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Blacklock. 



Blackburne of civil and of religious freedom. He wrote several 

 short pieces in favour of political liberty, which 

 were inserted in the public prints ; and was a large 

 contributor to a collection of letters and essays on 

 this subject, published in 1774, in 3 vols. 8vo. He 

 also appears as a correspondent in the excellent Mr 

 Wyvill's Political Papers, vol. iii. p. 133. 



When we recollect that the memoirs of Mr Hollis 

 were finished in the 75th year of the author's age, 

 the vigour of his mind will not fail to excite some 

 degree of surprise ; but the death of his second son 

 Thomas, a physician of rising eminence in the city 

 of Durham, affected him so severely as to relax his 

 ardour for all literary pursuits. His sight soon af- 

 terwards began to fail, and he was obliged to em- 

 ploy an amanuensis. The increasing infirmities of 

 age did not, however, prevent him from performing 

 the duties of his profession ; and it was on a visita- 

 tion circuit that he was seized with his last illness. 

 He died at the parsonage house of Richmond on the 

 7th of August 1787, after he had completed the 

 S2d year of his age. " Mr Blackburne," says Dr 

 Aikin, " was of an athletic make, and by constant 

 temperance preserved great firmness of mind and 

 body to the very last. His recluse mode of life 

 gave him the appearance of much austerity j but, 

 with the few friends with whom he associated, he 

 was cheerful and unreserved. In mixed conversation 

 he never introduced his own speculative opinions, 

 and experience had made him wary of answering any 

 interrogatories on the subject." The same respec- 

 table author remarks, that his theological opinions 

 did not so far deviate from those of the church of 

 England as to throw him into the class of Socinians 

 or Unitarians. He declared himself in confidence to 

 be a moderate Calvinist ; and such a declaration might 

 indeed have been anticipated from various passages 

 is his writings. Some time before his death, he ex- 

 plicitly asserted to his relation, the Rev. Mr Com- 

 ber, his belief in the divinity of Christ. It has been 

 considered as a testimony of his general esteem for 

 the established church, that he educated one of his 

 sons for the clerical office. 



The works of Blackburne are generally of an ex- 

 cellent tendency, and are always distinguished by 

 their intelligence and vivacity. Few writers have 

 discussed topics of theological controversy with equal 

 decency and animation, and in a manner so entertain- 

 ing to the general reader. See Dr Aikin's General 

 Biography, vol. ii. p. 173. (e) 



BLACKBURNIA, a genus of plants of the 

 class Tetrandria, and order Monogynia. See Bo- 

 tany. (u>) 



BLACKLOCK, the Rev. Thomas, D.D. a poet 

 and a minister of the established church of Scotland. 

 He was born in the year 1721, at Annan, in the 

 county of Dumfries, but was soon afterwards removed 

 to the town of Dumfries, where he spent the greater 

 part of his early years. Before he was six months 

 old he lost his eye-sight in the small-pox. This mis- 

 fortune, which threatened to render him incapable of 

 useful exertion, and leave him a burden to his family, 

 seems to have been really the foundation of his future 

 eminence. Endowed by nature with a lively fancy and 

 a retentive memory, and shut out from that intercourse 

 1 



with the external world which sight would have af- Blacldock. 

 forded him, his active mind was compelled to seek * v ; 

 employment in the exercise of its own powers. In 

 this he was assisted by the indulgent care of his fa. 

 ther, an intelligent tradesman, who fostered the incli- 

 nation he early showed for books, by reading for his 

 amusement whenever the intervals of business would 

 permit, and by directing his taste to the best authors 

 that lay within his reach. Though in his early years 

 his father's limited circumstances did not permit him 

 to enjoy the advantage of being educated at a gram- 

 mar school, yet, by the assistance of his companions, 

 whom the gentleness of his dispositions had warmly 

 attached to him, he acquired some knowledge of the 

 Latin tongue. The information thus obtained, the 

 very circumstance of his blindness gave him an op- 

 portunity to impress more forcibly on his mind, by 

 depriving him of the common means of relaxation. 

 This may in some measure account for the remarka- 

 ble progress which with such slender opportunities he 

 made in his studies. Even at the early age of twelve, 

 his poetical attempts, one of which is preserved in his 

 poems, gave the promise of future excellence ; and 

 from that period he found in the cultivation of the 

 muses, a delightful employment for the powers of his 

 mind, and a protection from that tedium, to whick 

 the situation of the blind, when endued with sensibi- 

 lity, peculiarly subjects them. Before he had reached 

 his twentieth year, he was fortunate enough to acquire 

 a new and advantageous connection, by the marriage 

 of his sister. This young woman, who possessed from 

 nature, together with a very lovely person and at- 

 tractive manners, all the innocent simplicity and gen- 

 tleness of heart which characterised her domestic cir- 

 cle, had received from paternal indulgence an educa- 

 tion superior to her station, and had begun to contri- 

 bute her share to the support of the family expenses 

 by her skill in needle-work, when she became known 

 to Mr M'Murdo, the son of a distinguished clergy- 

 man in that neighbourhood. This gentleman, who 

 had a short time before successfully commenced bu- 

 siness as a brewer in Dumfries, and who joined to 

 the most fascinating manners an enlightened and ac- 

 complished mind, having, on a further acquaintance, 

 discovered that Miss Blacklock's virtues were not infe- 

 rior to her personal charms, made her his wife, and 

 thus opened to young Blacklock an intercourse with 

 a more polished society than he had hitherto been ac- 

 customed to. An event in itself so fortunate, was 

 rendered still more opportune by the shock which he 

 was destined a short time afterwards to receive from 

 the sudden and accidental death of his father. A fire 

 having broken out in Mr M'Murdo's brewery, the 

 good old man fell a victim to the boldness of his ef- 

 forts in saving his son-in-law's property, and perished 

 in the midst of the flames. This melancholy occur- 

 rence Blacklock pathetically laments in a poem writ- 

 ten soon afterwards, which is strongly descriptive of 

 the state of his feelings, and places kis character in a 

 very interesting point of view. It is entitled, A 

 Soliloquy, and was occasioned by the following cir- 

 cumstance : During his father's life, the affectionate 

 attentions of parental love had not suffered him to go 

 out of doors without a guide, and by an amiable but 

 injudicious tenderness had fostered his natural timi- 





