ABSTRACT
Dr Hugh Blair (1718–1800) was minister of the High Kirk, elegantiae arbiter in the city, and Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh. He presumed to declare Macpherson’s Ossian authentic, and to instruct Burns in the art of poetry. Extracts from his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 2 vols. (1783), for too long a standard text-book.
