warm friends; while he was never in hazard of creating enemies, because, being incapacitated for any of the more active pursuits of life, his interests did not come into collison with those of any other aspirant in a similar path. He was thus enabled to "live pleasant," as far as his intercourse with the world was concerned. In hls own mind, he did not at all times enjoy the cheerfulness which his excellent temper and his piety might seem to promise; he laboured under a depression of spirits, which grew upon him, as the buoyancy of youth and the energy of manhood declined. When we consider how much more we are liable to superstitious fears and alarms of every kind during the night than in the day, it does not appear surprising, that those condemned to ceaseless darkness should find it impossible to subdue their sense of loneliness and destitution. No variety of visible objects, no beauty of colour or grace of motion, ever diverts the mind of the blind man from brooding over its own phantasmata; the ear may be said to be the only inlet by which he can receive cheering ideas, and hence, when companionless, he becomes liable to the intrusion of doubts and dreads in an endless train. The bodily inactivity to which the want of sight compels him and his exclusion from business, unhappily promote the same morbid sensibility; and though society may afford him many gleams of delight, the long hours of solitude bring back the prevailing gloom. From this disease of the mind, Dr Blacklock's varied stores of acquired knowledge, the native sweetness of his temper, and the tender cares of an affectionate wife, could not preserve him. It might be the cause of uneasiness to himself, however, but never influenced his behaviour to others; it made him melancholy, but not morose. Even they who look upon it as being, in ordinary instances, a fantastic and blameable weakness, must pity the present sufferer, in whom so many causes concurred to render it irresistible.
To Dr Blacklock as a poet, the rank of first-rate excellence has not been assigned, and is not claimed; but his works posses; solid merits, which will always repay a perusal. The thoughts are, for the most part, vigorous, seldom less than just; and they are conveyed with a certain intensity of expression, which shows them, even when not uncommon in themselves, to be the offspring of a superior genius. As the productions of a blind man, they present a study of the very highest interest, and have frequently been viewed as a problem in the science of mind. The author himself seems to have been not unwilling to invest them with a certain character of mystery: "It is possible," he says, "for the blind, by a retentive memory, to tell you, that the sky is an azure; that the sun, moon, and stars, are bright; that the rose is red, the lily white or yellow, and the tulip variegated. By continually hearing these substantives and adjectives joined, he may be mechanically taught to join them in the same manner; but as he never had any sensation of colour, however accurately We may speak of coloured objects, his language must be like that of a parrot, without meaning, or without ideas. Homer, Milton, and Ossian, had been long acquainted with the visible world before they were surrounded with clouds and ever-during darkness. They might, therefore, still retain the warm and pleasing impressions of what they had seen. Their descriptions might be animated with all the rapture and enthusiasm which originally fired their bosoms when the grand or delightful objects which they delineated were immediately beheld. Nay, that enthusiasm might still be heightened by a bitter sense of their loss, and by that regret which a situation so dismal might naturally inspire. But how shall we account for the same energy, the same transport of description, exhibited by those on whose minds visible objects were either never impressed, or have been entirely obliterated? Yet, however unaccountable this fact may appear, it is no less certain than extraordinary. But delicacy, and other particular circumstances, forbid us
