DR Thomas, a clergyman, was born at Annan in the south of Scotland in the year 1721. His father was a bricklayer; but though in this humble sphere of life, was of a respectable character, and not deficient in knowledge and urbanity. The son was not quite six months old when he lost his eyesight in the smallpox. This misfortune rendered him incapable of learning any of the mechanical arts; and therefore his father kept him at home, and with the assistance of some friends fostered that inclination which, at a very early period, he showed for books. This was done by reading to him first the simple sort of publications which are commonly put into the hands of children, and then several of our best authors, such as Milton, Spenser, Prior, Pope, and Addison. His companions, whom his early gentleness and kindness of disposition, as well as their compassion for his misfortune, strongly attached to him, were very affiduous in their good offices, in reading to instruct and amuse him. By their assistance he acquired some knowledge of the Latin tongue, but he never was at a grammar-school till at a more advanced period of life. Poetry was even then his favourite reading; and he found an enthusiastic delight in the works of the best English poets, and in those of his countryman Allan Ramsay. Even at an age so early as twelve he began to write poems, one of which is preserved in the collection that was published after his death, and is not perhaps inferior to any of the premature compositions of boys afflicted by the best education, which are only recalled into notice by the future fame of their authors.

He had attained the age of nineteen when his father was killed by the accidental fall of a malt-kiln belonging to his son-in-law. This loss, heavy to any one at that early age, would have been, however, to a young man possessing the ordinary means of support, and the ordinary advantages of education, comparatively light; but to him—thus suddenly deprived of that support on which his youth had leaned—definite almost of every resource which industry affords to those who have the blessings of sight—with a body feeble and delicate from nature, and a mind congenially susceptible—it was not surprising that this blow was doubly severe, and threw on his spirits that despondent gloom to which he then gave way in the following pathetic lines, and which sometimes overclouded them in the subsequent period of his life.

"Dejecting prospect! soon the hapless hour "May come; perhaps this moment it impends, "Which drives me forth to penury and cold, "Naked, and beat by all the storms of heav'n, "Friendless and guideless to explore my way; "Till, on cold earth this poor unhelp'd head "Reclining, vainly from the ruthless blast "Rep'ite I beg, and in the shock expire."

He lived with his mother for about a year after his father's death, and began to be distinguished as a young man of uncommon parts and genius. These were at that time unassisted by learning; the circumstances of his family affording him no better education than the smattering of Latin which his companions had taught him, and the perusal and recollection of the few English authors which they, or his father in the intervals of his professional labours, had read to him. Poetry, however, though it attains its highest perfection in a cultivated soil, grows perhaps as luxuriantly in a wild one. To poetry, as we have before mentioned, he was devoted from his earliest days; and about this time several of his poetical productions began to be handed about, which considerably enlarged the circle of his friends and acquaintance. Some of his compositions being thrown to Dr Stevenson, an eminent physician of Edinburgh, who was accidentally at Dumfries on a professional visit, that gentleman formed the benevolent design of carrying him to the Scotch metropolis, and giving to his natural endowments the assistance of a classical education. He came to Edinburgh in the year 1741, and was enrolled a student of divinity in the university there, though at that time without any particular view of entering into the church. In that university he continued his studies under the patronage of Dr Stevenson till the year 1745, when he retired to Dumfries, and resided in the house of Mr M'Murdo, who had married his sister, during the whole time of the civil war, which then raged in the country, and particularly Blacklock. cularly disturbed the tranquillity of the metropolis.

When peace was restored to the nation, he returned to the university, and pursued his studies for six years longer. During this last residence in Edinburgh, he obtained, among other literary acquaintance, that of the celebrated Mr Hume, who attached himself warmly to Mr Blacklock's interests, and was afterwards particularly useful to him in the publication of the 4to edition of his Poems, which came out by subscription in London in the year 1756. Previously to this, two editions in 8vo had been published at Edinburgh, the first in 1746, and the second in 1754.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the time that these verses were written, Dr Blacklock was, for the first time, afflicted with what to him must have been peculiarly distressful. He became occasionally subject to deafness, which, though he seldom felt it in any great degree, was sufficient, in his situation, to whom the sense of hearing was almost the only channel of communication with the external world, to cause very lively uneasiness. Amidst these indispositions of body, however, and disquietudes of mind, the gentleness of his temper never forsook him, and he felt all that resignation and confidence in the Supreme Being which his earliest and his latest life equally acknowledged. In summer 1791 he was seized with a feverish disorder, which at first seemed of a slight, and never rose to a very violent kind; but a frame so little robust as his was not able to resist it, and after about a week's illness it carried him off on the 7th day of July of that year.

Dr Blacklock's writings consist chiefly of poems, of which an edition in 4to was published in 1793. To that edition was added, an Essay on the Education of the Blind, translated from the French of M. Hauy. He was also the author of the article Blind in the last edition of this work.