ON

RHETORIC

AND

BELLES LETTRES.

By HUGH BLAIR, D.D. & F.R.S.Ed.

ONE OF THE MINISTERS OF THE HIGH CHURCH, AND
PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND BELLES LETTRES

IN THE UNIVERSITY, OF EDINBURGH.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

THIRTEENTH EDITION.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR CADELL AND DAVIES; F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON; LONGMAN,
HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN; J. AND A. ARCH; BALDWIN,
CRADOCK, AND JOY; BLACK AND SON; AND G. AND W. B. WHIT-
TAKER: AND A. CONSTABLE AND CO. AND J. FAIRBAIRN AT

EDINBURGH.

PREFACE.

THE following LECTURES were read in the University of Edinburgh, for twenty-four years. The publication of them, at present, was not altogether a matter of choice. Imperfect copies of them in manuscript, from notes taken by students who heard them read, were first privately handed about; and afterwards frequently.exposed to public sale. When the author saw them circulate so currently, as even to be quoted in print *, and found himself often threatened with surreptitious publications of them, he judged it to be high time that they should proceed from his own hand, rather than come into public view under some very defective and erroneous form.

They were originally designed for the initiation of youth into the study of Belles Lettres, and of

Biographia Britannica, Article ADDISON.