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and that warm interest in the happiness of others which led him so constantly to promote it in the young people who were committed to his charge. In their society he appeared entirely to forget the loss of sight, and the melancholy which, at other times, it might produce. "He entered," says his biographer, " with the cheerful playfulness of a young man, into all the sprightly narrative, the sportive fancy, the humorous jest that rose around him. It was a sight highly gratifying to philanthropy, to see how much a mind endowed with knowledge, kindled by genius, and above all lighted up with innocence and piety, like Blacklock's, could overcome the weight of its own calamity, and enjoy the content, the happiness, and the gaiety of others. Several of those inmates of Dr. Blacklock's house retained, in future life, all the warmth of that impression which his friendship at this early period had made upon them; and in various quarters of the world, he had friends and correspondents from whom no length of time or distance of place had ever estranged him.

“Music, which to the feeling and the pensive, in whatever situation, is a source of extreme delight, but which to the blind must be creative, as it were, of idea and of sentiment, he enjoyed highly, and was himself a tolerable performer on several instruments, particularly on the flute. He generally carried in his pocket a small flageolet 2, on which he played his favourite tunes; and was not displeased when asked in company to play or to sing them; a natural feeling for a blind man, who thus adds a scene to the drama of his society."

With regard to his poetry, there seems no occasion to involve ourselves in the perplexities which Mr. Spence first created, and then injudiciously as well as ineffectually endeavoured to explain. The character of his poetry is that of sentiment and reason: his versification is in general elegant and harmonious, and his thoughts sometimes flow with an ardent rapidity that betokens real genius. But it is impossible to ascribe powers of description to one who had seen nothing to describe; nor of invention to one who had no materials upon which he could operate. Where we find any passages that approach to the description of visible objects, we must surely attribute them to memory. As he had the best English poets frequently read to him, he attained a free command of the language of poetry, both in simple and compound words, and we know that all poets consider these as common property. It is not therefore wonderful that he speaks so often of mountains, vallies, rivers, nor that he appropriates to visible objects their peculiar characteristics, all which he must have heard repeated until they became fixed in his memory: but as no man pursues long what affords little more than the exercise of conjecture, we are still perplexed to discover what pleasure Mr. Blacklock could take, first in a species of reading which could give him no ideas, and then in a species of writing in which he could copy only the expressions of others. There are few of his poems in which some passage does not occur which tempts us to ask, what idea could he affix to this? When he speaks of "insect crowds that 'scape the nicest eye," how could he judge of crowds or insects

2 "His first idea of learning to play on this instrument he used to ascribe to a circumstance rather uncommon, but which, to a mind like his, susceptible at the same time and creative, might naturally enough arise, namely, a Dream, in which he thought he met with a shepherd's boy on the side of a pastoral hill, who brought the most exquisite music from that little instrument." Mackenzie.

that had no eyes?

"Starry skies" he might have borrowed, but what train of thought

led him to say of night,

Clouds peep on clouds, and, as they rise,

Condense to solid gloom the skies.

"Pale fear," " pale terrour," "white robed innocence," "iron sway," "livid phantoms," "rosy bowl," "angel form," and many others, he had often heard, but the following images, if borrowed in parts, are certainly combined with the hand of

master.

As swift descending show'rs of rain,

Deform with mud the clearest streams;

As rising mists Heav'n's azure stain,
Thng'd with Aurora's blush in vain;

As fades the flow'rs in mid-day beams.

On life thus tender sorrrows prey,

And wrap in gloom its promis'd day.—

Thro' tears behold a sister's eyes
Emit a faded ray.”—

Say, could no song of melting woe,
Revoke the keen determin'd blow,

That clos'd his sparkling eye?

Thus roses oft, by early doom,

Robb'd of their blush and sweet perfume,
Grow pale, recline, and die.

What idea our author had of these appearances, and what kind or degree of pleasure they afforded him, it is impossible to discover. He has himself written a very long article on Blindness in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but it affords no light to the present subject, containing chiefly reflections on the disadvantages of blindness, and the best means of alleviating them. His poems, however, especially where attempts are made at description, indicate powers which seem to have wanted the aid of sight only to bring them into the highest rank. We know that poetical genius is almost wholly independent of learning, and seems often planted in a soil where nothing else will flourish, but Blacklock's is altogether an extraordinary case: we have not even terms by which we can intelligibly discuss his merits, and we may conclude with Denina in his Disorso della Literatura, that "Blacklock will appear to posterity a fable, as to us he is a prodigy. It will be thought a fiction, a paradox, that a man blind from his infancy, besides having made himself so much a master of various foreign languages, should be a great poet in his own; and without having hardly ever seen the light, should be so remarkably happy in description."