Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/271

 the obscuration of glory enable him to understand the real nature of the appearances he describes when he says

All these suppositions fail to afford a solution of the difficulty concerning the nature of his ideas of visible objects. In order to arrive at the proper explanation, let us inquire whence he derived them: that the sky is blue and the fields green, he could only learn from the descriptions of others. What he learned from others he might combine variously, and by long familiarity with the use of words, he might do so correctly, but it was from memory alone that he drew his materials. Imagination could not heighten his pictures by stores of any kind but those supplied by his recollection of books. We wonder, indeed, at the accurate arrangement of the different parts in his delineations, and that he should ever have been led to peruse what he could not by any possibility understand how, for instance, he should have studied with ardour and delight such a work as the "Seasons," the appreciation of whose beauties one would suppose to depend almost entirely on an acquaintance with the visible forms of creation. But when we consider how deeply he must have regretted the want of the most delightful of our senses, it will appear most natural, that he should strive by every means to repair the deficiency, and to be admitted to some share of the pleasure which he had heard that sight conveys. From his constant endeavours to arrive at some knowledge of the nature of visible objects, he obtained a full command of the language proper to them; and the correct application of what he thus learned, is all that can be claimed for the descriptive parts of his poetry. These never present any picture absolutely original, however pleasing it may be, and however much it may enhance the effect of the sentiment it is introduced to assist

Besides the earlier notices of Mr Gilbert Gordon, of Spence, and, we may add, of Johnson, Blacklock's life has been written by Mackenzie with great elegance, by Chalmers, and by Dr Anderson. The last biographer mentions that "some memoirs of his life, written by himself, are now (1795) in the possession of Dr Beattie." It is not improbable that this statement refers merely to the "long letter" from Blacklock to Beattie, already alluded to. If other documents of this kind were in the hands of the latter in 1795, as he had not thought proper to communicate them to any of Dr Blacklock's biographers, the probability is, that he would have retained them till his death, and that they would have appeared among his papers. Sir William Forbes, however, makes no mention of any such discovery; although, besides frequent allusions to him in the course of the life of Dr Beattie, he has, in the appendix to that work, given a brief sketch of that of Dr Blacklock. If such memoirs are, nevertheless, in existence, and could be recovered, they would form a most interesting addition to our stock of autobiography.

, husband and wife. The former was brother to the more celebrated Dr Thomas Blackwell, the subject of the following article. His father, Thomas Blackwell, was at first minister of Paisley, whence he was removed, in 1700, to be one of the ministers of Aberdeen. He was there appointed to be Professor of Divinity in the Marischal college, and afterwards, in 1717, raised by the crown to the rank of Principal, which he held till his death in 1728. Alexander, his son, exhibited at an early period such symptoms of genius as induced his father to employ great personal care in his education. At fifteen, he was a perfect Greek and Latin scholar, and he afterwards distinguished himself very highly at college. It would appear that