Item talk:Q387384

Education: Edinburgh high school; University of Edinburgh, matriculated 1731; MA 1739; University of St Andrews, DD 1757; fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783; admitted to the University of Edinburgh by the senatus academicus 1760

Career: tutor to Simon Fraser 1740; minister to the parish of Collessie in Fife 1742; second charge in the Canongate church 1743-54; moderator of the presbytery of Edinburgh (age 28); minister of Lady Yester's Church 1754; minister of the High or New Kirk in St Giles's Church 1758; professor of rhetoric at the University of Edinburgh (no salary but the right to collect class fees from his students) 1760; director of the Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language 1761; regius chair of rhetoric and belles-lettres, with an annual salary of £70 and the continued right to collect class fees 1762-for life; The royal family's fondness for his Sermons helped secure for him a pension of £200 per annum

Patrons: Lord and Lady Leven (secured his position in the parish of Collessie)

Coteries: helped poet James Macpherson publish his purported translations in a small volume entitled Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland

Periodicals etc.: Edinburgh Review 1755-6

Overall: A minister very active in church life, Blair wrote countless sermons, only some of which are documented here. His five-volume compilation Sermons was hugely successful and unprecedentedly lucrative. His only two poems were written while at University. In addition to his clerical duties, he was also very involved in academia and the intellectual life of the Scottish Enlightenment as a man of letters and literary critic.

Jacob Sider Jost/ Mary Naydan/ Noah Fusco, “Poets of the 1730s: A Digital Humanities Seedling” (2017/ 2021)