BLACKWELL, THOMAS, an eminent Scottish writer, was the son of a minister at Aberdeen, and born there in 1701. He received his grammatical education at a school in Aberdeen, studied Greek and philosophy in the Marischal College there, and took the degree of A. M. in 1718. Being distinguished for uncommon parts, and an early proficiency in letters, he was, in December 1723, made Greek professor in the college where he had been educated; and continued to teach that language with applause till his death. In 1735 was published at London, but without his name, An Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, 8vo, a second edition of which appeared in 1736; and not long after, he gave to the world Proofs of the Inquiry into Homer's Life and Writings, being a translation of the Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and French notes, subjoined to the original work. In 1748 he published Letters concerning Mythology, 8vo, but without his name. The same year he was made principal of Marischal College in Aberdeen; being the only layman who had been appointed to that office since the patronage came to the crown, by the forfeiture of the Marischal family in 1716, all the other principals having been ministers of the church of Scotland. In March 1752 he took the degree of doctor of laws; and the year following published the first volume of his Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, 4to. The second volume appeared in 1755; and the third, which was posthumous, and left incomplete by the author, was prepared for the press by John Mills, Esq. and published in 1764. At the same time a third edition of the two former volumes appeared; which is a proof of the good reception the work met with from the public, although it must be acknowledged that the parade with which it is written, and the peculiarity of its language, exposed it to some severity of censure.
Soon after he became principal of his college, he married the daughter of a merchant in Aberdeen, by whom he had no children. Several years before his death, his health had begun to decline. His disorder was of the consumptive kind, and was probably accelerated by the excessive abstemiousness which he had imposed upon himself. His disease increasing, however, he was advised to travel, and accordingly set out in February 1757; but he was not able to proceed farther than Edinburgh, in which city he died on the 8th of March following, in his fifty-sixth year. Blackwell was both an ingenious and a learned man. He had an equable flow of temper and a truly philosophic spirit, and maintained to the last that serenity and composure of mind which, whether they be the result of a happily-constituted temperament, or of a long course of self-discipline, may well be accounted the greatest of earthly blessings.