.BLAC KWELL, TluoasAs, was born in Aber deen in the year 1701, and was the son of the Rev. Thomas Blackwell, one of the ministers, and princi pal of Marischal College in that city. He received his grammatical and university education in his native place, and took the degree of master of arts in the seventeenth year of his age. In the year 1723, he was appointed professor of Greek in the Marischal College, of which he was also made principal in the year 1748 ; and is the only layman who has been ad vanced to that office since the patronage fell to the crown, by the forfeiture of the Marischal family in 1716. He still retained his Greek class, which he continued to teach with great assiduity and success till within a few years of his death ; and in 1752 he received the degree of doctor of laws. In the latter part. of his life he was afflicted with a consumptive disorder, which he is supposed to have greatly ag gravated by his obstinate perseverance in excessive abstemiousness. It was recommended to him to tra vel for the benefit of his health, and, in February 1757, he set out from Aberdeen for that purpose ; but .he was unable to proceed farther than the city of Edinburgh, where he died in March following, in the 56th year of his age. Dr Blackwell's literary pro ductions were, An Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, published in 1735 ; a work of little me thod, but of great ingenuity and learning ;—A Key to the Inquiry, published in 1736, containing a trans lation of the numerous Greek, Latin, Spanish, Ita lian, and French notes in the original work ;—Letters concerning Mythology, published in 1748 ; a very miscellaneous and desultory composition, but full of erudition and fancy, and containing a variety of in teresting details ;—Memoirs of the Court of Augus tus, of which the first volume appeared in 1753, the second in 1755, and the third, which was posthumous •and incomplete, in 1764.; a book which is written with great parade of language and peculiarity of style, but which contains an immense fund of carious information. In all the productions of Dr Black
well, there is a very considerable dash of pedantry and affectation, which gradually increased with his years ; but it is a pedantry of a very peculiar descrip tion, and is an attempt at once to display the erudi tion of a scholar, and to write with the polite case of a gentleman. He was well acquainted with all the ancient, and with most of the modern languages, and had also read very extensively in the departments of history and the belles !cares ; but he was too much inclined to assume the appearance of universal knowledge, and frequently exposed himself by at tempting discussions and mathematics, in which his attainments were very defective. He discharged his duties as a pnblic teacher with great diligence, and merited applause. He commanded the attention of his students by the dignity of his address ; enforced application by a steady exaction of the pre scribed exercises ; excited an ardour of study by his own enthusiasm for the beauties of the ancients ; com municated much accurate classical learning by his per spicuous and engaging manner of teaching ; diffused particularly a keener relish for Grecian erudition ; and may justly be regarded as having principally contri buted to the future eminence of such men as Camp bell, Gerard, Reid, Beattie, Duncan, and the two Fordyces. He possessed an equable flow of spiri&s, an entire command of his passions, a great fund of good humour, and a considerable degree of ease and politeness in his manners. In his private life he was studious and retired, seldom entering into mixed com panies, and choosing the conversation chiefly of men of learning and of superior rank to himself. He was known to several persons of eminence, and numbered among his literary correspondents the celebrated Dr Mead and Dr Wa.burton. See Biog. Briton. (q)