cution, as applicable to the oratory of the pulpit, the bar, and the popular assembly. They do not aim at the character of a work purely original; for this, as the author justly considered, would have been to circumscribe their utility; neither in point of style are they polished with the same degree of care that the author has bestowed on some of his other works, as for example, his "Sermons." Yet, so useful is the object of these lectures, so comprehensive their plan, and such the excellence of the matter they contain, that, if not the most splendid, they will, perhaps, prove the most durable monument of their author's reputation." BLAIR (JAMES, M. A.) was born and bred in Scotland, and ordained and beneficed in the episcopal church there; but meeting with some discouragements under an unsettled state of affairs, and having a prospect of discharging his ministerial function more usefully elsewhere, he quitted his preferments, and came into England near the end of Charles the Second's reign. It was not long before he was taken notice of by Compton, bishop of London, who prevailed with him to go as missionary to Virginia, about 1685; where, by exemplary conduct, and unwearied labours in the work of the ministry, he did good service to religion, and gained to himself a good report amongst all: so that bishop Compton being well apprised of his worth, made choice of him, about 1689, as his commissary for Virginia, the highest office in the church there; which, however, did not take him off from his pastoral care, but only rendered him the more shining example of it to the rest of the clergy. While his thoughts were intent upon doing good in his office, he observed with concern that the want of schools, and proper seminaries for religion and learning, so impeded all attempts for the propagation of the gospel, that little could be hoped for, without first removing that obstacle. He therefore formed a vast design of erecting and endowing a college in Virginia, at Williamsburgh, the capital of that country, for professors and students in academical learning: in order to which, he had himself set on foot a voluntary subscription, amounting to a great sum; and, not content with that, came over into England in 1693, to solicit the affair at court. Queen Mary was 1 Life as above.-Tytler's Life of lord Kaimes.-Boswell's Life of Johnson. so well pleased with the noble design, that she espoused it BLAIR (JOHN), a monk of the order of St. Benedict, was born in the county of Fife, in Scotland, in the reign of king Alexander III. and educated with the celebrated sir William Wallace, at the school of Dundee. He then went over to France, where he studied for some time in the university of Paris, and became a monk of the order of St. Benedict. On his return to Scotland, he found his country in great confusion, owing to the death of Alexander III. without issue, and the contests of various competitors for the throne. At first, therefore, he retired to the house of the Benedictines at Dumfermline; but when sir William Wallace was made governor or viceroy of the kingdom in 1294, Blair became his chaplain, and being by this means an eye-witness of most of his actions, he composed the history of his life in Latin verse. Of this a fragment only is left, which was copied by sir James Balfour out of the Cottonian library, and published in 1705, by sir Robert Sibbald, the celebrated botanist. It appears to have been written in 1327; and what remains is translated in Hume's "History of the Douglasses." Blair, 1 From the last edition of this Dict. 1784.-Burnet's Own Times.-Humphrey's Hist. Account, p. 9. 10. the exact period of whose death is uncertain, is sometimes called John, and sometimes Arnold, which latter name he is said to have adopted when he retired into his monastery, and which is also used by sir Robert Sibbald in his "Relationes quædam Arnoldi Blair monachi de Dumfermelem et Capellani D. Willelmi Wallas Militis. Cum Comment." Edinb. 1705, 8vo.1 BLAIR (JOHN), was educated at Edinburgh, and was, as already noticed, related to Dr. Hugh Blair. He came to London in company with Andrew Henderson, a voluminous writer, who, in his title-pages styled himself A. M. and for some years kept a bookseller's shop in Westminster-hall. Henderson's first employment was that of an usher at a school in Hedge-lane, in which he was succeeded by his friend Blair, who, in 1754, obliged the world with a valuable publication under the title of "The chronology and history of the world, from the creation to the year of Christ 1753. Illustrated in fifty-six tables; of which four are introductory, and contain the centuries prior to the first olympiad; and each of the remaining fifty-two contain in one expanded view fifty years, or half a century. By the rev. John Blair, LL. D." This volume, which is dedicated to lord chancellor Hardwicke, was published by subscription, on account of the great expence of the plates, for which the author apologized in his preface, where he acknowledged great obligations to the earl of Bath, and announced some chronological dissertations, in which he proposed to illustrate the disputed points, to explain the prevailing systems of chronology, and to establish the authorities upon which some of the particular æras depend. In Dr. Hugh Blair's life, it has been noticed that this work was partly projected by him. In January 1755, Dr. John Blair was elected F. R. S. and in 1761, F. A. S. In 1756 he published a second edition of his Chronological Tables. In Sept. 1757, he was appointed chaplain to the princess dowager of Wales, and mathematical tutor to the duke of York; and, on Dr. Townshend's promotion to the deanry of Norwich, the services of Dr. Blair were rewarded, March 10, 1761, with a prebendal stall at Westminster. The vicarage of Hinck ley happening to fall vacant six days after, by the death of Dr. Morres, Dr. Blair was presented to it by the dean ! Mackenzie's Scots Writers, vol. I, and chapter of Westminster; and in August that year he obtained a dispensation to hold with it the rectory of Burton Coggles, in Lincolnshire. In September 1763, he attended his royal pupil the duke of York in a tour to the continent; had the satisfaction of visiting Lisbon, Gibraltar, Minorca, most of the principal cities in Italy, and several parts of France; and returned with the duke in August 1764. In 1768 he published an improved edition of his Chronological Tables, which he dedicated to the princess of Wales, who had expressed her early approbation of the former edition. To the edition were annexed fourteen maps of ancient and modern geography, for illustrating the tables of chronology and history. To which is prefixed a dissertation on the progress of geography. In March 1771 he was presented by the dean and chapter of Westminster to the vicarage of St. Bride's, in the city of London; which made it necessary for him to resign Hinckley, where he had never resided for any length of time. On the death of Mr. Sims, in April 1776, he resigned St. Bride's, and was presented to the rectory of St. John the Evangelist in Westminster; and in June that year obtained a dispensation to hold the rectory of St. John with that of Horton, near Colebrooke, Bucks. His brother, captain Blair *, falling gloriously in the service of his country in the memorable sea-fight of April 12, 1782, the shock accelerated the doctor's death. He had at the same time the influenza in a severe degree, which put a period to his life June 24, 1782. His library was sold by auction December 11-13, 1781; and a course of his "Lectures on the canons of the Old Testament," has since appeared. ' 1 BLAIR (PATRICK), an ingenious Scotch botanist, was a practitioner of physic and surgery at Dundee, where he made himself first known as an anatomist, by the dissection of an elephant, which died near that place, in 1706. He was a nonjuror, and for his attachment to the exiled family of Stuart, was imprisoned, in the rebellion in 1715, as a suspected person. He afterwards removed to London, This able officer, for his gallant conduct in the Dolphin frigate in the engagement with the Dutch on the Dogger Bank, August 5, 1781, was promoted to the command of the Anson, a new ship of 64 guns. By bravely distinguishing himself under sir George Rodney, he fell in the bed of honour, and became one of three heroes, to whom their country, by its representa. tives, voted a monument. Nichols's Hist. of Hinckley. where he recommended himself to the royal society by some discourses on the sexes of flowers. His stay in London was not long, and after leaving it, he settled at Boston, in Lincolnshire, where Dr. Pulteney conjectures that he practised physic during the remainder of his life. The time of his decease is not known, but it is supposed to have taken place soon after the publication of the seventh Decad of his "Pharmaco-Botanologia," in 1728. Dr. Blair's first publication was entitled "Miscellaneous observations in Physic, Anatomy, Surgery, and Botanics," 1718, 8vo. In the botanical part of this work he insinuates some doubts relating to the method suggested by Petiver, and others, of deducing the qualities of vegetables from the agreement in natural characters, and instances the Cynoglossum, as tending to prove the fallacy of this rule. But the work by which he rendered the greatest service to botany, originated with his "Discourse on the Sexes of Plants," read before the royal society, and afterwards greatly amplified, and published at the request of several members of that body, under the title of "Botanic Essays," 1720, 8vo, in which he strengthened the arguments in proof of the sexes of plants, by sound reasoning, and some new experiments. He published also," Pharmaco-botanologia, or an alphabetical and classical dissertation on all the British indigenous and garden plants of the new dispensatory," Lond. 1723—28, 4to, but this work extends only to the letter H. Dr. Blair wrote some papers in the Philosophical Transactions, particularly his anatomy and osteology of the elephant, &c.' BLAIR (ROBERT), a Scotch divine and poet, was the eldest son of the rev. David Blair, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, and chaplain to the king. His grandfather was the rev. Robert Blair, some time minister of the gospel at Bangor, in Ireland, and afterward at St. Andrew's, in Scotland. Of this gentleman, some "Memoirs," partly taken from his manuscript diaries, were published at Edinburgh, in 1754. He was celebrated for his piety, and by those of his persuasion, for his inflexible adherence to presbyterianism, in opposition to the endeavours made in his time to establish episcopacy in Scotland. It is recorded also that he wrote some poems. His grandson, the object 1 Pulteney's Sketches, vol. II. |