- the Spirit and Evidences of Christianity, with a dedication from his own pen, 1768.
- ‘The Graham, an heroic ballad in four cantos,’ 1774. This poem, intended to promote harmony between Scotch and English, was thought unworthy of a place in his works.
He wrote an article on blindness for the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica, and perhaps one on poetry. A conversation with Johnson is given in the ‘Tour to the Hebrides,’ and a letter of Blacklock’s to Boswell in regard to it is given in an appendix to later editions. He also wrote, in 1756, an ‘Essay towards Universal Etymology,’ in verse; and in 1773 a satire called ‘A Panegyric upon Great Britain.’ An edition of his poems was published in 1793, with a life by Henry Mackenzie, the ‘man of feeling.' He left a translation (never published) of the Abbé Haüy's work on the education of the blind.
[Lives by Spence (1756) and Anderson; Forbes's Life of Beattie; Burton's Life of Hume; Kerr's Memoirs of W. Smellie (1811), ii. 14–30.]
BLACKLOCK, WILLIAM JAMES (1815?–1858), landscape painter, was born at Cumwhitton, near Carlisle, about 1815, and as a youth was apprenticed to a bookseller of Carlisle. He had always been remarkable for his love of drawing, and so strong did this predilection become that he determined to adopt art as a profession, and accordingly proceeded to London, where he at once began to exercise his talent. In the year 1836 he sent his first pictures to the Royal Academy and continued to exhibit there, as well as at the British Institution and Society of British Artists, until 1855, in which year he contributed to the Royal Academy exhibition four pictures: ‘Hermitage Castle,' ‘The Border Keep,’ ‘Elter Water, and the Langdale Pikes,' and ‘Belted Will’s Tower, Naworth Castle.' He resided principally in London for about fifteen years, when declining health compelled him to return to his native county, where he continued to follow his profession until within a year or two of his decease, when the malady with which he was afflicted obliged him to relinquish its pursuit. He died at Dumfries on 12 March 1858, at the age of 42, and was buried at Cumwhitton. His works are principally views of the landscape scenery of the north of England, and their chief characteristics are picturesqueness and truthfulness. Lonely border towers, deeply embosomed in waving foliage, and bathing in the light of a golden sunset; remote and almost inaccessible tarns, surrounded by rough mountains, upon whose sides the shadows of the light clouds danced merrily; brawling brooks with overhanging rocks and waving trees were the scenes which he admired and loved to paint.
[Carlisle Journal, 19 March 1858; Royal Academy Exhibition Catalogues, 1836-56; Art Journal, 1858, p. 157; Athenæum, 1858, p. 439.]
BLACKLOE, THOMAS. [See White, Thomas.]
BLACKMORE, Sir RICHARD (d. 1729), physician and voluminous writer in verse and prose, son of Robert Blackmore, an attorney-at-law, was born at Corsham, in Wiltshire, and educated at Westminster School. He entered St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 1668, took his B.A. degree on 4 April 1674, and proceeded M.A. on 3 June 1676. His necessities compelled him to temporarily adopt the profession of schoolmaster. With this fact his enemies frequently taunted him in later years.
By nature form'd, by want a pedant made,
Blackmore at first set up the whipping trade.
Next quack commenced; then fierce with pride he swore
That toothache, gripes, and corns should be no more;
In vain his drugs as well as birch he tried,
His boys grew blockheads and his patients died.
After abandoning school work Blackmore spent some time abroad, visited France, Germany, and the Low Countries, and took the degree of M.D. at Padua. On his return to England he was admitted fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, under the charter of James II, at the Comitia Majora Extraordinaria of 12 April 1687, became censor of the college in 1716, and was named an elect on 22 Aug. 1716, which office he resigned on 22 Oct. 1722. In 1695 he published ‘Prince Arthur, an Heroick Poem in X books,' fol., which reached a second edition in 1696, and a third in 1714; an enlarged edition, in twelve books, appeared in 1697. The writer tells us that his work was written in such scant moments of leisure as his professional duties afforded, ‘and for the greatest part in coffee-houses, or in passing up and down the streets.’ Shortly after its appearance the poem, if so it must be called, was attacked by John Dennis in a criticism which Dr. Johnson pronounced to be ‘more tedious and disgusting than the work which he condemns.’ Far from resenting the attack, Blackmore took occasion in a later work to praise Dennis as ‘equal to Boileau in poetry, and superior to him in literary abilities.' When Dr. Johnson wrote his ‘Life of Black-
