BLACKLOCK, Thomas, a clergyman, was born at Annan, in the south of Scotland, in the year 1721. His father was a bricklayer; but, though in this humble sphere of life, he was of a respectable character, and not deficient in knowledge and urbanity. The son was not quite six months old when he lost his eye-sight by the small-pox. This misfortune rendered him incapable of learning any of the mechanical arts; wherefore his father kept him at home, and, with the assistance of some friends, fostered that inclination which, at a very early period, he showed for books. This was done by reading to him, first the simple sort of publications which are commonly put into the hands of children, and then several of our best authors, as Milton, Spenser, Prior, Pope, and Addison. His companions, whom his early gentleness and kindness of disposition, as well as their compassion for his misfortune, strongly attached to him, were also very assiduous in their good offices, particularly in reading to instruct and amuse him. By their assistance he acquired some knowledge of the Latin tongue; but he did not attend a grammar-school till a more advanced period of life. Poetry was even then his favourite reading; and he found an enthusiastic delight in the works of the best English poets, as well as in those of his countryman Allan Ramsay. Even at so early an age as twelve he began to write poems, one of which is preserved in the collection which was published after his death; and it is not perhaps inferior to any of the premature compositions of boys assisted by the best education, which, in most cases, are only recalled into notice by the subsequent fame of their authors.

Blacklock had attained the age of nineteen when his father was killed by the accidental falling of a malt-kiln belonging to his son-in-law. This loss, heavy to any one at that early age, would have nevertheless been comparatively light to a young man possessing the ordinary means of support, and the ordinary advantages of education; but to him, thus suddenly deprived of that support on which his youth had leaned, destitute of almost every resource which industry affords to those who have the blessing of sight, with a body feeble and delicate from nature, and with a mind peculiarly susceptible, this bereavement was doubly severe, and threw over his spirits that desponding gloom to which he gave expression in the following pathetic lines :—
Dejecting prospect! soon the hapless hour
May come, perhaps this moment it impends.
Which drives me forth to penury and cold,
Naked, and beat by all the storms of heav’n,
Friendless and guideless to explore my way;
Till, on cold earth this poor unsheltered head
Reclining, vainly from the ruthless blast
Respite I beg, and in the shock expire.

He lived with his mother for about a year after his father’s death, and began to be distinguished as a young man of uncommon parts and genius. At this time, however, his efforts were unassisted by learning; the circumstances of his family affording him no better education than the smattering of Latin which his companions had taught him, and the recollection of the few English authors [7:4:664] which they, or his father in the intervals of his professional labours, had read to him. But poetry, although it attains its highest perfection in a cultivated soil, grows perhaps as luxuriantly in a wild one. To it he was devoted from his earliest days; and about this time several of his poetical productions began to be handed about, which considerably enlarged the circle of his friends and acquaintance. Some of his compositions having been shown to Dr Stevenson, an eminent physician of Edinburgh, when accidentally at Dumfries on a professional visit, that gentleman formed the benevolent design of carrying him to the Scottish metropolis, and giving to his natural endowments the assistance of a classical education. Blacklock, in consequence, came to Edinburgh in the year 1741, and was enrolled a student of divinity in the university there, though without any particular view of entering into the church. In this university he continued his studies under the patronage of Dr Stevenson till the year 1745, when he retired to Dumfries, and resided in the house of Mr M‘Murdo, who had married his sister, during the whole time of the civil war, which then raged in the country, and particularly disturbed the tranquillity of the metropolis. When peace had been restored to the nation, he returned to the university, and pursued his studies for six years longer. During this residence in Edinburgh, he made the acquaintance of several literary men, particularly that of Mr Hume, who attached himself warmly to Mr Blacklock’s interests, and was afterwards particularly useful to him in the publication of the quarto edition of his poems, which was published by subscription in London in the year 1756. Previously to this, two editions in octavo had been published at Edinburgh, the first in 1746, and the second in 1754.

In the course of his education at Edinburgh he acquired a proficiency in the learned languages, and became more a master of the French tongue than was then common in that city. For this last acquisition he was chiefly indebted to the social intercourse to which he had the good fortune to be admitted in the house of Provost Alexander, who had married a native of France. At the university he attained a knowledge of the various branches of philosophy and theology, to which his course of study naturally led, and acquired at the same time a considerable fund of learning and information in those various departments of science and literature, from which his want of sight did not absolutely exclude him.

In 1757 he began a course of study, with a view to give lectures in oratory to young gentlemen intended for the bar or the pulpit. On this occasion he wrote to Mr Hume, informed him of his plan, and requested his assistance in the prosecution of it. But Mr Hume doubting the probability of its succeeding, he abandoned the project; and then, for the first time, adopted the decided intention of going into the church of Scotland. After applying closely for a considerable time to the study of theology, he passed the usual trials in the presbytery of Dumfries, and was by that presbytery licensed as a preacher of the gospel in the year 1759. In this capacity he obtained high reputation, and was fond of composing sermons, of which he has left some volumes in manuscript, as also a treatise on morals.

In 1762 he married Miss Sarah Johnston, daughter of Mr Joseph Johnston, surgeon in Dumfries; a connection which formed the great solace and blessing of his future life, and gave him, with the tenderness of a wife, all the care and attention of a guardian and a friend. This event took place a few days before he was ordained as minister of the town and parish of Kirkcudbright, in consequence of a presentation from the crown, obtained for him by the Earl of Selkirk. But the inhabitants of the parish,—whether from that violent aversion to patronage, which was then so universal in the southern parts of Scotland, from some political disputes which at that time subsisted between them and the patron, or from those prejudices which many of them might naturally enough entertain against a pastor deprived of sight, or perhaps from all these causes united,—were so extremely disinclined to receive him as their minister, that after a legal dispute of nearly two years, it was thought expedient by his friends, as it had always been wished by himself, to compromise the matter, by resigning his right to the living, and accepting a moderate annuity in its stead. With this slender provision he removed to Edinburgh in 1764; and to make up by his industry a more comfortable and decent subsistence, he adopted the plan of receiving into his house as boarders a certain number of young gentlemen, whose studies in languages and philosophy he might, if necessary, assist. In this situation he continued till the year 1787, when he found that his time of life and state of health required a degree of quiet and repose which induced him to discontinue receiving boarders. In 1767 the degree of doctor in divinity was conferred on him by the University and Marischal College of Aberdeen.

In the occupation which he had thus exercised for so many years of his life, no teacher was ever perhaps more agreeable to his pupils, nor any master of a family more beloved by its inmates, than Dr Blaçklock. The gentleness of his manners, the benignity of his disposition, and that warm interest in the happiness of others which led him so constantly to promote it, were qualities that could not fail to procure him the love and regard of the young people committed to his charge; whilst the society which respect for his character and his genius often assembled at his house, afforded them advantages rarely to be obtained in establishments of a similar kind.

In this mixed society he appeared to forget the privation of sight, and the melancholy which at other times it produced in his mind. He entered, with all the cheerful playfulness of a young man, into the sprightly narratives, sportful fancies, and humorous jests of those around him. Next to conversation, music was perhaps the source of his greatest delight; for he not only relished it highly, but was himself a tolerable performer on several instruments, particularly the flute. He generally carried in his pocket a small flageolet, on which he played his favourite tunes; and he was not displeased when asked in company to play or to sing them,—a natural feeling for a blind man, who thus adds a scene to the little and confined drama of his society.

Of the happiness of others, however, we are incompetent judges. Companionship and sympathy bring forth those gay colours of mirth and cheerfulness which perhaps serve to cover the sadness we have no opportunity of witnessing. Of a blind man’s condition we are particularly liable to form a mistaken estimate; we give him credit for all those gleams of delight which society affords him, without placing to their full account those dreary moments of darksome solitude to which the suspension of that society necessarily condemns him. Dr Blacklock had from nature a constitution delicate and nervous; and his mind, as is almost always the case, was in a great degree affected by the indisposition of his body. He frequently complained of a lowness and depression of spirits, which neither the attention of his friends, nor the unceasing care of a most affectionate wife, was able entirely to remove. The imagination, which we are so apt to envy and admire, serves but to irritate this disorder of the mind; and that fancy, in whose creations we so much delight, can draw, from sources unknown to common men, subjects of dis gust, disquietude, and affliction. Some of his latter poems express a chagrin, though not of an ungentle sort, at th e [7:4:665]supposed failure of his imaginative powers, or at the fastidiousness of modern times, which he despaired to please.
Such were his efforts, such his cold reward,
Whom once thy partial tongue pronounced a bard;
Excursive, on the gentle gales of spring,
He roved, whilst favour imped his timid wing;
Exhausted genius now no more inspires,
But mourns abortive hopes and faded fires;
The short-lived wreath, which once his temple graced,
Fades at the sickly breath of squeamish taste;
Whilst darker days his fainting flames immure
In cheerless gloom, and winter premature.

These lines are, however, no proof of “exhausted genius” or “faded fires.” “Abortive hopes,” indeed, must be the lot of all who, like Dr Blacklock, reach the period of old age. In early youth the heart of every one is poetical; it creates a scene of imaginary happiness and delusive hopes; it clothes the world in the brightest colours of fancy; it refines what is coarse, it exalts what is mean; it sees nothing but disinterestedness in friendship; it promises eternal fidelity in love. Even on the distresses of its situation it can throw a certain romantic shade of melancholy, that leaves a man sad, but does not make him unhappy. But at a more advanced age “the fairy visions fade,” and he suffers most deeply who has indulged them the most.

About the period when the above verses were written, Dr Blacklock was, for the first time, afflicted with what to him must have been peculiarly distressful. He had become occasionally subject to deafness, which, though he seldom felt it in any great degree, was sufficient, in his situation, when the sense of hearing was almost his only channel of communication with the external world, to cause very lively uneasiness. But amidst these indispositions of body and disquietudes of mind, the gentleness of his temper never forsook him; and he felt all that resignation and confidence in the Supreme Being which from his earliest days till his last moments he equally acknowledged. In the summer of 1791 he was seized with a feverish disorder, which at first seemed slight, and never rose to any great violence; but a frame so little robust as his proved unable to resist it; and after about a week’s illness, it carried him off on the 7th July of that year.

Dr Blacklock’s writings consist chiefly of poems, of which an edition in quarto was published in 1793. To that edition was added an Essay on the Education of the Blind, translated from the French of M. Hairy.