Author: BLAIR (Hugh):
Title: Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.
Description: Dublin: Printed for Messrs. Colles, Moncreiff, Gilbert, Walker, Exshaw, White and Byrne. 1789. 2 volumes. 8vo, 201 x 122 mms., pp. vi [vii - viii Contents], 384; [iv], 382 [383 - 408 Index], contemporary calf, spines ornately gilt in compartments with basket ornament, red and olive morcco labels; tops and bases of spines chipped, joints slightly cracked (but firm), slight worming to spine of volume 1, but a decent set with the armorial bookplate of John Vaughan Colby on the front paste-down end-paper, his autograph on the top margin of the second front free end-paper, with the late rAutogarph of James Phillips Lloyd on the top margin of each title-page, with some initials underneath. Blair's frequently-reprinted book was first published in 1783, and the first Dublin edition appeared in the same year. It was extensively and mostly favourably reviewed, but a long and thorough review in The Critical Review 1783 was not so complimentary and concluded that there "were many inaccuracies of style in these Lectures. The passages, which we have now cited, will be sufficient to justify this observation; and may serve in some respect to show, that the Eloquence of this country has not yet fixed her residence on the north side of the Tweed. Some of these improprieties may be thought too trivial to deserve the attention of a celebrated author, and others may probably be defended by analogy, or the example of preceding writers. But the greater part of them are real violations of grammar, or of that purity, propriety, and precision, which Dr. Blair himself has justly recommended."

Keywords: rhetoric literary criticism prose


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