BLAIR, Dr Hugh, a distinguished clergyman of the church of Scotland, was born at Edinburgh in 1718. His father, John Blair, was a merchant in that city, and grandson of the famous Mr Robert Blair, minister of St Andrews, chaplain to King Charles I., and one of the most distinguished clergymen of the period in which he lived. The views of Dr Blair, from his earliest youth, were turned toward the church, and his education received a suitable direction. After 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 license 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 particularly mentioned, because in his own opinion it determined the bent of his genius toward polite literature. An essay, ∏∞ τoy %αλou, Chi 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 afterwards 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 7 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 had 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, entitled The Chronology and History of the World.

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

The university of Edinburgh, about this period, numbered amongst her pupils many young men who were destined to make a distinguished figure in the civil, the ecclesiastical, and the literary history of their country. With most of these Dr Blair formed habits of intimacy, which no future competition or jealousy occurred to interrupt,—which held them united throughout life in their views of public good,—and which had the most beneficial influence on their own improvement, on the progress of taste among their contemporaries, 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 presbytery of Edinburgh, and received from that reverend body, on the 2lst of October 1741, a license to preach the gospel. His public life now commenced with very favourable 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 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 afforded his friends an opportunity of recalling him to a station more suited to his talents; and, although one of the most popular and eloquent clergymen in the church was placed in competition with him, a great majority of the electors decided in favour of the young orator, and restored him, in July 1743, to the bounds of hiá native city-

In this station Dr Blair continued for eleven years, discharging with great fidelity and success the various duties of the pastoral office. His discourses from the pulpit, m particular, attracted universal admiration. They were composed with uncommon 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 exhorta· tion, and exhibited captivating specimens of what had hitherto been rarely heard in Scotland, the polished, wel - compacted, and regular didactic oration.

In consequence of a call from the town-council and general[7:4:669] session of Edinburgh, he was translated from the Canongate to Lady Yester’s, one of the city churches, on the Hth of October 1754; and on the 15th of June 1758 he was promoted to the High Church of Edinburgh, 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 distinguished official characters who usually attend 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, sufficiently 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 delivered. For, besides the testimony given to his talents by his successive promotions in the church, the university of St Andrews, moved chiefly by the merit of his eloquence, had, in June 1757, conferred on him the degree of doctor in divinity, a literary honour which at that time was very rare in Scotland. Accordingly, his first course of lectures was well attended, and received with great applause. The patrons of the university, convinced that they would form a valuable addition 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 professorship of rhetoric and belles lettres in the university of Edinburgh, and to appoint Dr Blair, in consideration of his approved qualifications, regius professor thereof, with a salary of L.70.” 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 judicious and respectable, if not very profound, system of rules for forming the style and cultivating the taste of youth.

About the time when he was occupied in laying the foundations of this useful institution, he had an opportunity of conferring (as he doubtless believed) another important obligation on the literary world, by contributing to rescue from oblivion the poems of Ossian. It was by the joint 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 out of which he afterwards composed “Fingal,” and the other productions which bear the name of Ossian. To these Dr Blair applied the test of a criticism, not very subtile or profound; and soon after their publication gave an estimate of their merits in a “Dissertation,” which was prodigiously over-rated at the time when it first appeared, and has since, by a natural enough re-action in public opinion, been treated with unmerited neglect. It was printed in 1763; and being regarded as a masterpiece of critical acuteness, as well as of elegant composition, it spread the reputation of its author throughout all Europe, and, for a time, silenced the sceptical doubts which had been raised as to the honesty of Macpherson and the genuineness of Ossian. But the triumph of the believers and of their champion was destined to be comparatively short-lived; and it can scarcely now be said that even a remnant of the faith, which once seemed built upon a rock, has survived the rude and unsparing onset of Mr Laing.^[1. The question as to the genuineness of Ossian, or rather of the poems which Macpherson chose to attribute to that traditionary personage, has been placed in its true light by Sir James Mackintosh. “The Celtic tribes,” says he, “were celebrated for the love of poetry. The old songs of every people, which bear the impress of their character, and of which the beauties, whether few or many, must be genuine, because they arise only from feeling, have always been valued by men of masculine and comprehensive taste. Some fragments of the songs of the Scottish Highlanders, of very uncertain antiquity, appear to have fallen into the hands of Macpherson, a young man of no mean genius, unacquainted with the higher criticism applied to the genuineness of ancient writings, and who was too much a stranger to the studious world to have learnt those refinements which extend probity to literature as well as to property. Elated by the praise not unjustly bestowed on some of these fragments, instead of insuring a general assent to them by a publication in their natural state, he unhappily applied his talents for skilful imitation to complete poetical works in a style similar to the fragments, and to work them into the unsuitable shape of epic and dramatic poems. He was not aware of the impossibility of poems, preserved only by tradition, being intelligible, after thirteen centuries, to readers who knew ouly the language of their own times; and he did not perceive the extravagance of peopling the Caledonian mountains in the fourth century with a race of men so generous and merciful, so gallant, so mild, and so magnanimous, that the most ingenious romances of the age of chivalry could not have ventured to represent a single hero as on a level with their common virtues. He did not consider the prodigious absurdity of inserting as it were a people thus advanced in moral civilization, between the Britons, ignorant and savage as they are painted, by Caesar, and the Highlanders, fierce and rude as they are presented by the first accounts of the chroniclers of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Even the better part of the Scots were, in the latter period, thus spoken of:—' In Scotland ye shall find no man lightly of honour or gentleness: they be like wyld and savage people.’ The great historian who made the annals of Scotland a part of Euro pean literature had sufficiently warned his countrymen against such faults, by the decisive observation that their forefathers were unacquainted with the art of writing, which alone preserves language from total change, and great events from oblivion. Macpherson was encouraged to overleap these and many other improbabilities by youth, talent, and applause: perhaps he did not at first distinctly present to his mind the permanence of the deception. It is more probable, and it is a supposition countenanced by many circumstances, that, after enjoying the pleasure of duping so many critics, he intended one day to claim the poems as his own; but if he had such a design, considerable obstacles to its execution arose around him. He was loaded with so much praise, that he seemed bound in honour to his admirers not to desert them. The support of his own country appeared to render adherence to those poems which Scotland inconsiderately sanctioned a sort of national obligation. Exasperated, on the other hand, by the perhaps unduly vehement and sometimes very coarse attacks made on him, he was unwilling to surrender to such opponents. He involved himself at last so deeply as to leave him no decent retreat. Since the keen and searching publication of Mr Laing, these poems have fallen in reputation, as they Jost the character of genuineness. They had been admired by all the nations and by all the men of genius in Europe. The last ιnculent∙in their story is perhaps the most remarkable. In an Italian version, which softened their defects, and rendered their characteristic qualities faint, they formed almost the whole poetical library of Napoleon,—a man who, whatever may be finally thought of him in other respects, must be owned to be, by the transcendent vigour of his powers, entitled to a place in the first class of human minds. No other imposture in literary history approaches them in the splendour of their course. They have, however, thrown a colour of fraud over Celtic poetry which is not likely to be effaced; for the Irish and Scotch are not even yet likely to join their exertions for the recovery, literal translation, and impartial illustration, of such fragments of the ancient songs of both these nations as are still extant.” { History of England, vol. i. p. 86, 87, 88. London, 1830.) ]

The great objects of Blair’s 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 the first volume of those sermons, which had so long furnished instruction and de light to his own congregation. But this volume having been 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 Majesty George III., with that attention to the interests of religion and literature which distinguished his reign, was graciously pleased to judge them worthy of a public reward. By a royal mandate to the Exchequer of Scotland, dated the 25th of July 1780, a pension of L.200 a year was conferred upon their author, and continued till the period of his death.

The motives which gave rise to the fifth volume are sufficiently explained by himself in his address to the [7:4:670]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 the summer 1800, after he had completed his eighty-second year. They were delivered tŏ the publishers 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 may 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, 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 application to the private and unseen labours of his office. It rested on the uniform excellence of his discourses in point of matter and composition, rather than on extrinsic attractions; for his delivery, though distinct, serious, and impressive, was not remarkably distinguished by that 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 what is usually styled the moderate party. 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 contemporaries; 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; while his opinion, which had always been held in high respect by the friends with whom he acted, was, during many of the last years of his life, 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 hand, from a-slavish or corrupt dependence on the civil power, and, on the other, from a greater infusion of democratical influence than is compa-1 tible 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 private character. Deriving from family associations a strong sense of clerical decorum, feeling in his heart deep impressions of religious and moral obligation, and guided in his intercourse in the world by the same correct 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 too often distinguish men of talent, not to say genius: free from all tincture of envy, it delighted cordially in the prosperity and fame of his companions; sensible of the estimation in which he was himself held, it disposed him to dwell at times on the thought of his success with a satisfaction 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 pleasing 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 tohisfriends, and to render him an invaluable member of the society to which he belonged. Few men, indeed, have been more universally respected by those who knew him, more sincerely esteemed in the circle of his acquaintance, or more tenderly beloved by those who enjoyed the happiness of being connected with him in private and domestic life.

In April 1748, he married his cousin Catharine Bannatyne, daughter of the Rev. James Bannatyne, 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 for near half a century to his happiness and comfort.

Dr Blair had been naturally of a feeble constitution; but as he grew up it acquired greater firmness and vigour. Though liable to occasional attacks from some of the sharpest and most painful diseases that afflict the human [7:4:671] frame, he enjoyed a general state of good health; and, through habitual cheerfulness, temperance, and care, survived theusual term of human life. For some years he had felt himself unequal to the fatigue of instructing his large congregation from the pulpit; and, under the impression which this feeling produced, he was heard at times to say, with a 6 igh, “that he had been left almost the last of his contemporaries.” 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 6U∏ιmer was devoted to the preparation of his fifth volume of sermons; and in the course of it he exhibited a vigour of understanding and capacity of exertion equal to that of his best days.

He began the winter pleased with himself on account of the completion of this work; and his friends were flattered with the hope that he might live to enjoy the accession of emolument and fame which he expected it would bring. But the seeds of a mortal disease were lurking within him. On the 24th of December 1800, he complained of a pain in his bowels, which, during that and the following day, gave him but little uneasiness; and he received as usual the visits of his friends. But on the afternoon of the 26th, the symptoms became violent and alarming. He felt that he was approaching the end of his appointed course; and retaining to the last moment the full possession of his mental faculties, he expired on the morning of the 27th, with the composure and hope which became a Christian pastor.

Blair, James, an eminent divine, was born and bred in Scotland, where he had at length a benefice in the episcopal church; but meeting with some discouragements, he went to England in the latter end of the reign of King Charles IL, was sent by Dr Compton as a missionary to Virginia, and afterwards by the same bishop made commissary for that colony, which was the highest office in the church there. He distinguished himself by his exemplary conduct and unwearied labours in the work of the ministry; and finding that the want of proper seminaries for the advancement of religion and learning proved a great obstacle to all attempts for the propagation of the gospel, he formed a design of erecting and endowing a college at Williamsburg, in Virginia, for professors and students in academical learning. He therefore not only set on foot a voluntary subscription, but, in 1693, came to England to solicit the affair at court; when Queen Mary was so well pleased with the noble design, that she espoused it with particular zeal; and King William readily concurring with her majesty, a patent was passed for erecting and endowing a college by the name of the William and Mary College, of which Mr Blair was appointed president, and enjoyed that office near fifty years. He was also rector of Williamsburg, and president of the council in that colony. He wrote Our Saviour’s divine Sermon on the Mount explained, in several sermons, 4 vols. octavo. He died in 1743.

Blair, John, a Scottish author, contemporary with, and the companion, some say the chaplain, of Sir William Wallace. He attended that illustrious hero in almost all his exploits; and, after his death, which left so great a stain on the character of Edward I., he wrote Memoirs of the Scottish Champion, in Latin. But time has destroyed this work, which might have thrown great light on the history of a very troubled and remarkable period. An inaccurate fragment of it only has descended to us. It was published, with a commentary, by Sir Robert Sibbald; but little, unfortunately, can be learned from it.

Blair, John, an eminent chronologist, was educated at Edinburgh, whence he afterwards proceeded to London, and was for some time usher of a school in Hedge-Lane. In 1754 he presented to the world his valuable work, The Chronology ånd History of the World, from the Creation to the year of Christ 1753. This volume, which is dedicated to Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, was published by subscription, on account of the great expense of the plates. For this the author apologized in his preface, where he acknowledged great obligations to the Earl of Bath, and announced some chronological dissertations, in which he proposed to illustrate the disputed points, to explain the prevailing systems of chronology, and to establish the authorities upon which some of the particular eras depend. In January 1755 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1761 of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1756 lie published a second edition of his Chronological Tables. In September 1757 he was appointed chaplain to the princess dowager of Wales, and mathematical tutor to the Duke of York; and on Dr Townshend’s promotion to the deanery of Norwich, in 1761, the services of Dr Blair were rewarded with a prebend’s stall in Westminster. The vicarage of Hinckley happening to fall vacant six days after, by the death of Dr Morris, Dr Blair was presented to it by the dean and chapter of Westminster; and in the August of that year he obtained a dispensation to hold with it the rectory of Burton Coggles in Lincolnshire. In September 1763 he attended his royal pupil the Duke of York in a tour to the Continent, when he had the satisfaction of visiting Lisbon, Gibraltar, Minorca, most of the principal cities in Italy, and several parts of France; after which he returned with the duke in August 1764. In 1768 he published an improved edition of his Chronological Tables, which he dedicated to the Princess of Wales, who had early expressed her approbation of the former edition. To the new edition were annexed fourteen maps of ancient and modern geography, for illustrating the tables of chronology and history; together with a Dissertation on the Progress of Geography. In March 1771 he was presented by the dean and chapter of Westminster to the vicarage of St Bride’s in the city of London; which made it necessary for him to resign Hinckley, where he had never resided for any length of time. On the death of Mr Sims, in April 1776, he resigned St Bride’s, and was presented to the rectory of St John the Evangelist in Westminster; and in June of the same year he obtained a dispensation to hold the rectory of St John, together with that of Horton, near Colebrook, Bucks. The fate of his brother Captain Blair, who fell gloriously in the service of his country in the memorable battle of the 12th April 1782, is believed to have accelerated his own death. Being at the time affected with an influenza, the disease continued to gain ground till it put a period to his life on the 24th of June 1782.

Blair, Robert, author of the well-known poem entitled “The Grave,” was the eldest son of the Reverend Robert Blair, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, and the grandson of that Robert Blair who figured so conspicuously among the Scottish clergy in the civil wars. Of his personal history very few particulars are known. He seems to have been born at Edinburgh about the beginning of the last century, and to have received the elements of a classical education at the university of his native city; after which he was sent abroad for improvement, and spent some time on the Continent. Upon his return he took orders, and on the 5th of January 1731 was ordained minister of Athelstaneford, in East Lothian, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died of a fever on the 4th of February 1746, in the forty-seventh year of his age; and was succeeded in his living of Athelstaneford by another poet, Mr John Home, the author of “Douglas.” By his lady, who survived him several years, he had five sons and one daughter[7:4:672]; the late Robert Blair of Avington, Lord President of the Court of Session, being his fourth son. Being in easy circumstances, Mr Blair lived very much in the style of a gentleman of fortune, and was greatly respected by all who knew him. He was a man of learning and accomplishments as well as a poet, and evinced a peculiar predilection for the natural sciences, particularly botany, in which he was considered as a great proficient. He carried on a correspondence with some of the learned men of England, and numbered among his friends Mr Henry Baker of the Royal Society, Dr Watts, Dr Doddridge, and other eminent persons of his time. He appears to have written several other pieces besides “The Grave,” and we may particularly mention “A Poem dedicated to the Memory of Mr William Law, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh,” which was first published in Dr Anderson’s collection; but the former constitutes his best and indeed only title to rank as a poet. It consists of a succession of descriptions and reflections which have no other connection or dependence except what they may be supposed to derive from their relation to a common subject; but these are interspersed with striking allusions, picturesque imagery, touches of a rude though effective pathos, and a vein of sentiment at once so natural and so just that it is almost certain to find its way to the heart through the medium of the understanding. The rhythm is often harsh, and the versification frequently devoid of correctness, harmony, and grace; but it has nevertheless a masculine vigour and freshness about it, which more than atone for these defects in the finishing; while, in certain moods of the mind, the air of deep and almost misanthropical melancholy diffused over the whole, proves highly touching and impressive. Accordingly there are few poems indeed which have become so thoroughly infixed in the general memory; none, perhaps, except the “Cottar’s Saturday Night,” which is so universal a favourite with the people of this country. Mr Campbell, in his " Pleasures of Hope,” has borrowed, with a slight variation, which seems scarcely an improvement, a well-known line of this poem. His “like angel visits, few and far between,” is an almost tautological substitution for the more correct and precise comparison of Blair, 1 its visits, Like those of angels, short and far between.