Kate Alexander
19th Century Rhetoric
The Second Assignment
The Blair Assignment (Complete)
The venue again will be Oberlin College of the 1836 to late forties. Although Blair’s work was apparently not taught there during these years, I intend to construct an assignment for the young ladies there using Blair. This time they will be sophomores who are already studying Whately along with Euclid, Day’s Trigonometry, Bridge’s Conic Sections, Buchanan’s Psalms, Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia finished, Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Greek Testament, Epistles finished, Hebrew Bible, Psalms and Selections from the Historical Parts, Paley’s Evidences, Robbins’ Universal History finished, Cowper’s Poems continued, and Botany.
The male rhetoric teacher, James Dascomb, M.D., will again teach. This time, students will read Cowper’s antislavery poems as well as the Blair material to fulfill their assignment. One poem in particular will be used:


William Cowper
'The Negro’s Complaint' (1788)
FORCED from home and all its pleasures
Afric's coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures
O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold.
Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England's rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task ?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.
Why did all-creating nature
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.
Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
Is there One who reigns on high?
Has He bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
Agents of his will to use?
Hark! He answers!--Wild tornadoes
Strewing yonder sea with wrecks,
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
Afric's sons should undergo,
Fixed their tyrants' habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer--"No."
By our blood in Afric wasted
Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries that we tasted,
Crossing in your barks the main;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
To the man-degrading mart,
All sustained by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart;
Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard and stronger
Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours!
Both Campbell and Blair are appealing to works of Scottish philosopher, David Hume. However, Campbell aligns his empiricist philosophy with Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding while Blair seems to be aligning himself with Hume’s Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion, a treatise dealing with issues of taste and sensibility as well as ideas of the beautiful and the sublime (also see Edmund Burke’s Treatise on the Origins of the Sublime and the Beautiful).

The Blair unit will be completed over a month’s time. Students will be expected to read Blair lectures I, II, and III during the first week with attention to being prepared for Dr. Dascomb’s lectures on the subject matter. Lectures V and X will be the subject of the next week’s lectures. The remaining weeks will deal with Lectures XX, XXVII. Time will not permit finishing all of the Blair material in this unit. A second unit offering the remainder of the Blair material will be offered to students the following semester.

A synopsis of Dr. Dascomb’s lectures follows:

Lecture I is Blair’s introduction to the work to follow. He begins by indentifying one of the most distinguished privileges conferred upon mankind by Providence is the power of communicating our thoughts to each other. Without speech, reason would be solitary. Thus, Blair says, discourse and writing become deserving of the highest attention we can give them.

Blair’s Lecture II deals with taste which he says is not resolvable into any such operation of reason. He states that it is not through the understanding, or deduction or argument, that the mind receives pleasure from a beautiful object or a poem. These strike the intuition. Thus, we see Blair leaning toward the Kantian notion of transcendence versus our knowing only from experience or sensation while he invokes the taste and passion ideas of Hume.

In his lecture III, Blair addresses notions of criticism which he connects to experience as he calls it an art founded on experience. Blair believes that the “genius” will compose his work in accordance with the rules of criticism. These rules are, of course, founded in nature in her beauty and sublimity or grandeur. With respect to grandeur, Blair alludes to the ideas of Burke’s treatise on the beautiful and the sublime.

Blair’s Lecture V deals with beauty and the other pleasures of taste which provide pleasure to the imagination. While Campbell places imagination last in his listing of mental contents, Blair appeals to imagination. Thus, these rhetoricians appear to be on opposite ends of the spectrum. Whately, whom the students are currently studying, is a logician. Thus, we seem to have three rhetoricians following different trajectories. The introduction of Blair into their curriculum might confuse the young ladies, but also may serve to provide a lens on their study of Cowper.

By the end of the first week, students will be expected to answer in recitation form the contents of Blair material delivered by Dr. Dascomb. They will begin to look at the Cowper poem later.

The Lecture material of the second week deals with the following:

Blair’s Lecture X concerns style which he defines as the manner in which a man expresses his ideas by means of language. Blair deals with the concept of perspicuity which, he says, requires purity, propriety and precision. Thus, the language used must not only be pure, but also selective and using just the appropriate number of words. Here natural genius comes into play; it must, however, be accompanied by labor and attention.

Lectures XX deals with an examination of Joseph Addison’s work in The Spectator. Blair believes Addison to be one of the most beautiful writers in the English language.

Lecture XXVII deals with the classifications in public speaking as defined by the ancients. The three categories still identified to this day are the demonstrative (to praise or blame), the deliberative (to advise or dissuade), and the judicial (to accuse or defend). Blair addresses the notion of passion which arises by mutual sympathy between the orator and the audience. This relationship occurs only when the orator feels the emotion himself.

As in the first week, students will answer questions about the material in recitation form. They will prepare for an examination on the material at the beginning of the following week. At this time, they will begin to examine the Cowper poem with the following ideas in mind:

1. The poem uses language of the beautiful and the sublime in a manner employing perspicuity while alluding to at least the first two ancient categories of the demonstrative and the deliberative. In the context of these two categories, one can certainly identify elements of the third (probably more commonly used in legal situations).
2. Students will prepare a chart listing elements of the beautiful, the sublime, and their succinct expressions (in keeping with perspicuity). For example:
Beautiful: Fleecy locks and black complexion/Cannot forfeit nature’s claim/Skins may differ, but affection/Dwells in white and black the same.

Sublime: O’er the raging billows borne
Hark! He answers!—Wild tornadoes/Strewing yonder sea with wrecks.

The instructor anticipates that students will find many examples of the sublime, while few of the beautiful. This demonstrates the unsettling subject of the poem expressed in a style that is unsettling.

Students will discuss their findings in class and then be given a short writing exercise in which they convert a few passages of their choice from the poem into prose. They will then talk about perspicuity in terms of the poem itself.

By the fourth week, students should be intensely involved in the poem with respect to the Blair material. After recitation of their favorite stanzas of the poem, they will begin to deal with the poem as it demonstrates elements of ancient rhetorical arguments. They will again make a chart identifying examples of the three elements. For example:

Demonstrative (to praise or blame):

Men from England bought and sold me

What are England’s rights, I ask…/Me to torture, me to task?

Deliberative (to advise or dissuade):

Skins may differ, but affection/Dwells in white and black the same
Deem our nation brute no longer/Till some reason ye shall find/Worthier of regard and stronger/Than the colour of our kind

Judicial (to accuse or defend):

Prove that you have human feelings,/Ere you proudly question ours!

The instructor anticipates that students will find many examples in all categories with some overlapping. He also anticipates that their discussion of the material will be intense and provocative.