Thomas Blacklock

Thomas Blackcock (1721-1791), Scottish poet, the son of a bricklayer, was born at Annan, in Dumfriesshire, on November 10th, 1721. When not quite six months old he lost his sight as a result of smallpox. His career is largely interesting as that of one who achieved what he did in spite of blindness, and he is notable as an early supporter of Robert Burns.

Early Life

Should but thy fair companions view How ill that frown becomes thy brow, With fear and grief in every eye, Each would to each, astonished, cry, Heavens! where is all her sweetness flown!— How strange a figure now she’s grown! Run, Nancy, let us run, lest we

Grow pettish awkward things as she.

(from "To a little Girl whom I had offended", written at about 12 years of age.

Blacklock had begun to write poetry from about the age of 12. He lived at home till his nineteenth year, when his father died in an accident at work: who was crushed to death by the fall of a malt-kiln, with eighty bushels of grain upon it, belonging to his son-in-law. Soon after his father's death in 1740, some of his poems began to be handed about among his acquaintances and friends. They arranged for his education first at the grammar-school, and then at the University of Edinburgh, where he studied divinity. His first volume of Poems was published in 1746. In 1754 he became deputy librarian for the Faculty of Advocates, by the kindness of David Hume. He later became estranged from Hume, and defended James Beattie's attack on that philosopher. Blacklock was among the first friends of Robert Burns in Edinburgh, being one of the earliest to recognize his genius.

Blacklock decided to become a clergyman. and was licensed as a preacher by the presbytery of Dumfries, in 1759. He soon acquired a considerable reputation as a pulpit orator, and left many sermons, which were never published. In 1762 he was ordained minister of the church of Kirkcudbright, and now with a stable income, he married Sarah Johnston, daughter of Mr Joseph Johnston, surgeon in Dumfries. Unfortunately, the people of the parish refused, on account of his blindness, to acknowledge him as their pastor.

A lawsuit followed, which, after two years, was resolved by Blacklock retiring upon a moderate annuity. From the first moment of opposition, it had been his wish to make this arrangement, not from any conviction of incompetency to the duties of a parish minister, but because he saw it was needless to contend against a prejudice so strongly maintained. "Civil and ecclesiastical employments," he says, "have something either in their own nature, or in the invincible prejudices of mankind, which renders them almost entirely inaccessible to those who have lost the use of sight. No liberal and cultivated mind can entertain the least hesitation in concluding that there is nothing, either in the nature of things, or even in the positive institutions of genuine religion, repugnant to the idea of a blind clergyman. But the novelty of the phenomenon, while it astonishes vulgar and contracted understandings, inflames their zeal to rage and madness."

In 1764, Blacklock moved to Edinburgh, where he received boarders into his house; he occupied the two upper flats of a house at the west end of West Nicolson Street, close to the present site of The Blind Poet, a public house named in his memory. According to his biographer, Henry Mackenzie, "no teacher was perhaps ever more agreeable to his pupils, nor master of a family to its inmates, than Dr Blacklock. The gentleness of his manners, the benignity of his disposition, and that warm interest in the happiness of others which led him so constantly to promote it, were qualities that could not fail to procure him the love and regard of the young people committed to his charge; while the society which esteem and respect for his character and his genius often assembled at his house, afforded them an advantage rarely to be found in establishments of a similar kind. The writer of this account has frequently been witness of the family scene at Dr Blacklock’s; has seen the good man amidst the circle of his young friends, eager to do him all the little offices of kindness which he seemed so much to merit and to feel. In this society he appeared entirely to forget the privation of sight, and the melancholy which, at other times, it might produce. He entered with the cheerful playfulness of a young man into all the sprightly narrative, the sportful fancy, the humorous jest, that rose around him. It was a sight highly gratifying to philanthropy to see how much a mind endowed with knowledge, kindled by genius, and above all, lighted up with innocence and piety, like Blacklock’s, could overcome the weight of its own calamity, and enjoy the content, the happiness, the gaiety of others. Several of those inmates of Dr Blacklock’s house retained, in future life, all the warmth of that impression which his friendship at this early period had made upon them; and in various quarters of the world he had friends and correspondents from whom no length of time, or distance of place, had ever estranged him."

In 1767 the degree of doctor in divinity was conferred on him by Marischal College, Aberdeen. He died in Edinburgh on the 7th of July 1791.

Blindness

As a blind child he experienced the casual cruelty of other children; he wrote the article "Blind," for the Encyclopaeodia Britannica, and in it he declared that "Parents of middle or of higher rank, who are so unfortunate as to have blind children, ought by all possible means to keep them out of vulgar company. The herd of mankind have a wanton malignity which eternally impels them to impose upon the blind, and to enjoy the painful situations in which these impositions place them. This is a stricture upon the humanity of our species, which nothing but the love of truth and the dictates of benevolence could have extorted from us. But we have known some," he adds, evidently referring to himself, "who have suffered so much from this diabolical mirth in their own persons, that it is natural for us, by all the means in our power, to prevent others from becoming its victims."

Lamenting his blindness, he thus closes an enumeration of the miseries it entailed upon him:

"Nor end my sorrows here: The sacred fane Of knowledge, scarce accessible to me, With heart-consuming anguish I behold: Knowledge for which my soul insatiate burns With ardent thirst. Nor can these useless hands, Untutor’d in each life-sustaining art, Nourish this wretched being, and supply Frail nature’s wants, that short cessation know."

Dr John Stevenson, a physician in Edinburgh, who, while on a professional visit in Dumfries, saw some of our author’s pieces, and resolved to afford the young man’s talents the opportunity of expanding in avocations and amid society more congenial to one so much restricted to pleasures of an intellectual kind. Accordingly Blacklock was, in 1741, induced to remove to the metropolis, where he attended a grammar-school for some time, and afterwards entered as a student in the college, Dr Stevenson supplying him with the means necessary for the prosecution of his studies. .

Amid the severer studies of classical learning, philosophy, and theology, his attachment to poetry was not forgotten. In 1746, a volume of his verses in 8vo. was published at Glasgow. A second edition followed at Edinburgh, in 1754; and two years afterwards, a quarto edition, with an account of his life by Mr Spence, professor of poetry at Oxford, came out by subscription in London. In the selection of pieces for the press, Blacklock was by his friends considered to be over fastidious; and by persisting to exclude what he himself thought unworthy of a place, he greatly limited the size of his books. By the London edition a considerable sum was realized for the author’s advantage. Besides these editions of his poems, another in 4to. was published in 1793, with a life elegantly written by Henry Mackenzie. They have also been reprinted in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Of all these the edition of Dr Anderson, though not the latest, is the most complete.

"All those who ever acted as his amanuenses," says Mackenzie, "agree in this rapidity and ardour of composition which Mr Jameson ascribes to him. He never could dictate till he stood up; and as his blindness made walking about without assistance inconvenient or dangerous to him, he fell insensibly into a vibratory sort of motion of his body, which increased as he warmed with his subject, and was pleased with the conceptions of his mind. This motion at last became habitual to him; and though he could sometimes restrain it when on ceremony, or in any public appearance, such as preaching, he felt a certain uneasiness from the effort, and always returned to it when he could indulge it without impropriety. This is the appearance which he describes in the ludicrous picture he has drawn of himself:

—"As some vessel tossed by wind and tide Bounds o’er the waves, and rocks from side to side, In just vibration thus I always move."

Much of the singularity in the gestures of poor Blacklock must have proceeded from his inability to observe the carriage of others, and to regulate his own in conformity with theirs: a tree will accommodate its growth to the restraints imposed upon it, but where a single branch escapes from the artificial training, flinging itself abroad in all the wild vigour of nature, its tufted luxuriance appears more striking from the contiguity of a well-clipt and orderly neighbourhood. Such was Blacklock’s manner: he could not know with how little outward discomposure the world has taught men to accompany the expression of their emotions; and with him ardent feeling produced an unrestrained effect upon the countenance and gestures. The author of Douglas, in one of his letters, has given a curious picture of his singular appearance when under strong excitement: "I went to a companion’s," says Home, "and sent for the blind poet, who is really a strange creature to look at—a small weakly under thing—a chilly, bloodless animal, that shivers at every breeze. But if nature has cheated him in one respect, by assigning to his share forceless sinews, and a ragged form, she has made him ample compensation on the other, by giving him a mind endued with the most exquisite feelings—the most ardent, kindled-up affections; a soul, to use a poet’s phrase, that’s tremblingly alive all over: in short, he is the most flagrant enthusiast I ever saw; when he repeats verses, he is not able to keep his seat, but springs to his feet, and shows his rage by the most animated motions. He has promised to let me have copies of his best poems, which I will transmit to you whenever he is as good as his word."

This letter, besides the description of Blacklock’s exterior and carriage, opens to us one source of his acutest sufferings: we have already adverted to the unthinking insults to which his blindness exposed him while a boy, and it appears but too certain that many who had arrived, at manhood in respect of their outward frame, did not treat him with greater tenderness in his maturer years. They did not, perhaps, decoy him to the edge of a ditch that they might have the satisfaction of seeing him flounder into it, or offer prickles to his grasp that they might be diverted by the contortions of countenance which the unexpected wounds occasioned; but they went to see the blind poet, and induced him to recite his verses, from the same kind of motive that takes people to witness the exhibition of a learned pig. Blacklock’s position in regard to such visitors was peculiarly painful: he was in a great measure dependant upon his talents for support; and to have indignantly refused to display them, would have been to raise up obstacles to his own success. His feelings were at the same time the most nicely wrought, and even the triumphs of genius did not afford him perfect gratification; for he knew that his hearers were not carried away by his enthusiasm, but listened with a cold and critical attention, noting every peculiarity of tone, look, and gesture. He has himself told us how exquisitely painful was the consciousness of being the object of such unfeeling curiosity:

—"the supercilious eye Oft, from the noise and glare of prosperous life, On my obscurity diverts its gaze, Exulting; and with wanton pride elate Felicitates its own superior lot: Inhuman triumph!"

Finding that his increasing years and infirmities required repose, Dr Blacklock discontinued the keeping of boarders in 1787. But though his bodily vigour began to fail, he experienced no diminution of that benevolence which had ever characterised him. His own genius having been greatly indebted to patronage, he was ever ready to acknowledge it in others, and especially to cultivate and bring it into reputation where he found it struggling with obscurity. Nor were his efforts for this purpose confined to occasional acts of liberality—they were laborious and long-continued. He had taken a boy from a village near Carlisle to lead him, and perceiving in the youth a willingness to learn, taught him Latin, Greek, and French, and having thus fitted him for a station superior to that in which he was born, procured for him the situation of secretary to Lord Milton, who was chief active manager of state affairs in Scotland for many years. This young man was Richard Hewitt, known to the admirer of Scottish song as the author of "Roslin Castle." Hewitt testified his gratitude to his instructor by a copy of complimentary verses, in every line of which may be traced the chief excellence of compositions of that description – sincerity; but he did not long enjoy his change of fortune, having died in 1764 from the fatigue of the office to which he had been elevated.

Blacklock’s friendship with Beattie commenced about a year after his return from Kirkcudbright to Edinburgh. The first letter from the opponent of Hume, dated in 1765, expresses satisfaction that the present of a copy of our author’s poems had at last afforded the opportunity of establishing an acquaintance. The correspondence was for some time kept up with great regularity by Beattie, who, when the composition of the "Minstrel" had not advanced beyond a few stanzas, explained his plan to the blind bard. The progress of a work of still greater importance was confided to Blacklock. The "Essay on the Immutability of Moral Sentiment" having been perused and approved by him, the more extensive plan and object of the "Essay on Truth" was also disclosed; and that he was pleased with the design, and encouraged the author to proceed, may be understood from what afterwards took place: on the publication of the work, it was thought necessary, by Beattie’s friends, that an analysis of it, giving a brief and popular view of the manner in which the subject was treated, should be inserted in the newspapers; and "this task," Sir William Forbes says, "Dr Blacklock undertook, and executed [Edinburgh Evening Courant, 2d June, 1770.] with much ability." On Blacklock’s part this literary intercourse was cultivated by allowing Beattie the perusal of a translation of the "Cenie" of D’Happoncourt de Grafigny, which he had made under the title of "Seraphina." This play was not intended to be either printed or brought on the stage; but the translator appears to have been under some apprehensions, in consequence of the proceedings in regard to "Douglas," that, if his having engaged in such a work should come to be known, it might draw upon him the censure of the church courts, or at least, of the more rigid ecclesiastics.

Blacklock and Burns

The Rev. Mr Lawrie of Newmills had transmitted to Blacklock a copy of the Kilmarnock edition of Burns’ poems. With calmness, yet with energy, the enthusiastic Blacklock indicated his own admiration and the certainty of the poet’s future fame:—" many instances," he wrote to Mr Lawrie, "have I seen of nature’s force and beneficence exerted under numerous and formidable disadvantages; but none equal to that with which you have been kind enough to present me. There is a pathos and delicacy in his serious poems, a vein of wit and humour in those of a more festive turn, which cannot be too much admired nor too warmly approved. I think I shall never open the book without feeling my astonishment renewed and increased.—It were much to be wished, for the sake of the young man, that a second edition, more numerous than the former, could immediately be printed; as it appears certain that its intrinsic merit, and the exertion of the author’s friends, might give it a more universal circulation than any thing of the kind which has been published within my memory."—"I had taken the last farewell of my few friends," says Burns; "my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Scotland—‘The Gloomy night is gathering fast’—when a letter from Dr Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition. The Doctor belonged to a set of critics for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His opinion that I would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition, fired me so much, that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction."—"Blacklock received him," says Dr Currie, "with all the ardour of affectionate admiration; he eagerly introduced him to the respectable circle of his friends; he consulted his interest; he emblazoned his fame; he lavished upon him all the kindness of a generous and feeling heart, into which nothing selfish or envious ever found admittance."—"In Dr Blacklock," Burns himself writes to Mr Lawrie, "In Dr Blacklock, whom I see very often, I have found what I would have expected in our friend,—a clear head and an excellent heart." It is not our business, in this place, to trace Burns’s career farther. Dr Blacklock’s duty towards him was performed, when he had bestowed upon him every mark of private regard, and consigned him to the care of more influential patrons. After Burns retired to the country, some letters passed between them, which, on Dr Blacklock’s part, show how very poorly a remarkably sensible man could write when he had little to say, and thought to compensate for the meagreness of his subject by elevating it into rhyme.

Besides the miscellaneous poems by which Dr Blacklock is best known as an author, he published several other works. In 1756 he gave to the world an "Essay towards Universal Etymology ;" in 1760, " The Right Improvement of Time, a Sermon;" in the ensuing year another sermon, entitled "Faith, Hope, and Charity compared." In 1767 appeared his " Paraclesis; or Consolations deduced from Natural and Revealed Religion," in two dissertations, the first supposed to be Cicero’s, translated by Dr Blacklock,—the other written by himself. This work, to use the author’s own touching words, "was begun and pursued by its author, to divert wakeful and melancholy hours, which the recollection of past misfortunes, and the sense of present inconveniences, would otherwise have severely embittered." He endeavours, but without success, to prove the authenticity of the dissertation ascribed to Cicero, which he has translated with fidelity and elegance: the object of the original discourse is to prove the superiority of the consolations afforded by revealed religion. In 1768, he printed "Two Discourses on the Spirit and Evidences of Christianity," translated from the French of Mr James Armand. To this work he prefixed a long dedication to the Moderator of the General Assembly. In 1773 appeared his "Panegyric on Great Britain," which shows him to have possessed considerable talents for satire had he chosen to pursue that species of writing. His last production was in 1774, "The Graham, an Heroic Ballad, in Four Cantos;" intended to promote a good understanding between the natives of England and Scotland. He contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica, in 1783, the article Blind—a little treatise of peculiar interest, which we have had occasion to quote in the present account of its author. He is also said to have written the Essay on Poetry, and others on various subjects in the same work. Dr Blacklock left behind him in manuscript some volumes of sermons, and a Treatise on Morals.

In his latter years our author was occasionally afflicted with deafness—in his case a double calamity, as at the periods when it visited him, he was in a manner shut out from all communication with the external world. In this forlorn condition—old, blind, and sometimes deaf—it was more difficult for him than formerly to bear up against the depression of spirits to which he had always been more or less subject; but his gentleness of temper never forsook him, and though he could not altogether avoid complaint, he was not loath to discover and state some alleviating circumstance along with it. He died from fever after a week’s illness, on the 7th July, 1791, and was buried in the ground of St Cuthbert’s Chapel of Ease, where there is a tombstone erected, with the following inscription by Dr Beattie:— "Viro Reverendo Thomae Blacklock, D. D. [The classical reader will easily detect a fault here – Divinitatis Doctor! Which, it may be remarked, was also committed on one occasion by Dr Adam.] Probo, Pio, Benevolo, Omnigent Doctrina Erudito, Poetae sublimi; ab incunabului usque oculis capto, at hilari, faceto, amicisque semper carissimo; qui natus xxi Novemb. MDCCXX. obiit VII Julii, MDCCXCI: Hoc Monumentum Vidua ejus Sara Johnston, moerens P."

It has been said of Dr Blacklock that "he never lost a friend, nor made a foe;" and perhaps no literary man ever passed through life so perfectly free from envious feeling, and so entirely respected and beloved. His conversation was lively and entertaining; his wit was acknowledged, but it had no tinge of malice; his temper was gentle, his feelings warm—intense; his whole character was one to which may be applied the epithet amiable, without any qualification. We do not deny him the merit of this; but he was placed in circumstances favourable for the development of such a character; his blindness, together with his genius, prepossessed all in his favour, and procured him many warm friends; while he was never in hazard of creating enemies, because, being incapacitated for any of the more active pursuits of life, his interests did not come into collision with those of any other aspirant in a similar path. He was thus enabled to "live pleasant," as far as his intercourse with the world was concerned. In his own mind, he did not at all times enjoy the cheerfulness which his excellent temper and his piety might seem to promise; he laboured under a depression of spirits, which grew upon him, as the buoyancy of youth and the energy of manhood declined. When we consider how much more we are liable to superstitious fears and alarms of every kind during the night than in the day, it does not appear surprising, that those condemned to ceaseless darkness should find it impossible to subdue their sense of loneliness and destitution. No variety of visible objects, no beauty of colour or grace of motion, ever diverts the mind of the blind man from brooding over its own phantasmata; the ear may be said to be the only inlet by which he can receive cheering ideas, and hence, when companionless, he becomes liable to the intrusion of doubts and dreads in an endless train. The bodily inactivity to which the want of sight compels him and his exclusion from business, unhappily promote the same morbid sensibility; and though society may afford him many gleams of delight, the long hours of solitude bring back the prevailing gloom. From this disease of the mind, Dr Blacklock’s varied stores of acquired knowledge, the native sweetness of his temper, and the tender cares of an affectionate wife, could not preserve him. It might be the cause of uneasiness to himself, however, but never influenced his behaviour to others; it made him melancholy, but not morose. Even they who look upon it as being, in ordinary instances, a fantastic and blameable weakness, must pity the present sufferer, in whom so many causes concurred to render it irresistible.

To Dr Blacklock as a poet, the rank of first-rate excellence has not been assigned, and is not claimed; but his works possess solid merits, which will always repay a perusal. The thoughts are, for the most part, vigorous, seldom less than just; and they are conveyed with a certain intensity of expression, which shows them, even when not uncommon in themselves, to be the offspring of a superior genius. As the productions of a blind man, they present a study of the very highest interest, and have frequently been viewed as a problem in the science of mind. The author himself seems to have been not unwilling to invest them with a certain character of mystery: "It is possible," he says, "for the blind, by a retentive memory, to tell you, that the sky is an azure; that the sun, moon, and stars, are bright; that the rose is red, the lily white or yellow, and the tulip variegated. By continually hearing these substantives and adjectives joined, he may be mechanically taught to join them in the same manner; but as he never had any sensation of colour, however accurately he may speak of coloured objects, his language must be like that of a parrot,—without meaning, or without ideas. Homer, Milton, and Ossian, had been long acquainted with the visible world before they were surrounded with clouds and ever-during darkness. They might, therefore, still retain the warm and pleasing impressions of what they had seen. Their descriptions might be animated with all the rapture and enthusiasm which originally fired their bosoms when the grand or delightful objects which they delineated were immediately beheld. Nay, that enthusiasm might still be heightened by a bitter sense of their loss, and by that regret which a situation so dismal might naturally inspire. But how shall we account for the same energy, the same transport of description, exhibited by those on whose minds visible objects were either never impressed, or have been entirely obliterated? Yet, however unaccountable this fact may appear, it is no less certain than extraordinary. But delicacy, and other particular circumstances, forbid us to enter into this disquisition with that minuteness and precision which it requires."

"Mr Spence observes," says the writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, [We have already stated our belief that this writer was Dr Johnson. Besides the evidence which the passages quoted in the text afford, there is much of the spirit of Johnson in the summary of Blacklock’s personal character: "This gentleman has one excellence which outvalues all genius, and all learning – he is truly and eminently a good man. He possesses great abilities with modesty, and wants almost every thing else with content." The probability is farther heightened by the kindness which Johnson manifested to Blacklock when he visited Scotland. On being introduced at Mr Boswell’s, the English moralist "received him with a most humane complacency – ‘Dear Dr Blacklock, I am glad to see you!’" Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides. We are also told by Mr Boswell, that Dr Johnson, on his return from the Western Islands, breakfasted once at Dr Blacklock’s house. We esteem the verbal criticism in the article we have just spoken of, as equally characteristic of the illustrious lexicographer: "Some passages," it is remarked, "appear to have something wrong in them at the first view, but upon a more accurate inspection, are found to be right, or at least only to be wrong as they reflect the faults of others. In these verses, ‘What cave profound, what star sublime, Shall hide me from thy boundless view,’ there seems to be an improper connextion of ideas; but the impropriety is in a great degree of our own making, We have joined ideas which Mr Blacklock, without any absurdity, has here separated. We have associated the idea of darkness with that of profundity; and a star being, as a luminous body, rather adapted to discover than to hide, we think the cave and the star, with their epithets, improperly opposed in this passage; but Mr Blacklock’s idea included only distance: and as neither height nor depth, in the language of St Paul, can separate good men from the love of God; neither, says Mr Blacklock, can height or depth conceal any being from his sight. And that he did not here suppose concealment the effect of obscurity, appears plainly from the epithet boundless, which he has given to that view which he supposes to comprehend all height and depth, or, in other words, universal space. It must, however, be granted, that as height and depth are relative to a middle point, there is no proportion between the depth of a cave and the height of a star. ‘So fools their flocks to sanguine wolves resign, So trust the cunning fox to prune the vine.’ But into this mistake he was perhaps led by the impropriety of the common fable of the fox and grapes, which we frequently quote, without reflecting that an inordinate love of grapes is falsely attributed to that animal: when the fox could not reach the grapes, he said they were sour. Blacklock explained this latter passage by saying, "that he alluded to that well-known passage of the Scripture: ‘Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines; for our vines have tender grapes.’ Cant. ii. 15."] "that Blacklock’s notion of day may comprehend the ideas of warmth, variety of sounds, society, and cheerfulness; and his notion of night, the contrary ideas of chillness, silence, solitude, melancholy, and, occasionally, even of horror: that he substitutes the idea of glory for that of the sun; and of glory in a less degree for those of the moon and stars: that his idea of the beams of the sun may be composed of this idea of glory, and that of rapidity: that something of solidity, too, may perhaps be admitted both into his idea of light and darkness; but that what his idea of glory is, cannot be determined. Mr Spence also remarks, that Mr Blacklock may attribute paleness to grief, brightness to the eyes, cheerfulness to green, and a glow to gems and roses, without any determinate ideas; as boys at school, when, in their distress for a word to lengthen out a verse, they find purpureus olor, or purpureum mare, may afterwards use the epithet purpureus with propriety, though they know not what it means, and have never seen either a swan or the sea, or heard that the swan is of a light, and the sea of a dark colour. But he supposes, too, that Mr Blacklock may have been able to distinguish colours by his touch, and to have made a new vocabulary to himself, by substituting tangible for visible differences, and giving them the same names; so that green, with him, may seem something pleasing or soft to the touch, and red, something displeasing or rough. In defence of this supposition, it has been said, with some plausibility, that the same disposition of parts in the surfaces of bodies, which makes them reflect different rays of light, may make them feel as differently to the exquisite touch of a blind man. But there is so much difference in the tangible qualities of things of the same colour, so much roughness and smoothness, harshness and softness, arising from other causes, that it is more difficult to conceive how that minute degree arising from colour should be distinguished, than how a blind man should talk sensibly on the subject without having made such distinction. We cannot conceive how a piece of red velvet, woollen cloth, camblet, silk, and painted canvass, should have something in common, which can be distinguished by the touch, through the greatest difference in all qualities which the touch can discover; or in what mode green buckram should be more soft and pleasing to the touch than red velvet. If the softness peculiar to green be distinguished in the buckram, and the harshness peculiar to red in the velvet, it must be by some quality with which the rest of mankind are as little acquainted as the blind with colour. It may perhaps be said, that a blind man is supposed to distinguish colours by his touch, only when all things are equal. But if this be admitted, it would as much violate the order of his ideas to call velvet red, as to call softness harsh, or, indeed, to call green red; velvet being somewhat soft and pleasing to the touch, and somewhat soft and pleasing to the touch being his idea of green."

The acuteness of these remarks leaves us to regret that the author eluded the discussion of the most difficult part of the subject, and fixed upon that concerning which there is no dispute: Blacklock himself acknowledged what is here said about distinguishing colours by the touch, to be true as far as he was concerned, that being a nicety of perception which, though reported to be possessed by others, he in vain endeavoured to attain. "We have known a person," he says, in his article on Blindness, "who lost the use of his sight at an early period of infancy, who, in the vivacity or delicacy of his sensations, was not, perhaps, inferior to any one, and who had often heard of others in his own situation capable of distinguishing colours by touch with the utmost exactness and promptitude. Stimulated, therefore, partly by curiosity, to acquire a new train of ideas, if that acquisition were possible, but still more by incredulity with respect to the facts related, he tried repeated experiments by touching the surfaces of different bodies, and examining whether any such diversities could be found in them as might enable him to distinguish colours; but no such diversity could he ever ascertain. Sometimes, indeed, he imagined that objects which had no colour, or, in other words, such as were black, were somewhat different and peculiar in their surfaces; but this experiment did not always, nor universally hold."

But even supposing Dr Blacklock to have possessed the power of distinguishing colours by the touch, and that by handling the coat which he wore he could have told whether it was blue or black, the stock of ideas that he might thereby have obtained, would have contributed little to fit him for describing external nature. He could have formed no conception of a landscape from the representation of it on canvass; which, at the most, could only convey the idea of a plain surface covered with a variety of spots, some of which were smoother and more pleasant to the touch than others. The pomp of groves and garniture of fields would never have been disclosed to his yearning fancy by so slow and unperfect a process. Nor could his notions of scenery be much improved by whatever other conventional method he endeavoured to form them. Granting that he framed his idea of the sun upon the model of that of glory, it was still but an abstract idea, and could bring him no nearer to a distinct apprehension of the splendour with which light covers the face of the earth; nor could his idea of the obscuration of glory enable him to understand the real nature of the appearances he describes when he says—

"Clouds peep on clouds, and as they rise, Condense to solid gloom the skies."

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

An edition of his poems in 1793 contains a life by Henry Mackenzie.

References