Hugh Blair - Influence

Influence

Blair wrote in a time when print culture was flourishing and traditional rhetoric was falling out of favour. By focusing on issues of cultivation and upward mobility, Blair overshadowed the prevailing opinions of rhetoric and capitalized on the 18th century belief in the potential to rise above one's station. At this time, new money industrialists and merchants caused the middle class to rise and the English empire to grow. Blair's optimistic view that upward mobility could be affected by an understanding of eloquence and refined literature fit perfectly with the mentality of the time. In particular, the ideas presented in Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres were adapted in many prestigious institutions of learning and served as the guide on composition for many years. Lectures were predominantly popular in the United States, with colleges such as Yale and Harvard implementing Blair's theories.

While Blair enjoyed great success in the better part of the 19th century, this success was not maintained throughout the following century. After the authenticity of the Ossian poems was disproved, A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian caused a decline in Blair's credibility. Sermons was criticized for its sentimentality and lack of doctrinal definiteness and it failed to adapt to changing tastes. Lectures too did not maintain its popularity as theorists such as Whatley and Spencer, drawing on Blair's theories, dominated the domain of composition theory. Though the status of Blair's theories declined in the 19th century, his role as the first great theorist of written discourse cannot be denied. Blair's influence on decades of academics and theorists has ultimately affected the compositional theory of today.

An excellent portrait of Blair's Spanish translator, José Luis Munárriz, painted in 1815 by Goya, hangs in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. Munárriz holds one of Blair's books in his hands.