The DNB explains, "Blair possessed a private fortune and had long relied on this to give him leisure to pursue his two chief interests, English poetry and botany." His most famous work is the melancholic poem "The Grave," which became an instant success with the public and made 'mortuary poems' the vogue. This success encouraged Edward Young to continue working on his Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality, which together with Blair's work created a "literary cult of sentiment" that paved the way for proto-Romantic writers like Thomas Gray and James Macpherson. Perhaps because of "The Grave"'s incongruency with his position as a minister, he did not publish any more work or leave any literary manuscripts behind.