BLAIR, DR HUGH

BLAIR, DR HUGH, a distinguished clergyman of the Church of Scotland, was born at Edinburgh, April 7. 1718. His father, John Blair, was a merchant in that city, and grandson of the famous Mr Robert Blair, minister of St Andrews, chaplain to King Charles I., and one of the most distinguished clergymen of the period in which he lived.

After the usual grammatical course at school, Blair entered the humanity class in the university of Edinburgh in October 1730, and spent eleven years at that celebrated seminary, assiduously employed in the literary and scientific studies prescribed by the Church of Scotland to candidates for the ministry.

At this time he commenced a method of study which contributed much to the accuracy and extent of his knowledge, and which he continued to practise occasionally even after his reputation was fully established. It consisted in making abstracts of the most important works which he had read, and in digesting them according to the train of his own thoughts. History, in particular, he resolved to study in this manner; and, in concert with some of his youthful associates, he constructed a very comprehensive scheme of chronological tables for receiving into its proper place every important fact that should occur. The scheme devised by this young student for his own private use was afterwards improved, filled up, and given to the public, by his learned friend Dr John Blair, prebendary of Westminster, in his valuable work entitled The Chronology and History of the World.

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

On the completion of his academical course, after undergoing the customary trials before the presbytery of Edinburgh, on the 21st Oct. 1741 he was licensed to preach the gospel. His public life now commenced with very favourable prospects. The reputation which he brought from the university was fully justified by his first appearance in the pulpit; and in a few months the fame of his eloquence procured for him a presentation to the parish of Coleskie in Fife, where he was ordained Sept. 23. 1742. A vacancy having occurred the following year in the second charge of the Canongate of Edinburgh, the young orator was elected by a great majority in July 1743.

In this station Dr Blair continued for eleven years, discharging with great fidelity and success the various duties of the pastoral office; till, in consequence of a call from the town-council and general session of Edinburgh, he was translated from the Canongate to Lady Yester's, one of the city churches, Oct. 11. 1754; and on the 15th June 1758 he was promoted to the High Church of Edinburgh, the most important ecclesiastical charge in the kingdom.

Hitherto his attention seems to have been devoted almost exclusively to the attainment of professional excellence, and to the regular discharge of his parochial duties. No production of his pen had yet been given to the world by himself, except two sermons; some translations in verse of passages of Scripture; and a few articles in the Edinburgh Review, a publication begun in 1755, and conducted for a short time by some of the ablest men in the kingdom. But, standing as he now did at the head of his profession, he began to think seriously on a plan for teaching to others that art which had contributed so much to the establishment of his own fame. With this view he prepared a course of lectures on composition; and having obtained the approbation of the university, he began to read them in the college on the 11th of December 1759. The university of St Andrews, moved chiefly by the merit of his eloquence, had, in June 1757, conferred on him the degree of doctor in divinity, a literary honour which at that time was very rare in Scotland. His first course of lectures was received with great applause; and the patrons of the university agreed in the following summer to institute a rhetorical class, under his direction, as a permanent part of their academical establishment. On

the 7th April 1762, the king was pleased "to erect and endow a professorship of rhetoric and belles-lettres in the university of Edinburgh, and to appoint Dr Blair, in consideration of his approved qualifications, regius professor thereof, with a salary of £70." These lectures he published in 1783, when he retired from the labours of the office.

About the time when he was occupied in laying the foundations of this useful institution, he had an opportunity of conferring what he considered another important obligation on the literary world, by contributing to rescue from oblivion the poems of Ossian. It was by the joint solicitation of Dr Blair and Mr John Home that Mr Macpherson was induced to publish his Fragments of Ancient Poetry; and their patronage was of essential service in procuring the subscription which enabled him to undertake his tour through the Highlands, for collecting the materials out of which he afterwards arranged "Fingal," and the other productions which bear the name of Ossian. Soon after their publication Blair gave an estimate of their merits in a "Dissertation," which was prodigiously overrated at the time when it first appeared, and has since, by a natural enough re-action in public opinion, been treated with unmerited neglect. It was printed in 1763; and being regarded as a masterpiece of critical acuteness, as well as of elegant composition, it spread the reputation of its author throughout all Europe, and, for a time, silenced the sceptical doubts which had been raised as to the honesty of Macpherson and the genuineness of Ossian.

It was in 1777 that Blair published the first volume of those sermons which had so long furnished instruction and delight to his own congregation; and this volume having been well received, three other volumes followed at different intervals. These sermons experienced an unusual degree of success, and were circulated rapidly and widely; they were soon translated into almost all the languages of Europe; and His Majesty George III. was graciously pleased, July 1780, to confer a pension of £200 a-year upon their author.

The sermons contained in the fifth volume were composed at very different periods; but they were in many parts recomposed during the course of the summer 1800, after the writer had completed his eighty-second year. They were delivered to the publishers about six weeks before his death, in the form and order in which they now appear.

The reputation which Dr Blair acquired in the discharge of his public duties was well sustained by the great respectability of his private character. Deriving from family associations a strong sense of clerical decorum, feeling in his heart deep impressions of religious and moral obligation, he was eminently distinguished through life by the prudence, purity, and dignified propriety of his conduct.

In 1748, he married his cousin Catherine Bannatyne, daughter of the Rev. James Bannatyne, one of the ministers of Edinburgh; and by her he had a son who died in infancy, and a daughter who lived to her twenty-first year.

Though liable to occasional attacks from some of the sharpest and most painful diseases that afflict the human frame, he enjoyed a general state of good health; and, through habitual cheerfulness, temperance, and care, survived the usual term of human life. After a brief illness, and retaining to the last moment the full possession of his mental faculties, he expired on the 27th of December 1800, with the composure and hope which became a Christian pastor.