Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/282

 Russel Wallace (1899) and the publication of 'The Poetical Works of Mathilde Blind' (a selection edited by Arthur Symons, with a memoir by Dr. Garnett, 1900, 8vo).

There was more character in Mathilde Blind than she could quite bring out in her poetry, though no effort was wanting. The consciousness of effort, indeed, is a draw-back to the enjoyment of her verse. Sometimes, however, especially in songs, sonnets, and the lyrics with which she was inspired by sympathy with the destitute and outcast classes, she achieves a perfect result; and the local colouring of her Scottish and many of her oriental poems is fine and true. Some of her sonnets are exceedingly impressive; she nevertheless did her powers most real justice when her singing robes were laid aside, and her reputation would be enhanced by a judicious selection from her correspondence.

 BLITH, WALTER (fl. 1649), agricultural writer, issued in 1649 a work entitled 'The English Improver, or a new Survey of Husbandry. . . . Held forth under Six Peeces of Improvement. By Walter Blith, a Lover of Ingenuity,' London, 1649. This edition has two dedications: one ' To thole of the High and Honourable Houses of Parliament; ' and another 'To the Ingenuous Header.' Of this book Thorold Rogers says in his 'Six Centuries of Work and Wages' (p. 458): 'The particulars are those commonplaces of agriculture which are found in all treatises of the time.' In 1652 it was re-issued in a revised form as * The English Improver Improved, or the Survey of Husbandry Surveyed,' with 'a second part containing six newer peeces of improvement,' and with an engraved titlepage headed 'Vive la Republick,' which contained representations of horse- and footsoldiers, and of agricultural operations. The edition of 1652 contains seven dedications or preliminary epistles: to 'The Right Honourable the Lord Generall Cromwell, and the Council of State;' to 'The Nobility and Gentry;' to 'The Industrious Reader;' to 'The Houses of Court and Universities; ' to 'The Honourable the Souldiery of these Nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland;' to 'The Husbandman, Farmer, or Tenant;' to 'The Cottager, Labourer, or meanest Commoner.' In the first dedication Blith refers to eight 'prejudices to improvements,' the first of which is interesting from the point of view of the history of tenant-right and Agricultural Holdings Acts. 'If a tenant be at never so great paines or cost for the Improvement of his Land, he doth thereby but occasion a greater Rack upon himself, or else invests his Land-Lord into his cost and labour gratis, or at best lyes at his Land-Lord's mercy for requitall, which occasions a neglect of all good Husbandry, to his owne, the land, the Land-Lord, and the Common wealth's suffering. Now this I humbly conceive may be removed, if there were a Law Inacted by which every Land-Lord should be obliged either to give him reasonable allowance for his cleare Improvement, or else suffer him or his to enjoy it so much longer as till he hath had a proportionable requitall.' In the fifth dedication Blith signs himself 'Your quondam brother, fellow-souldier, and very servant, Walter Blith,' and some commendatory verses prefixed to the book, signed ' T. C.,' are addressed 'To Captain W. Blith upon his Improvement.' He would therefore seem to have been a captain in the parliamentary army. There was a 'Captain Blith' of the king's ship Vanguard in 1642.

 BLOCHMANN, HENRY FERDINAND (1838–1878), orientalist, born at Dresden on 8 Jan. 1838, was the son of Ernest Ehrenfried Blochmann, printer, and nephew of Karl Justus Blochmann, a distinguished pupil of Pestalozzi. He was educated at the Kreuzschule in Dresden and the university of Leipzig (1855), where he studied oriental languages under Fleischer, and afterwards (1857) under Haase at Paris. In the following year he came to England, eager to visit India and to study the eastern languages in situ; and as the only means open to him of getting there he enlisted in the British army in 1858, and went out to India as a private soldier, after the example of Anquetil du Perron. His linguistic and other abilities had, however, become known on the voyage to India, and soon after his arrival in Calcutta he was set to do office-work in Fort William, and gave lessons in Persian. In the course of about a year he obtained his discharge, and for a time entered the service of the Peninsular and Oriental Company as an interpreter. He was befriended by the Arabic scholar. Captain (afterwards Major-general) William Nassau Lees [q. v.], the principal of the Madrasa and secretary to the board of examiners, who had assisted in obtaining his discharge, and through whom he obtained, at the age of twenty-two, his first government 