BLAIR, Hugh (1718--1800)
[Lectures on rhetoric. 1783]

Lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres. By Hugh Blair, ... In two volumes. ...
London (Place), printed for W. Strahan; T. Cadell; and W. Creech, in Edinburgh,, 1783.
2 vols ; 27.7 cm. (4º)
I: viii, 496, 8 p., frontis. port.
II: [4], 550, [18] p.

Hugh Blair was a Church of Scotland minister and professor of rhetoric at the University of Edinburgh (the first dedicated university chair of English), who wrote the preface to James Macpherson's Fragments of ancient poetry, collected in the highlands of Scotland (1760), and played a leading role in the Ossian controversy in the early 1760s. Blair's Lectures, published towards the end of his academic career, set a new standard in the study of rhetoric and include discussions of taste, literary criticism, language, style and eloquence. Soane also owned the1785 second edition of the Lectures and Blair's immensely popular Sermons, 7th ed. (1779--1781), as well as The Poems of Ossian, 1773 (q.v.), which includes 'A critical dissertation on the poems of Ossian' written by Blair. The frontispiece portrait of the author is by J. Caldwall after D. Martin, protected by tissue guard. With 8 pp. of advertisements at end of vol. I. ESTC t143711.

Copy Notes Inscribed in ink on vol. I fly leaf verso George Wyatt. Wyatt was Mrs Soane's uncle.

Binding C18th tree calf, gilt-ruled and dotted spines, black and olive morocco spine-labels.

Reference Number 492

Additional Names Wyatt, George (d.$1790)