I am engaged in writing a
Life of Admiral Blake, and shall be extremely grateful to any of your
correspondents who can and will direct me, either through the medium of
your columns or by private communication, to any new sources of information
respecting his character and career. A meagre pamphlet being the utmost
that has yet been given to the memory of this great man, the entire story
of his life has to be built up from the beginning. Fragments of papers,
scraps of information, however slight, may therefore be of material value.
A date or a name may contain an important clue, and will be thankfully
acknowledged. Of course I do not wish to be referred to information
contained in well-known collections, such as Thurloe, Rushworth, Whitelock,
and the Parliamentary Histories, nor to the Deptford MSS. in the Tower, the
Admiralty papers in the State Paper Office, or the Ashmole MSS. at Oxford.
I am also acquainted, of course, with several papers in the national
collection of MSS. at the British Museum throwing light on the subject; but
while these MSS. remain in their present state, it would be very rash in
any man to say what is _not_ to be found in them. Should any one, in
reading for his own purposes, stumble on a fact of importance for me in
these MSS., I shall be grateful for a communication; but my appeal is
rather made to the possessors of old family papers. There must, I think, be
many letters--though he was a brief and abrupt correspondent--of the
admiral's still existing in the archives of old Puritan families. These are
the materials of history of which I am most in need.

HEPWORTH DIXON.

84. St. John's Wood Terrace.

* * * * *

Minor Queries.

_John Holywood the Mathematician._--Is the birthplace of this distinguished
scholar known? Leland, Bale, and Pits assert him to have been born at
Halifax, in Yorkshire; Stanyhurst says, at Holywood, near Dublin; and
according to Dempster and Mackenzie, at Nithsdale, in Scotland.

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

_Essay on the Irony of Sophocles, &c._--Who is the author of the _Essay on
the Irony of Sophocles_, which has been termed the most exquisite piece of
criticism in the English language?

Is it Cicero who says,

"Malo cum Platone errare, quam cum aliis recte sentire?"

And who embodied the somewhat contradictory maxim,--

"Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas?"

NEMO.

_Meaning of Mosaic._--What is the exact meaning and