SOURCE: "The Most Significant Passage in Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres" Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Summer, 1987, pp. 281-304.

In the collection of essays below, originally presented at the 1986 Speech Communication Association convention, six experts on Blair discuss what they feel is the most significant passage in his book Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.

Herman Cohen, the Pennsylvania State University

The passage which I have chosen as the most significant in the works of Hugh Blair is one which might seem very obvious. It occurs at the beginning of Lecture X. It reads as follows:

It is not easy to give a precise idea of what is meant by style. The best definition I can give of it, is the peculiar manner in which a man expresses his conceptions by means of language. It is different from mere language or words. The words...