Words as Things: Icons of Progress in Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
[In the following essay, Ulman analyzes Blair's rhetorical theory, paying particular attention to his presentation of language and his view of words as "things," such as "objects of art and icons of aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural progress."]
Whether we consider Poetry in particular, and Discourse in general, as Imitative or Descriptive; it is evident, that their whole power, in recalling the impressions of real objects, is derived from the significancy of words. As their excellency flows altogether from this source, we must, in order to make way for further enquiries, begin at this fountain head.
It appears, that, in all the successive changes which Language has undergone, as the world advanced, the understanding has gained ground on the fancy and imagination. The Progress of Language, in this respect, resembles the progress of age in man. The imagination is most vigorous and predominant in youth; with advancing years, the imagination cools, and the understanding ripens…. Language is become, in modern times, more correct, indeed, and accurate; but, however, less striking and animated: In its antient state, more favourable to poetry and oratory; in its present, to reason and philosophy.
—Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
In contrast to George Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, which grew out of a set of philosophical discourses presented to a private literary society, Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783) originated as a more or less complete set of public lectures first delivered during the winter of 1759-60 under the auspices of the University of Edinburgh and thereafter for nearly a quarter-century to students at the university. According to Blair's preface, this pedagogical setting influences the scope, content, form, and style of the published volume of lectures: "[The lectures] were originally designed for the initiation of Youth into the study of Belles Lettres, and of Composition. With the same intention they are now published; and, therefore, the form of Lectures, in which they were at first composed, is still retained" (iv). He goes on to explain his selection and treatment of materials in light of his "duty as a Public Professor." While he admits that the lectures are not "wholly original," he also maintains that they are not merely "a Compilation from the Writings of others." Rather, he claims to have "thought for himself" about his subject, adopting the views of others and adding his own reflections according to the principle that he should "convey to his Pupils all the knowledge that could improve them; to deliver not merely what was new, but what might be useful, from whatever quarter it came" (iv). Following this approach, Blair does not present a philosophically profound treatment of rhetoric, but he does provide a carefully drawn and richly detailed map of the realms of belles lettres and composition, as he conceived of them, tracing connections among doctrines of taste, language, style, eloquence, and belles lettres as he lays before his students various rules of composition and criticism. Moreover, perhaps in part because he was mindful of the need to motivate his young charges, Blair keeps before his listeners and readers a telos for the study of rhetoric and belles lettres: throughout the lectures, he implicitly and explicitly links the progress of society, language, taste, and the arts to the improvement of individuals.
Language plays a key role in Blair's rhetorical theory and mythos of progress, serving both as the material cause of oratory and written composition and, more importantly, as material evidence of the progress of society. Yet while Campbell links principles of language to principles of thought and logical truth throughout his argument, Blair never provides a rigorous epistemological account of language. Rather, he asserts a link between language and various faculties of mind, then develops that link primarily within his mythos of progress; he explains how language and knowledge have developed in concert but says little of the principles governing their interaction.
This tendency poses an interpretive problem somewhat different from the task of tracing and clarifying the philosophical analysis of language in Campbell's Rhetoric. As Vincent Bevilacqua notes in "Philosophical Assumptions Underlying Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres," Blair does not examine in his lectures many of the assumptions upon which he builds his theory of rhetoric: "unlike Kames and Campbell, Blair did not develop systematically as a distinct and related part of his theory of rhetoric the various philosophical and epistemological assumptions from which he reasoned in the lectures. Rather, Blair left such presuppositions for his audience to provide from their own philosophic frame of reference, assuming that as orthodox eighteenth-century notions about human nature they would be readily understood and accepted" (151). Bevilacqua and others have done much to recover for twentieth-century readers the underlying epistemological assumptions that Blair shared with his eighteenth-century colleagues and readers. But as I noted earlier, relatively little has been done to recover Blair's philosophy of language. That task requires us to ask how Blair "thought for himself" about the resources of eighteenth-century language theory and wove his assumptions about language into a set of lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres. Even though his treatment of language is less thorough and ambitious than Campbell's, and therefore yields a less richly detailed model for articulating philosophies of language and theories of rhetoric, Blair offers a useful complement to Campbell because he draws more often on a different alchemic opportunity for overlapping the generating principles of this study. While Blair subscribes to the Lockean doctrine that words are signs of ideas, and he believes that the chief end of eloquence is to move others to action, the perspective that most consistently informs his treatment of language and rhetoric presents words as things—objects of art that reflect the intellectual and social circumstance of individuals and cultures.
To trace Blair's Lectures back to these generating principles, this chapter first sketches the scenes of his theory building, the public lectern and the lecture halls of the University of Edinburgh. The next section examines how Blair presents language as the material foundation of eloquence, and the final section assesses his view of words as things—more specifically, as objects of art and icons of aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural progress.
Rites of Initiation and Improvement
Blair's lectures provided his public audience and his students not only with the principles and precepts of oratory and composition but also with an argument for the importance of those arts in the improvement of society and, more particularly, in the education of those who wish to speak in, or write for the, public; "to support a proper rank in social life"; and to improve their understanding of human nature (1: 9-10). Accordingly, before considering more specifically the role of language in Blair's lectures, I will outline the place of rhetoric and belles lettres in the curriculum of the University of Edinburgh and note how Blair addresses the aspirations and expectations of his students.
The Institutional Role of Rhetoric at Edinburgh
Blair's lectures are significant not only because of their influence on the teaching of rhetoric but also because of the circumstances under which they were delivered. From 1762 to 1783, Blair served as Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, holding the only chair of rhetoric and belles lettres established in a Scottish university during the eighteenth century.1 In "The Formation of the Regius Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh," Paul Bator presents a detailed account of the social milieu, university curriculae, and intellectual traditions that provided the contexts for Blair's appointment as Regius Professor. Bator and others demonstrate clearly that the Regius Chair was the "logical outcome" of a host of factors, including "attitudes toward scholarly and vernacular language, achievements in the polite arts, and a general spirit of curricular reform" (40).
In 1708, the University of Edinburgh followed several Continental universities in "fixing" the professorial positions at the university to particular fields of study. Previously, regents had taught individual classes throughout their arts curriculum. The professorships at Edinburgh included Greek, moral philosophy, natural philosophy, and logic, but the distinctions among the areas were not sharply delineated. In these circumstances, Bator notes, rhetoric "found itself attached to various disciplines and professorial holds" (51). For instance, subjects treated in Blair's lectures were taught at Edinburgh during the first half of the century by professors of both logic and moral philosophy (Bator 51-56). Also, from 1748 to 1751 Adam Smith delivered to the literati of Edinburgh a set of public lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres, which Blair attended.2 Sometime after Smith was appointed professor of logic at Glasgow in 1751, Robert Watson continued Smith's course until he left Edinburgh in 1756 to occupy the Chair of Logic at St. Andrews (in which capacity he would teach rhetoric and metaphysics).
In addition to teaching rhetoric and belles lettres in their classes, Scottish professors were writing books about the subject. Roger Emerson has determined that of publications by Scottish university professors serving between 1691 and 1800, "The various categories of belles lettres which prior to 1746 accounted for a mere 2% of the titles in the latter period rose to 19%, an impressive demonstration of the success of the efforts to make the universities seats of polite learning" (Emerson, "Scottish Universities" 460). This phenomenal increase in treatises concerning rhetoric and belles lettres during the second half of the century occurred throughout Great Britain and Ireland. The most influential British rhetorical treatises published during the eighteenth century—other than Blair's—that originated as courses of academic lectures include John Lawson's Lectures Concerning Oratory (1758; delivered at Trinity College, Dublin); John Ward's System of Oratory (1759; delivered at Gresham College, London); and Joseph Priestley's Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism (1762; delivered at Warrington Academy).3
Blair's lectures were first delivered publicly during the winter of 1759-60.4 He read the lectures at the university with the approval of the Edinburgh Town Council, but the lectures were not officially part of the university curriculum, nor was Blair a member of the faculty. So successful were the lectures, however, that the following year the council named Blair "Professor of Rhetorick" without salary. As a result, after 1760 his lectures were restricted to university students. During the negotiations leading up to his appointment as Regius Professor in 1762, Blair took steps to ensure that his course was established on what he considered sound academic grounds. He was first offered a salary of £100 on the condition that he not charge students to attend his course. In response, Blair proposed that he be given a salary of £70 and the right to charge fees, arguing that students would commit themselves more fully to a course for which they had paid. Blair's biographer, Robert Schmitz, reports that Blair rejected a proposal in 1767 to open his lecture again to the public, citing the same reasons for which he rejected the initial proposal to offer a free class (63). Both the Town Council and Blair's sponsors for the Regius Professorship believed that his lectures would attract students to the university, as they apparently did—Schmitz reports that Blair's classes enrolled fifty to sixty students each session (63).
Blair's other significant contribution to the definition of his chair was the suggestion that "Belles Lettres" be added to the title. Bator demonstrates that Blair had "a host" of models for combining rhetoric and belles lettres, including the work of previous professors at Edinburgh and various French treatises on eloquence (63-64n95). However, Bator cautions against seeing Blair's Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres as "a signal institution for either the discipline of rhetoric or the nascent discipline of English literature and literary criticism," for it was not part of any comprehensive plan to integrate rhetoric and belles lettres into the curriculum—indeed, Blair's course was not required for a degree at Edinburgh (58). Rather, Bator views Blair's course as "one of the results of an ambitious reform of the curriculum that took place in all the Scottish universities during the mid-eighteenth century" and "as a fitting feather for the cap of the Edinburgh literati, who strove to promote polite literature in town and university" (58). It was, in other words, part of larger movement of cultural and personal improvement in which language and discourse were understood to play a central role.
The Aspirations and Expectations of Blair's Student Audience
Though a broader and more mature segment of Edinburgh's polite society served as the audience for Blair's original public lectures, university students were the exclusive audience for the lectures during Blair's active years on the faculty at Edinburgh. Moreover, as we have seen, Blair takes particular notice of his student audience in the volume of lectures eventually published in 1783. Who were those students, and, perhaps more to the point, how did Blair conceive of them?
In A Short History of the University of Edinburgh, 1556-1889, D. B. Horn cites studies demonstrating that Edinburgh University graduated 343 of the 2,500 university-educated men born between 1685 and 1785 who are listed in the Dictionary of National Biography—more than all other Scottish universities combined (63-64). "Most of them," Horn notes, "are clergymen, teachers, physicians, or lawyers; some are statesmen, inventors, reformers, and authors" (64). During roughly the same period, Edinburgh produced more of the scientists listed in the DNB than Oxford and nearly as many as Cambridge (64). These numbers support the generalization that Edinburgh was training Scotland's future leaders.
How did Blair articulate the role that he envisioned for rhetoric and belles lettres in the education of such men? Having in his preface to the published lectures identified his intended audience as those who "are studying to cultivate their Taste, to form their Style, or to prepare themselves for Public Speaking or Composition" (iv), Blair treats in his first lecture several "general topics" that place these communicative practices in the contexts of culture, education, and human nature.
Blair argues that human reason, though a faculty of mind, is intimately linked to language and discourse: "What we call human reason, is not the effort or ability of one, so much as it is the result of the reason of many, arising from lights mutually communicated, in consequence of discourse and writing" (1: 1). Accordingly, he maintains, curiosity about the means of improving discourse is a universal feature of human culture and is developed most fully in the most civilized countries. Bringing his point closer to home, Blair asserts "that in all the polished nations of Europe, this study has been treated as highly important, and has possessed a considerable place in every plan of liberal education" (1: 2). From the outset, then, Blair appears to link his subject to a cultural hierarchy. Yet neither he nor his audience was necessarily smug about that hierarchy. Throughout the eighteenth century—Scotland's "age of improvement"—Scottish literati worried about bringing letters in Scotland up to the standard of England and France.
There were of course many venues for such improvement, including private study, literary magazines, and the scores of literary, philosophical, and student debating societies established in Scotland during the century, but Blair takes pains to describe for his particular audience the role of rhetoric and belles lettres in "academical education." He acknowledges the disdain of "men of understanding" for the "artificial and schol'astic rhetoric" taught in the past but promises to establish "good sense as the foundation of all good composition" (1: 3). He does so in the first instance by turning the commonplace separation of thought and language—a traditional reason to distrust rhetoric—to his advantage, employing one of his favorite evaluative metaphors: "Knowledge and science must furnish the materials that form the body and substance of any valuable composition. Rhetoric serves to add the polish, and we know that none but firm and solid bodies can be polished well" (1: 4). Though it might be tempting to emphasize that such metaphors establish a close relationship between rhetoric and reason, they nevertheless distinguish substance from polish (or the body from the dress of discourse) and, I believe, more accurately reflect the role that Blair envisions for rhetoric in education. In his lectures, Blair never systematically examines the principles or methods by which we come to know the substance of things, assigning that task to philosophers rather than rhetoricians.
Further, Blair discusses the pedagogical role of rhetorical training from two perspectives more specifically related to the aspirations of his audience. Those preparing to "communicate their sentiments to the Public" must study rhetoric and belles lettres in order to "do justice" to their thoughts, cultivate their reason, and adapt to "the taste and manners of the present age" (1: 5-7). Those with no aspirations as speakers or writers will nevertheless benefit from such study by becoming conversant with the concerns of polite society and improving their understanding of human nature, in particular "the operations of the imagination, and the movements of the heart" (1: 8-10). Speaking generally of the "happy effects" of the "cultivation of taste," Blair prefigures his students' future circumstances, whether they will engage in "serious professions" or be favored with "the most gay and flourishing situations of fortune." In either case, there will be "unemployed intervals" in which "the entertainments of taste, and the study of polite literature" will provide a means of improvement and a guard against dissipation: "He who is so happy as to have acquired a relish for these, has always at hand an innocent and irreproachable amusement for his leisure hours, to save him from the danger of many a pernicious passion…. He is not obliged to fly to low company, or to court the riot of loose pleasures, in order to cure the tediousness of existence" (1: 11). Blair complements the overt and simplistic moralizing in this passage by tying his argument to commonplace assumptions about human faculties, arguing that the pleasures of taste occupy "a middle station between the pleasures of sense, and those of pure intellect" (1: 12). Of course this analysis still reflects a hierarchical ordering of the faculties, from the "low" senses through taste and imagination to the "high" region of the understanding: "We were not designed to grovel always among objects so low as the former; nor are we capable of dwelling constantly in so high a region as the latter. The pleasures of taste refresh the mind after the toils of the intellect, and the labours of abstract study; and they gradually raise it above the attachments of sense, and prepare it for the enjoyments of virtue" (1: 12).
Thus, Blair overlays his hierarchical analysis of the faculties with parallel analyses of communicative practices and the "duties" and "pursuits" of life. Near the end of his introductory lecture, he aligns these analyses in an apologia for the role of rhetoric and belles lettres in the education of his students:
So consonant is this to experience, that in the education of youth, no object has in every age appeared more important to wise men, than to tincture them early with a relish for the entertainments of taste. The transition is commonly made with ease from these to the discharge of the higher and more important duties of life. Good hopes may be entertained of those whose minds have this liberal and elegant turn. Many virtues may be grafted upon it. Whereas to be entirely devoid of relish for eloquence, poetry, or any of the fine arts, is justly constructed to be an unpromising symptom of youth; and raises suspicions of their being prone to low gratifications, or destined to drudge in the more vulgar and illiberal pursuits of life. (1: 12)
Apologias for the study of composition and literature are familiar features of our own textbooks, and in any given period such arguments can help us understand the ways in which "higher" levels of literacy were viewed and valued. To the historical record of their middle-class status and considerable achievements, Blair's treatment of his students' aspirations and expectations adds rich detail about the intellectual and moral dimensions of their training in rhetoric and belles lettres.
The Foundation of Eloquence
After the initial lecture discussed above, Blair devotes four lectures to the general topic of taste, a faculty whose development and operation he later links intimately to language. Though he later describes these lectures as "introductory to the principle subject" of his lectures (1: 97), he explains their importance by noting that taste is the "faculty which is always appealed to in disquisitions concerning the merit of discourse and writing" (1: 15). Blair's definition of taste—"The power of receiving pleasure from the beáuties of nature and of art" (1: 16)—leads him to two assertions concerning human nature and taste that will determine much of his approach to language and style, the foundations of his rhetorical theory. First, he distinguishes between taste and reason while relating their operations: "Though taste, beyond doubt, be ultimately founded on a certain natural and instinctive sensibility to beauty, yet reason … assists Taste in many of its operations, and serves to enlarge its power" (1: 16-17).5 Though Blair acknowledges that reason "assists" taste, his readers should not forget that from the outset he aligns "disquisitions concerning the merit of discourse and writing" fundamentally with sensibility. Second, he analyzes the differences or inequalities among people with regard to taste. He argues first that "in the powers and pleasures of Taste, there is a more remarkable inequality among men than is usually found in point of common sense, reason, and judgment" (1: 18). He offers no grounds for this analysis beyond the assertion that in "the distribution of those talents which are necessary for man's well-being" a benevolent "Nature hath made less distinction among her children" (1: 18). Even greater sources of "this inequality of Taste among men," he claims, are education and culture. However, he welcomes this characteristic of taste, for it means that "Taste is a most improveable faculty," a fact "which gives great encouragement to such a course of study as we are now proposing to pursue" (1: 19).
As further support for this key assertion, Blair offers a parallel, hierarchical analysis of the differences among cultures and the differences among individuals within any given society:
Of the truth of this assertion we may easily be convinced, by only reflecting on that immense superiority which education and improvement give to civilized, above barbarous nations, in refinement of Taste; and on the superiority which they give in the same nation to those who have studied the liberal arts, above the rude and untaught vulgar. The difference is so great, that there is perhaps no one particular in which these two classes of men are so far removed from each other, as in respect of the powers and the pleasures of Taste: and assuredly for this difference no other general cause can be assigned, but culture and education. (1: 19)
One can detect in this argument two rather shaky assumptions that underlie Blair's mythos of progress. First, Blair does not consider the possibility that he might just as well reverse his causal argument and assert that "civilized" societies give a liberal education to those whose class or family have already been deemed superior. (To be fair to Blair's context, however, I should note that eighteenth-century Scotland made greater provisions for general education than its European neighbors.) More importantly, we should recognize that in Blair's system there is no test of taste independent of the culture and education that fosters it. Blair's argument doubles back on itself by conflating specific cultural forms with supposedly universal or "natural" mental faculties.
Other aspects of Blair's argument participate in the larger debate over the effects of nature and art in human affairs. Identifying the two sources of improvement in taste as frequent exercise of the faculty and "the application of good sense and reason to the objects of Taste," Blair claims that "in its perfect state, [Taste] is undoubtedly the result both of nature and of art" (1: 23). Accordingly, he defines the two "characters" of taste in relation to nature and art. "Delicacy of Taste," he asserts, "respects principally the perfection of that natural sensibility on which Taste is founded" (1: 23). "Correctness of Taste," by contrast, "respects chiefly the improvement which that faculty receives through its connexion with the understanding" (1: 24). In sum, he writes, "The former is more the gift of nature; the latter, more the product of culture and art" (1: 25). Though eighteenth-century authors typically consider the understanding a natural faculty, they also consider it a foundation of art. Thus, Blair argues that natural sensibility is to the understanding as Taste is to reason and nature is to culture or art.
After establishing the nature and characters of taste, Blair turns to the problem of determining a standard for taste. Acknowledging that the variation in taste among individuals and nations has led some to reject any standard beyond "whatever pleases," Blair attempts to counter with an argument ad absurdum: "For is there any one who will seriously maintain that the Taste of a Hottentot or a Laplander is as delicate and as correct as that of a Longinus or an Addison? or, that he can be charged with no defect or incapacity who thinks a common news-writer as excellent an Historian as Tacitus?" (1: 27). However, this ploy smacks of gratuitous ethnocentrism and class bias. Whom, after all, do we suppose Blair is asking to compare the journalism of early English newspapers to Latin historiography and the taste of Hottentots and Laplanders to Roman and British authors? Surely he is addressing people whose "culture and education" has naturalized them to a particular standard of taste.
Granting that taste "admits of latitude and diversity of objects," Blair nevertheless defines a standard of taste intended to resolve disagreement over the merits of any given object of taste: "His Taste must be esteemed just and true, which coincides with the general sentiments of men" (1: 30). Implicitly, this attempt to appeal to the Taste not of individual humans or groups but of "human nature" detracts from the importance of particular cultures or classes, and Blair almost immediately qualifies his definition. First, he rejects the notion that a quantitative assessment of the "approbation of the majority" can settle matters of taste, maintaining that arguments concerning taste must employ "reason and sound judgment" and appeal to principle. Second, he specifies that "the concurring sentiments of men" refers not to "rude and uncivilized nations" but to "the sentiments of mankind in polished and flourishing nations" (1: 32). Even in such nations, he acknowledges, "accidental causes may occasionally warp the proper operations of Taste," in which cases we must trust to the test of time (1: 33).
Having proposed a standard of taste, Blair proceeds to define criticism, which strives "to distinguish what is beautiful and what is faulty," and genius, or "the power of executing" (1: 36, 41). With these basic terms in hand—taste, criticism, and genius—he next presents a long survey of the sources of the pleasures of taste. Most of the lectures devoted to this subject concern the sources of sublimity and beauty. Under the former head, he first discusses the sublimity of objects and sentiments, then turns to the sublime in writing. Here we encounter an important, if implicit, assumption about language.
Blair tells us that he deals with the subject of sublimity in writing under the general heading of taste rather than in later lectures on eloquence and composition because "the Sublime is a species of Writing which depends less than any other on the artificial embellishments of rhetoric" (1: 57). Indeed, his discussion of the sublime in composition downplays attention to the textual features of sublime discourse, emphasizing instead the concise and simple presentation of sublime objects.6
In his discussion of beauty, Blair follows a similar pattern. He first treats the beauty of objects (color, figure, motion), of qualities of mind (high and great virtues, social virtues), and of fitness and design. This last species of beauty he identifies as particularly important in composition, but when he turns explicitly to "Beauty as it is applied to writing and discourse," he says little more than he said in regard to the sublime in writing: beauty in writing is associated with the same emotions aroused by beautiful objects and sentiments.
Everything that Blair has said so far in his lectures on taste, except for the two sections devoted specifically to sublimity and beauty in writing, could apply to any object of taste. It is for this reason that he considers these lectures as "introductory to the principal subject" of the course—"poetry, eloquence, and fine writing." Turning to his "chief subject" near the end of lecture 5, Blair asserts that writing and discourse "have power to exhibit, in great perfection, not a single set of objects only, but almost the whole of those which give Pleasure to Taste and Imagination" (1: 93). And of all the productive arts that present to us objects of taste, eloquence and composition are the most "full and extensive":
Now this high power which eloquence and poetry possess, of supplying Taste and Imagination with such a wide circle of pleasures, they derive altogether from their having a greater capacity of Imitation and Description than is possessed by any other art. Of all the means which human ingenuity has contrived for recalling the images of real objects, and awakening, by representation, similar emotions to those which are raised by the original, none is so full and extensive as that which is executed by words and writing. Through the assistance of this happy invention, there is nothing, either in the natural or moral world, but what can be represented and set before the mind, in colours very strong and lively. (1: 93)
In this key passage, Blair clearly reveals his representationalist view of language and his conviction that language is the most powerful semiotic system available to humans. Taste, in this view, is doubly related to language: first, the refinement of taste requires reason and, therefore, language; second, language is the richest source of art and, therefore, of the objects of taste.
Before turning his full attention to language, however, Blair relates discourse to other arts in terms of two semiotic principles: imitation and description. Imitation, he asserts, "is performed by means of somewhat that has a natural likeness and resemblance to the thing imitated, and of consequence is understood by all; such are statues and pictures" (1: 94). Description, by contrast, "is the raising in the mind the conception of an object by means of some arbitrary or instituted symbols, understood only by those who agree in the institution of them; such are words and writing" (1: 94). Though he suggests that writing may imitate actual speech and, in a special sense, "the course of nature," he views discourse as an art built upon a primarily descriptive symbolic system (1: 95n). Yet more important to him than the particular principle by which language signifies objects and sentiments are the medium of language itself and the ends toward which it can be employed: "Whether we consider Poetry in particular, and Discourse in general, as Imitative or Descriptive; it is evident, that their whole power, in recalling the impressions of real objects, is derived from the significancy of words. As their excellency flows altogether from this source, we must, in order to make way for further enquiries, begin at this fountain head" (1: 96). At this point in his argument, Blair leaves his introductory material behind and turns in lecture 6 to language, shifting his metaphor for language from the fountainhead of meaning to "the foundation of the whole power of eloquence" (1: 97).
Blair's fairly conventional definition of language follows the operational principle introduced at the end of lecture 5—description by means of arbitrary symbols—but adds to that formulation explicit mention of the concept of ideas:
Language, in general, signifies the expression of our ideas by certain articulate sounds, which are used as the signs of those ideas…. How far there is any natural connexion between the ideas of the mind and the sounds emitted, will appear from what I am afterwards to offer. But as the natural connexion can, upon any system, affect only a small part of the fabric of Language; the connexion between words and ideas may, in general, be considered as arbitrary and conventional, owing to the agreement of men among themselves; the clear proof of which is, that different nations have different Languages, or a different set of articulate sounds, which they have chosen for communicating their ideas.7 (1: 98)
This definition applies only to the present state of language, however, and Blair's larger project requires that he turn first to consider the rise and progress of language before analyzing further the current structure of language. While such speculative history may have little immediate application to the formal rules of style, it does establish the relationship of linguistic style to cultural history, thus contributing a significant hortatory element to Blair's argument.
Blair sidesteps the question of whether language was a divine gift or human invention by observing that whatever its origin, language must have existed first in an imperfect state suited to the "circumstances of mankind" at the time, leaving it up to mankind "to enlarge and improve it as their future necessities should require" (1: 100-101). This is the history that interests Blair, a history that he promises will be "curious" in its own right and "useful in our future disquisitions" (1: 101).
He provides separate histories of speech and writing, following a pattern that informs much of the course. In his account of speech, he first considers the transformation of words from imitations to arbitrary symbols. Assuming that language originated in the "cries of passion" that "nature teaches all men," Blair asserts that exclamations or interjections must have constituted the "first elements" of speech. When such limited natural signs proved inadequate for changing social circumstances, humans developed names for objects assigned at first by imitation or natural relations of sound, noise, or motion. Later, through analogy, words associated with natural objects were applied to moral ideas, for example, "stability" or "fluidity." Thus, Blair's history challenges the theory that language was "altogether arbitrary in its origin" (1: 101-4). As language progressed, however, words, "by a thousand fanciful and irregular methods of derivation and composition," lost their relationship to their "natural" origins (1: 105). Consequently, according to Blair, "Words, as we now employ them … may be considered as symbols, not as imitations; as arbitrary, or instituted, not natural signs of ideas" (1: 106).
Turning to changes in the "style and character of Speech," Blair speculatively examines three characteristics of early speech. First, in line with his earlier argument, he claims that primitive language was more picturesque or imitative. Second, he reasons that early speech must have been accompanied by more gestures and more and greater inflections of voice, both strategies for overcoming the limitations of language in its formative stages. To this characteristic he traces the origin of several features of more polished language: of ornament to the "fire and vivacity in the genius of nations" (1: 105) who retained these embellishments after they were no longer necessary; of prosody to exaggerated tones; and of theatrical delivery to exaggerated gestures. Third, he argues that early speech must have been more figurative in order to compensate for the barrenness of a limited lexicon and to accommodate the dominion of imagination and passion over reason in earlier stages of society.
A similar argument informs Blair's survey of shifts in "the order and arrangement of words." Here he argues that ancient languages were characterized by inversion—subjects in the initial position—and other variations in word order that emphasized objects and their effects on the imagination. Animation was the most important principle of arrangement. In modern languages, he maintains, this "order of the imagination" has given way to the "Order of Understanding" or "the order of nature and of time" (1: 120). The new principle of arrangement is "clearness in communication" (1: 121). Blair identifies "differences in termination" (i.e., inflection) as the key to this structural shift. The earlier order, he maintains, favored poetry and oratory, while our present arrangement favors reason and philosophy. Oddly enough, he ignores the obvious objection that Western philosophy emerged in ancient Greece.
In sum, Blair's history of speech identifies three causes of change in language: the material and social "circumstances of mankind," the "genius" of particular nations, and the relative importance of imagination and understanding in human society.
Turning briefly to the history of writing, Blair again couches analysis in the context of a narrative of progress. He traces the nature and development of two sorts of written characters, signs for things and signs for words. The former, associated with rude societies and ancient languages, Blair assigns to three principles of signification: pictures signify by representation, hieroglyphics by analogy, and nonalphabetic symbols by institution or convention.8 By contrast, signs for (spoken) words, which he associates with civilization and more modern languages, consist of wholly arbitrary alphabetic symbols.
Comparing speech and writing as he closes his account of the rise and progress of language, Blair observes that both speaking and writing reveal parallel shifts from natural to artificial forms, though speaking retains the more natural signs of "tones of voice … looks and gesture" (1: 136). These features of spoken language, he argues, "remove ambiguities … enforce impressions; [and] operate on us by means of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful instruments of persuasion" (1: 136). Thus, he concludes, while writing is best suited to instruction, speaking is requisite for "all the great and high efforts of eloquence."
While shifting emphasis from the development to the structure of language, Blair's two lectures on general grammar and on English grammar are still organized according to his mythos of progress. He analyzes the parts of speech, which he takes to be the same in all languages, in order of their supposed appearance: substantive nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions and conjunctions (1: 138ff). Blair acknowledges that the traditional division of the parts of speech "is not very logical," but he adopts the convention for convenience, "as these are the terms to which our ears have been most familiarized, and, as an exact logical division is of no great consequence to our present purpose" (1: 139). He does not clarify his purpose in this passage, but he devotes more time to description and prescription in his treatment of grammar than to logical analysis. Indeed, after asserting that "there are few sciences, in which a deeper, or more refined logic, is employed, than in Grammar," Blair begs off any detailed grammatical inquiry: "I do not propose to give any system, either of Grammar in general, or of English Grammar in particular. A minute discussion of the niceties of Language would carry us too much off from other objects, which demand our attention in this course of Lectures" (1: 137-38). Accordingly, Blair offers no discussion of such key theoretical problems as the relationships between usage and grammar, grammar and verbal criticism, and grammar and rhetoric. Given the superficiality of his treatment of "general grammar," his apologia at the end of this section falls a bit flat:
[D]ry and intricate as [grammar] may seem to some, it is, however, of great importance, and very nearly connected with the philosophy of the human mind. For, if Speech be the vehicle, or interpreter of the conceptions of our minds, an examination of its Structure and Progress cannot but unfold many things concerning the nature and progress of our conceptions themselves, and the operations of our faculties; a subject that is always instructive to man. (1: 168)
For Blair's students and readers, this observation remains little more than a recommendation for further study.
Turning to the structure of English, Blair provides a brief historical account of English and discusses the compound nature of the language (i.e., its mixture of Saxon, Danish, Norman, and Latin influence), the national characteristics of the English-speaking people ("gravity and thoughtfulness"), and the flexibility of English (in terms of its lexicon, possibilities of arrangement, and variety and quality of sound). This section establishes two important principles linking the formal study of language to the arts of speaking and writing. The first relates to avoiding error. Blair argues that the more elaborately inflected classical languages required attention that constituted them as "objects of art":
[Language] was reduced into form; a standard was established; and any departures from the standard became conspicuous. Whereas, among us, Language is hardly considered as an object of grammatical rule. We take it for granted, that a competent skill in it may be acquired without any study; and that, in a syntax so narrow and confined as ours, there is nothing which demands attention. Hence arises the habit of writing in a loose and inaccurate manner.9 (1: 179)
On a more positive note, Blair draws his students' attention to "The flexibility of a Language, or its power of accommodation to different styles and manners, so as to be either grave and strong, or easy and flowing, or tender and gentle, or pompous and magnificent, as occasions require, or as an author's genius prompts," noting that such flexibility is "a quality of great importance in speaking and writing" (1: 175). In terms of the practical benefits of the study of language to the student of rhetoric and belles lettres, Blair's comments are thoroughly conventional. He stresses avoiding error and making effective choices among the options allowed by the language.
Blair turns next to style, and, while he does not forge a theoretical link between language and style as explicitly as did his fellow rhetorician George Campbell, he does not leave his theories of language completely behind. Without explicitly alerting the reader to the fact, however, he shifts the substantive and pedagogical emphases of the lectures. In the middle of the final paragraph of his lecture on the structure of English, Blair still invokes the mixed audience of writers and speakers characteristic of the lectures on language: "Whatever knowledge may be acquired by the study of other Languages, it can never be communicated with advantage, unless by such as can write and speak their own Language well" (1: 181).10 By the end of the paragraph, he is referring primarily to writers: "The many errors … which are committed by writers who are far from being contemptible, demonstrate, that a careful study of the Language is previously requisite, in all who aim at writing it properly" (1: 182). In the lectures on style, Blair refers almost invariably to "authors" and "writers," and of course his examples are all of written discourse. This shift from spoken to written language may explain in part why Blair's lectures on language appear less fully integrated into his lectures than, say, Campbell's treatment of similar issues.
In moving from the consideration of language to style, Blair also shifts the emphasis of his lectures from description, narration, and critical commentary to prescription. The first sentence of the first lecture on style quietly effects the transition: "Having finished the subject of Language, I now enter on the consideration of Style, and the rules that relate to it" (1: 183; emphasis added). Throughout the lectures on style, specific rules accompany discussions of particular aspects of style. With this shift to a more didactic delivery, Blair moves from the "foundation" of his subject to its superstructure.
That transition is further marked by his definition of style:
[Style refers to] the peculiar manner in which a man expresses his conceptions, by means of Language. It is different from mere Language or words. The words, which an author employs, may be proper and faultless; and his Style may, nevertheless, have great faults…. Style has always some reference to an author's manner of thinking. It is a picture of the ideas which rise in his mind, and of the manner in which they rise there…. Style is nothing else, than that sort of expression which our thoughts most readily assume (1: 183-84).
Blair's distinction between language and style, however, is blurred. According to his doctrine, language, too, reflects the mind. The more important distinction developed at least implicitly in the lectures is that the rules of language and the rules of style are not coterminous. Moreover, style distinguishes patterns of individual choice from the resources supplied by language.
Blair divides his treatment of style according to two chief qualities: perspicuity and ornament. He considers perspicuity in terms of the choice of words and phrases and the construction of sentences, both areas of style that overlap with traditional grammar. In his discussion of perspicuity in words and phrases, Blair identifies three subordinate qualities—purity, propriety, and precision—that build directly on the foundation supplied by language. Purity he defines as "the use of such words, and such constructions, as belong to the idiom of the Language which we speak; in opposition to words and phrases that are imported from other Languages, or that are obsolete, or new coined, or used without proper authority" (1: 187). Similarly, propriety refers to "the selection of such words in the Language, as the best and most established usage has appropriated to those ideas which we intend to express by them. It implies the correct and happy application of them, according to that usage, in opposition to vulgarisms, or low expressions; and to words and phrases, which would be less significant of the ideas that we mean to convey" (1: 187). As Blair is quick to note, both of these qualities raise the question of standards: "There is no standard, either of Purity or of Propriety, but the practice of the best writers and speakers in the country" (1: 187). Of course this criterion is not particularly helpful, for it leaves open the question of who constitutes the "best" speakers and writers? Blair reveals his biases in his choice of examples, but he never warrants his choices further. Moreover, he neglects in this instance to raise the complicated issues related to such standards, issues that he addressed in greater detail in his discussion of taste.
The final quality related to perspicuity—precision—constitutes "the highest part of the quality denoted by Perspicuity" (1: 188) and "imports retrenching all superfluities, and pruning the expression so, as to exhibit neither more nor less than an exact copy of his idea who uses it" (1: 189). Again, Blair develops his subject by precept rather than principle. He does not consider the problems with the notion of communicating an "exact copy" of ideas through words, problems to which Campbell devotes much thought.
At this point in his lectures, Blair has begun to move beyond stylistic choices dictated by grammatical and semantic convention. He moves further beyond "mere Language or words" when he turns to perspicuity in sentences, setting forth rules governing the length and variety of sentences in extended discourses as well as various other "qualities that are required to make a Sentence perfect" (1: 208): clearness and precision, unity, strength, and harmony of sound. Discussions of sentence variety, unity of scene and topic, emphasis within sentences, and rhythm appeal more to aesthetics, text conventions, and reading habits than to any strictly grammatical concerns.
Neither is any explicit connection with his earlier treatment of language apparent in Blair's definition of ornament or figurative language: "some departure from simplicity of expression" in order to "render the impression more strong and vivid" (1: 273). However, in the course of discussing the origin and nature of figurative language he argues again that figurative expression is natural and characteristic of early speech (1: 274). Also, he associates figurative language with the imagination and the passions and notes that figures render language more copious, thus linking ornament in these ways to his earlier account of the history of language and society (1: 275).
When Blair turns next to consider general characters of style—diffuse, concise, feeble, nervous, dry, plain, neat, elegant, and flowery—he no longer considers linguistic conventions as constraints but focuses on patterns of linguistic choices that reveal or embody individual genius: "Of such general Characters of Style, therefore, it remains now to speak, as the result of those underparts of which I have hitherto treated…. Wherever there is real and native genius, it gives a determination to one kind of Style rather than another. Where nothing of this appears … we are apt to infer … that he is a vulgar and trivial author, who writes from imitation, and not from the impulse of original genius" (1: 368-69). This transition marks a pivotal point in Blair's lectures, for it indicates that the "foundation" or "underparts" provided by his discussion of language is complete. Up to this point, his argument has focused on natural faculties and artificial conventions that make it possible for language to be intelligible, vivid, and moving—that is, that link language to the understanding, imagination, and passions. From this point forward, Blair builds upon this foundation by analyzing general characters of style and types of discourse according to new criteria: individual genius and the occasions and subjects of eloquence and composition. However, the foundation provided by his lectures on language determines the shape of the superstructure built upon it.
Several implicit connections link the lectures on language with Blair's treatments of eloquence and composition—that is, his inquiry proceeds in similar ways even when he makes no explicit reference to the lectures on language. At the most general level, Blair's separate treatment of public speaking (lectures 25-34) and composition (lectures 35-47) mirrors his separate consideration of the rise and progress of speech and writing. Near the end of his lectures on eloquence, lamenting the "very few recorded examples of eloquent Public Speaking" and urging caution when imitating the style of a favorite author for the purpose of public speaking, Blair draws attention to the differences between written and spoken language:
We must attend to a very material distinction, between written and spoken Language. These are, in truth, two different manners of communicating ideas…. In books, we look for correctness, precision, all redundancies pruned, all repetitions avoided, Language completely polished. Speaking admits a more easy copious Style, and less fettered by rule; repetitions may often be necessary, parentheses may sometimes be graceful; the same thought must often be placed in different views; as the hearers can catch it only from the mouth of the Speaker, and have not the advantage, as in reading a book, of turning back again, and of dwelling on what they do not fully comprehend. (2: 237-38)
This passage also articulates the principle behind Blair's shift to written discourse and his presentation of prescriptive rules in his lectures on style.
Other implicit connections to the lectures on language inform more local emphases in the later lectures. Early in his lectures on eloquence, Blair maintains that eloquence is natural to mankind (2: 4); that degrees or kinds of eloquence—aimed at pleasing, instructing, and moving—are linked to the faculties of imagination, understanding, and passion (2: 4-6); and that the most effective kind of eloquence is linked in part to the conditions of society as well as to particular ends and occasions (2: 8-9). Further, the lectures on eloquence and composition each open with comparisons between the ancients and moderns (2: 44ff.; 2: 246ff.). Finally, Blair draws a comparison between social history and personal history analogous to the comparison he drew between the history of language and the growth of individuals: "To return to our comparison of the age of the world with that of a man; it may be said … that if the advancing age of the world bring along with it more science and more refinement, there belong, however, to its earlier periods, more vigour, more fire, more enthusiasm of genius (2: 254). In sum, a host of themes first raised in the lectures on taste and language continues to inform the lectures: the relationships between nature and art, mind and language, speech and writing, society and individuals, the ancients and the moderns, the conditions of society and the standards of taste, language, style, and discourse.
Throughout the lectures on eloquence and composition, Blair also makes several explicit references to his lectures on language, but these tend not to be systematic, that is, they do not determine the direction of his inquiry. For instance, in his review of the history of eloquence, Blair argues that the early state of language favored poetry over reasoning and debate:
There is reason to believe, as I formerly showed, that the Language of the first ages was passionate and metaphorical; owing partly to the scanty stock of words, of which Speech then consisted; and partly to the tincture which Language naturally takes from the savage and uncultivated state of men, agitated by unrestrained passions, and struck by events, which to them are strange and surprising. In this state, rapture and enthusiasm, the parents of Poetry, had an ample field. But while the intercourse of men was as yet unfrequent, and force and strength were the chief means employed in deciding controversies, the arts of Oratory and Persuasion, of Reasoning and Debate, could be but little known. (2: 10)
Explicit references to the language of nature also appear frequently in a lecture on pronunciation (lecture 33), linking intelligibility to qualities of loudness, distinctness, slowness, and propriety of pronunciation, or establishing a natural foundation for the artistic uses of emphasis, pauses, tones, and gestures. However, these and other explicit references to the lectures on language do not extend Blair's theory of language or the themes outlined above.
This overview of Blair's lectures on language and their place in the larger course of lectures illuminates two ways in which Blair presents language as the "foundation" for the study of eloquence and composition: first, as a resource for and constraint on the chief end of eloquence, "to speak to the purpose" (2: 2); second, as a source of knowledge about two of the most important focuses of inquiry in the Scottish Enlightenment, the mind and society. In order to compare Blair's articulation of language and rhetoric with others' attempts, however, we must now look more closely at two global aspects of his theory of language: the status he assigns to language in terms of the matrix of generating principles adopted at the beginning of this study and the mythos of progress that informs his analyses of taste, language, style, eloquence, and composition.
Words as Things: Language as an Object of Art and an Icon of Progress
Along with most of his contemporaries, Blair defines language in terms of a relationship between signs and thoughts: "Language … signifies the expression of our ideas by certain articulate sounds, which are used as the signs of those ideas" (1: 98). More particularly, he bases much of his analysis on the relationship of various features of language and style to the several faculties, and he stresses the importance of sentiment over expression in discourse. Though he believes that thought and expression are distinct, Blair see them as interdependent: "it is to the intercourse and transmission of thought, by means of speech, that we are chiefly indebted for the improvement of thought itself (1: 1). Elaborating on this interdependence, he asserts that "when we are employed … in the study of composition, we are cultivating reason itself. True rhetoric and sound logic are very nearly allied. The study of arranging and expressing our thoughts with propriety, teaches to think, as well as to speak, accurately. … so close is the connection be tween thoughts and the words in which they are clothed" (1: 6-7).11 In all these general doctrines, there is little to distinguish Blair from other late eighteenth-century British rhetoricians such as Campbell, Priestley, and Smith.
Metaphorically, Blair sometimes constitutes thought and language as closely related objects, as he does in the passage quoted above, using the familiar metaphor of language as the dress of thought. Elsewhere, as we have seen, language becomes almost a quality of thought: "Knowledge and science must furnish the materials that form the body and substance of any valuable composition. Rhetoric serves to add the polish, and we know that none but firm and solid bodies can be polished well" (1: 4). Again, both of these metaphors seem quite conventional, maintaining the traditional priority of thought over language while illustrating their interdependence. However, Blair never examines the relationship between linguistic signs and ideas in any depth; for him (and, thus, for his audithus, for his audience) that relationship constitutes a doctrine, not a philosophical problem.
Blair also views language from the perspective of action, as illustrated by his particular analyses of the uses of language in rude and civilized societies and by his general definition of eloquence in which he argues that "as the most important subject of discourse is Action, or Conduct, the power of Eloquence chiefly appears when it is employed to influence Conduct, and persuade to Action" (2: 2-3). In such passages, however, Blair views action as the end of discourse, and language as a means to that end. Accordingly, he most consistently views language as an object, a system of sensible signs whose formal qualities make them ideal for expressing thought and feeling.
This emphasis appears, for instance, in Blair's discussion of the natural language of gestures, cries of passion, and facial expressions that artificial language first imitated. Later, he claims, words imitated the nature and qualities of "sensible objects," either by representing sound, noise, motion, or some other principle of correspondence.12 As language evolved, these words for sensible objects and their qualities were transferred by analogy to "moral ideas" (1: 103). At the end of his survey of the rise and progress of speech, Blair seems quite well aware of his focus on language as a system of sensible signs: "Thus I have shewn what the natural Progress of Language has been, in several material articles … it appears, that Language was, at first, barren in words, but descriptive by the sound of these words; and expressive in the manner of uttering them, by the aid of significant tones and gestures" (1: 124; emphasis added).13 Much later in the course of lec tures, after his detailed analysis of the structure of language, of perspicuity, and of the origin and nature of figurative language, Blair pauses to praise the instrumentality of language: "What a fine vehicle is it now become for all the conceptions of the human mind; even for the most subtile and delicate workings of the imagination! What a pliant and flexible instrument … prepared to take every form which [one] chuses to give it!" (1: 289). This focus on form recalls an earlier passage near the end of his lectures on language, in which he praises a particular formal characteristic, flexibility, which gives language "its power of accommodation to different styles and manners" (1: 175). In that passage, Blair maintains that the flexibility of language depends upon three qualities: (1) lexical copiousness; (2) syntactic variation; (3) phonetic richness. His emphasis on such formal characteristics of language help Blair to portray language as both a rich resource for human communication and, as we shall see, an icon of progress.
It is not Blair's belief in progress that distinguishes his rhetorical theory from those of his contemporaries but the manner in which he weaves language and arts of discourse into his mythos of progress. In his introductory lecture, Blair introduces and links together three broad themes of progress that he develops throughout the lectures: the progress of society from rudeness to civilization, of language from barrenness to copiousness and flexibility, and of individual reason and sensibility from callowness to mature understanding and discriminating taste. Linked in turn to all three of these themes is the "improvement of thought itself," accompanying the progress of society and language, and improvement in the arts and sciences as mankind's knowledge and experience grow.
Given Blair's topic, it is natural that he adopts "improvement of discourse" as his central theme, arguing that attention to the "grace or force" of expression is not only a universal concern of human societies but a measure of their progress toward civilization and a mark of every civilized person's education: "But, among nations in a civilized state, no art has been cultivated with more care, than that of language, style, and composition. The attention paid to it may, indeed, be assumed as one mark of the progress of society towards its most improved period…. Hence we find, that in all the polished nations of Europe, this study has been treated as highly important, and has possessed a considerable place in every plan of liberal education" (1: 2). Having established three themes related to language and the arts of discourse, to the progress of society, and to liberal education, Blair elaborates on these themes—particularly on the theme of liberal education—throughout his introductory lecture.
Blair's mythos of progress also includes a familiar compensatory theme first introduced in his lectures on taste. Early on, he argues that in rude and uncivilized nations "taste has no materials on which to operate," that it improves as arts, science, and philosophy improve (1: 32). Nevertheless, he allows that genius may offset deficiencies of taste "in the infancy of arts" (1: 42). Indeed, he suspects that the circumstances of mankind in rude and uncivilized nations may favor sublimity more than polite society:
I am inclined to think, that the early ages of the world, and the rude unimproved state of society, are peculiarly favourable to the strong emotions of Sublimity. The genius of men is then much turned to admiration and astonishment. Meeting with many objects, to them new and strange, their imagination is kept glowing, and their passions are often raised to the utmost. They think, and express themselves boldly, and without restraint. In the progress of society, the genius and manners of men undergo a change more favourable to accuracy, than to strength or Sublimity. (1: 60-61).
Because of this sea change in the genius of language and humanity, Blair later maintains that we are at somewhat of a disadvantage in the art of oratory relative to the ancients (2: 44). It is beside the point to dwell on how fanciful this historical narrative appears to us. In the context of Blair's argument, this compensatory theme allows him to account for the literary merits of the Bible, the Iliad, and the works of Ossian, thus complicating without directly contradicting his overall mythos of progress in language and society (1: 61-66).14
The invention of language poses a similar problem, for this greatest of inventions appears to be the product of "rude" ages (1: 99). Blair states the problem as follows:
One would think, that in order to any Language fixing and extending itself, men must have been previously gathered together in considerable numbers; society must have been already far advanced; and yet, on the other hand, there seems to have been an absolute necessity for Speech, previous to the formation of Society. For, by what bond could any multitude of men be kept together, or be made to join in the prosecution of any common interest, until once, by the intervention of Speech, they could communicate their wants and intentions to each other? (1: 100)
Blair dodges this problem by entertaining the notion that language originated in "divine teaching or inspiration" but was given to mankind in a state suited to their needs at the time, obliging them to "enlarge and improve it as their future necessities should require" (1: 101). Thus, Blair settles for a mythos in which mankind continually shapes language to meet changing material and cultural circumstances, ignoring the fact that he has figured language as God's chief agency for shaping human society. In spite of this suggestive speculation (and in either case—whether God or humanity invented language), Blair's theory of language does not allow the possibility that this great agency of progress could turn on its creators/improvers, becoming an agent capable, in twentieth-century parlance, of inscribing them.15
All the same, while language may not serve as the agent of social change in Blair's mythos of progress, it does provide perhaps the most revealing evidence of that change. As we have seen, Blair devotes much of his discussion of language to tracing those changes, including the transformation of the lexicon from barrenness to copiousness; of the character of speech from picturesque, demonstrative, and figurative to discriminating and accurate; of the arrangement of words in sentences from the order of the imagination to the order of understanding; of writing from signs of things to signs of spoken words; and of the structure of language from isolated interjections and names to precisely related parts of speech. Perhaps Blair's most reflective statement concerning his use of language as evidence of progress occurs in his consideration of "the order and arrangement of words," the history of which he claims will "serve to unfold farther the genius of Language, and to show the causes of those alterations, which it has undergone, in the progress of Society" (1: 117). In reviewing those alterations, he again conflates—or, more precisely, links without thoroughly explaining the relationships among—changes in linguistic form, "advancement" of the world, shifts in the relative operation of mental faculties, and "the progress of age in man":
It appears, that, in all the successive changes which Language has undergone, as the world advanced, the understanding has gained ground on the fancy and imagination. The Progress of Language, in this respect, resembles the progress of age in man. The imagination is most vigorous and predominant in youth; with advancing years, the imagination cools, and the understanding ripens. Thus Language, proceeding from sterility to copiousness, hath, at the same time, proceeded from vivacity to accuracy; from fire and enthusiasm, to coolness and precision…. Language is become, in modern times, more correct, indeed, and accurate; but, however, less striking and animated: In its antient state, more favourable to poetry and oratory; in its present, to reason and philosophy. (1: 124-25)
Though the analogy between the progress of language and society and the progress of age in man is an eighteenth-century commonplace, it appears no less implicated here in the occasion of Blair's lectures to university students. More generally, Blair's influential presentation of words as icons of mental and social progress constitutes an important chapter in the history of the subtle relationships among the forms of academic discourse, the perceptions and measurements of mental ability, and the markers of social standing that form the nexus of our own debate over literacy and education.
Finally, it is important to note a tension in Blair's theory of language related to his use of words as icons of progress, a tension that dogs any study of rhetorical history. As Wilbur Samuel Howell has pointed out, Blair's comparison of ancient and modern oratory invokes contradictory principles (656-59). On the one hand, Blair holds forth Demosthenes and Cicero as timeless standards of oratorical perfection. On the other hand, he defends modern orators for not hewing to that standard but rather addressing their times in ways appropriate to their audiences. He also warns students not to follow inappropriate, outmoded models. His argument, in short, is stretched between static and dynamic principles of rhetorical practice. A similar tension vexes several aspects of his language theory. In his analysis of inflection, for instance, he seems to present flexibility based on "differences in termination" as an ideally economic linguistic principle, yet he also praises the shift to an "order of understanding" occasioned by the emphasis on word order rather than inflection in English. It does not occur to Blair that the grammatical principles that we call inflecting and isolating (in which word order determines grammatical relationships) might be equally capable of embodying a range of mental functions. In a mythos of progress such as Blair's, conflating linguistic and discursive forms with the intellectual and social functions of language seems inevitably to lead to tension between ideal relationships among these elements and their dynamic interplay. More than any other aspect of his Lectures, it is this perspective that distances Blair's work from much twentieth-century literary and rhetorical theory. A measure of the difference between Blair's articulation of language and rhetoric and much modern rhetorical theory is the body of research that suggests that semiotic, cognitive, and social systems do not "track" one another according to some internal logic, that is, particular linguistic forms do not exclusively embody the uses to which they are put by particular social groups or the intellectual capabilities of individuals who belong to those groups. A measure of the influence of the mythos in which Blair worked, however, is the continuing pressure to insist that language, thought, and society should march to a standard step.
In terms of my generating principles, whereas Campbell's treatment of words as thoughts often emphasizes principles that drive ongoing practical adaptation and theoretical innovation, Blair's treatment of words as things or objects of art tends to reify written and even spoken language as fixed systems that embody equally stable truths and virtues, thus constituting the historical culmination of a mythos of progress. And whereas Campbell's philosophical inquiry into language complicates his compromise between empiricism and Scottish Common Sense realism by distancing an analogous world of words and thoughts from the world of things, Blair's treatment of words as icons of progress employs only those aspects of eighteenth-century realism that allow language to be viewed as material evidence that the achievements of eighteenth-century British science, art, and society are uniformly based in a knowable reality.
Notes
1 Blair retired from lecturing in 1783. However, Paul Bator notes that from 1784 until 1799 Blair shared the appointment with William Greenfield, who delivered his own lectures. After Greenfield's dismissal in 1799, Blair was again designated the sole professor in the Chair until his death the following year (58).
2 Smith's course of lectures was not offered under the auspices of the university, and records of the circumstances surrounding the lectures are sketchy. For a review of the evidence, see Bator (54-55). Also, for overviews of the controversy concerning the degree to which Blair's lectures borrow from Smith's, see Harding (xxii-xxv) and Lothian (xxi). Blair acknowledges his debt to Smith for his discussion of the general characters of style (1: 381n).
3 Other figures, most notably Adam Smith and James Beattie, also delivered very influential courses of lectures in rhetoric.
4 Except where noted, my account of Blair's public lectures and subsequent appointment as Regius Professor follows Bator (56-58).
5 On this point, in the first of several bibliographic footnotes, Blair fulfills the promise he made in his preface to cite his sources. He refers the reader to Alexander Gerard's Essay on Taste (1759), Jean d'Alembert's "Reflections on the Use and Abuse of Philosophy In Matters that are Properly Relative to Taste" (originally delivered to the French Academy 14 March 1757; Blair cites the translation appended to Gerard's Essay), Alembert's Réflexions sur la poésie (1760), Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism (1762), David Hume's essay "On the Standard of Taste" (1757), and Edmund Burke's Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756). Obviously, taste was a hot topic in the 1750s and 1760s. Blair might also have mentioned William Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty (1753).
6 After reviewing various definitions of the sublime, Blair determines that the "fundamental quality" of the sublime is "mighty force or power" (1: 56).
7 In a bibliographic note to the opening paragraph of lecture 6, Blair cites Adam Smith's Treatise of the Origin and Progress of Language; James Harris's Hermes; Condillac's Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines; Marsais's Principes de grammaire; President de Brosses's Grammaire generale & raisonnée and Traité de la formation mechanique des langues; Rousseau's Discours sur l'inegalité parmi les hommes; Beauzee's Grammaire generale; Batteaux's Principes de la traduction; Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses; and Abbé Girard's Sanctii Minerva, cum notis Perizonii and Les vrais principes de la langue Françoise.
8 Though the accuracy and derivation of Blair's ideas about language are not immediately germane to this study, I should note that his examples of writing are drawn from a wide range of Old World and New World writing systems, including Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese characters, Mexican "historical pictures" and "hieroglyphical characters," Peruvian knotwriting, and Arabian "cyphers."
9 Blair notes that Bishop Lowth makes this same argument in the preface to his Introduction to English Grammar. For readers who want more help avoiding error, Blair recommends Lowth, Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, and Joseph Priestley's Rudiments of English Grammar.
10 In fact, Blair devotes more space in the lectures on language to speech than to writing.
11 Blair repeats this argument in lecture 12, on the structure of sentences: "Thought and Language act and re-act upon each other mutually. Logic and Rhetoric have here, as in many other cases, a strict connection; and he that is learning to arrange his sentences with accuracy and order, is learning, at the same time, to think with accuracy and order" (1: 245-46)
12 In a long footnote, Blair cites President de Brosses's work on naturally significant sounds: "Some of the radical letters or syllables which he supposes to carry this expressive power in most known Languages are, St, to signify stability or rest; Fl, to denote fluency; Cl, a gentle descent; R, what relates to rapid motion; C, to cavity or hollowness, &c." Blair also discusses John Wallis's work on the sounds of English, which, according to Wallis, expresses "the nature of the objects which it names, by employing sounds sharper, softer, weaker, stronger, more obscure, or more stridulous, according as the idea which is to be suggested requires…. Thus; words formed upon St, always denote firmness and strength, analogous to the Latin sto; as, stand, stay, staff, stop, stout, steady, stake, stamp, stallion, stately, &c." Blair concludes that these arguments "leave no doubt, that the analogies of sound have had some influence on the formation of words. At the same time, in all speculations of this kind, there is so much room for fancy to operate, that they ought to be adopted with much caution in forming any general theory" (1: 104n). As he often does, Blair "skips a step" in the conventional Lockean analysis of language to which he at least in part subscribes. If words are signs of ideas, de Brosses's principle would require that our ideas also materially resemble the objects of which they are signs, farfetched as that seems. In context, however, it is clear that Blair is primarily interested in these theories as historical rather than epistemological principles.
13 Though "material," as used here, carries a double meaning—"important" and "having to do with physical matter"—the context emphasizes the latter sense of the word.
14 Blair championed the works of Ossian in his Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian (1763), and he edited an eight-volume edition of The Works of Shakespear (1753). In the Lectures, he offers Shakespeare along with Homer as proof of his assertion that "in the infancy of arts … Genius frequently exerts itself with great vigour, and executes with much warmth; while Taste, which requires experience, and improves by slower degrees, hath not yet attained its full growth" (1: 42).
15 Though it would be anachronistic to argue that Blair figures language as an agent of thought, he appears in several places to flirt with the notion because he so often incorporates linguistic forms and mental faculties into metaphors open to such interpretation. Thus, when Blair claims that "it is to the intercourse and transmission of thought, by means of speech, that we are chiefly indebted for the improvement of thought itself," modern readers will ask—though Blair does not—whether such transmission necessarily determines the nature of what gets transmitted (1: 1). Again, he argues that by speech and writing "men's thoughts are communicated, and the foundation laid for all knowledge and improvement," and modern readers will ask to what degree the foundation determines the super-structure built upon it (1: 135).
Works Cited
Bator, Paul G. "The Formation of the Regius Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh." Quarterly Journal of Speech 75 (1989): 40-64.
Blair, Hugh. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. 1783. 2 vols. Ed. Harold F. Harding. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1965.
Campbell, George. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. 1776. Ed. with a new introduction by Lloyd Bitzer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1988.
Horn, D. B. A Short History of the University of Edinburgh, 1556-1889. Edinburgh: U of Edinburgh P, 1967.
Howell, Wilbur Samuel. Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1971.
Schmitz, Robert Morell. Hugh Blair. Morningside Heights, NY: King's Crown Press, 1948.
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