng fought, on the 20th of May, an indecisive battle, after which the relieving squadron sailed away and Blakeney was left to his fate. A second expedition subsequently appeared off Minorca, but it was then too late, for after a heroic resistance of seventy-one days the old general had been compelled to surrender the fort to Richelieu (April 18-June 28, 1756). Only the ruined fortifications were the prize of the victors.

Blakeney and his little garrison were transported to Gibraltar with absolute liberty to serve again. Byng was tried and executed; Blakeney, on his return to England, found himself the hero of the nation. Rewards came freely to the veteran. He was made colonel of the Enniskillen regiment of infantry, knight of the Bath, and Baron Blakeney of Mount Blakeney in the Irish peerage. A little later Van Most's statue of him was erected in Dublin, and his popularity continued unabated for the short remainder of his life. He died on the 20th of September 1761, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

See _Memoirs of General William Blakeney_ (1757).

BLAKESLEY, JOSEPH WILLIAMS (1808-1885), English divine, was born in London on the 6th of March 1808, and was educated at St Paul's school, London, and at Corpus Christi and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge. In 1831 he was elected a fellow, and in 1839 a tutor of Trinity. In 1833 he took holy orders, and from 1845 to 1872 held the college living of Ware, Hertfordshire. Over the signature "Hertfordshire Inc.u.mbent" he contributed a large number of letters to _The Times_ on the leading social and political subjects of the day, and he also wrote many reviews of books for that paper. In 1863 he was made a canon of Canterbury, and in 1872 dean of Lincoln. Dean Blakesley was the author of the first English _Life of Aristotle_ (1839), an edition of Herodotus (1852-1854) in the _Bibliotheca Cla.s.sica_, and _Four Months in Algeria_ (1859). He died on the 18th of April 1885.

BLAMIRE, SUSANNA (1747-1794), English poet, daughter of a c.u.mberland yeoman, was born at Cardew Hall, near Dalston, in January 1747. Her mother died while she was a child, and she was brought up by her aunt, a Mrs Simpson of Thackwood, who sent her niece to the village school at Raughton Head. Susanna Blamire's earliest poem is "Written in a Churchyard, on seeing a number of cattle grazing," in imitation of Gray.

She lived an uneventful life among the farmers of the neighbourhood, and her gaiety and good-humour made her a favourite in rustic society. In 1767 her elder sister Sarah married Colonel Graham of Gartmore. "An Epistle to her friends at Gartmore" gives a playful description of the monotonous simplicity of her life. To her Perthshire visits her songs in the Scottish vernacular are no doubt partly due. Her chief friend was Catharine Gilpin of Scaleby Castle. The two ladies spent the winters together in Carlisle, and wrote poems in common. Susanna Blamire died in Carlisle on the 5th of April 1794. The poems which were not collected during her lifetime, were first published in 1842 by Henry Lonsdale as _The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire, "the Muse of c.u.mberland,"_ with a memoir by Mr Patrick Maxwell. Some of her songs rank among the very best of north-country lyrics. "And ye shall walk in silk attire"

and "What ails this heart o' mine," are well known, and were included in Johnson's _Scots' Musical Museum_.

BLANC, (JEAN JOSEPH CHARLES) LOUIS (1811-1882), French politician and historian, was born on the 29th of October 1811 at Madrid, where his father held the post of inspector-general of finance under Joseph Bonaparte. Failing to receive aid from Pozzo di Borgo, his mother's uncle, Louis Blanc studied law in Paris, living in poverty, and became a contributor to various journals. In the _Revue du progres_, which he founded, he published in 1839 his study on _L'Organisation du travail_.

The principles laid down in this famous essay form the key to Louis Blanc's whole political career. He attributes all the evils that afflict society to the pressure of compet.i.tion, whereby the weaker are driven to the wall. He demanded the equalization of wages, and the merging of personal interests in the common good--"_a chacun selon ses besoins, de chacun selon ses facultes_." This was to be effected by the establishment of "social workshops," a sort of combined co-operative society and trade-union, where the workmen in each trade were to unite their efforts for their common benefit. In 1841 he published his _Histoire de dix ans 1830-1840_, an attack upon the monarchy of July. It ran through four editions in four years.

In 1847 he published the two first volumes of his _Histoire de la Revolution Francaise_. Its publication was interrupted by the revolution of 1848, when Louis Blanc became a member of the provisional government.

It was on his motion that, on the 25th of February, the government undertook "to guarantee the existence of the workmen by work"; and though his demand for the establishment of a ministry of labour was refused--as beyond the competence of a provisional government--he was appointed to preside over the government labour commission (_Commission du Gouvernement pour les travailleurs_) established at the Luxembourg to inquire into and report on the labour question. On the 10th of May he renewed, in the National a.s.sembly, his proposal for a ministry of labour, but the temper of the majority was hostile to socialism, and the proposal was again rejected. His responsibility for the disastrous experiment of the national workshops he himself denied in his _Appel aux honnetes gens_ (Paris, 1849), written in London after his flight; but by the insurgent mob of the 15th of May and by the victorious Moderates alike he was regarded as responsible. Between the _sansculottes_, who tried to force him to place himself at their head, and the national guards, who maltreated him, he was nearly done to death. Rescued with difficulty, he escaped with a false pa.s.sport to Belgium, and thence to London; in his absence he was condemned by the special tribunal established at Bourges, _in contumaciam_, to deportation. Against trial and sentence he alike protested, developing his protest in a series of articles in the _Nouveau Monde_, a review published in Paris under his direction. These he afterwards collected and published as _Pages de l'histoire de la revolution de 1848_ (Brussels, 1850).

During his stay in England he made use of the unique collection of materials for the revolutionary period preserved at the British Museum to complete his _Histoire de la Revolution Francaise_ 12 vols.

(1847-1862). In 1858 he published a reply to Lord Normanby's _A Year of Revolution in Paris_ (1858), which he developed later into his _Histoire de la revolution de 1848_ (2 vols., 1870-1880). As far back as 1839 Louis Blanc had vehemently opposed the idea of a Napoleonic restoration, predicting that it would be "despotism without glory," "the Empire without the Emperor." He therefore remained in exile till the fall of the Second Empire in September 1870, after which he returned to Paris and served as a private in the national guard. On the 8th of February 1871 he was elected a member of the National a.s.sembly, in which he maintained that the republic was "the necessary form of national sovereignty," and voted for the continuation of the war; yet, though a member of the extreme Left, he was too clear-minded to sympathize with the Commune, and exerted his influence in vain on the side of moderation. In 1878 he advocated the abolition of the presidency and the senate. In January 1879 he introduced into the chamber a proposal for the amnesty of the Communists, which was carried. This was his last important act. His declining years were darkened by ill-health and by the death, in 1876, of his wife (Christina Groh), an Englishwoman whom he had married in 1865. He died at Cannes on the 6th of December 1882, and on the 12th of December received a state funeral in the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise.

Louis Blanc possessed a picturesque and vivid style, and considerable power of research; but the fervour with which he expressed his convictions, while placing him in the first rank of orators, tended to turn his historical writings into political pamphlets. His political and social ideas have had a great influence on the development of socialism in France. His _Discours politiques_ (1847-1881) was published in 1882.

His most important works, besides those already mentioned, are _Lettres sur l'Angleterre_ (1866-1867), _Dix annees de l'histoire de l'Angleterre_ (1879-1881), and _Questions d'aujourd'hui et de demain_ (1873-1884).

See L. Fiaux, _Louis Blanc_ (1883).

BLANC, MONT, the culminating point (15,782 ft.) of the mountain range of the same name, which forms part of the Pennine Alps, and is divided unequally between France, Italy and Switzerland. The actual highest summit is wholly French and is the loftiest peak in the Alps, and in Europe also, if certain peaks in the Caucasus be excluded. At Geneva the mountain was in former days named the Montagne Maudite, but the present name seems to have been always used locally. On the north is the valley of Chamonix, and on the east the head of the valley of Aosta. Among the great glaciers which stream from the peak the most noteworthy are those of Bossons and Taconnaz (northern slope) and of Brenva and Miage (southern slope). The first ascent was made in 1786 by two Chamonix men, Jacques Balmat and Dr Michel Paccard, and the second in 1787 by Balmat with two local men. Later in 1787 H.B. de Saussure made the third ascent, memorable in many respects, and was followed a week later by Colonel Beaufoy, the first Englishman to gain the top. These ascents were all made from Chamonix, which is still the usual starting point, though routes have been forced up the peak from nearly every side, those on the Italian side being much steeper than that from Chamonix. The ascent from Chamonix is now frequently made in summer (rarely in winter also), but, owing to the great height of the mountain, the view is unsatisfactory, though very extensive (Lyons is visible). There is an inn at the Grands Mulets (9909 ft.). In 1890 M. Vallot built an observatory and shelter hut (14,312 ft.) on the Bosses du Dromadaire (north-west ridge of the mountain), and in 1893 T.J.C. Janssen constructed an observatory just below the very summit.

See C. Durier, _Le Mont Blanc_ (4th ed., Paris, 1897); C.E. Mathews, _The Annals of Mont Blanc_ (London, 1898); P. Gussfeldt, _Der Montblanc_, (Berlin, 1894, also a French translation, Geneva, 1899); L. Kurz, _Climbers' Guide to the Chain of Mont Blanc_, section vi.

(London, 1892); L. Kurz and X. Imfeld, _Carte de la chaine du Mont Blanc_ (1896, new edition 1905). (W. A. B. C.)

BLANCHARD, SAMUEL LAMAN (1804-1845), British author and journalist, the son of a painter and glazier, was born at Great Yarmouth on the 15th of May 1804. He was educated at St Olave's school, Southwark, and then became clerk to a proctor in Doctors' Commons. At an early age he developed literary tastes, contributing dramatic sketches to a paper called _Drama_. For a short time he was a member of a travelling dramatic company, but subsequently became a proof-reader in London, and wrote for the _Monthly Magazine_. In 1827 he was made secretary of the Zoological Society, a post which he held for three years. In 1828 he published _Lyric Offerings_, dedicated to Charles Lamb. He had a very varied journalistic experience, editing in succession the _Monthly Magazine_, the _True Sun_, the _Const.i.tutional_, the _Court Journal_, the _Courier_, and _George Cruikshank's Omnibus_; and from 1841 till his death he was connected with the _Examiner_. In 1846 Bulwer-Lytton collected a number of his prose-essays under the t.i.tle _Sketches of Life_, to which a memoir of the author was prefixed. His verse was collected in 1876 by Blanchard Jerrold. Over-work broke down his strength, and, unnerved by the death of his wife, he died by his own hand on the 15th of February 1845.

His eldest son, SIDNEY LAMAN BLANCHARD, who was the author of _Yesterday and To-day in India_, died in 1883.

BLANCHE, JACQUES eMILE (1861- ), French painter, was born in Paris. He enjoyed an excellent cosmopolitan education, and was brought up at Pa.s.sy in a house once belonging to the princesse de Lamballe, which still retained the atmosphere of 18th-century elegance and refinement and influenced his taste and work. Although he received some instruction in painting from Gervex, he may be regarded as self-taught. He acquired a great reputation as a portrait painter; his art is derived from French and English sources, refined, sometimes super-elegant, but full of character. Among his chief works are his portraits of his father, of Pierre Lous, the Thaulow family, Aubrey Beardsley and Yvette Guilbert.