Hugh Blair 9780231883962

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Hugh Blair

Hugh Blair ROBERT MORELL SCHMITZ

King's Crown Press MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, NEW YORK

1948

Copyright 1948 by ROBERT

MOKELL

SCHMITZ

Printed and Bound in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, N . Y. Designed by H e n r y M. Silver

KING'S

CROWN

PRESS

is a division of Columbia University Press organised for the purpose of publishing scholarly material at minimum cost. Toward that end the publishers adopt every reasonable economy except such as would interfere with a legible format, and place upon the author full responsibility for proofreading and editing the text.

Published in Great Britain and India by Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, I^ondon and Bombay.

PREFACE

D I N B U R G H , said Matt. Bramble, "is a hot-bed of genius." Indeed the register of geniuses in Edinburgh during the second half of the eighteenth century was an imposing one, including such conspicuous personages as James Boswell, Adam Ferguson, "Douglas" Home, David Hume, Lord Kames, James Macpherson, William Robertson, and Adam Smith. Among such men moved the Reverend Doctor Hugh Blair, minister, professor, littérateur—"a vain, timid, fussy, kind-hearted little man that everybody liked." 1 This man was, in his day, "the famous Dr. Blair" whom the English-speaking world held in highest regard as a moralist and as a literary critic. His reputation continued high for almost half a century a f t e r his death in 1800, but after that half-century Fate began to deal with him rather cavalierly. Thereafter his published pulpit orations were often referred to in such terms as "the egregious sermons of Dr. Blair," 2 or as "Blair's bucket of warm water." 3 Unqualified disgust was also heaped upon the Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, as when Leslie Stephen took to speaking of Blair "mouthing his sham rhetoric." 4 The active critical abuse of Blair gave way thereafter to almost complete suppression of his name, but he is latterly appearing again— now without either praise or censure—in scores of articles and books attempting in one way or another to reconstruct the moral, intellectual, or esthetic temper of Blair's day, which is now recognized as a highly 1. The Letter* of 3+8n. 2. J. H. Millar, A 319-20. 3. Edmund Gosse, York, 192T), p. 302. 4. English Thought

David

Ilume,

Literary A History

ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford, 1932), I,

History

of Scotland

of Eighteenth

in the Eighteenth

Century

( X e w York, 1903), pp.

Century

Literature

(New

(Ixindon, 1902), II, 455.

vi

P R E F A C E

important era in the history of British thinking. He also a p p e a r s in a number of excellent lives and critiques recently written about Huine, Kames, Mackenzie, and Burns, but only fitfully as a figure emerging for a moment from the shadow cast by the greater image. There are, to be sure, several biographies with Blair as the central figure. J a m e s Finlayson, Professor of Logic at the University of Edinburgh, wrote the first as "A Short Account of the Life and Character of the Author," to be prefixed to the edition of Blair's complete Sermons ( 1 8 0 1 ) . In certain respects Finlayson was a man proper for the work. As a churchman he was spiritually much like Blair. H e succeeded Blair in the pulpit of the H i g h Church in St. Giles and preached his funeral sermon there. When he came to p r e p a r e a " L i f e , " he spent much time and effort in inquiry, but the biography, despite its excellences, has the f u n e r a r y tone of the Rev. D r . Finlayson praising his predecessor the Rev. D r . Blair. Furthermore it is, as the title indicates, "short." T h e second of the "Lives" is by J o h n Hill, Professor of H u m a n i t y at the University of Edinburgh, and the manuscript may very well have been p r e p a r e d — j u d g i n g from its extended treatment of Blair as a pulpit o r a t o r — f o r the same purpose as Finlayson's. Though less ingratiating than the former, Hill's " L i f e " is much longer and is fuller of factual details. T h e manuscript was found among Hill's remains a f t e r his death in 1805, and was published two years later as An Account of the Life and Writings of Hugh Blair, D.D. Its chief weakness may be gathered from the unqualified damnation of Macaulay who found it a "stupid book," written "in that vile fashion which Dugald Stewart set;—not a life, but a series of disquisitions on all sorts of subjects." 5 Finlayson and Hill were whittled down to make two subsequent biographies, both worthless by all s t a n d a r d s : W. Hamilton Reid's "A Copious Account of the Life and Writings of the Author," prefixed to The Sentimental Beauties and Moral Delineations of the late Dr. Hugh Blair (1809), and Thomas Tegg's "Memoirs of the Reverend H u g h Blair," prefacing The Beauties of Blair (1810). T e g g reported 5. G. O. Trevelyan, The Life 1903), II, 292.

and Letters

of Lord

Macaulay

(London,

PREFACE

vii

that the "Memoirs" were copied "from Vol. 3 of a popular work entitled the Public Characters." Leslie Stephen's sketch of Blair in the Dictionary of National Biography was the first attempt to go beyond the sources already mentioned. His inquiry included an examination of three very valuable books: Burton's Hume, Carlyle's Autobiography, and Tytler's Kamet. Stephen's is, however, no more than a sketch. About the same time appeared a curious anonymous article of 25 pages entitled "A Littérateur of the Eighteenth Century," in a collection of essays, Cross Lights (1888). The author was poorly informed on many points of Blair's life, but he was the first to make any mention of Blair's editorial work on Shakespeare and on The British Poets. Recently some inquiry into original materials was undertaken at the University of Chicago by William N. Hawley, but the work was carried out no further than was necessary to the limited purposes of the dissertation, Hugh Blair: Moderate Preacher (1938). To these sources I have added much that lay scattered far and wide in the principal libraries and collections of Scotland, England, and the United States, hoping that from the mass of materials I might bring forth a real and lively picture of Blair. He is unfortunately little more than a name to most of the persons who are currently writing about the Scottish group or about literary ideas of the eighteenth century, but he seldom fails to make an appearance and often carries considerable weight in these discussions. I shall be content if I can bring before sucli writers a lifelike representation of the man as the first step necessary to a realistic estimate of his place in the history of critical ideas. That place may be somewhat difficult to determine, partly because a highly complex eighteenth century has not yet submitted to an orderly or convincing digest of its leading ideas, and partly because Blair's writing upon literature is encyclopedic in scope. A further hazard lies in the fact that his ideas are largely derivative. "Dr. Blair," said Burns, "is merely an astonishing proof of what industry and application can do." 6 "As penetration . . . and profoundness are not his characteristics," wrote Gilbert Stuart reviewing the Lec6, Chambers-Wallace, Burns

(New York, 1896), II, 86.

viii

P R E F A C E

turet on Rhetoric and Bellet Lettres, "we meet here with no theories of his own." 7 "Blair's g r e a t popularity," as Miss Randall sums it u p , "was due undoubtedly to the simple and 'perspicuous' way in which he presented almost every one of the current critical concepts about which his contemporaries wished to be informed." 8 The note struck by each of these quotations might be taken as a sign of Blair's critical impotence. I believe, however, that deference is the proper conclusion, and deference can hardly be interpreted as weakness when it spends its efforts absorbing the ideas of a most noteworthy group of men in a most notable era. This fact makes me hope that an extended account of the "vain, timid, fussy, kind-hearted little man," moving among his friends, his parishioners, his students, and his books, will be of help in judging the pervasive influence of D r . Blair upon the moral, esthetic, and literary thought of his time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My work on Blair has been greatly aided by Professors E r n e s t H u n t e r Wright, George Sherburn, Hoxie N. Fairchild, Elliott V. K. Dobbie, M a r j o r i e Xicolson, and J a m e s L. Clifford, who have been my very kind and expert listeners, readers, and advisors. Among the librarians in the United States were two whose expertness was of particular help to me, Miss Constance Winchell of Columbia University and Mr. Giles E. Dawson of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. I n Britain the great depositories of materials about Blair were the seven libraries of E d i n b u r g h : the National Library of Scotland, the libraries of the University of Edinburgh, the Church of Scotland, New College, the Signet, the City, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In each of them I was well received and well rewarded. The gracious services of Dr. H e n r y W. Meikle and his staff at the National 7. The English Review, II (1783), 18-25. 8. Helen Randall, The Critical Theory of Lord Katnes Mass., 1944), p. 82.

(Northampton,

PREFACE

ix

Library, of Dr. Lauriston Sharp at the University, and of the secretary at the Royal Society I remember with particular pleasure. These gentlemen permitted me to clutter up their libraries with the photographic equipment of which I made extensive use in an attempt to make headway in a race for time against an approaching war. I was graciously received also at the libraries of the universities of Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews, and I am pleased to acknowledge publicly a very enlightening correspondence with Dr. G. H . Bushnell of St. Andrews. The further search for materials at Durham Cathedral Library, at Oxford, at Cambridge, and finally at the British Museum was an experience of great pleasure and profit. To Dr. Ernest C. Mossner of the University of Texas and to D r . W. Powell Jones of Western Reserve I am much indebted for the discovery of some Blair letters in the uncatalogued manuscripts at the Huntington Library. Holographs were also made available to me through the courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the University of Rochester, and Yale University. I wish also to acknowledge the assistance I received from Arthur D. Brown, a teacher in the High School at Edinburgh, and from Miss Agnes Sibley of Lindenwood College. Miss Susan Fowler of Columbia University was of great help to me in giving modern idiomatic force to the pseudo-Ciceronian Latin of Blair's master's dissertation. Quotation of material from The Private Papers of James Boswell is by permission of The Viking Press. To Dr. William Roy Mackenzie and Professor Alexander M. Buchan of Washington University I give my thanks for that essential good will and interest which did much to forward the work. Others on the staff at Washington University will, I feel sure, accept with good grace a general acknowledgement of their assistance. And lastly I mention my wife, whose help, when I needed it, was dependable and graciously given. R. M. S.

T A B L E OF

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER

(1)

ONE

Blair's Family and E a r l y Training ( 6 ) , The University (10) CHAPTER

TWO

Collcssie ( 1 7 ) , The Canongate ( 1 7 ) , Vita Sine Litteris Mors Carmichael ( 2 1 ) , Shakespeare ( 2 1 ) , Lady Yester's ( 2 4 ) , burgh Review, 1755 ( 2 7 ) , Episcopus Infidelium ( 2 9 ) , Douglas D. D. (37) CHAPTER

(20), Edin(35),

THREE

St. Giles: Rewards and Confusion ( 3 9 ) , Ossian (42) CHAPTER

FOUR

The Professor ( 6 1 ) , The Literary Gentleman ( 6 7 ) , The Poets (69) CHAPTER

British

FIVE

The Meridian Years ( 8 1 ) , Ossian Again (88) CHAPTER

SIX

The Last Years ( 9 3 ) , Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres ( 9 6 ) , Taste ( 9 7 ) , Criticism ( 9 9 ) , Genius ( 9 9 ) , Sublimity ( 1 0 0 ) , Beauty ( 1 0 2 ) , Language (103), Style ( 1 0 5 ) , Eloquence (108), Literature ( 1 1 1 ) , Robert Burns (119)

xii

C O N T E N T S MEMORIALS

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

(131)

(137)

The Canon of Blair's Work (139), Lists of Editions, Adaptations, Anthologies &c. (143), Reference Bibliography (145) INDEX

(159)

INTRODUCTION

The Famous

Dr.

Blair

I

N H I S E N T H U S I A S M over the preaching of the Reverend Dr. Hugh Blair, Boswell set down one of the most curious remarks ever offered to the greater glory of the Scottish pulpit. "Blair," he wrote, "would stop hounds by his eloquence." 1 At another time, when Boswell heard Blair preach upon the text of Fanitas vanitatum, he noted how "prettily" the doctor "smoothed it over." 2 In fact Boswell and many others both in and out of Scotland—King George I I I and Samuel Johnson among them—were pretty well agreed that Blair's sermons "lighted things up so finely, and you get from them such comfortable answers." 3 A kind of eloquent gentleness—in all its senses of mild, moderate, amiable, well-born, refined—was, in fact, his chief character. I t was the basic temperament behind his unruffled friendships, behind his thornless literary criticism, and behind the sentimental preaching which left no stings behind. Vanity was also strong in him. At a dinner one evening Sir Gilbert Elliot, who sat next D r . Blair, was so sensible of Blair's vanity that he laid on the compliments with a lavish hand, and afterwards reported to his wife that the reverend gentleman had "stood the trowel with fortitude and resignation." 4 Blair was especially vain of his reputation as a pulpit orator, and his pleasure in the praise of any man upon that point could be surpassed only by his pleasure when the praise came from a woman. " H e seemed," said Alexander Carlyle, 1. Private Papers of James Botwell from Malahide Castle, ed. G. Scott and F. A. Pottle (Mount Vernon, N.Y., [1928]-1933), XIII, 109. 2. Ibid., XIV, 9-10. 3. Boswell quoting Duncan Drummond. Ibid., VII, 16-17. 4. Sir Gilbert Elliot to Lady Minto, 25 July, 1782. Life and Letter» of Sir Gilbert Elliot . . . from 1751 to 1806 (London, 1874), p. 84.

2

INTRODUCTION

"to have no wish but to be admired as a preacher, particularly by the ladies." 5 No matters were too trifling for him. " H e was," says Carlyle, "as eager about a new paper to his wife's drawing room, or his own wig, as about a new tragedy or a new epic poem." On occasion Blair's "conversation was so infantine that many people thought it impossible, at first sight, that he could be a man of sense or genius," though he was "capable of the most profound conversation, when circumstances led to it." 8 Publicly, however, Blair was a pillar in the edifice of civic pride. I n the city of 60,000 persons there were many who never saw him or talked to him, but who would nevertheless know that he was Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University, and that the best people of Edinburgh listened to his preaching in the High Church of St. Giles, the most fashionable pulpit in the city. Furthermore, he never seriously embarrassed the citizenry nor compromised the burgherlv point of view, as did some of his closest friends. H e may have stood politely aloof from the masses, but he was the very embodiment of the state and the kirk at times when his philosophic friends Lord Karnes and David Hume tempted the devil and shocked the community with their heterodoxy. Blair never trampled upon the toes of the God-fearing by writing plays and having them performed, like his friend and fellow minister John Home. Blair was considered a better Scot than Boswell, whom the citizens damned for spending too much time with the Scot-baiting Johnson. Blair could be counted upon not to bring forth any intellectual monstrosities like lawyer Monboddo's theorizings about men with tails. Edinburgh's civic pride in Blair demanded no awkward apologies or explanations. H e was thoroughly respectable, and he presented a good figure in public. In his later years, when he lived in Argyle Square, he used to walk in state, in gown, bands and wig, with his hat beneath his arm, every Sunday morning to the service in the High Kirk; taking the route down the Horse Wynd and up the Fishmarket Close. And the more the people watched for him, bowed to him with reverence, and pointed 5. Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander ed. J . H. Burton (Boston, 1861), p. 236. 6. Ibid., pp. 236, 237.

Carlyle, Miniiter

at

Inveretk,

INTRODUCTION

3

him out to strangers as "the great D r . Blair," the better he was pleased. 7 Such was the entente between Blair and his city. Outside Scotland, Blair's reputation was largely dependent upon published works, the most widely distributed of which were his Lecture» on Rhetoric and Belles Lettre», a school text which formed a staple of instruction for half the educated English-speaking world in its day. I n foreign languages the Rhetoric was also widely known, and many a young Frenchman, German, Italian, Spaniard, and Russian was drilled in Blair's "most judicious, elegant, and comprehensive system of rules for formulating the style, and cultivating the taste of youth." 8 If the student missed the whole, he was sure to catch a p a r t , knowingly or unknowingly, for Blair's Rhetoric was briefed, quoted, adapted, and referred to in textbooks and school readers prepared by Dana, Chandler, Irving, Mills, Milns, Murray, Putnam, and many others during the early nineteenth century. One would not argue, of course, that Blair achieved wide personal fame through this circulation. Students have a remarkable facility for forgetting—if they ever knew—who wrote the textbooks from which they study. Yet Blair's widespread use does bespeak his favor among the professors at the universities and the headmasters at the academies. Blair enjoyed a somewhat different following through his published Sermon»—those elegant and perspicuous discourses which found high favor among readers who had a taste for sentimental moral tractates. T h e printed Sermon» were almost as widely circulated as the Rhetoric, and like the Rhetoric found a wide foreign-language public through translation into French, German, Dutch, and Gaelic. If Blair's English and American admirers did not wish sermons in extento, they had available to them many extracts and distillations in such compendia as Advice to Youth (1837), A Companion to the Altar (1825), Practical Morality (1822), Elegant Miscellaneous Extract» (1813), The Gentleman's Library (1813), the often reprinted 7. J. Y. T. Greig, David Hume (New York, [1931]), p. 208. 8. James Finlayson, "A Short Account of the Life and Character of the Author," prefixed to Blair's Sermons (New York: Samuel Campbell, 1802), I, viii.

4

INTRODUCTION

Beauties of Blair (1792 fï.), and The Sentimental Beauties and Moral Delineations from the writings of the celebrated Dr. Blair . . . selected with a view to refine the taste, rectify the judgement, and mould the heart to virtue (1782). Somewhat more robust and picturesque was Blair as protagonist in the famous quarrels over the poems ascribed to Ossian, who was alleged to have composed epic poetry in the wilds of Scotland during the third century. Blair was the accepted leader among those literati who pronounced the Ossianic epics both ancient and sublime. Samuel Johnson was the most famous of those men who denied both the antiquity and the beauty of these poems, and who angered the Scots beyond measure by making it pretty clear that the "Homer of the Scottish Highlands" was a plain fraud foisted upon the public by one James Macpherson. The literary tastes of the latter 1700's hungered, however, for the tales told in the mist-covered north, among craggy mountains and amidst rushing torrents, about primitive men and women guided by the noblest sentiments. With this taste Blair was in heartiest accord, and, having been instrumental in bringing the poems of Ossian before the world, he defended them in a Critical Dissertation (1763, 1765). This Dissertation became the standard preface to the many editions of Ossian, and voiced Blair's admiration of the poems to the thousands of readers who, untroubled about antiquarian matters, sought the pleasures to be found in the moaning prose-poetry of the blind harper as he unfolded tales of a fabled past. Blair made one attempt to authenticate the poems—did so, in fact, to his own satisfaction—but his main interest in them was displaying the picturesque and the sentimental sublime which he considered the natural tone of primitive poetical genius. Blair's reputation as a poetical interpreter could not, however, survive the death of the poems which he explained. The Critical Dissertation died with Ossian somewhere in the mid-nineteenth century. So also died the taste for comfortable, sentimental sermons of Blair's kind—killed off by the religious revivals of the Victorian era. And, thirdly, Blair's Rhetoric, the most long-lived of all his works, was almost completely supplanted in the schools by the rhetorics of Whately and others towards the mid-century.

INTRODUCTION

5

For almost a hundred years, however, Blair had held a dominant and pervasive power. From 1760 onwards, particularly after 1777 when his sermons began to appear in print, and after 1783 when he published his rhetorical lectures, Blair was a man whose pronouncements upon matters of morality, literature, and taste commanded the widest respect. The critics of the period, whenever they touched upon these topics, were continually citing the opinions held by the "ingenious," the "learned," the "famous Dr. Blair."

CHAPTER

Blair s Family

ONE

and Early

Training

T

O CAST BACK to the beginning of a life which ends in the dignity of high repute makes one look for portents and signs of what one knows will come to pass. I n the life of Blair such hints as his family and early training afford are quite pertinent, and it is no mere beginning at the beginning to note the influence of a family accustomed to success, much more flexible and varied than most, and strongly rooted in the professions. Hugh Blair once told Boswell that he could trace his ancestry back to "a fifth son of the Laird of Blair." 1 Another and earlier report held that the line was descended from Alexander Blair, "the good-man of Windyedge, who was brother-german to the Laird of Blair." 2 The conflict between these reports need not trouble us, for that branch of the family through which Dr. Blair traced his descent had left its Ayrshire lands during the time of Mary Tudor and had settled in trade, John Blair, youngest son of Good-man Alexander being described as a "merchant adventurer." This Blair's fourth son, Robert (1593—1666), twice wived and the father of eleven sons and two daughters, was the progenitor of a family which, by direct descent and marriage during the next four generations, came to include seventeen ministers of the church, five college professors, and six men of law, besides others of the lesser professions. The most famous of Robert Blair's descendants, aside from Doctor Blair, were Robert Blair (1699-1746), author of " T h e Grave," his son Robert (17411. Malahide Papers, X V , 34. 2. The Life of Mr. Robert Blair, 'Minister of St. Andrews, autobiography, from. 159S to 1636, with supplement to his life, tion of the history of his times to 1680, by his son-in-law, Mr. ed. Thomas M'Crie (Edinburgh: The Wodrow Society, 1848),

containing hit and continuaWilliam Row, p. 112.

HUGH

BLAIR

7

1811), Solicitor General for Scotland, and the latter's son Robert (d. 1828), inventor of the aplanatic telescope. T h e prolific Robert Blair—he of the thirteen children—was a man of both note and notoriety during the covenanting period in Scotland. Professor at the University of Glasgow from 1615 to 1622, he subsequently held and relinquished a number of Irish and Scottish parishes in a dizzy record of suspensions, restorations, and excommunications. He was Moderator of the General Assembly in 1646, but later resigned his connection with the established church when he became a Covenanter, and ended his days preaching "at the hazard of his life." 3 T h e twelfth child of this lusty church fighter was Hugh Blair, who became Merchant Burgess of Edinburgh and Dean of Guild, a position implying considerable wealth. This wealth he seems to have passed on to his son John, "who succeeded him in merchandise," but who speculated in the Darien Scheme for colonizing the Isthmus of Panama, "and thereby so impaired his resources that he was necessitated to retire from commerce. I n his financial extremity he obtained employment in the Excise, and was enabled to maintain himself and his family in circumstances of comfort." 4 In the days of his retrenched living, John had married Martha, daughter of the bookseller Alexander Ogston of Parliament Close. Their only child, Hugh, was born 7 April, 1718. Young Blair's future as a minister of the kirk was probably determined for him early. The father, as a failure in business, was likely to look with jealous respect upon the many professional men in the family, living in comparative security upon their learning. Furthermore, the child gave early evidence of a studious temperament and a capacity for study. In all likelihood the strongest force working towards an education for the ministry was, however, the family of his uncle, James Bannatine, minister of Trinity Church, with whose five 3. D.S.B. 4. C. Rogers and J . C. Higgins, The Book of Robert Burnt, Genealogical and historical memoirs of the poet, his associates, and those celebrated in his •writings (Edinburgh: The Grampian Club, 1891), I, 59.

8

H U G H

B L A I R

children Hugh was a constant companion. T h e two Bannatine sons were destined for the ministry, and young Blair's education probably followed very naturally the pattern established by the uncle for his younger son, George, who was almost of an age with Hugh. After some preliminary instruction in the family, young B l a i r was put through "the regular course at the High School," 5 and, during his last year there, was under the direct tutelage of the rector, George Arbuthnot. 6 The education of an Edinburgh lad preparing to enter the University was never so well described as by Thomas Ruddiman, who went through the five-year routine of the Ordo Scholae Grammaticae Ediitensis, which, though established as far back as 1644, was still the basic pattern of education when B l a i r went to school. 1st Class

In the first year, and during the first six months; the children were to be taught the principles of grammar, in vernaculo sermone. They were at the same time to learn the Latin names of everything, on earth, and in heaven. During the second six months; the children were daily to repeat a certain portion of grammar; and, they were incidentally to be taught particular sentences, relating to life and manners. 2nd In the second year, and during the first six months; the ehilClass dren were to repeat daily certain parts of grammar, but more particularly, as the same are laid down by Despauter; and to translate the same into English: moreover, they were to read Cordery's Colloquies. During the second six months, the children were to be taught daily the Syntax of Erasmus; and the masters were to tcach, and the scholars to learn, in the Latin langauge. 3rd Through the whole of the third y e a r ; the boys were to repeat Class daily, a portion of the etymology and s y n t a x ; to be exercised in reading Cicero's Epistles D e Senectutc, de Amicitia; Terence's Comedies and Elegies; Ovid's Tristium [ s i c ] ; Buchanan's Psalms; and to translate Cicero's Epistles. They were to read the same clara voce. 4th I n the fourth y e a r ; the boys were to repeat daily, for the first Class month, what they had already learned. T o be taught Buchanan's Prosody, with Despauter's Select Rues, and Buchanan's Epigrams and Poetry. During the other months, the boys were to be exercised in poetry, and in the practice of the rules of gram5. John Hill, An Account of the Life and Writings of Hugh Blair (Philadelphia, 1808), p. 15. 6. William Steven, The History of the High School of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1849), Appendix, p. 204.

HUGH

BLAIR

9

m a r ; to read Virgil, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Horace, Buchanan's Psalms; and to translate Cicero, Caesar, and Terence. The beauties of these authors were to be explained to the scholars. 5th In the fifth year; the boys were to study the whole Rhetoric of Class Tulaeus [ T a l l y ] and the greater p a r t of the compendious Rhetoric of Cassandeus. They were to read Cicero's Orations, and the short speeches in Sallust, in Virgil, and in Lucan. T h e y were to read distinctly and audibly; and were to declaim. 7 I t is interesting, when we think of young Blair as the future rhetorician, to note the heavily rhetorical studies which he undertook in the final year at the High School. T h a t year was chiefly devoted to Cicero. There were, it is true, short passages to be read from Sallust, Virgil, and Lucan, but the boys studied not only Cicero's orations and his rhetorical works, but also the "compendious Rhetoric of Cassandeus," which is merely another way of saying "Cicero" again, for Cassandeus defines eloquence as "Facultas sapienter inornate dicendi, quae merito a Cicerone, In partit. Oral, virtutibus annumeratur." 8 With this training drilled into him, Blair graduated from the High School in the summer of 1730, and entered the University the following autumn at the age of 13.9 7. George Chalmers, The Life of Thomas Ruddiman (London, 1794), pp. 88-90. In 1710 a committee, headed by Principal Carstares of the University, was called upon to revise the Ordo. The chief recommendations were (1) that the modern Latin writers "be obliged to give place to the ancient, their masters," and (2) that Buchanan, except for his Psalms, be omitted. See Steven, op. ext., Appendix, pp. 34, 36. Since Thomas Ruddiman mentions among the works to be studied in the 5th class "the whole Rhetoric of Tulaeus [Tully]," it may be well to remark upon a possible confusion. "Tulaeus" is Audomarius Talaeus, who in the midsixteenth century published his own rhetoric under the title of Audomari Talaei Rhetorica, and also issued an annotated rhetoric by Cicero under the title of M. Tullii Ciceronis de Oratore . . . dialogi tret, Audomari Talaei explicalionibtu illustrati. The first of these works was a primer in common use at the University of Edinburgh in 1628: "(Taleus being the first taught before by which they know the tropes and figoures [iic])." See the University of Edinburgh Charters, Statutes, and Acts of the Town Council and the Senatus, 1583-1858 (Edinburgh, 1937), pp. 111-112. 8. "Georgii Cassandri Tabula Breves, et Expeditae Praeceptiones Rhetorica," Opera Qraecorum, Latinorum, $ Italorum Rhetorum (Venice, 1644), V,3. 9. Hill, Life of Blair, p. 16.

10

H U G H

The

B L A I R

University

W h e n H u g h Blair entered the University of E d i n b u r g h , it was beginning to r e a p the f r u i t s of a great academic reorganization f r o m which a commonplace, medievally organized college emerged as one of the g r e a t modern E u r o p e a n universities. T h e antiquated system u n d e r which each regent had t a u g h t all the s u b j e c t s of the curriculum h a d given place to the modern system of professors teaching only in their special fields. By and large the change h a d been eminently satisf a c t o r y so f a r as the teaching was concerned, but there were some curious secondary effects which were not at all satisfactory, but which nevertheless worked strongly at the University in Blair's day and had a decided effect upon his own academic progress. U n d e r the older dispensation each regent had based his reputation upon the speed and efficiency with which lie could put his students through the academic mill. I n 1705 the university, with four very efficient regents, established a record by c o n f e r r i n g degrees upon 110 M a s t e r s of Arts. A f t e r 1708 it was another story. T h e n each p r o f e s s o r , specializing in his s u b j e c t , had nothing to do with the mechanics of graduation, and t h e University S e n a t u s was extremely indifferent about g r a n t i n g degrees. In 1738 there were only t h r e e M a s t e r s of Arts, in 1739 six, in 1740 four, a n d in 1741 only one. 1 0 U n d e r these conditions the curriculum was also weakened, f o r , as one historian remarks, " I t must be remembered t h a t as soon as g r a d uation fell into disregard, no such thing as a curriculum could really continue to exist. . . . E a c h student a t t e n d e d such classes as he or his f r i e n d s might think advisable." 11 Such a state of affairs a t least helps explain why a studious youth like B l a i r should have used up 10. The University of Edinburgh had about 165 undergraduates, exclusive of professional students in Theology, Law, and Medicine, throughout the period under consideration. Attendance and graduation figures a r e computed from A Catalogue of the Graduates . . . of the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1858) and from Andrew Dalzel's History of the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1862), passim in Vol. II. 11. Alexander Grant, Story of the University of Edinburgh (London, 1884), I, 277.

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11

nine years in taking a degree which, theoretically, he could have taken in four. It was not only that Blair was very young—others of his station and prospects took degrees at a very early age 1 2 —but the times were plainly out of joint for efficient progress towards a degree. So far as there was an official curriculum, it would require attendance upon (1) the Humanity class under Professor Adam W a t t , ( 2 ) the Greek class under Professor Colin Drummond, (3) the class in Logic under Professor John Stevenson, and (4) the Natural Philosophy class under Professor Robert Stewart. Blair studied under the first three of the men named, 13 but it is obvious that he varied the theoretical time and order of the program. He was not a student in Professor Stevenson's class until his fourth year. Under Professor Stevenson Blair first distinguished himself at the University, and under Stevenson first shaped those interests and attitudes which were later to mark the man of letters. In fact, no other professor seems to have had a comparable influence upon Blair as an undergraduate. In some ways Stevenson was mediocre, in others remarkably clearheaded a n ! effective. Alexander Carlyle, when he recalled his student days, reimrked that, though the professor "had no pretensions to superiority in point of learning and genius," he did possess that quality of mini which brought the latent abilities of his students out into the open. He was, futhermore, "the most popular of all the professors on accoun; of his civility and even kindness to his students." 14 Another stud;nt, John Witherspoon, who later became President of the College of New Jersey and was a signer of the American Declaration of Indepeidence, felt that "no one in a chair at Edinburgh did more to turn mei to the love of letters." 15 The historian Robertson acknowledged that his sense of literary prose had come to him through Stevenson's practice of reading to his classes "copious extracts from the 12. John Witherspoon, minister, lecturer, and later President of the College of Nev Jersey (Princeton), graduated in 1739 with Blair, at the age of 16. 13. Hill, Life of Jilair, p. 16. 14. Autobiography, p. 36. 15. Varnim I,. Collins, President Witherspoon (Princeton, 1925), I, 14.

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prose discourses and prefaces of Dryden, as well as Addison's papers of the Spectator." 16 The hint given in Robertson's remark shows clearly that Stevenson was "receptive and appreciative of what was new," 17 and that he had broken with the traditional notions of what was proper to a course in Logic at the University of Edinburgh. A typical class day under Stevenson began with a judicious selection from the French and English critics, which he gave at the morning hour of eight, when he read with us Aristotle's Poetics and Longinus On the Sublime. At eleven he read Heineccius's Logic, and an abridgement of Locke's Essay; and in the afternoon at two . . . he read to us a compendious history of the ancient philosophers, and an account of their tenets. 18 To the selections from Aristotle, Longinus, Dryden, and Addison, Stevenson added critical notices from the commentaries of Le Bossu, Mme. Dacier, and Pope's notes on Homer, "so as greatly to delight and instruct his hearers." 19 Though Stevenson devoted only one third of the time in his course to the study of criticism, it was the work he most enjoyed, the most fruitful part of his teaching, and the part about which we have the most flattering testimonials from his students. Blair's testimonial was his own course of lectures in rhetoric, but the compliment was a backhanded one, in that when Blair began to lecture, Stevenson was forced to give over to the younger man, and to confine his course strictly to logic. In the spring of 1734 Blair wrote for Stevenson an essay On The Beautiful, marking "the general characters of beauty as residing in the different objects of taste." The paper is described as having treated the subject "with a power of discrimination, and a correctness of feeling beyond what could have been expected of a youth but sixteen years of age." Though the professor's leavening influence was 16. John Watson, The Scot of the Eighteenth, Century (New York: A. C. Armstrong, n.d.), p. 165. 17. Grant, op. cit., II, 328. 18. As described by Alexander Carlyle, Autobiography, p. 36. Carlyle attended the class in 1736. 19. "Account of the Late Duke Gordon, M.A.," The Scots Magazine, XLIV (1802), 21.

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13

at work in the production of the p a p e r , it was Stevenson's public acknowledgment of it and its merits which gave greater s p u r to t h e young man of taste. Stevenson ordered Blair's p a p e r " t o be r e a d publicly a t the end of the session during which it was composed, a n d he considered it as a performance that did credit to himself, as well as to his pupil." 20 T h e psychological effect of sincere a n d timely praise upon a young and industrious student can hardly be overestimated. T h e other men under whom Blair studied could have had no comparable influence. Adam W a t t and Colin Drummond were both old and worn out. Blair probably spent a year in the N a t u r a l H i s t o r y class of Professor Robert Stewart, a f t e r which he entered u p o n the theological studies with which the remainder of his academic career was concerned. O n l y a few scattered and quasi-academic items have been l e f t to us f r o m these years. Boswell tells that " B l a i r and his cousin M r . George Bannatine, when students in divinity, wrote a poem entitled ' T h e Resurrection,' copies of which were handed about in manuscript." 21 Blair is also credited with having published in 1736 A Poem Sacred to the Memory of the Reverend Mr. James Smith, Principal of the University of Edinburgh,22 Aside from the two poems, we hear also of a remarkable set of notes which Blair p r e p a r e d for his private convenience, and which l a t e r formed the basis of a published work. E a r l y in his university days Blair began making elaborate abstracts of every important book he read. 2 8 H e also h a d a deep-rooted sense of order, particularly for his20. Hill, Life of Blair, pp. 16-17. 21. Life of Johnson, ed. Hill-Powell (Oxford, 1934), I, 360. From Boswell and from the European Magazine and London Review, XXXIII (1798), 219, we piece out a story that this poem was eventually appropriated by one William Douglas, M.D., who in 1747 issued a pompous folio edition of it dedicated to the Princess Dowager of Wales. 22. David Laing, who describes the poem as a seven-page octavo, is the sole authority for this attribution. See Samuel Halkett and John Laing, Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature (Edinburgh, 1926-1934). I have been able to And no copies of this poem or of "The Resurrection." 23. A single sheet (pp. 9 and 10) from one of his notebooks is preserved at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It is a large sheet, 9 by 15 inches,

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torical data in which he developed such an absorbing interest that "with the assistance of some of his young friends, he formed chronological tables, in which every important fact that occurred in his reading found its proper place." 24 Though we know nothing more about the tables in this original form, we know that in the year 1740 John Blair, a remote "cousin," arrived at the University and took great interest in them. He expanded the tables, and in the end published them under the title of The Chronology and History of the TVorld, from the Creation to the year of Christ, 1753." Practically everyone is agreed that the reputation of "Chronologist" Blair was ultimately founded upon Hugh Blair's student notes. A f t e r nine years of academic life Blair decided that a degree would not be amiss. H e knew that formal presentation was out of fashion. H e knew that the Church of Scotland required none for ordination, and he knew that several of the professors themselves had no degrees. 28 Blair had, however, a sense of decorum which abhorred academic carelessness, and in consequence he, with four of his friends, requested the Senatus to make a "decent t h i n g " of their graduation. T h e minutes of the Senatus Academicus for November, 1738, read: I t being represented by the Principal [William Wishart, the younger] that some students of philosophy, who had been conversing with him and some of the professors, were willing to print and defend theses publicly in order of their receiving the degree of M.A. viz. Hugh Blair, William Mackenzie, J o h n Wotherspoon, 2 7 William Cleghorn, and Nathaniel Mitchell,—this university meeting unanimously agreed and allowed the same, as being a probable means of retrieving the honours of that degree. The minutes also record that written in two columns and crammed from margin to margin with abstracts of Bacon and Sir William Temple. 24. Hill, Life of Blair, p. 201. 25. The Chronology, first published in 1754, was reprinted in 1756, 1768, 1814, and was then revised and enlarged for Bohn's Scientific Library in 1856. 26. In 1778 the University gave degrees to three of its professors who had not previously taken them. See Grant, op. cit., I, 280-281. 27. I.e. Witherspoon. H i s name also appears in the university records as Wederspan.

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15

for the encouragement of any who shall be at the charges of this public trial, the masters are resolved that they shall be eased of the Promoter's fee and other college dues. 28 The public trials were held in February, 1739, each of the theses being defended by its author and impugned by the other four candidates during "public and frequent meeting in the Common Hall." 29 I t was thus that Hugh Blair defended the dissertation De Fundamentis 8f Obligatione Legit Naturae, holding that benevolence to man and duty to God constitute the pattern of man's life according to the law of nature. The dissertation showed the strong currents of Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hutcheson which had run through Blair's philosophic training, and ended with the admission that Christianity might be of service in promoting both benevolence and duty. Though we may, he argued, discover, without the aid of Christianity, that Natural Law is the source of good, yet "Christian teaching both makes the law clearer, and lures us to follow it by giving us a surer hope." 30 This was in the very tone of his later sermons, where Christianity remained peripheral or auxiliary. His friends would approve of such Ciceronian academics as the very touchstone of "Moderate" preaching, but to the zealous Scots Calvinists such doctrine was plain "heathen morality." The thesis satisfied the University, however, and Blair, with his four impugners, was made Master of Arts on 23 February, 1739. 31 Blair had dedicated the printed thesis to Robert Dundas, Lord Arniston the elder, and in so doing provided himself with an active and effective patron. The elder Lord Arniston died in 1753, but the Dundas family continued its patronage and help, particularly through Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville. The connection with the Dundas 28. Quoted in Grant, op. cit., I, 277-278. 29. Ibid, 30. Dissertatio Philotophica Inaugurate, De Fundamenti» on Dr. Blair'» Sermons (Edinburgh, 1779), Letter I, pp. 11-12.

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be discussed as a matter of taste, and its being seen in the parlor excited no surmise t h a t a n y one in the house had lately been converted. Above all, it was most p e r f e c t l y f r e e f r o m t h a t disagreeable and mischievous p r o p e r t y attributed to the eloquence of Pericles, that it 'left stings behind.' W i t h these recommendations, aided by the author's reputation as an elegant critic, and by his acquaintance with persons of the highest note, the book became fashionable; . . . till at last, it was almost a m a r k of vulgarity not to have read [ t h e sermons], and many a lie was told to escape this imputation, by persons who had not yet enjoyed the advantage. Grave elderly ministers, of much severer religious views than D r . Blair's, were, in sincere benevolence, glad that a work had appeared, which gave a chance f o r religion to make itself heard among the dissipated and the great, to whom ordinary sermons, and less polished treatises of piety, could never find access. 20 I n the first flush of pride over the success of his Sermons, Blair renewed his perennial campaign to improve the service of the Scottish kirk. H e h a d by then been a member for thirty-five years of the dilatory committees of Assembly charged with improving the psalmody, a n d was doing all he could to push t h a t work towards a conclusion. In 1778, about the time Assembly would sit, he and J a m e s Beattie of Aberdeen were ready to publish letters which Blair, a member, could introduce as a spur to action. One letter f r o m Beattie had, in fact, been set u p and printed. I t expressed the hope of many a Moderate clergyman t h a t Scottish Christianity might at least be protected against "those unmerciful bawlers [ i n every congregation] . . . whose roarings are generally loud in proportion as they are untuneable." 2 1 Blair's work upon the improved psalmody finally saw t h e light a f t e r still another three years in committee. W h a t Blair himself had done was a fair sample of what the committee as a whole had hoped to accomplish. H e had, for instance, t u r n e d such lines as Joseph Stennet's 20. The Analectic Magazine, V (1815), 196-7. 21. James Beattie, A Letter to the Rev. Hugh Blair . . . on the Improvement of Psalmody (Edinburgh, 1829), p. 27. An editorial note at the end of this pamphlet remarks that the letter, dated 31 May, 1778, "is reprinted verbatim from a copy . . . printed in 1778, but never published."

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Behold the Saviour of the World Embru'd with Sweat and Gore, into Behold the Saviour on the Cross, A spectacle of woe! 22 If Blair had reduced fervor to what might be called genteel calidity, he had also blotted out the crudities of language. If the changes did not make for sublimity, they at least eliminated baldness. Blair had a hand in preparing nine of the sixty-seven paraphrases as they were finally published in 1781. They now appear as an appendix in almost every Scottish Bible. 23 For a time Blair employed a choir of singers trained by masters from York Cathedral. 2 4 His university lectures contained an extensive defense of instrumental music in religious service, 25 and he had it in mind even to install an organ in the High Church. So f a r as this, however, not even the most popular preacher could push matters. Beattie had warned him against this utmost heresy: The best things may be abused; and the lovers of that instrument may draw comfort from this consideration, that, if we enjoy not the benefit of organ-musick, we are not hurt by its improprieties; which, as that matter is too frequently conducted, are neither few nor small. 28 In the more laconic opinion of traveller P e n n a n t : " P e g still faints at the sound of an organ." 27 22. Translations and Paraphrases, in Verse, of Several Passages of Sacred Scripture, No. X L I V , on John, xix, 30. 23. Blair is credited with work upon Nos. I V , V I I , X X , X X X I I , X X X I I I , X X X I V , X L I V , X L V I , and L V I I . See John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology, Revised edition (London, [1925]), and Thomas Young, The Metrical Psalms and Paraphrases (London and Edinburgh, 1909). 24. C. Rogers and J. C. Higgins, The Book of Robert Burns. Genealogical and historical memoirs of the poet, his associates, and those celebrated in his writings (Edinburgh: The Grampian Club, 1891), I, 70. 25. Lecture X L I , on the poetry of the Hebrews. 2fi. Beattie, op, cit., p. 31. 27. Thomas Pennant, "A Tour of Scotland, 1769," in John Pinkerton's A General Collection of the best and most interesting voyages and travels (London, 1809), III, 29.

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Ossian

BLAIR

Again

About this same time the Ossianic controversy, over which the partisans had never quite stopped grumbling, burst out afresh in a particularly splenetic mood, mingling the solid arguments for and against the authenticity of Ossian with a number of personal accusations which did credit neither to Blair and Ferguson (the accused) nor to Thomas Percy (the accuser). For the squabble of 1781 we must, however, move back for a moment to the year 1765 when Thomas Percy brought young Algernon Percy to Edinburgli to place him as a university student in the home of D r . Blair. Blair was at first predisposed in Percy's favor. The visitor was a churchman, he had connections with a duke, and he was an antiquarian. His Five Piece* of Runic Poetry (1763) and his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, just off the press, excited Blair so greatly that he urged Percy to continue his collecting to embrace the "early Poetry of all Nations." 28 Percy's doubts, however, about the poems of Ossian being all they were supposed to be, set Blair the task of doing a little literary missionary work. He therefore introduced Percy to Professor Adam Ferguson, whose very adequate knowledge of the Gaelic language might dispel Percy's doubts. T h e visitor related that in the evening before I left Edinburgh (»is October 13), [Professor Ferguson] invited us to drink tea at his house, where he produced a student, a native of the Highlands, who recited several passages or verses, in Earse (some of which he afterwards sung to me) as what he had heard in his own country; and . . . when he interpreted the verses to me, some of them appeared to contain part of the description of Fingal's chariot. D r . Ferguson also gave me, in his own handwriting, some specimens of Earse poetry in the original. 29 The matter was alluded to several times during the following years, for Algernon Percy's living with Blair required a regular correspondence between Edinburgh and the Percy family at Alnwick Castle. On 28. Blair to Percy, 31 January, 1772: "Quae circumvolitas agilii Thyma? — W h a t is become of my favourite plan of your early Poetry of all N a t i o n s ? " MS. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 29. John Bowyer Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1817-1868), V I , 569.

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10 February, 1766, and again on 10 J a n u a r y , 1767, Blair's letters to Thomas Percy contain reminders of the recital, and in the second edition of the Reliques (1767) there appeared a short account of the incident. 30 Neither Blair nor Percy could, however, have anticipated the pamphlet war which was focussed upon the event some fifteen years afterwards. The publication of Johnson's Journey to the Western Island» in 1775 caused Blair immediately to write Macpherson, urging him "to take proper measures for wiping o f [ f ] the aspersions cast upon the authenticity of Ossian," and telling him in plain language that "his chance for immortality depended . . . more on his being . . . the Restorer of the British Homer 31 than [on] any of the Histories he would ever write." 32 Johnson's well publicized quarrel with Macpherson had made Ossian fair game for all comers, and by 1780 the whole ground had been freshly beaten by four new hunters. Three of the investigators were, in a general way, favorable to Ossian, but the fourth, William Shaw, engaged them in a pamphlet war into which Blair and Ferguson and Percy were drawn willy-nilly, simply because they had spent an afternoon at tea together in 1765. 33 When Shaw's Enquiry into the Authenticity of the Poems Ascribed to Ossian dipped into the matter of the tea, the author wrote: T h e truth is, D r . Blair and Professor Ferguson . . . took care to introduce a young student from the Highlands, who repeated some verses, of which Professor Ferguson said such and such sentences in 30. Vol. I, p. xlv. 31. The phrase used by St. Simon in his translation of Temora. 32. Blair to Elizabeth Montagu, 1 April, 1776. MS. Huntington Library. Macpherson had j u s t issued Original Papers containing the Secret History of Great Britain. 33. Because the pamphlet war is not worth tracing out in detail, I shall merely list the persons concerned, and their publications in chronological order: ( 1 ) John Smith, Gaelic Antiquities, 1780. ( 2 ) William Shaw, An Enquiry into the Authenticity of . . . Ossian, 1781. ( 3 ) John Clark, An Answer to Mr. Shaw's Enquiry, 1781. ( 4 ) Shaw, An Enquiry . . . with a reply to Mr. Clark's Answer, 1782. (5) ' T h e Ossian Controversy Stated," London Magazine, L I (1782), 511-512. (6) Thomas F. Hill, "New and Interesting Light thrown on the Ossian Controversy," Gentleman's Magazine, L I I (1782), 570-571; L I I I (1783), 33-36, 140-144, 398-400, 489-494, 590-592, 662-665. ( 7 ) Clark, An Answer to Mr. Shaw's Reply, 1783. ( 8 ) Shaw, A Rejoinder to an Answer from Mr. Clark, 1784. ( 9 ) Hill, Ancient Erse Poems, 1784.

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Fingal w e r e the t r a n s l a t i o n . . . . D r . P e r c y , on reflection, h a d j u s t r e a s o n to suspect t h a t this y o u n g s t u d e n t h a d previously been t a u g h t t h e p a r t he r e c i t e d ; a n d the lines m i g h t as r e a d i l y be any common song, as the original of Fingal; for t h e y k n e w it was impossible f o r a n E n g l i s h m a n to detect it. 3 4 T h e r e u p o n followed a r u n n i n g p a m p h l e t w a r between the forces of S h a w a n d J o h n C l a r k , the details of which were d u l y r e p o r t e d in the magazines. T h e London Magazine was content with one article, but the Gentleman's Magazine was f u l l of the stuff in nine issues f r o m J u n e , 1781, to A u g u s t , 1783, p u b l i s h i n g S h a w ' s charge, F e r g u s o n ' s denial, S h a w ' s e m e n d e d charge, P e r c y ' s affirmation of S h a w , a n d F e r g u s o n ' s final r e b u t t a l , which concluded with the opinion t h a t P e r c y h a d not " m a d e t h e best use of his u n d e r s t a n d i n g . " 35 B l a i r a n d F e r g u s o n were obviously distressed over the imputation of dishonesty, but P e r c y was violent about the whole m a t t e r , keeping every s c r a p of correspondence on t h e s u b j e c t easy of access, to display to a n y visitor as proof of w h a t it m e a n t to deal w i t h E d i n b u r g h . H e showed e v e r y t h i n g , including B l a i r ' s l e t t e r s , to H o r a c e W a l p o l e , L o r d O s s o r y , A l e x a n d e r Carlyle, a n d several others in 17 8 2, 36 a n d a year l a t e r , w h e n Boswell visited him, again b r o u g h t out the entire docket. B l a i r , like F e r g u s o n , t h o u g h t t h a t P e r c y — a s u p p o s e d l y sensible a n d well i n f o r m e d c l e r g y m a n — h a d indeed used his wits to poor purpose, a n d when, in 1782, P e r c y was m a d e B i s h o p of D r o m o r e , Blair w r o t e to C a r l y l e : " A s f o r D r . P e r c y I never h e a r d of his I r i s h Bishoprick. I wish him a good j o u r n e y . " 37 Such stale a n d u n p r o f i t a b l e bickering was merely a gadfly to Blair who h a d more u s e f u l business at h a n d . W i l l i a m Smellie, t r a n s l a t o r of Buff oil's Natural History ( 1 7 8 1 ) , c o n f e r r e d with him over the lengthy historical p r e f a c e to t h a t work a n d accepted a n u m b e r of emendations 34. An Enquiry, &c. Second edition (London, 1782), pp. 25-26. 35. LII, 13. 36. See Walpole's letter to the Rev. William Mason, 22 April, 1782, in Walpole's Correspondence, ed. Toynbee, XII, 240, and letters of Blair to A. Carlyle, 18 and 22 April [1782], MS. Laing, II, 243, at the University of Edinburgh. 37. Letter of 22 April referred to in preceding footnote.

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suggested by the doctor. 38 I n 1786 Smellie again availed himself of Blair's help in preparing the prospectus for The Philosophy of Natural History (1790-9).39 I n 1782 the doctor served as a kind of middleman between the executors of Robert Watson and the publishers of his posthumous History of Philip III (1783). Watson, it will be recalled, had for a brief time given the literary lectures which Blair took over in 1759 a f t e r the former had gone to St. Salvator's College. After Watson's death, his executor, John Davidson, brought his papers to Edinburgh where Blair was asked to look over all which had to do with history or with literary-financial matters. The doctor passed the pertinent manuscripts on to William Thomson, who was employed to complete Watson's history, and arranged with Strahan for payment of £ 4 0 0 in the interest of Watson's five daughters. 4 0 The year 1782 was not, however, a good one for Blair. T h a t year his closest friend, a f t e r David Hume, died, and in the passing of H e n r y Home, Lord Kames, the doctor lost not only an intimate associate but also a stout intellectual prop. Some years later when a biographical sketch of the philosopher-jurist was prepared for the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Blair made extensive additions to the manuscript which had been written by their mutual friend Smellie, 41 and, in 1795, he wrote the epitaphs which are carved upon the tomb of Lord Kames and his wife at Blair-Drummond. 42 His final estimate of the philosopher who had tampered with some of the most cherished doctrines of Calvinism was that— H e was so f a r from being inclined to irreligion, as some zealots would have insinuated, that very few men possessed a more devout habit of 38. Blair to Smellie, 16 June, 1780, and [late 1T80], in Robert Kerr, Memoirs of . . . William Smellie (Edinburgh, 1811), II, 148-9, 150-1. 39. Blair to Smellie, 2 Oct., 1786, in Kerr, Smellie, II, 290-1. 40. Correspondence may be found on the subject in Blair to Strahan, 7 Jan., 1782, MS. Historical Society of Pennsylvania; three letters of Blair to Davidson, 9 Aug. [1782], and two without date, MSS. B.M. Addit., 35, 619 f. 240; 35, 617 f. 281; 35, C19 f. 242; and Blair to [Strahan], 10 Sept., 1782, MS. R. F$. Adam Collection at the University of Rochester. 41. Kerr, Smellie, II, 411-415. 42. Tytler, Kames, III, 336-7.

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thought. A constant sense of Deity, and veneration for Providence, dwelt upon his mind: and hence that propensity which appears in all his writings, and which by some he was thought to carry too far, towards searching every where for final causes, and tracing the wisdom of the Supreme Author of Nature. 49 Soon after Lord Karnes's death, occurred another which opened up the long vistas of memory back to Blair's early days in the church. In April, 1783, the Rev. Mr. Robert Walker died—he whom Blair had defeated in the bitter contest of 1743 for the Canongate pulpit. That bitterness was later relaxed; and Blair was called upon to preach Walker's funeral sermon in the High Church. Blair's high praise of Walker was later used as a preface to his published sermons. 44 Now that Blair's friends were dying off, lie himself was beginning to feel old. He was approaching 65, he had fallen victim to the gout, 45 and he was thinking seriously of withdrawing from his many official and quasi-official activities in Edinburgh. 43. Kerr, Smellie, II, 415. 44. "Conclusions of a Sermon . . . preached . . . by Dr. Hugh Blair, 13 April, 1783, on the occasion of the death of Mr. Robert Walker," Sermon» on Practical Subject» (London, 1789), I, 6-11. 45. Boswell, Malahide Paper», XV, 76.

CHAPTER

The Last

SIX

Years

O D E S C R I B E the period from 1783 to 1800 as "the last years" is not to imply that Blair was declining or in decay. There was a kind of grand eldership about the man. Witness, for example, the impression he made upon Mrs. Thrale, who met him during her tour of Scotland in 1789: "Well! what did I like and who did I take a Fancy to in the Journey? Loch Lomond and D r . Blair. . . . their Images rise most spontaneously to my Mind among all the People and Places." 1 During the "last years" Blair was very active in the ministry, and he maintained an unremitting interest to the day of his death in the many miscellaneous labors which fell upon the shoulders of a man who had both reputation and friends. Yet, in 1783 he took the first definite step towards retirement by resigning his professorship and sealing the deed with the simultaneous publication of his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Blair was apologetic—as convention required—about publishing the lectures himself, explaining that the "publication . . . was not altogether a matter of choice." His reasons f o r printing were, as he pointed out in the preface, that Imperfect copies of them, in manuscripts, from notes taken by students who heard them read, were first privately handed about; and afterwards frequently exposed for public sale. When the author saw them circulate so currently, as even to be quoted in print, 2 and found himself often threatened with surreptitious publications of them, he judged it to be high time that they should proceed from his own hand, 1. Thraliana, ed. Balderston, II, 750. 2. Blair cites the Biographia Britannica,

article "Addison."

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r a t h e r t h a n come into p u b l i c view u n d e r some very defective a n d erroneous f o r m . 3 F a m i l i a r as this sort of e x p l a n a t i o n is, t h e r e was more f a c t behind it t h a n commonly s u p p o r t e d such s t a t e m e n t s . A less complicated reason f o r B l a i r ' s p u b l i s h i n g was a n offer f r o m Creech a n d S t r a h a n of £ 1 5 0 0 f o r t h e c o p y r i g h t . 4 T h e p r i c e was v e r y high, but w a s , it should be r e m e m b e r e d , the offer of two Scotsmen who h a d m a d e considerable profit f r o m p u b l i s h i n g B l a i r ' s Sermons, a n d who k n e w how to t r a n s l a t e the p r o f e s s o r ' s r e p u t a t i o n into cash t e r m s . B l a i r w a s b y no m e a n s so sanguine as his publishers. I n f a c t , he was d o w n r i g h t u n e a s y a n d f u s s y about how the book would be received. E v e r y p r o s p e c t w a s displeasing. H i s r e p u t a t i o n was at stake. H i s f r i e n d s would not like the book. T h e L o n d o n j ournals would t r e a t it r o u g h l y . W o r s t of all was the t h o u g h t of the u n t i m e l y f e u d which h a d r e c e n t l y s p r u n g u p b e t w e e n his colleague, W i l l i a m R o b e r t s o n , a n d the critic G i l b e r t S t u a r t who was c e r t a i n to w r i t e about the p r i n t e d lect u r e s f o r The English Review. So flustered was B l a i r about the whole a f f a i r , t h a t J o h n L o g a n , distressed by his f r i e n d ' s continual state of nerves, w r o t e p r i v a t e l y to S t u a r t h o p i n g to p r e d i s p o s e t h a t gentleman in t h e p r o f e s s o r ' s f a v o r . T h e l e t t e r , w r i t t e n two months b e f o r e the lect u r e s w e r e issued, closed w i t h t h e a p p e a l : Y o u r influence to give D r . B l a i r his l a s t p a s s p o r t to the public will [ b e v e r y ] a g r e e a b l e to t h e l i t e r a t i h e r e [ i n E d i n b u r g h ] , a n d [will be a] p a r t i c u l a r f a v o u r done to me. I will s t u d y [ t o ] enhance the obligation if you will w r i t e me such a letter as I can shew to him in order to quiet his fears.5 T h e Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres a p p e a r e d on 7 June in L o n d o n , a n d on 5 J u l y in E d i n b u r g h as a n expensive two-volume 3. Two complete manuscripts of Blair's lectures, neither in Blair's handwriting, have been preserved, one in the National Library of Scotland, another at the University of Edinburgh Library. Many others like them are probably scattered throughout the British Isles. 4. Andrew Dalzel, History of the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1862), II, 428n. By 21 May, 1782, Blair wrote to Strahan arranging the terms of payment at three £500 installments over a year and a half. See letter of that date in Historical Society of Pennsylvania MSS. 5. March 8, 1783. MS. Laing, II, 419 in the University of Edinburgh Library.

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quarto. 8 I n due time they were reviewed by the journals, which displayed a variety of opinions from which Blair might make a choice to fit any mood. The Monthly Review came first with a sugared article maintaining that Blair, by a "happy and singular union of taste and philosophy, . . . supplied a great defect in the science of criticism, and . . . made a valuable addition to the polite literature of the . . . age." 7 Gilbert Stuart and The English Review were not so sure. "As penetration . . . and profoundness are not his characteristics," wrote Stuart, "we meet with no theories of his own." From that report Blair had to be satisfied with commendation on the grounds that "his intentions are good; his diligence is most commendable; and he has collected a great mass of excellent material." 8 The Gentleman's Magazine, though generally favorable, spent its chief energy making big holes out of little errors. 8 Blair was probably satisfied that the reviews were no worse. The suspense was over, his personal friends were comforting in their approval, and he could retire from the lectureship with more than a clear conscience. His service to Scottish letters was summed up in the Observations of Robert Heron, his onetime assistant, who wrote: I know not that any Professor of Rhetoric and Criticism ever contributed more to the Reformation of Taste in a Nation than D r . Blair has done. At the time when he began to read his Lectures, Taste in Composition was confined almost exclusively to those very few among us who deserved the appellation of Classical Scholars: We knew in general little of Regularity, and still less of Delicacy of Composition; All the Writings of Scotchmen residing in Scotland,—except perhaps half a dozen, or hardly so many—were, properly speaking, written in the Scottish dialect; We admired the best English authors, we sometimes tried to imitate, but we dared not to emulate them. But, under him has a School of Taste and Eloquence been formed, which has 6. Advertisement in The London Chronicle, 7 June, and in The Edinburgh Evening Courant, 6 July. The Lectures were issued by Strahan and Cadell in London, and Creech in Edinburgh. They sold for £1/16 in boards, and £ 2 / 2 bound. 7. L X V I I I (1783), 491. 8. II (1783), 18-25, 81-95. 9. L I I I (1783), 684, 756.

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diffused a skill in elegant composition and Taste to relish it, througli all Scotland. 10 When the lectures were published they were immediately taken up by the schools of England and America, becoming a book "which half the educated English-speaking world studied." 11 They were also companion volumes to Johnson's Dictionary, bringing meaning and usage into the most elegant and precise conjunction. Said Oliver Wendell Holmes on one occasion: "one cannot help Blair-ing it up more or less, ironing out crumpled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping and plaiting a little sometimes." 12

Lectures

on Rhetoric

and Belles

Lettres

What made the lectures, in their printed form, highly attractive to both teachers and public was that, besides being the pronouncements of a famous man, they displayed a wide gathering of materials, and passed judgments which were safe, middle-of-the-road decisions. Blair also addressed a large segment of the public which, without ever intending to speak before an audience or to write for the press, still wished to know about the elegances of speech and writing. To them f h e said] rhetoric is not so much a practical art as a speculative science; and the same instructions which assist others in composing will assist them in discerning and relishing the beauties of composition. Whatever enables genius to execute well, will enable taste to criticise justly. 1 3 Such persons, though out of the public eye, might by the study of rhetoric, nevertheless, sustain the title "men of taste," or "ingenious gentlemen," for, as the doctor observed: I n an age [such as this] when works of genius and literature arc so frequently the subjects of discourse, when every one erects himself 10. Observations Made in a Journey through the Western Counties of Scotland; in the autumn of 1792 (Perth, 1793), II, 495-6. 11. William Charvat, The Origins of American Critical Thought, 1810-1835 (Philadelphia, 1936), p. 44. 12. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Chapter II. 13. Lecture I,

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into a judge, and when we can hardly mingle in polite society without bearing some share in such discussions; studies of this kind . . . will appear to derive a p a r t of their importance from the use to which they may be applied in furnishing materials for those fashionable topics of discourse, and thereby enabling as to support a proper rank in social life. 14 TASTE

On Taste—that most discussed of all matters—Blair had canvassed Cicero and Quintilian among the ancients, and, among the moderns, Hobbes, Locke, Du Bos, D'Alembert, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Burke, Gerard, Hume, and Kames." H e flatly rejected any "mechanical operation of the spirit" such as suggested by Hobbes and Locke, he had little faith in Neo-classic judgment by rule, but he suspected that the sixth "inner sense" as propounded by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson was unsafe as a guide unless it were aided by reason and learning and were found to conform with a generally accepted standard. Good taste was to Blair a composite (1) of delicacy, which was native, and (2) correctness, which was acquired. T h e conclusion which it is sufficient for us to rest upon, is, that taste is f a r from being an arbitrary principle, which is subject to the fancy of every individual, and which admits of no criterion for determining whether it be false or true. I t s foundation is the same in all human minds. I t is built upon the sentiments and perceptions which belong to our nature; and which, in general, operate with the same uniformity as other intellectual principles. When these sentiments are perverted by ignorance and prejudice, they are capable of being rectified by reason. Their sound and natural state is ultimately determined, by comparing them with the general taste of mankind. Let men declaim as much as they please concerning the caprice and uncertainty of taste, it is found, by experience, that there are beauties, which, if they be displayed in a proper light, have power to command lasting and general admiration. In every composition, what interests the imagination, and 14. Ibid. 15. See R. L. Brett, "The Aesthetic Sense of Taste in the Literary Criticisms of the Early Eighteenth Century," R.E.8., X X (1944), 199-213; E. N. Hooker, "The Discussion of Taste, from 1750 to 1770, and the New Trends in Literary Criticism," P.M.L.A., X L I X (1934), 577-592, and the review of the latter by R. W. Babcock in P.M.L.A., L (1935), 922-926.

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touches the h e a r t , p l e a s e s all ages a n d all n a t i o n s . T h e r e is a c e r t a i n s t r i n g to which, w h e n p r o p e r l y s t r u c k , t h e h u m a n h e a r t is m a d e to answer.16 M u c h t h a t B l a i r h a d t o say about t a s t e ( a s also a b o u t other m a t t e r s ) seems to have d e r i v e d f r o m conversation with L o r d Karnes 17 a t whose instigation he h a d b e g u n t h e lectures. T h e y b o t h recognized a hiera r c h y of p l e a s u r e s — t h e low p l e a s u r e s of sense, t h e middle of sensibility, a n d the s u p r e m e of i n t e l l e c t i o n — a s a basic p a t t e r n f o r t h e s t u d y of h u m a n r e a c t i o n s , b u t laid chief e m p h a s i s on the m i d d l e g r o u p because both believed t h a t emotional r e s p o n s e was the d i s t i n g u i s h i n g c h a r a c t e r of t h e a r t s . 1 8 Karnes's aim, h o w e v e r , w a s to discover t h e elements of criticism a n d their i n t e r p l a y , B l a i r ' s merely to select a few of the s i m p l e s t t o serve as guides. T h e y were also a g r e e d t h a t t h e s t a n d a r d of t a s t e h a d " a f o u n d a t i o n in n a t u r e , " t h a t it could be discovered by o b s e r v i n g t h e " c o m m o n s e n s e " of m a n k i n d t h r o u g h o u t t h e ages, a n d t h a t such o b s e r v a t i o n s were " s i g n a l p r o o f s " of divine p r o v idence. " O u r t a s t e , " s a i d Karnes, evidencing his a n d B l a i r ' s sense of D e i t y , "is not a c c i d e n t a l , b u t u n i f o r m a n d u n i v e r s a l , m a k i n g a b r a n c h of our n a t u r e . " 1 9 B l a i r ' s f r i e n d H u m e also recognized t h e " s e v e r a l classes a n d o r d e r s of e x i s t e n c e , " a m o n g which were reason a n d taste, each with its " d i s tinct b o u n d a r i e s a n d offices." 2 0 I n a n o t h e r p a s s a g e , however, H u m e was e s t h e t i c a l l y s o m e w h a t in advance of his t w o i n t i m a t e s : [ R e a s o n ] conveys t h e k n o w l e d g e of t r u t h a n d f a l s e h o o d ; [ t a s t e ] gives the s e n t i m e n t of b e a u t y a n d d e f o r m i t y , vice a n d virtue. T h e one discloses o b j e c t s w i t h o u t a d d i t i o n or d i m i n u t i o n : t h e other has a p r o ductive f a c u l t y ; a n d g i l d i n g or s t a i n i n g all n a t u r a l o b j e c t s with t h e colors, b o r r o w e d f r o m t h e i n t e r n a l s e n t i m e n t , raises, in a m a n n e r , a new creation. 2 1 16. Lecture II. 17. See Helen Randall, The Critical Theory of Lord Kames (Northampton, 1944), p. 82. 18. See Gordon McKenzie, "Lord Kames and the Mechanist Tradition," University of California Publications in English, XIV (1943), 107. 19. Elements of Criticism (London, 1824), pp. 440, 441, 97, 98. 20. Essays Literary, Moral, and Political (World Library of Standard Books), p. 484. 21. Ibid.

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Blair could not throw off, as Hume could, the conventional eighteenthcentury dualisms (reason and taste, beauty and sublimity, fancy and imagination), and his discussion of taste did not, consequently, move very far in the direction of an organic philosophy. 22 His was merely a liberal attitude towards the privileges of the intuitive sense, with ample checks against any possible vagaries.

CRITICISM

Criticism was very closely allied with taste, Blair pointed out, in that "all the rules of genuine criticism [ a r e ] . . ! ultimately founded upon feeling; and taste and feeling are necessary to guide us in the application of those rules in every particular instance." 23 No mere statement of emotional reaction or bias was sufficient, however, because the purpose of criticism was "to distinguish what is beautiful and what is faulty in every performance ; from particular instances to ascend to general principles ; and so to form rules or conclusions concerning the several kinds of beauty in works of genius." This was the process by which Aristotle had arrived at judgments "so consonant to the principles of human nature, as to pass into established rules . . . for judging the excellency of every performance." 24 Blair felt secure enough in this mid-ground between Aristotle and taste, despite what Lord Kames must have pointed out to him : that "no critical chemist lias been found to analyze" the "delicate feelings" which are the "constituent p a r t s " of criticism. 25

GENIUS

If Blair was only mildly interested in the psychological aspects of taste, "the power of judging," he was even less so in explaining 22. See Harold Taylor, "Hume's Theory of Imagination," University of Toronto Quarterly, XII (1942), 190. 23. Lecture III. 24. Ibid. 25. Elements of Criticism (London, 1824), p. 199. René Wellek, The Rise of English Literary History (Chapel Hill, 1941), p. 50j considers Blair to \ave left the basic problem "unstated and unsolved."

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genius, "the power of executing." He gave his readers to understand t h a t it "always imports something inventive and creative," 26 but in several times using the phrase "talent or aptitude" he gave comfort to those who, feeling that they possessed some capacity, wished to "enlarge" it "by art and study." His "universal genius" was merely an unaccountable Jack-of-all-Arts, and his "original genius" remained the unexplicable and unexplained prodigy which mankind produced more freely in ancient than in modern times. In original genius Milton and Shakespeare were, however, "inferior to no poets in any age." 27 SUBLIMITY

Ossian had given the professor his best opportunity to expound sublimity, and the fervid prose of the Critical Dissertation touching upon the wilder aspects of nature was probably more influential than anything Blair had to say about sublimity in the Lectures.2* In them he discussed the subject more methodically but without advancing much beyond the systems of opinion which had gathered around the subject since the appearance of Boileau's Longinus. 29 The attempts of Kames, Gerard, and Burke to analyze the emotion of sublimity are briefed in the statement that I t produces a certain elevation and expansion; it raises the mind very much above its ordinary state, and fills it with a degree of wonder and astonishment, which it cannot well express. The emotion is certainly delightful; but it is altogether of a serious kind; a degree of awfulness 26. This phrase from Lecture III is cited in the OED. 27. Lecture X X X V . 28. The influence of Blair upon later thinkers and writers, though it has been incompletely studied, bears out this generalization, though it is obvious that at the century's end the Lectures were far more widely distributed than the Dissertation. See Arthur Beatty, William Wordsworth, his Doctrine and Art in their Historical Relations (Madison, 1922), pp. 34-5; E. F. Carritt, "The Sources and Effects in England of Kant's Philosophy of Beauty," The Monist, X X X V (1925), 315 f.; Gilbert and Kuhn, A History of Aesthetics (New York, 1939), pp. 321 f.; The Heritage of Kant (Princeton, 1939), p. 325n.; E. C. Knowlton, "Wordsworth and Hugh Blair," Philological Quarterly, VI (1927), 277-281; Samuel Monk, The Sublime (New York, 1935), pp. 121-9. 29. See A. F. B. Clark, Boileau and the French Classical Critics in England (,1660-1830) (Paris, 1925), pp. 361-380.

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and solemnity, even approaching to severity commonly attends it when at its height; very distinguished from the more gay and brisk emotion raised by beautiful objects. 3 0 Blair's dualism is somewhat like Burke's, but he flatly rejects terror as the sole emotion connected with the sublime. To him "the mighty force of power, whether accompanied by terror or not, . . . has a better title than any thing that has yet been mentioned, to be the fundamental quality of the sublime." 31 " I t is in this connection," says a modern analyst, "that Blair offers his contribution to the subject," 32 but Blair's discussion of power l e f t his readers among the most familiar attitudes and examples: In general . . . great power and strength exerted, always raise sublime ideas . . . Hence the grandeur of earthquakes and burning mountains; of great conflagrations; of the stormy ocean, and overflowing waters; of tempests of wind; of thunder and lightning; . . . Nothing is more sublime than mighty power and strength. A stream that runs within its banks, is a beautiful object, but when it rushes down with the impetuosity and noise of a torrent, it presently becomes a sublime one. 33 On sublimity in style, the doctor leaned heavily upon Boileau's preface to Longinus and all that Boileau implied in shifting the center from language to thought. He must have had the French critic directly before him to write: As for what is called the sublime style, it is, for the most part, a very bad one; and has no relation, whatever, to the real sublime. Persons are apt to imagine, that magnificent words, accumulated epithets, and a certain swelling kind of expression, by rising above what is usual or vulgar, contributes to, or even forms, the sublime. Nothing can be more false. I n all the instances of sublime writing, which I have given, nothing of this kind appears. 'God said, let there be light; and there was light.' This is striking and sublime. But put it into what is commonly called the sublime style: 'The sovereign arbiter of nature, by the potent energy of a single word, commanded the light to exist'; and, 30. 31. 32. 33.

Lecture III. Ibid. Samuel Monk, The Sublime (New York: M.L.A., 1935), p. 121. Lecture III.

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as Boileau has well observed, the style indeed is raised, but the thought is fallen. 3 4 Blair hammered away at this idea throughout his lectures, and probably did as much as anyone to kill off the still entrenched trope-andfigure schools of style represented by John Holmes, John Stirling, Robert Dodsley, and Anthony Blackwall. "Let nature and passion," he insisted, "always speak their own language." 35 BEAUTY

The doctor approached the subject of beauty without the slightest desire to espouse any one doctrine or explanation. He would discuss it merely because "the subject is curious, and tends to improve taste." Beauty, next to sublimity, [he wrote] affords, beyond doubt, the highest pleasure of the imagination. The emotion which it raises, is very distinguishable from that of sublimity. I t is of a calmer kind; more gentle and soothing; does not elevate the mind so much, but produces an agreeable serenity. 38 Following this statement, which was in the pattern of the school of taste, Blair took up hints from virtually all the writers who had during the half-century preceding attempted to elucidate the efficient causes of beauty. He specifically acknowledged Addison, Hutcheson, Gerard, Kames, and Hogarth, but he followed none and was careful to avoid oversimplifying the discussion by adopting any such ingenious phrases as "uniformity amidst variety" (Hutcheson), or "the art of varying well" ( H o g a r t h ) . To Blair beauty lay in (1) color, (2) figure, (3) motion, and (4) the "perception of means being adapted to an end. . . . Our sense of fitness and design, . . . is so powerful, and holds so high a rank among our perceptions, as to regulate, in a great measure, our other ideas of beauty." 37 In this emphasis he was following Kames and Gerard, and, as might be expected, the principle of association finds its way into the discussion of color, figure, and motion. Green is more beautiful "by being connected in our ideas with rural prospects"; 34. L e c t u r e I V .

35. L e c t u r e X V I I .

3«. L e c t u r e V.

37. Ibid.

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"orderly and proportioned forms" are the more beautiful for suggesting "fitness, propriety, and use"; "the graceful and ornamental movements [of daily life] are made in waving lines." The last, of course, he acknowledged as from Hogarth. When discussing color alone, outside the principle of association, he drew most heavily upon Burke. What the doctor saw in his mind as "the most complete assemblage of beautiful objects that can any where be found" was a rich natural landscape, where there is sufficient variety of objects; fields in verdure, scattered trees and flowers, running water, and animals grazing. If to these be joined some of the productions of art which suit such a scene: as bridges with arches over a river, smoke rising from cottages in the midst of trees, and the distant view of a fine building seen by the rising sun; we then enjoy, in the highest perfection, that gay, cheerful, and placid sensation which characterizes beauty. To have an eye and a taste formed for catching the peculiar beauties of such scenes as these, is a necessary requisite for all who attempt poetical description. 38 [ T o write about such beauties requires] a manner neither remarkably sublime, nor vehemently passionate, nor uncommonly sparkling; but such as raises in the reader an emotion of the gentle, placid kind . . . which neither lifts the mind very high, nor agitates it very much, but diffuses over the imagination an agreeable and pleasing serenity. Mr. Addison is a writer altogether of this character. 39 LANGUAGE

The professor had an extraordinary interest in the literature which had arisen, chiefly during the 1740s and 1750s, over the subject of the rise and progress of language. H e specifically cited a dozen treatises, half French, half English, 4 0 and proposed to conduct his discussion, 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Adam Smith, Dissertation on the Origin of Languages (1759) ; Treatise of the Origin and Progress of Language; James Harris, Uermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar (1757); Condillac, Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances Humaines (1746); Du Marsais, Principes de Grammaire; Grammaire Générale et Raisonée; De Brosses, Traité de la Formation Mécanique des Langues (1765); Rousseau, Discours sur l'Inégalité parmi les Hommes (1755); Beauzée, Grammaire Générale (1767); Charles Batteux, Principes de la Traduction; Warburton, The Divine Legation of Moses (1737-41) ; Girard, Les Vrais Principes de la Langue Française (1747).

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like the majority of his authorities, "on the principles of universal grammar." His hypothetical beginning of language with "cries of passion," 41 led him to see next a refinement and combination of those cries with a scant vocabulary of concrete nouns such as could be represented by sound or motion. " F o r those inflections of voice which, in the infancy of language, were no more than harsh or dissonant cries, must, as language gradually polishes, pass into more smooth and musical sounds; and hence is formed, what we call the prosody of language." 42 Primitive language, then, imitative, scant in symbols, and eking out its deficiencies with all manner of devices, would naturally hit upon figures and metaphors, "not correct indeed," said the doctor, "but forcible and picturesque." To those who thought that metaphorical language was a late invention or the product of civilization, Blair replied: "Mankind never employed so many figures of speech, as when they had hardly any words for expressing their meaning." 43 The lectures dealing with spoken language conclude with the observation that The progress of language . . . resembles the progress of age in man. — T h e imagination is most dominant and vigorous in youth; with advancing years, the imagination cools, and the understanding ripens. Thus language, proceeding from sterility to copiousness, doth, at the same time, proceed from vivacity to accuracy; from fire and enthusiasm, to coolness and precision. . . . Language is become, in modern times, more correct, indeed, and accurate; but, however, less striking and animated; in its ancient state, more favorable to poetry and oratory; in its present to reason and philosophy. 44 Here again was Blair's primitivism with its emphasis upon imagination and the passions, coupled this time with a biological analogy to fortify the ideas that language was no "simple contrivance of human ingenuity," but " p a r t and parcel of the human mind, of its development and growth." 45 His observations, as Wellek points out, repre41. Lecture VI. See Cowper's pleasant ridicule of such theories (specifically Blair's) in his letter to William Unwin, 5 April, 1784. Letters of William Cowper, ed. Frazer (London, 1912), I, 291-3. Ibid.

42. Lecture V I .

43.

44. lecture VII.

43. Wellek, op. cit., p. 94.

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sent the forward movement in linguistic theory accompanying the general advance in the study of esthetics. 4 " Following a brief historical account of English in all its varied origins and admixtures, the doctor confronted the prophets of decay who, like Adam Smith, thought that the compounding of languages signified deterioration, with the observation that the mixture had measurably enriched the language. " F e w languages," he said, " a r e more copious than the English," and the reason for its fulness lay in "the studious and reflective genius of the people," carefully drawing "from every quarter . . . an ample stock and compass" of words. 4 7 T h e "strength and energy" of the language also lay in the "national character of the people who speak i t . " H e admitted a certain enfeebling prolixity which had come from the many draughts upon foreign languages, but concluded: Notwithstanding this defect . . . our language may be esteemed to possess considerable force of expression; comparatively, at least, with other modern tongues, though much below the ancient. T h e style of Milton alone, both in poetry and prose, is sufficient proof, that the English tongue is far from being destitute of nerves and energy. 4 8 8TYI.E

T h e doctor had an inordinate interest in style, devoting fifteen of his forty-seven lectures to the subject. H e seemed to be proposing a discussion of style with as much attention as Lord Karnes had devoted to association psychology or Burke to the origins of beauty and sublimity. At all events, he searched deeply for the roots of style, and set up an elaborate system for classifying the components of "the peculiar manner in which a man expresses his conceptions, by means of language." 4 9 The approach was not new, but the analysis was the most complex of his time, expressing in part his interest in individuality, in part his dissatisfaction with existing criteria. He first discarded several conventional distinctions. The divisions of "austere," "middle," and "florid"—established by Dionysius of Halicarnassus—he considered insufficient because they were concerned chiefly with the amount of 46. Ibid. 47. Lecture V I I I , 48. Lecture I X . 49. Lecture X.

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ornament employed. H e thought the distinctions between the "simplex" (tenue), "medium" ( t e m p e r a t u m genus dicendi), and " g r a v e " (vehement)—established by Cicero and Quintilian—"so loose and general, that they cannot advance us much in our ideas of style." 50 T h e peculiar genius and t u r n of mind in an author could be determined, he thought, only by noting ( 1 ) how closely he approached his meaning, ( 2 ) how much ornament he employed, and ( 3 ) whether his manner were natural or affected. All three criteria were necessary for j u d g m e n t . In outline Blair's system a p p e a r s as follows: I . Characters of style " t h a t respect its expressiveness of an author's meaning." A. Concise: close-knit and s p a r i n g : Tacitus, Montesquieu's Esprit des Loix. B. Diffuse: spread-out and repetitious : Cicero. C. Nervous: giving a strong impression of meaning: Demosthenes. D . Feeble: giving a weak impression of meaning: ( N o examples). I I . Characters of style "with respect to the degree of ornament employed to beautify it." A. D r y : excludes all ornament : Aristotle. B. Plain : employs very little ornament : S w i f t , Locke. C. N e a t : "Such a style . . . may be attained by a writer who has no great powers of f a n c y or genius ; by industry merely, and careful attention to the rules of writing, and it is a style always agreeable" : ( N o examples). D. E l e g a n t : " I d e a s clothed with all the beauties of expression, but not overcharged with any of its misplaced finery" : Addison, Pope, D r y d e n , Temple, Bolingbroke, Atterbury. E . Florid: "Ornaments applied to style . . . too rich and gaudy in proportion to the s u b j e c t " : H e r v e y . I I I . Characters of style as they distinguish between natural and affected. A. Simple. 1. Simplicity of composition: Iliad, Aeneid. 2. Simplicity of thought : Cicero, Parnell. 3. Simplicity in language: Locke. 4. Nàiveté—by 50. Lecture XVIII.

which an author "expresses himself in such

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a manner, that every one thinks lie could have written in the same w a y " : Scripture, Homer, Hesiod, Anacreon, Theocritus, Herodotus, Xenophon, Tillotson, Temple, Addison. B. Affected: Shaftesbury, Thomas Blackwell of Aberdeen. C. Vehement : Demosthenes, Bolingbroke. Blair sensed the confusion inherent in this elaborate system, overlapping at many points, and proposed to exemplify his method by a meticulous, sentence-by-sentence, word-by-word examination of Addison's papers on the "Pleasures of the Imagination," 51 and Swift's "Proposals for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue." 52 To devote four lectures to Addison was, perhaps, not out of proportion, since the professor considered Addison's style "the highest, most correct, and ornamented degree of the simple manner," the "safest model for imitation." 53 The examination of Addison and S w i f t seems tediously drawn out, but even Saintsbury, who is not often favorable to Blair, admits that these lectures, "like Johnson's criticisms of Dryden and Pope, [possess] the advantage of thorough sympathy." " Students of the printed Lectures could not know, of course, about certain passages which the professor deleted when he sent his classroom prelections to press. Before his students at the University, Blair had been in the habit of illustrating "the full glory" of Addison by converting a passage from Spectator No. 411 into what he considered the "affectation which distinguishes the Rambler."55 Addison had written: There are, indeed, but very few who know how to be idle and innocent, or have a Relish of any Pleasures that are not criminal ; every Diversion they take is at the Expense of some one Virtue or another, and their very first Step out of Business is into Vice and Folly. The professor converted this passage into what he thought D r . Johnson would have written : 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

Lectures X X - X X I I I on Spectator Xos. 411-114. Lecture X X I V . Lecture X I X . A History of Criticism ( N e w York, 1905), II, 463. Lecture X X in MS. Lectures in the National Library of Scotland.

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There are indeed but very few who know how to join the Relaxations of Idleness with the Salubriety of Innocence, or have a Relish for any Pleasures that are not tainted with the Pollutions of Guilt. Every Diversion they take is at the Expense of some Virtue impaired, or evil Habit acquired, and their very first Step out of the Regions of Business is into the Perturbations of Vice or the Vacuity of Folly. 58 Boswell, who had sat as a student under Blair, passed the story on to D r . Johnson who replied: "Sir, these are not the words I should have used. No, S i r ; the imitators of my style have not hit it." 57 ELOQUENCE

The ten lectures which Blair devoted to "eloquence, properly so called, or public speaking," 58 were safely reactionary in many respects, having at their core the great classical authorities (Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian) and the five classical canons (invention, disposition, style, memory, and delivery). Although the professor was undoubtedly writing about eloquence throughout all ten lectures, only four of them deal with the formal study according to the conventional patterns. This constriction was natural for a teacher to whom rhetoric was comprehensive enough to include taste, style, composition, and oratory. Much that was conventionally included in discussion of the five canons was, therefore, distributed elsewhere in the lectures and was not included under eloquence. Furthermore, the professor's thoroughgoing distrust of scholastic rhetoricians and of those "sophists and enthusiasts" who had drawn upon them for "flowers of rhetoric," feats of memory, and tricks of delivery, made him put his readers on their guard. "We are now on the watch," he said; "we are jealous of being deceived by oratory." 59 The fifteen lectures on style, treated separately, left nothing more to be said on the subject under public speaking. Memory is hardly touched upon, and delivery is discussed 56. Ibid. 57. Boswell, Johnton, ed. Hill-Powell, III, 172. See also Boswell's Malahide

Paper», XIII, 40.

68. Lectures X X V - X X X I V . 59. Lecture X X V .

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only in the most general terms and with reference to Thomas Sheridan. 60 Disposition and invention were his chief concerns, for, said he, the maxims to be observed by public speakers are: "solid argument, clear method, a character of probity appearing in the speaker, joined with such graces of style and utterance, as shall draw our attention to what he says." 81 With this position for a beginning, Blair launched into a history of ancient and modern eloquence, telling the familiar story of what Greece invented, Rome polished, and England dulled. Public speaking, he said, "has . . . fallen below that splendour which it maintained in ancient ages, and from being sublime and vehement, has come down to be temperate and cool." 62 Oratory had declined generally because of its perversion by "sophists and enthusiasts." P a r liamentary speaking had suffered under the transference of power from the assembly to the ministry. 63 And the pulpit had sickened from a variety of diseases, the worst of which was the evangelical mode of preaching, "the odium of [which] drove the established church . . . into the opposite extreme of a studied coolness and composure of manner." 64 H e was rather sad about this turn of affairs, because he greatly admired what the French called onction—"the affecting, penetrating, interesting manner, flowing from a strong sensibility of heart in the preacher to the importance of those truths which he delivers, and an earnest desire that they may make full impression on the hearts of his hearers." 65 His French models (Saurin, Bourdaloue, Massilon) might well instruct his English (Barrow, Atterbury, Tillotson) in what the latter were lacking. The French preachers address themselves chiefly to the imagination and the passions; the English almost solely to the understanding. I t is the union of these two kinds of composition, of French earnestness 60. Lecture XXXIII. Sheridan's A Courte of Lectures on Elocution (1762) is recommended as "very worthy of being consulted." Blair admits taking "several hints" from it. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Blair mentions neither Burke nor Fox. They came into reputation after Blair had drawn up his lectures, and, besides, he did not like their politics. 6i. Lecture X X V I . 65. Lecture X X I X ,

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a n d w a r m t h , w i t h E n g l i s h a c c u r a c y a n d reason, t h a t w o u l d f o r m , a c c o r d i n g to m y i d e a s , t h e m o d e l of a p e r f e c t s e r m o n . 6 9 B l a i r e n d e d his l e c t u r e s u p o n p u l p i t o r a t o r y w i t h a critical examin a t i o n of a s e r m o n b y B i s h o p A t t e r b u r y , a n d t h e n t u r n e d t o t h e more g e n e r a l " c o n d u c t of a d i s c o u r s e in all its p a r t s . " T h i s he d r e w variously f r o m t h e r h e t o r i c a l w o r k s of A r i s t o t l e , Cicero, a n d Q u i n t i l i a n , b u t w i t h v e r y close d e p e n d e n c e u p o n C a s s a n d e r ' s Praeceptiones Rhetoricae, a w o r k w h i c h h a d been a s t a p l e of i n s t r u c t i o n in t h e H i g l i School a t E d i n b u r g h in his y o u t h . C a s s a n d e r , d r a w i n g heavily a n d a d m i t t e d l y u p o n Cicero, h a d d i v i d e d o r a t o r y into ( 1 ) exordium, (2) narratio, ( 3 ) propositio, ( 4 ) confirmatio, ( 5 ) confutatio, and (6) (b) peroratio. T h e a r g u m e n t a t i v e p a r t s he divided i n t o ( a ) inventio, dispositio, a n d ( c ) elocutio. H o w closely B l a i r f o l l o w e d this p a t t e r n m a y be g a t h e r e d f r o m a n outline of t h e p e r t i n e n t l e c t u r e s :

Lecture

XXXI

Lecture

XXXII

I. II. III. IV.

E x o r d i u m or i n t r o d u c t i o n . T h e s t a t e a n d division of the s u b j e c t . N a r r a t i o n or e x p l i c a t i o n . R e a s o n i n g or a r g u m e n t s . a. I n v e n t i o n . b. D i s p o s i t i o n or a r r a n g e m e n t . c. E x p r e s s i o n . V. T h e P a t h e t i c p a r t . V I . P e r o r a t i o n or conclusion.

B l a i r h a d also c a n v a s s e d a n u m b e r of o t h e r w r i t e r s , chiefly F r e n c h , a n d h a d f o u n d his p r e f e r e n c e in F e n e l o n ' s Dialogues sur l'Eloquence, chiefly b e c a u s e of t h e A r c h b i s h o p ' s d i s c r i m i n a t i n g p r e f e r e n c e s in classical o r a t o r y , a n d f o r his g e n e r a l l y m o r a l a t t i t u d e t o w a r d s eloquence. Vossius, 6 7 t h o u g h d e a d f o r a h u n d r e d y e a r s , w a s a p p a r e n t l y still influential e n o u g h t o d r a w s p e c i a l d a m n a t i o n f r o m t h e doctor. I n t o a c a t e g o r y l a b e l l e d "of d o u b t f u l u s e , " w e r e tossed t h e F r e n c h w r i t e r s Rollin, B a t t e u x , C r e v i e r , a n d G i b e r t . 6 8 H i s final advice to s t u d e n t s w a s t o a d d r e s s t h e m s e l v e s to A r i s t o t l e , Cicero, a n d Q u i n 66. Ibid. 67. Commentariorum Rheloricorum Oratoriarum Institutionum (1606). 68. Rollin, Traité des Etude» (1726-31), Batteux, Traité de la Construction Oratoire (1763), Crevier, Rhetorique Française (1765), Gibert, De la Véritable Eloquence (1704).

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tilian, "the most instructive and useful" of all writers upon eloquence. Blair had allied himself with the positions of many schools. His emphasis on taste, previously discussed, made him one of the "Champions of T a s t e " ; his emphasis upon style brought him into line with Lawson, Ward, and Campbell; 8 9 his continual insistence upon "good sense" brought him within the school of Thomas Reid. His purpose, however, of setting forth a "more comprehensive view of style, taste, public speaking and composition than that found in any other book does not fall so far short of its mark," and his "reliance upon the practical wisdom of Quintilian saves him from the absurdities into which less careful writers lapsed in their efforts to be original." 7 0

LITERATURE

In the last group of lectures ( X X X V - X L V I I ) the professor surveyed "the most distinguished kinds of composition, both in prose and verse," and pointed out "the principles of criticism relating to them." On this part of his book has fallen the most adverse criticism. " I n Blair's critical view of literature," wrote Saintsbury, "the eighteenth century blinkers are drawn as close as possible." 7 1 Millar speaks of "the fetters with which . . . so many of its eminent professors have conspired to hamper [literary criticism]," and of Blair's Lectures as embodying "the full orthodox creed of the pseudo-classical school." 7 2 There is a certain truth to such remarks, but the attitude reflected in them destroys fair inquiry. What is conventional in the survey of letters is a set of patterns and ideas inherited from the Augustans. Blair considers the ancients generally superior to the moderns; he uses the familiar critical balances of beauties vs. defects; he separates literature into types, with only faint interest in the interplay of kinds and only faint awareness of literary history in the sense of Warton's History of English Poetry. But while thus blinkered and fettered, he was at the same time liberal. (¡9. John Lawson, Lectures Concerning Oratory (1758), John Ward, A System of Oratory (1759), George Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776). 70. Harding, op. cit., pp. 285-