Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres

London and Edinburgh

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

1783

"A sentiment which is expressed in a period, clearly, neatly, and happily arranged, makes always a stronger impression on the mind, than one that is any how feeble or embarrassed."

FOR, though many of those attentions, which I have been recommending, may appear minute, yet their effect, upon writing and style, is much greater than might, at first, be imagined. A sentiment which is expressed in a period, clearly, neatly, and happily arranged, makes always a stronger impression on the mind, than one that is any how feeble or embarrassed. Every one feels this upon a comparison: and if the effect be sensible in one sentence, how much more in a whole discourse, or composition, that is made up of such Sentences?
(Vol. I, Lecture XII, p. 292)

Impressions::Impression

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