Robert Blair (poet)

His family's wealth gave him leisure for his favourite pursuits: gardening and the study of English poets.

His reputation rests entirely on his third work, The Grave (1743), which is a poem written in blank verse on the subject of death and the graveyard.

Its religious subject no doubt contributed to its great popularity, especially in Scotland, where it gave rise to the so-called "graveyard school" of poetry.

[1] The poem extends to 767 lines of various merit, in some passages rising to great sublimity, and in others sinking to commonplace.

[1] See the biographical introduction prefixed to Blair's Poetical Works, by Robert Anderson, in his Poets of Great Britain, vol.