presented him to the parish of Collessie in Fife. In 1743 he was elected to the second charge of the Canongate Church, Edinburgh, where he performed the pastoral duties with great success, until removed to Lady Yester s, one of the city churches, in 1754. He married his cousin, Katherine Bannatyne, in 1748, and by her had a son, who died in infancy, and a daughter who lived to her twenty- first year. In 1757 the University of Sir Andrews con ferred on him the degree of D.D., and in the following year he was promoted to the High Church, Edinburgh, the most important charge in Scotland. In 1759 he com menced, under the patronage of Lord Kames, to deliver a course of lectures on composition, the success of which led to the foundation of a chair of rhetoric and belles lettres in the Edinburgh University. To this chair he was appointed in 1762, with a salary of 70 a year. Having long taken interest in the Celtic poetry of the Highlands, he published in 1763 a laudatory Dissertation on Mac- pherson s Ossian, of which he maintained the authen ticity. This critique, after being greatly overrated at the time, has now fallen into neglect. In 1777 the first volume of his Sermons appeared. It was succeeded by other four volumes, all of which met with the greatest success. Dr Samuel Johnson praised them warmly. " I love Blair s Sermons" Johnson said, " his doctrine is the best limited, the best expressed; there is the most warmth without fanaticism, the most rational transport." The Sermons were translated into almost every language of Europe, and in 1780, to signify the royal approbation, George III. conferred upon him a pension of 200 a year. In 1783 he retired from his professorship and published his Lectures on Rhetoric which he had carefully revised, and which have been frequently reprinted. He died, after a brief illness, on the 27th December 1801. In the church Blair belonged to the " moderate " or latitudinarian party, and his Sermons have been objected to as deficient in doctrinal definiteness. His once brilliant reputation is now becom ing forgotten. His works display little originality, but are written in a flowing and elaborate style ; and his Ehetoric, although inferior to Campbell s, and wanting in research and
depth of thought, is unworthy of the neglect it has met with.BLAIR, Egbert, author of the well-known poem entitled The Grave, was the eldest son of the Rev. Robert Blair, of Edinburgh. He was probably born at Edinburgh about the year 1700, and at the university of that city he received the elements of a classical education. He after wards spent some time on the Continent. Upon his return he took orders, and in 1731 was ordained minister of Athel- staneford, in East Lothian, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died of fever, February 4, 1746, and TOVS succeeded in his living by John Home, the author of Douglas. His fourth son became lord-president of the Court of Ses sion. 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 inter spersed 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. Camp bell, in the Pleasures of Hope, has borrowed, with a slight variation, a line from this poem—
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"Its visits, Like those of angels, short and far between."
The vigorous, though occasionally rather forced, poetic conceptions of the author of The Grave, were finely illus trated in Cromek s edition, published in 1808, by the grandly wild designs of William Blake, engraved by the delicate burin of Schiavonetti. The Grave was first printed at London in 1743.
Commonwealth, was born at Bridgwater in Somersetshire, in August 1598. His birth thus falls in the year before that of Cromwell; their lives ran parallel in the service of their country ; their characters present many points of likeness ; and they died within a few months of each other. Blake was the eldest son of a well-to-do merchant, and received his early education at the grammar school of Bridgwater. At the age of sixteen he was sent to Oxford, entering at first St Alban s Hall, but removing afterwards to Wadham College, then recently founded by his father s friend, Nicholas Wadham. He remained at the university till 1623, and though certainly not wanting in ability or in diligence, he missed, for some reason not clearly ascertained, such college preferment as he naturally aimed at. From Oxford, after taking his degree of M.A., he returned to his father s house, where, through the memor able and troubled years which followed, he led a quiet and retired life. His thorough honesty, his public spirit and disinterestedness, his courageous utterance of what he thought of the court and the church, of shipmoney and the High Commission Court and the licence of the times, made him a man of mark among his neighbours. And when, after eleven years of kingship without parliaments, a parlia ment was summoned to meet in April 1640, Blake was elected by the Presbyterian party to represent his native borough. This parliament, named " the Short," was dis solved in three weeks, and the career of Blake as a poli tician was suspended. Two years later the inevitable con flict began. Blake declared for the Parliament; and thinking, says Johnson, a bare declaration for right not all the duty of a good man, he raised a troop of horse in his county, and rendered such efficient service, that in 1643 he was entrusted with the command of one of the forts of Bristol. This he stoutly held during the siege of the town by Prince Rupert, and was near being hung for continuing his resistance after the governor had capitulated. In the following year Colonel Blake took Taunton by surprise, and notwithstanding its imperfect defences and inadequate supplies, held the tcwn for the Parliament against two sieges by the Royalists, until July 1645, when it was relieved by Fairfax. Blake did not approve of the trial and execution of Charles I. ; but he adhered to the Parliamentary party after the king s death, and within a month (February 1649) was appointed, with Colonels Dean and Popham, to the command of the fleet, under the title of General of the Sea. In April he was sent in pursuit of Prince Rupert, who with the Royalist fleet had entered the harbour of Kinsale in Ireland. There he blockaded the Prince for six months ; and when the latter, in want of provisions, and hopeless of relief, succeeded in making his escape with the fleet and in reaching the Tagus, Blake followed him thither, and again blockaded him for some months. The king of Portugal refusing permission for Blake to attack his enemy, the latter made reprisals by falling on the Portuguese fleet, richly laden, returning from Brazil. He captured seventeen ships and burnt three, bringing his prizes home without molestation. After revictualling his fleet, he sailed again, captured a French man-of-war, and then pursued Prince Rupert once more to the harbour of Carthagena, The Spanish governor would not allow him to violate the peace of a neutral port, and he there fore withdrew. In January 1651 he at last attacked the
Royalist fleet in Malaga harbour, and destroyed the whole