Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres

London and Edinburgh

Printed for W. Strahan; T. Cadell; and W. Creech

1783

"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."

I WILL not go so far as to say that the improvement of taste and of virtue is the same; or that they may always be expected to coexist in an equal degree. More powerful correctives than taste can apply, are necessary for reforming the corrupt propensities which too frequently prevail among mankind. Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart. At the same time this cannot but be admitted, that the exercise of taste is, in its native tendency, moral and purifying. From reading the most admired productions of genius, whether in poetry or prose, almost every one rises with some good impressions left on his mind; and though these may not always be durable, they are at least to be ranked among the means of disposing the heart to virtue. One thing is certain, and I shall hereafter have occasion to illustrate it more fully, that without possessing the virtuous affections in a strong degree, no man can attain eminence in the sublime parts of eloquence. He must feel what a good man feels, if he expects greatly to move or to interest mankind. They are the ardent sentiments of honour, virtue, magnanimity, and publick spirit, that only can kindle that fire of genius, and call up into the mind those high ideas, which attract the admiration of ages; and if this spirit be necessary to produce the most distinguished efforts of eloquence, it must be necessary also to our relishing them with proper taste and feeling.
(Vol. I, Lecture I, pp. 15-16)

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Searching ECCO-TCP

29 entries in ESTC (1783, 1784, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1793, 1796, 1798). See also Heads of the Lectures on Rhetorick, and Belles Lettres (1767, 1771, 1777) and abridgments of the lectures as Essays on Rhetoric (1784, 1785, 1787, 1789, 1793, 1797, 1798).

See Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. By Hugh Blair (London: Printed for W. Strahan; T. Cadell; and W. Creech, in Edinburgh, 1783): <Link to ESTC>. See also Dublin edition of same year in ECCO-TCP: <Link to Vol. I><Vol. II><Vol. III>. Revised and corrected for second edition of 1785.

Reading Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, eds. Linda Ferreira-Buckley and S. Michael Halloran (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005). Text based on second edition of 1785.

11/18/2013