HENRI-MARIE DUCROTAY DE, a distinguished naturalist, was born at Arques, near Dieppe, Sept. 12, 1777. About the year 1795 he entered the school of design at Rouen, but after a very short time he went to Paris, where he became a pupil of Vincent the painter. Attracted by the lectures of Cuvier and other eminent professors in the College of France, he commenced the study of Anatomy, and in August 1808 he took the degree of M.D.
He now devoted himself to the study of natural history, more particularly the department of myology, and he soon attracted the attention of Cuvier, who requested Blainville's co-operation in a work on comparative anatomy on which he was then engaged. He was also chosen by that illustrious professor to supply his place at the College of France and at the Athenaeum, and he soon afterwards obtained the vacant chair of anatomy and zoology in the Faculty of Sciences at Paris. On that occasion he produced his thesis upon that curious animal the ornithorhyncus, or duck-bill.
Blainville's somewhat irascible disposition was probably one cause of the subsequent estrangement between him and Cuvier, which ended in an open and irreconcilable enmity. In 1825 Blainville was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1830 he was appointed to succeed Lamarck at the museum in the chair of natural history, an honour he had well earned by his important contributions to that science. This he resigned in 1832 to become the successor of Cuvier in the chair of comparative anatomy, which he continued to occupy for the space of eighteen years.
His scientific writings are very numerous, and chiefly relate to the animal kingdom. As a comparative anatomist he proved himself a worthy successor of the celebrated Cuvier. M. de Blainville was found dead in a railway carriage while travelling between Rouen and Caen, May 1, 1850.
Besides a great variety of memoirs published in the Annales du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, and in similar works, he was the author of Prodrome d'une Nouvelle Distribution Méthodique du Régne Animal, 1816; Ostéographie, ou Description Iconographique Comparée du Squelette et du Système Dentaire des Cinque Classes d'Animaux Vertébrés Récents et Fossiles, &c.; Faune Française, Paris, 1821-1830; Cours de Physiologie Générale et Comparée, Paris, 1833; Manuel de Malacologie et de Conchyliologie, Strasbourg, 1825-1827; Histoire des Sciences Naturelles au Moyen Age, &c., Paris, 1845, &c. 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 Nature*, 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 Collessie 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 L70." 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 reaction 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 L200 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 affect 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.
Blair, James, an eminent divine, born in Scotland, where he was ordained and benefited in the Episcopal church. Going to England about the end of the reign of Charles II., he was sent by Dr Compton as a missionary to Virginia, and afterwards by the same bishop made commissary, which was the highest ecclesiastical office in that colony. He formed a design of erecting and endowing a college at Williamsburg, in Virginia; and, in 1693, came to England to solicit assistance; when Queen Mary espoused the noble design, and with the concurrence of King William, a patent was passed for erecting and endowing a college by the name of the William and Mary College, of which Blair was appointed president, an office which he enjoyed for nearly fifty years. He was also rector of Williamsburg, and president of the council in that colony. He died in 1748, leaving four volumes of discourses on our Saviour's Sermon on the Mount. London, 1742.
Blair, John, a Scottish author, the contemporary and companion, some say the chaplain, of Sir William Wallace. He attended that illustrious hero in almost all his exploits; and, after his death, wrote Memoirs of the Scottish Champion, in Latin. But time has destroyed this work, which might have thrown great light on the history of a very troubled and remarkable period. An inaccurate fragment of it only has descended to us. It was published, with a commentary, in 1705, by Sir Robert Sibbald; and it is translated in Hume's History of the Douglasses.
Blair, John, an eminent Scottish chronologer, was born and educated at Edinburgh, and afterwards went to London, where he became usher at a school. In 1754 he presented to the world his valuable work, The Chronology and History of the World, from the Creation to the year of Christ 1753. This volume was published by subscription, and dedicated to Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. In 1755 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1761 of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1756 he published a second edition of his Chronological Tables; and in the following year he was appointed chaplain to the princess dowager of Wales, and mathematical tutor to the Duke of York. His services were rewarded with a prebend's stall in Westminster, and other preferments. In 1763 he attended his royal pupil on a Continental tour, when he visited Lisbon, Gibraltar, Minorca, Italy, and France; and on his return he published an improved edition of his Chronology, which he dedicated to the Princess of Wales. The fate of his brother Captain Blair, who fell in the memorable sea-fight in which Admiral Rodney defeated and took prisoner the French commander Count de Grasse, on the 12th April 1782, is believed to have accelerated his own death, which took place on the 24th of June in the same year.
Blair, Robert, author of the well-known poem entitled The Grave, was the eldest son of the Rev. Robert Blair, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, and the grandson of that Robert Blair who was so conspicuous among the Scottish clergy in the civil wars. He was probably born at Edinburgh about the year 1700, and at the university of that city received the elements of a classical education. He afterwards spent some time on the Continent. Upon his return he took orders, and in 1731 was ordained minister of Athelstaneford, in East Lothian, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died of a fever, Feb. 4, 1746; and was succeeded in his living by John Home, the author of Douglas.
Blair had five sons and one daughter; the late Robert Blair of Avontoun, Lord President of the Court of Session, being his fourth son.
Blair wrote several other pieces besides The Grave; but that poem alone constitutes his title to rank as a poet. It consists of a succession of descriptions and reflections, which have no other connection except what they may derive from their relation to a common subject; but these are interspersed with striking allusions, picturesque imagery, touches of a rude though effective pathos, and a vein of sentiment at once natural and just. The rhythm is often harsh, and the versification frequently devoid of correctness, harmony, and grace; but it has nevertheless a masculine vigour and freshness about it, which more than atone for the defects in the finishing; while, in certain moods of the mind, the air of deep and almost misanthropical melancholy diffused over the whole, proves highly touching and impressive. Campbell, in the Pleasures of Hope, has borrowed, with a slight variation, a line from this poem:
Like those of angels, short and far between.
The vigorous, though occasionally rather forced, poetic conceptions of the author of The Grave, were finely illustrated, in Cromek's edition published in 1808, by the grandly wild designs of William Blake, engraved by the delicate burn of Schiavonetti. The Grave was first printed at London in 1743.