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the usual grammatical course at school, he entered the Humanity Class in the university of Edinburgh, in October 1730, and spent eleven years at that celebrated seminary, assiduously employed in the literary and scientific studies prescribed by the church of Scotland to all who are to become candidates for her licence to preach the Gospel. During this important period he was distinguished among his companions both for diligence and proficiency; and obtained from the professors under whom he studied repeated testimonies of approbation. One of them deserves to be mentioned particularly, because in his own opinion it determined the bent of his genius towards polite literature. An essay, ПE TO xxλov, or, On the Beautiful, written by him when a student of logic in the usual course of academical exercises, had the good fortune to attract the notice of professor Stevenson, and, with circumstances honourable to the author, was appointed to be read in public at the conclusion of the session. This mark of distinction made a deep impression on his mind; and the essay which merited it he ever after recollected with partial affection, and preserved to the day of his death as the first earnest of his fame.

"At this time Dr. Blair commenced a method of study which contributed much to the accuracy and extent of his knowledge, and which he continued to practise occasionally even after his reputation was fully established. It consisted in making abstracts of the most important works which he read, and in digesting them according to the train of his own thoughts. History, in particular, he resolved to study in this manner; and, in concert with some of his youthful associates, he

constructed a very comprehensive scheme of chronological tables for receiving into its proper place every important fact that should occur. The scheme devised by this young student for his own private use was afterwards improved, filled up, and given to the public by his learned friend Dr. John Blair, prebendary of Westminster, in his valuable work, Chronology and History of the World.'

"In the year 1739 Dr. Blair took his degree of A. M. On that occasion he printed and defended a thesis De Fundamentis et Obligatione Legis Nature, which contains a short but masterly discussion of this important subject, and exhibits in elegant Latin an outline of the moral principles, which have been since more fully unfolded and illustrated in his Sermons.

"The university of Edinburgh, about this period, numbered among her pupils many young men who were soon to make a distinguished figure in the civil, the ecclesiastical, and the literary history of their country. With most of them Dr. Blair entered into habits of intimate connexion, which no future competition or jealousy occurred to interrupt, which held them united through life in their views of publie good, and which had the most beneficial influence on their own improvement, on the progress of elegance and taste among their cotemporaries, and on the general interests of the community to which they belonged.

"On the completion of his academical course, he underwent the customary trials before the Presby, tery of Edinburgh, and received from that venerable body a licence to preach the Gospel on the 21st of October 1741. His public life now commenced with very favourable prospects.

prospects. The reputation which he brought from the university was fully justified by his first appearance in the pulpit; and, in a few months, the fame of his eloquence procured for him a presentation to the parish of Colessie in Fife, where he was ordained to the office of the holy ministry on the 23d of September 1742. But he was not permitted to remain long in this rural retreat. A vacancy in the second charge of the canongate of Edinburgh furnished to his friends an opportunity of recalling him to a station more suited to his talents. And, though one of the most popular and elo quent clergymen in the church was placed in competition with him, a great majority of the electors decided in favour of this young orator, and restored him in July 1743 to the bounds of his native city.

"In this station Dr. Blair continued eleven years, discharging with great fidelity and success the various duties of the pastoral office. His discourses from the pulpit in particu, lar attracted universal admiration. They were composed with uncoin. mon care; and, occupying a middle place between the dry metaphysical discussion of one class of preachers, and the loose incoherent declamation of another, they blended together, in the happiest manner, the light of argument with the warmth of exhortation, and exhibited captivating specimens of what had hitherto been rarely heard in Scotland-the polished, well-compacted, and regular didactic oration. "lu consequence of a call from the town-council and general session of Edinburgh, he was translated from the canongate to lady Yester's, one of the city churches, on the 11th of October 1754: and on the 15th day of June 1758 he was promoted to the high church of Edin

burgh, the most important ecclesiastical charge in the kingdom. To this charge he was raised at the request of the lords of council and session, and of the other distin guished official characters who have their seats in that church. And the uniform prudence, ability, and success which, for a period of more than forty years, accompanied all his ministerial labours in that conspicuous and difficult station, suiciently evince the wisdom of their choice.

"Hitherto his attention seems to have been devoted almost exclusively to the attainment of professional excellence, and to the regular discharge of his parochial duties. No production of his pen had yet been given to the world by himself, except two sermons preached on particular occasions, some translations in verse of passages of Scripture for the psalmody of the church, and a few articles in the Edinburgh Review-a publication begun in 1755, and conducted for a short time by some of the ablest men in the kingdom. But standing as he now did at the head of his profession, and released by the labour of former years from the drudgery of weekly preparation for the pulpit, he began to think seriously on a plan for teaching to others that art which had contributed so much to the establishment of his own fame. With this view, he communicated to his friends a scheme of Lectures on Composition; and having obtained the approbation of the university, he began to read them in the college on the 11th of December 1759. To this undertaking he brought all the qualifications requisite for executing it well; and along with them a weight of reputation which could not fail to give effect to the lessons

he should deliver. For besides the
testimony given to his talents by
his successive promotions in the
church, the university of St. An-
drew's, moved chiefly by the merit
of his eloquence, had in June 1757
conferred on him the degree of
D.D. a literary honour which at
that time was very rare in Scotland.
Accordingly his first course of lec-
tures was well attended, and re.
ceived with great applause. The
patrons of the university, convinced
that they would form a valuable ad-
dition to the system of education,
agreed in the following summer to
institute a rhetorical class, under his
direction, as a permanent part of
their academical establishment:
and on the 7th of April 1762, his
majesty was graciously pleased
To erect and endow a Professor-
ship of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
in the university of Edinburgh, and
'to appoint Dr. Blair, in considera-
tion of his approved qualifications,
Regius Professor thereof, with a
salary of 70l.' These Lectures he
published in 1783, when he retired
from the labours of the office; and
the general voice of the public has
pronounced them to be a most ju-
dicious, elegant, and comprehensive
system of rules for forming the
style and cultivating the taste of
youth.

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"About the time in which he was occupied in laying the foundations of this useful institution he had an opportunity of conferring another important obligation on the literary world, by the part which he acted in rescuing from oblivion the poems of Ossian. It was by the solicitation of Dr. Blair and Mr. John Home that Mr. Macpherson was induced to publish his Fragments of Ancient Poetry; and their patronage was of essential service in procuring the subscription which enabled him

to undertake his tour through the Highlands for collecting the materials of Fingal, and of those other delightful productions which bear the name of Ossian. To these productions Dr. Blair applied the test of genuine criticism; and soon after their publication gave an estimate of their merits in a Dissertation, which for beauty of language, delicacy of taste, and acuteness of critical investigation, has few parallels. It was printed in 1763, and spread the reputation of its author throughout Europe.

"The great objects of his literary ambition being now attained, his talents were for many years consecrated solely to the important and peculiar employments of his station. It was not till the year 1777 that he could be induced to favour the world with a volume of the Sermons which had so long furnished instruction and delight to his own congregation. But this volume being well received, the public approbation encouraged him to proceed: three other volumes followed at different intervals; and all of them experienced a degree of success of which few publications can boast. They circulated rapidly and widely wherever the English tongue extends; they were soon translated into almost all the languages of Europe; and his present majesty, with that wise attention to the interests of religion and literature which distinguishes his reign, was graciously pleased to judge them worthy of a public reward. By a royal mandate to the exchequer in Scotland, dated July 25th, 1780, a pension of 2001. a year was conferred on their author, which continued unaltered till his death.

"The motives which gave rise to the present volume are sufficiently explained by himself in his address

to

to the reader. The sermons which it contains were composed at very different periods of his life; but they were all written out anew in his own hand, and in many parts recomposed, during the course of last summer, after he had completed his eighty-second year. They were delivered to the pub lishers about six weeks before his death in the form and order in which they now appear. And it may gratify his readers to know that the last of them which he composed, though not the last in the order adopted for publication, was the sermon on a Life of Dissipation and Pleasure a sermon written with great dignity and eloquence, and which should be regarded as his solemn parting admonition to a class of men whose conduct is highly important to the community, and whose reformation and virtue he had long laboured most zealously to promote.

"The sermons which he has given to the world are universally admitted to be models in their kind; and they will long remain durable monuments of the piety, the genius, and sound judgment of their author. But they formed only a small part of the discourses he prepared for the pulpit. The remainder modesty led him to think unfit for the press; and, influenced by an excusable solicitude for his reputation, he left behind him an explicit injunction that his numerous manuscripts should be destroyed. The greatness of their number was creditable to his professional character, and exhibited a convincing proof that his fame as a public teacher had been honourably purchased by the most unwearied ap plication to the private and unseen labours of his office. It rested on the uniform intrinsic excellence of

his discourses in point of matter and composition, rather than on foreign attractions; for his delivery, though distinct, serious, and inpressive, was not remarkably distinguished by that magic charm of voice and action which captivates the senses and imagination, and which, in the estimation of superficial hearers, constitutes the chief merit of a preacher.

"In that department of his professional duty, which regarded the government of the church, Dr. Blair was steadily attached to the cause of moderation. From diffidence, and perhaps from a certain degree of inaptitude for extemporary speaking, he took a less public part in the contests of ecclesiastical politics than some of his cotemporaries; and, from the same causes, he never would consent to become moderator of the general assembly of the church of Scotland. But his influence among his brethren was extensive; his opinion, guided by that sound uprightness of judgment. which formed the predominant feature of his intellectual character, had been always held in high respect by the friends with whom he acted, and for inany of the last years of his life it was received by them almost as a law. The great leading principle in which they cordially concurred with him, and which directed all their measures, was to preserve the church on the one side from a slavish corrupting dependence on the civil power and on the other from a greater infusion of democratical influence than is compatible with good order and the established constitution of the country.

"The reputation which he acquired in the discharge of his public duties was well sustained by the great respectability of his priA 4

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vate character. Deriving from family associations a strong sense of clerical decorum, feeling on his heart deep impressions of religious and moral obligation, and guided in his intercourse in the world by the same correct and delicate taste which appeared in his writings, he was eminently distinguished through life by the prudence, purity, and dignified propriety of his conduct. His mind, by constitution and culture, was admirably formed for enjoying happiness-well-balanced in itself by the nice proportion and adjustment of its faculties, it did not incline him to any of those eccentricities, either of opinion or of action, which are too often the lot of genius; free from all tincture of envy, it delighted cordially in the prosperity and fame of his companions; sensible to the estimation in which he himself was held, it disposed him to dwell at times on the thought of his success with a satifaction which he did not affect to conceal; inaccessible alike to gloomy and to peevish impressions, it was always master of its own movements, and ready, in an uncommon degree, to take an active and pleas ing interest in every thing, whether important or trifling, that happened to become for the moment the object of his attention. This habit of mind, tempered with the most unsuspecting simplicity, and united to eminent talents and inflexible integrity, while it secured to the last his own relish of life, was wonderfully calculated to endear him to his friends, and to render him an invaluable member of any society to which he belonged. Accordingly there have been few men more universally respected by those who knew him, more sincerely esteemed in the circle of his acquaintance, or more tenderly be

loved by those who enjoy the blessings of his private and domestic connexion.

"In April 1748 he married his cousin Catharine Bannatine, daughter of the Rev. James Bannatine, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. By her he had a son who died in infancy, and a daughter who lived to her twenty-first year, the pride of her parents, and adorned with all the accomplishments that became her age and sex. Mrs. Blair herself, a woman of great good sense and spirit, was also taken from him a few years before his death, after she had shared with the tenderest affection in all his fortunes, and contributed near half a century to his happiness and comfort.

"Dr. Blair had been naturally of a feeble constitution of body; but as he grew up his constitution acquired greater firmness and vigour. Though liable to occasional attacks from some of the sharpest and most painful diseases that afflict the human frame, he enjoyed a general state of good health; and, through habitual cheerfulness, temperance, and care, survived the usual term of human life. For some years he had felt himself unequal to the fatigue of instructing his very large congregation from the pulpit; and, under the impression which this feeling produced, he has been heard at times to say, with a sigh, that he was left almost the last of his cotemporaries.' Yet he continued to the end in the regular discharge of all his other official duties, and particularly in giving advice to the afflicted, who from different quarters of the kingdom solicited his correspondence. His last summer was devoted to the preparation of this volume of Setmons; and in the course of it he exhibited a vigour of understanding

and

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