Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/285

 perfect sincerity, that he was justified by the precept of St Paul, which commands the ministers of religion to be "all things to all men." Religious feeling is modified by time and place; and I do not apprehend it to be impossible that the mind of Hugh Blair, existing at the time of his celebrated ancestor, might have exerted itself in maintaining the covenant, and inspiring the populace with the energy necessary for that purpose; while the intellect and heart of his predecessor, if interchanged, might have spent their zeal in behalf of Henry Viscount Melville, and in gently pleasing the minds of a set of modern indifferents, with one grain of the gospel dissolved into a large cooling-draught of moral disquisition.

The remaining part of the life of Blair hardly affords a single additional incident. He had been married, in 1748, to his cousin, Katherine Bannatyne, daughter of the Rev James Bannatyne, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. By this lady he had a son who died in infancy, and a daughter, who survived to her twenty-first year, the pride of her parents, and adorned with all the accomplishments which belong to her age and sex. Mrs Blair, herself a woman of great good sense and spirit, was also taken from him a few years before his death, after she had shared with the tenderest affection in all his fortunes, and contributed nearly half a century to his happiness and comfort. The latter part of his life was spent in the enjoyment of a degree of public respect which falls to the lot of few men, but which was eminently deserved by him, both on account of his high literary accomplishments, and the singular purity and benevolence of his private character. He latterly was enabled, by the various sources of income which he enjoyed, to set up a carriage; a luxury enjoyed, perhaps, by no predecessor in the Scottish church, and by very few of his successors. He also maintained an elegant hospitality, both at his town and country residences, which were much resorted to by strangers of distinction who happened to visit Edinburgh.

It may be curious to know in what manner those discourses were delivered from the pulpit, which have so highly charmed the world in print As might be easily supposed, where there was so much merit of one kind, there could scarcely, without a miracle, be any high degree of another and entirely different kind. In truth, the elocution of Dr Blair, though accompanied by a dignified and impressive manner, was not fit to be compared with his powers of composition. His voice was deformed by a peculiarity which I know not how to express by any other term than one almost too homely for modern composition, a burr. He also wanted all that charm which is to be derived from gesticulation, and, upon the whole, might be characterized as a somewhat formal preacher.

In what is called church politics, Dr Blair was a strenuous moderate, but never took an active share in the proceedings of the church. A constitutional delicacy of organization unfitted him for any scene where men have to come into strong and personal collision. In temporal politics, he was a devout admirer of the existing constitution, and a zealous supporter of the tory government which flourished during the greater part of the reign of George III. With Viscount Melville, to whose father he had dedicated his thesis in early youth, he maintained a constant interchange of civilities. At the breaking out of the French revolution, he exerted himself in the most energetic manner to stop the tide of disaffection and irreligion, which at one particular crisis seemed to threaten all existing institutions. He declared in the pulpit that none but a good subject could be a good Christian; an expression so strongly akin to the ancient doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance, that it can only be excused by the particular circumstances of the time. The mind of Blair was too fastidiously exact and elegant to display any thing of the majestic. Possessing more taste than genius,