ON RHETORIC AND BELLES LETTRES. BY HUGH BLAIR, D.D. AND F. R. S. EDIN. ONE OF THE MINISTERS OF THE HIGH CHURCH, AND PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND BELLES LETTRES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. SIXTH AMERICAN, FROM THE LAST EDINBURGH EDITION. NEW-YORK; PUBLISHED BY RICHARD SCOTT, No. 276 PEARL-STREET. 12-22-24 11190 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 publio 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 composition. With the same intention they are now published; and therefore, the form of Lectures, in which they were at first composed, is still retained. The author gives them to the world, neither * Biographia Britannica. Article ADDISON. |