gies of the Blakes of Ireland, I have not come across any Ellen Blake who married John O'Neil who afterwards (as is said by Messrs. Ellis and Yeats) adopted the surname of Blake.'
Mr. Sampson points out that Blake's father was certainly a Protestant. He is sometimes described as a Swedenborgian, always as a Dissenter, and it is curious that about half of the Blakes recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography were also conspicuous as Puritans or Dissenters. Mr. Sampson further points out that Blake in one of his poems speaks of himself as 'English Blake.' It is true that he is contrasting himself with the German Klopstock; yet I scarcely think an Irishman would have used the expression even for contrast. Blake is nowhere referred to as having been in any way Irish, and the only apparent exception to this is one which I am obliged to set up with one hand and knock down with the other. In the index to Crabb Robinson's Diary one of the references to Blake shows us Mr. Sheil speaking at the Academical Society while 'Blake, his countryman, kept watching him to keep
