X ROBERT BLAKEY 



full stock, removed the flies on Blakey's cast, and with 

 his own hands affixed a couple of his own. After 

 sauntering with him two or three hundred yards, he 

 wished him good day and better luck ; and it was only 

 then that Blakey found from a passing countryman that 

 his companion had been "the Laird of Abbotsford — 

 Wattie Scott." Later on Scott was made a baronet, and 

 when, as Sir Walter, Blakey met him at the office of 

 the Kelso Mail, he reminded him of that gift of flies. 



Amongst others personally known early iu his career 

 to Blakey were Thomas Bewick the wood engraver, 

 and Luke Clennell the artist. Through Dr. Jerdan, 

 of the Literary Gazette, he was introduced to the 

 American naturalist Audubon, the eminent ornithologist 

 having come over to this country to obtain subscribers for 

 his Birds of America. Blakey now seems to have made 

 a living by writing for periodicals, many of his con- 

 tributions being of a controversial character. He knew 

 William Cobbett, was an admirer of William Godwin, 

 was personally acquainted with Allan Cunningham, 

 Thomas Doubleday, Dr. Whewell, and Chalmers. He 

 published a Treatise on the Divine and Human Wills, 

 and a History of Moral Science, before he was forty years 

 of age. He went to London in 1840, to arrange the 

 joining of his paper, the Champion, to the Northern Liber- 

 ator, and had the honour of being prosecuted by the 

 Government, at the end of the year, for an essay on the 

 Natural Right of Resistance to Constituted Authorities. 

 No great harm came of it, as the offender was merely 

 bound over to keep the peace for three years, in his 

 own recognisances, in the sum of five hundred pounds. 

 His political journalism kept him in London a while, 

 and in three years he and his family seem to have been 

 in considerable straits on the Continent, whither he had 

 repaired to study the literature of the Middle Ages. 



So we come to 1845, with the statement that his 

 prospects at the commencement of that year were 

 "rather gloomy." His work on The Christian 

 Hermits probably brought him little money. His 

 aff'airs, indeed, had never apparently been very flourish- 



