"Blake was the most powerful force in Canadian political history. He had the most extraordinary mental organization, a grasp that covered the whole and searched out each smallest detail. He was first and foremost the great advocate, a tremendous dialectician, analyzing and cross analyzing to the last point, major points and minor points, utterly exhaustive. But he was no mere man of words. He would have proved Canada's most constructive statesman had he held office....He was proud, and expected men to come to him; sensitive, for he lacked humour; honourable and earnest, and saw charlatans and men steeped in corruption holding high place in public life. Public life in the eighties was not a calling where thin-skinned men throve. The kindliest of men to his intimates, he wore the sensitive man's mask of indifference to the public. Ill-health and a nervous temperament unfitted him for the dridgery and disappointments of politics. He was moody and nervous when things were not going well. Yet without any of the lesser arts, he cast a spell over every man in parliament. We felt in the presence of genius, and would have been proud to serve to the end, had he not drawn himself aloof."
Oscar D. Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Oxford University Press: 1921), footnote pp 223-224.
