Volume 3

Lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres / by Hugh Blair.

  • Blair, Hugh, 1718-1800.
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres / by Hugh Blair. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    contribute to render him one of thofe very few L E c T. Authors whom one never tires of reading; and w ^ ', from whom alone, were every other monument deftroyed, we mould be led to form a very high idea of the tafte and genius of the Auguftan Age. To all fuch, then, as wifh to form their tafte, and nourifli their genius, let me warmly recom- mend the affiduous ftudy of the Antient Claffics, both Greek and Roman: No&urna verfate manu, verfatediurna*. Without a considerable acquaintance with them, no man can be reckoned a polite fcholar, and he will want many afiiftance for writing and fpeak- ing well, which the knowledge of fuch Authors would afford him. Any one has great reafon to fufpe6l his own tafte, who receives little or no pleafure from the perufal of Writings, which fo many ages and nations have confented in holding up as objects of admiration. And I am per- fuaded it will be found, that in proportion as the Antients are generally ftudied and admired, or are unknown and difregarded in any country, good tafte and good compolition will flourifli or decline. They are commonly none but the ig- norant or fuperficial who undervalue them. At the fame time, a juft and high regard for the prime writers of antiquity is to be always * « Read them by day, and ftudy them by night. Francis. diftin-