Robert Blair; Scottish poet; born in Edinburgh, 1699; a relative of Hugh Blair. He was ordained minister of Athelstaneford in 1731. He wrote a poem of undoubted merit, entitled “The Grave,” which was not printed until after his death. Died in Athelstaneford, Feb. 4, 1746.

Personal

  I got away time enough next day to reach Haddington before dinner, having passed by Athelstaneford, where the minister, Mr. Robert Blair, author of “The Grave,” was said to be dying slowly; or, at any rate, was so austere and void of urbanity as to make him quite disagreeable to young people. His wife, who was in every respect the opposite (a sister of Sheriff Law), was frank and open, and uncommonly handsome; yet, even with her allurements and his acknowledged ability, his house was unfrequented.

The Grave

  The eighteenth century has produced few specimens of blank verse of so powerful and simple a character as that of “The Grave.” It is a popular poem, not merely because it is religious, but because its language and imagery are free, natural and picturesque. The latest editor of the poets has, with singularly bad taste, noted some of this author’s most nervous and expressive phrases as vulgarisms, among which he reckons that of friendship “the solder of society.” Blair may be a homely and even a gloomy poet in the eye of fastidious criticism; but there is a masculine and pronounced character even in his gloom and homeliness that keeps it most distinctly apart from either dullness or vulgarity. His style pleases us like the powerful expression of a countenance without regular beauty.

  A brawny contemplative Orson.

  It is a complete and powerful poem, of limited design, but of masterly execution.

  He had found a vein of rich and virgin gold; he had thrown out one mass of ore, and was, as it were, resting on his pickaxe ere recommencing his labour, when he was smitten down by a workman who never rests nor slumbers. Still let us thankfully accept what he had produced; the more as it is so distinctively original, so free from any serious alloy, and so impressively religious in its spirit and tone. This masterpiece of Blair’s genius is not a great poem so much as it is a magnificent portion, fragment, or book of a great poem. The most, alike of its merits and its faults, spring from the fact, that it keeps close to its subject—it daguerreotypes its dreadful theme.

  This poem met with but little attention at first, but the commendation of Hervey, Pinkerton, and others, brought it into general notice. Of late years it seems to be but little read.

  It is remarkable for its masculine vigor of thought and expression, and for the imaginative solemnity with which it invests the most familiar truths; and it has always been one of our most popular religious poems.

  “The Grave” is a complete and powerful poem, of limited design, but masterly execution. The subject precluded much originality of conception, but, at the same time, is recommended by its awful importance and its universal application. The style seems to be formed upon that of the old sacred and puritanical poets, elevated by the author’s admiration of Milton and Shakspeare. There is a Scottish Presbyterian character about the whole, relieved by occasional flashes and outbreaks of true genius.

  Blair’s singular little poem, which has perhaps been more widely read than any other poetical production of a writer who wrote no other poetry, was, it is said, rejected by several London publishers on the ground that it was “too heavy for the times.” As its introducer was Dr. Watts, it is not likely that he suggested it to any but serious members of the trade. “The Grave” thus adds one to the tolerably long list of books respecting the chances of which professional judgment has been hopelessly out. It acquired popularity almost as soon as it was published, and retained it for at least a century; indeed its date is not yet gone by in certain circles. Long after its author’s death it obtained an additional and probably a lasting hold on a new kind of taste by the fact of Blake’s illustrating it. The artist’s designs indeed were, as he expresses it in the beautiful Dedication to Queen Charlotte, rather “visions that his soul has seen” than representations of anything directly contained in Blair’s verse. But that verse itself is by no means to be despised. Technically its only fault is the use and abuse of the redundant syllable. The quality of Blair’s blank verse is in every respect rather moulded upon dramatic than upon purely poetical models, and he shows little trace of imitation either of Milton, or of his contemporary Thomson. Whether his studies—contrary to the wont of Scotch divines at that time—had really been much directed to the drama, I cannot say; but the perusal of his poem certainly suggests such a conclusion, not merely the licence just mentioned, but the generally declamatory and rhetorical tone helping to produce the impression. The matter of the poem is good. General plan it has none, but in so short a composition a general plan is hardly wanted. It abounds with forcible and original ideas expressed in vigorous and unconventional phraseology, nor is it likely nowadays that this phraseology will strike readers, as it struck the delicate critics of the eighteenth century, as being “vulgar.” Vigorous single lines are numerous; and it is at least as much a tribute to the vigour of the poem as to its popularity, that many of its phrases have worked their way into current speech.

  The “Grave” was the first and best of a whole series of mortuary poems. In spite of the epigrams of conflicting partisans, “Night Thoughts” must be considered as contemporaneous with it, and neither preceding nor following it. There can be no doubt, however, that the success of Blair encouraged Young to persevere in his far longer and more laborious undertaking. Blair’s verse is less rhetorical, more exquisite, than Young’s, and, indeed, his relation to that writer, though too striking to be overlooked, is superficial. He forms a connecting link between Otway and Crabbe, who are his nearest poetical kinsmen. His one poem, the “Grave,” contains seven hundred and sixty-seven lines of blank verse. It is very unequal in merit, but supports the examination of modern criticism far better than most productions of the second quarter of the eighteenth century. As philosophical literature it is quite without value; and it adds nothing to theology; it rests solely upon its merit as romantic poetry.

  The choice of such a subject as the grave does not necessarily imply anything morbid in the treatment; but it must be admitted that there is a morbid element in Blair’s poem. He has no reticence about the worm that surfeits on the damask cheek of beauty, about the awful pangs attending the strong man’s dissolution, or about the all-devouring appetite of the “great maneater;” and he has been praised, most injudiciously, for being so out-spoken. Shakespeare has used much the same images; but a comparison of Blair with the parts of “Hamlet” and “Measure for Measure,” which he evidently had in his mind in more passages than one, shows at once what a change the stronger imagination has worked, how much more skillful in the execution, how much deeper the moral, how widely different in consequence the work of the two poets. Yet Blair has learnt not a little, and often has learnt well, from his master; and it is to his honour that he, a Scotch clergyman of a century and a half ago, is found imitating him at all. Often his lines sound simply like distant echoes of Shakespearean lines; but sometimes there is originality combined with a considerable share of Shakespeare’s strength. And this is Blair’s highest praise. At his best he shows a masculine vigour of language and an austere dignity of imagination more than sufficient to atone for the harshness of his verse, marred, nay, almost ruined, as it is by the abuse of the hypermetrical line. That there is virtue in the poem is proved by its richness in quotable and often-quoted lines—a feature which may be taken as one of the tests of good work.

  Robert Blair’s dull poem of “The Grave.”

  Pregnant with suggestions that sieze the imagination, and appeal alike to the intellect and the heart. The brevity of the piece is in its favour; there is not a line that flags.