SOURCE: "Chapter Two," in Hugh Blair, King's Crown Press, 1948, pp. 17-38.

In the excerpt below, Schmitz describes Blair's role as the editor of Frederick Carmichael 's Sermons and of the first complete edition of the Works of Shakespeare published in Scotland.

Vita Sine Litteris Mors

One should not assume for a moment that a clergyman of the "Moderate" persuasion would confine himself to church matters. The "Moderates" were devotees of the many-sided life, and were anxious to display their intellectual wares. "Moderate" clergymen essayed poetry, history, philosophy, mathematics. The Scottish literary revival of the eighteenth century is crowded with their names: Beattie, Blacklock, Blair, Campbell, Carlyle, Ferguson, Fordyce, Greenfield, Home, Jardine, Logan, Reid, Robertson, Watson. There was hardly a minister among the "Moderates" who, if he expected to make a figure among his fellow clergy, would not essay at least one of the cultural pursuits outside divinity. For...