"Now, when an author has brought us, or is attempting to bring us, into this state; if he multiplies words unnecessarily, if he decks the Sublime object which he presents to us, round and round, with glittering ornaments; nay, if he throws in any one decoration that sinks in the least below the capital image, that moment he alters the key; he relaxes the tension of the mind; the strength of the feeling is emasculated; the Beautiful may remain, but the Sublime is gone."
Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
29 entries in ESTC (1783, 1784, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1793, 1796, 1798). See also <u>Heads of the Lectures on Rhetorick, and Belles Lettres</u> (1767, 1771, 1777) and abridgments of the lectures as <u>Essays on Rhetoric</u> (1784, 1785, 1787, 1789, 1793, 1797, 1798).<br>
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See <u>Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. By Hugh Blair</u> (London: Printed for W. Strahan; T. Cadell; and W. Creech, in Edinburgh, 1783): &lt;<a href="http://estc.bl.uk/N5887">Link to ESTC</a>&gt;. See also Dublin edition of same year in ECCO-TCP: &lt;<a href="http://name.umdl.umich.edu/004786433.0001.001">Link to Vol. I</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="http://name.umdl.umich.edu/004786433.0001.002">Vol. II</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="http://name.umdl.umich.edu/004786433.0001.003">Vol. III</a>&gt;. Revised and corrected for second edition of 1785.<br>
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Reading <u>Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres</u>, eds. Linda Ferreira-Buckley and S. Michael Halloran (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005). Text based on second edition of 1785.