James Beattie, the author of the

was born at Laurencekirk, in the county of Kincardineshire—a village situated in that beautiful trough of land called the Howe of the Mearns, and surmounted by the ridge of the Garvock Hills, which divide it from the German Ocean—on the 25th day of October 1735. His father, who was a small farmer and shopkeeper, and who is said to have possessed a turn for literature and versifying, died when James was only seven years old; but his brother David, the eldest of a family of six, undertook the superintendence of his education till he was fit to go to the parish school. That school which had been raised to celebrity by Thomas Ruddiman, the grammarian, was now taught by one Milne, whom his pupil describes as also a good grammarian and an excellent Latin scholar, but destitute of taste, and of all the other qualifications of a teacher. Milne preferred Ovid to Virgil; but Beattie's taste, already giving promise of its future classical bent, was attracted by the less meretricious beantics of Virgil; and this author, in Dryden's translation, as well as Milton's

, and Thomson's

, were devoured with eagerness, and copied with emulation, by him in the intervals of his school hours. He was assisted in his studies by Mr Thomson, minister of the parish. In 1749, when he reached the age of fourteen, he entered Marischal College, Aberdeen, and such was his proficiency that he took by competition the first of those bursaries or exhibitions which are given to those students who are unable to support the expenses of their own education. Aberdeen has been always distinguished by its eminent professors. Blackwell, Gerard, Reid, Campbell, the subject of this sketch, Brown, Blackie, &c. are only a few of the celebrated names the roll of its two colleges contains. The two first-mentioned were flourishing at the time when young Beattie entered the University. Blackwell was a learned but pedantic Grecian, who wrote with considerable power and great pomp on

,

, and the

. Alexander Gerard was the author of some books of some merit, although now nearly forgotten, on the

, on

, &c. Under both these Beattie profited very much. He gained a high prize in Blackwell's class, for an analysis of the fourth book of the

. He did not neglect general reading, nor the art of poetry. He spent much of his leisure in studying and practising music, which he always loved with a passion. We can conceive him, too, the "lone enthusiast," repairing often to the resounding shore of the ocean, or leaning where a greater than he was by and by to lean, over the Brig of Balgounie, which bends above the deep, dark Don, or walking out pensively to the Bridge of Dee, and watching the calm, translucent, yet strong, victorious river running through its rich green banks and clustering corn-fields to wed the sea. No university in wide Britain can be named with Aberdeen, in point of the wild romantic grandeur of its environs, if we include in these the upper courses of the two rivers which meet beside it and Byron Hall. Macintosh, as well as Beattie, have owned the inspiration which the scenery, still more than the scholastic training of the Northern Metropolis, breathed into their opening minds.

In 1753, having cultivated assiduously every branch of study taught at college except mathematics, for which he had neither taste nor aptitude, Beattie took the degree of A.M. He had hitherto been supported by the kindness of his brother David, but now he was to look out for a profession for himself. The situation of parish schoolmaster at Fordoun falling vacant, he determined to apply for it; and on the 11th of August 1753 he was elected to the office. Fordoun is situated a few miles to the north-east of Laurencekirk, and is surrounded by similar scenery. A series of gentlemen's seats extend, at brief intervals, from Brechin to Stonehaven, along a ridge of bare and bold mountains, and overlooking a fair and rich plain, so that thus the neighbourhood of Fordoun includes a combination of the soft, the beautiful, the luxuriant, and the nakedly-sublime, which must have fed to satiety the eye and heart of this true poet. Otherwise, the situation could not be called eligible. The salary was small, the society at that time indifferent, and the sphere limited. There were, however, some counter-balancing advantages. Near the village resided Lord Gardenstown, who met Beattie in a romantic glen near his house, with pencil and paper in his hand—entered into conversation with him—found out that he was a poet—and gave him the "Invocation to Venus" in the opening of Lucretius, to translate, which he did on the spot, and thus removed some doubts Lord Gardenstown had entertained as to whether his poetry was actually his own; and, besides, Lord Monboddo, a remarkable man, alike in talent and eccentricity; and both vied with each other in their patronage of the poetical _dominie_ when he had undisturbed leisure for study and solitary communion with nature. On the whole, perhaps, the future "Minstrel" was happier as a parish schoolmaster than in any part of his after life; and perhaps often, in more brilliant but less easy days, would revert with a sigh to the simple school and the stream which murmurs past the small kirkyard of Fordoun.

While there, he wrote a few poetical pieces, which he sent with his initials, and the name of his place of abode, to the _Scots Magazine_. We can fancy him, like the immortal Peter Pattieson, on the day the Magazine was due, walking as far as the little height of Auchcairnie, to watch and weary for the long-expected carrier's cart wending its slow way from the south and, when the parcel reached his hand, with eager, trembling fingers, opening it up, to have all the joy of virgin authorship awakened in his soul. In these days a poetic production from the country seemed a phenomenon—as great, to use an expression of De Quincey's, as if "a dragoon horse had struck up 'Rule Britannia,'" and no doubt, many an eyebrow in Auld Reekie rose in wonder, and many a voice exclaimed, "Who can this be?" when verses so good by J. B. Fordoun, flashed upon the public from time to time. But, although his poetry procured him more fame than he was then aware of, it brought him nothing more, and his way to competence and elevation in society, seemed as completely blocked up as ever.

It would seem that he had, from an early period of his life, looked forward to the Church as his profession; and, having taught for some time in Fordoun, he returned to Aberdeen, to prosecute those preparatory studies which he had for a while abandoned for a parish school and poetry. Here he attended the lectures of Dr Robert Pollock of Marischal College, and Professor John Lumsden of King's-and performed the exercises prescribed by both. It was at this time that he delivered a discourse in the Divinity Hall in language so lofty, that the Professor challenged him for writing poetry instead of prose—a story reminding us of similar facts in the history of Thomson, Pollok, and others whose names we do not mention—and corroborating the truth, that poetical genius and the halls of philosophy or theology are seldom congenial, and that "musty, fusty, crusty" old professors are in general harsh stepfathers to rising poets.

Whether from chagrin on account of this criticism—and this is the more probable, because Beattie was all along very sensitive to depreciation or abuse—or from some other cause, he determined to abandon the study of Divinity, and to follow teaching as a profession. In 1757, a vacancy occurring in the Grammar School of Aberdeen, Beattie offered himself as a candidate, but failed in the preliminary examination, as he had himself expected, from a want of circumstantial and minute acquaintance with the Latin tongue. A few months after, however, a second vacancy having taken place in the same school, he was elected without the form of a trial, and entered on the discharge of his duties in June 1758. He was now in a more advantageous and a more reputable post—and while discharging its duties with exemplary diligence, he found time for the cultivation of his poetical gift.

In 1760, through the exertions of his friends, especially the Earl of Erroll, and Mr Arbuthnott, Beattie was appointed Professor of Philosophy in Marischal College. It was thought at the time a startling experiment to appoint a man so young—and who had given no proof of peculiar proficiency in philosophical lore—to such an important chair; and was no doubt stigmatised as one of those arrant

by which the history of Scotch Colleges has been often disgraced. In Beattie's case, however, as well as in the kindred one of Professor Wilson, the issue was more fortunate than might have been expected. He set manfully to work to supply his deficiencies—read and wrote hard—and in a few years had prepared a very respectable course of lectures—and became able to front, without shame, such men as Gerard and Gregory, Campbell and Reid—with whom he was now associated. In the same year appeared, in a very modest manner,

In 1761, the volume itself was published—consisting of the pieces formerly printed in the

, corrected and altered, and of some new productions. The book appeared simultaneously in Edinburgh and London, and was hailed with universal applause; the critics generally maintaining that no poetry so good had been written since Gray's; which they thought Beattie had taken for his model. He himself entertained, after a while, a very different opinion of their merits; he was, in fact, seized with a fastidious loathing for them; he destroyed every copy he could procure; and on republishing his poetry before his death, he acknowledged only four of these early effusions.

In 1765, he published, in quarto, his

which met with the unfavourable reception it deserved. He added it to an edition of his poems printed in 1766; but afterwards refused to reprint it. We have given it, however, as well as all his original minor poems, in our edition, including a poem on Churchill, published by him in 1766, and which, acrimonious and unjust as it is, is full of spirit, and shows Beattie in the character of a "good hater."

In 1763, he had visited London, where almost his only acquaintance was Andrew Millar, the bookseller, and where nothing remarkable occurred except a visit to Pope's Villa at Twickenham. In 1765, he had been invited by the Earl of Strathmore to meet with Gray, then on a visit at Glammis Castle. Lovelier spot, or more appropriate for the meeting of two poets, does not exist in broad Scotland than the Castle of Glammis, with its tall, vast, antique structure, towering over its ancient park, and shadowed by large ancestral trees—with its interior full of the quiet memories, quaint paintings, and collected curiosities of a thousand years—with its chapel situated in the very groin of the edifice, and in whose dim religious light you see walls surrounded, by some female hand of a past age, with curious pictures—and with its leaden roof, commanding a wide view over forest and lawn, village and stream, mountain, meadow, and all the glories which replenish the long, fair valley of Strathmore. Here the poets met, and spent two delightful days. Beattie was amazed at the taste, the judgment, and the extensive learning of Gray; and Gray, an older and a more fastidious man, was nevertheless delighted with Beattie's enthusiasm, bonhommie, and heart.

In 1767, he married Mary, the daughter of Dr Dunn, rector of the Grammar School, Aberdeen. She was an amiable and lovely woman. Dr Johnson, when he saw her in London, along with her husband, seemed to think more highly of her than of him. He was not aware, however, of a fact which became afterwards distressingly apparent—that from her mother she inherited a tendency to insanity, which broke out in capricious waywardness, some time before it culminated in madness. We know not but this may explain Dr Johnson's saying to Boswell—"Beattie," he said, "when he came first to London,

us that he was married,"

, tried to hide that he was married. Perhaps the reason of this remark, which so much offended Beattie himself, was, that, afraid of her capricious flightiness being misunderstood, he was at first reluctant to bring her into society. His letter to the contrary was we fear, written for a purpose, and in order to

the truth.

And now came what Beattie and some of his friends—although not we, nor the literary world now generally—considered the grand epoch of his life—the publication of his "Essay on Truth." He had for some time been alarmed at the progress of the sceptical philosophy, both at home and abroad, and had expressed that alarm to his friends in his correspondence. At last this fear awoke in him a Quixotic courage, and he sallied forth like the valiant Don, in search of all whom he knew or imagined to be the enemies of Truth—and like him made some considerable mistakes, and showed more zeal than discretion. We may quote here some sensible sentences from one of his biographers.—"That his meaning was excellent, no one can doubt; whether he discovered the right remedy for the harm which he was desirous of removing, is much more questionable. To magnify any branch of human knowledge beyond its just importance, may indeed tend to weaken the force of religious faith; but many acute metaphysicians have been good Christians, and before the question thus agitated can be set at rest, we must suppose a proficiency in those inquiries which he would proscribe as dangerous. After all, we can discover no more reason why sciolists in metaphysics should bring that study into discredit, than that religion itself should be disparaged through the extravagance of fanaticism. To have met the subject fully, he ought to have shown, that not only those opinions he controverts are erroneous, but that all the systems of former metaphysicians were so likewise." In truth, Beattie would have gained his purpose far better had he been able to have written another such satire against Hume and his followers, as Swift's

, Butler's

, or Voltaire's

. Had he had sufficient wit and sufficient knowledge, the inconsistencies, absurdities, and endless quarrels of metaphysicians might have furnished an admirable field! But wit was hardly one of his qualities, and his knowledge of these subjects was superficial. In fact, the gentle "minstrel" warring against philosophy, reminds us of a plain English scholar attacking the Talmud, or of one who had never crossed the

slandering the Fluxions of Newton.

The essay appeared in 1770, and became instantly popular, passed through five large editions in four years, and was translated into foreign tongues. Hume smiled at it in his sleeve, but attempted no answer. Burke, Johnson, and Warburton, who must have seen through its sounding shallowness, pardoned and praised it for its good intentions, and because its author, though a champion rather showy than strong, was on the right side. Flushed by its success, Beattie, in 1771, revisited London, and obtained admission to the best literary circles—sate under the "peacock-hangings" of Mrs Montague—visited Hagley Park, and became intimate with Lord Lyttelton—chatted cheerily with Boswell and Garrick—listened with wonder to the deep bow-wows of Johnson's talk—and as he watched the rich alluvial, yet romantic mountain stream of thought, knowledge, and imagery that flowed perpetually from the inspired lips of Burke, perhaps forgot Gray and Glammis Castle, and felt "a greater is here." These men, in their turn, seem all to have liked Beattie, although the full

of praise came only from Lord Lyttelton, who vowed that in him Thomson had come back from the shades, much purified and refined by his Elysian sojourn! Beattie, we fear, was a little spoiled by the flatteries he received from Lyttelton and that peculiar clique which circled round him; and hence his prejudice in their favour, and the praise he reciprocates, are enormous. "Lord Lyttelton," says a writer, "is his private friend, and him he always calls the 'Great Historian,' though he is obliged to give his lordship's name afterwards, to let his readers know of whom he is speaking! From his letters it might appear that all the literary talent, all the taste, and all the virtue of the country, were confined to his circle of friends—Lord Lyttelton, Mrs Montague, Dr Porteous, and Major Mercer."

In 1773, he again visited London, and the climax of his renown seemed to be reached, when the University of Oxford gave him the degree of LL.D.—when three different times he refused the offer by bishops and archbishops of promotion in the English Church—and when (oh, brave!) he was admitted to an interview with their Majesties, complimented on his

by good old George III., who was much better qualified to judge of an essay on turnips, and gifted with a pension of £200 a year. About the same time he was urged to apply for the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, which he declined to do, apparently from a terror at the thought of coming so near David Hume—a terror which strikes us as exceedingly ludicrous, when we recollect that, most pernicious as were Hume's principles, he was in private as harmless, good-natured, and (

)

a being as lived.

A few months after the

appeared, and while the echoes of its fame were beginning to spread through the world, there had appeared a thin anonymous quarto, entitled the

It slid noiselessly as a star into the world's air. The critics, finding no name on the title page, were peculiarly severe, and peculiarly senseless, in their treatment of the unpretending volume, which would have been crushed under their heavy strictures, had not—rare event in those days—the public chosen to judge for itself, and to fall in love with the beautiful poem. It consequently soon ran through four editions, each edition containing some corrections and improvements; and in the year 1774 he published the second part, which, now that its author's name was known, was loudly praised by the Reviews, as well as by the general reader. He always meant to, but never did, add a third.

From the date of his refusal of promotion in the English Church, Beattie had made up his mind to remain in Aberdeen, which is a beautifully built town, and which teemed to him with old associations. He spent his winters in diligently instructing his class, and in summer was often found at Peterhead, a town situated on the most easterly promontory of Scotland, and which was then noted for its medicinal waters. Beattie was troubled with a vertiginous complaint, which he found benefited by the use of the Peterhead Spa. He no doubt also admired and often visited the noble sea scenery to the south of that town.—Slaines Castle, standing on its rock, sheer over the savage surge, and begirt by the perpetual clang of sea-fowl and roar of billows, and the famous Bullers of Buchan, where the sea has forced its way through the solid rock, leaving an arch of triumph to commemorate the passage, and formed a huge round pot where its waters, in the time of storm, rage and fret and foam like a newly imprisoned maniac—a pot which Dr Johnson proposes to substitute for the Red Sea, in the future incarceration of demons.

In 1776, he published, by subscription, a new and splendid edition of his

, accompanied by two other essays, much more interesting, on

, and on

, and by

. This was followed, in 1783, by a volume of

, &c. In 1786 he published a little treatise on the

, which he had shown to Bishop Porteous in London, two years before, and been recommended by him to give to the world. Beattie himself preferred it to all his writings, in "closeness of matter and style." In 1790 and 1793, appeared two volumes on the

, containing an abridgment of his lectures on Moral Philosophy and Logic. He wrote also, in the

of the Royal Society, Edinburgh, a paper on the sixth book of the

, and contributed a few notes to an edition of Addison's works.

His wife long ere this had been separated from him by her malady. By her he had two sons, James Hay, named after the Earl of Errol, and Montague, after the celebrated Mrs Montague. The history of both was hapless. James Hay, who gave high literary promise, and was still more distinguished by his amiable disposition, after having been appointed to be his father's successor in the chair, died in 1790, at the age of twenty-two, of a consumption. Beattie felt the blow deeply, and published, soon after, the life and remains of the precocious youth. Our readers must all remember the exquisite story of his teaching him the idea of a Creator by sowing his name in cresses in the garden. The loss of Montague, also a youth of much promise, by a rapid fever in 1796, completed the prostration of the poor father. It was the case of Burke over again, but worse, inasmuch as Beattie, a weaker nature, was sometimes driven to seek oblivion in the cup, and as sometimes his reason reeled on its throne, and he went about the house asking where his son was, and whether he had or had not a son. He retired from all society—lost taste for his former pleasures, such as music, which he had once relished so keenly—was seized, in 1799, with a paralytic affection, which deprived him of speech—and languished on, ever and anon visited with new assaults of the same malady, till at last, on the 18th of August 1803, the gifted, amiable, but most miserable "Minstrel" breathed his last. He now lies beside his two dear sons in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Aberdeen, a graceful Latin inscription from the pen of Dr James Gregory of Edinburgh distinguishing the stone which covers his ashes.

Beattie was of the middle size, of slouching gait, and common-place appearance, redeemed by two fine dark eyes, which, melancholy in repose, gleamed and glowed whenever he became animated in conversation. He had warm affections, a tender, shrinking, sensitive disposition, was a kind parent, an attached friend, truly pious, and could be charged with no fault, save an irritability of temper, which grew upon him with his misfortunes and infirmities, and, latterly, that occasional excess to which we have alluded, which sprung rather from dotage and wretchedness than from inclination, and in which he was far more to be pitied than blamed.

Of his pretensions as a philosopher we shall say nothing, save that he has now no name, and is held rather to have struck at and all about Hume, than to have smote him hip and thigh. His essays are exceedingly agreeable reading. Cowper relished no book so well, but they can scarcely be called either profound or brilliant. They soothe, but do not suggest—they tickle, but do not tell us anything new. It is as a poet that his name must survive, and the pæan of reception which saluted him in his

, entering on stilts, should have been reserved entirely for the

, with the meek harp in his hand.

Much has been said of the effect of fine scenery upon the development of genius. And as this is the theme of one-half of the

, we must be permitted a few remarks on it. The finest scenery in the world cannot, then,

genius. A dunce, born in the Vale of Tempe, will remain a dunce still. And, on the other hand, a poet reared in St Giles or the Goosedubs will develop his poetic vein. The true influences, we suspect, of scenery on genius are the following:—1st, Where poetry lies deep and latent in a deep but silent nature, scenery will act like the rod of Moses on the rock in bringing forth the struggling waters—it will prompt to imitation, and gradually supply language. 2d, Early familiarity with the beautiful aspects of nature will enable the youth of genius to realize the descriptions of nature in the great poetic masters, to test their truth, and imbibe their spirit, by comparing them day by day with their archetypes. He can stand on a snow-clad mountain, with Thomson's

in his hands. He can walk through a wood of pines, swinging in the tempest, and repeat Coleridge's

. He can, lying on a twilight hill, with twilight mountains darkening into night around him, and twilight fields and rivers glimmering far below, and one cataract, touching the grand piano of the silence into melancholy music, turn round and see in the north-east the moon rising in that "clouded majesty" of which Milton had spoken long before. He can take the

to the same summit, while afternoon, the everlasting autumn of the day, is shedding its thoughtful and mellow lines over the landscape, and can see in it a counterpart of the scene at the Trosachs—the woodlands, the mountains, the isle, the westland heaven—all, except the chase, the stag, and the stranger, and these the imagination can supply; or he can plunge into the moorlands, and reaching, toward the close of a summer's day, some insulated peak, can see a storm of wild mountains between him and the west, dark and proud, like captives at the chariot-wheels of the sun, and smitten here and there into reluctant splendour by his beams, and think of all the gorgeous descriptions of sunset and its momentary miracles to be found in Scott, Byron, Wilson, Croly, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge; or he can from some mighty Ben look abroad over a country—Scotland, and the sea below, the blue heaven above, till, in his enthusiasm, he might deem that he could lay his one hand on the mane of the ocean, and his other on the tresses of the sun, and feels for the first time the force of Beattie's own fine words—

Again, scenery will help sometimes to settle a question with a young mind, whose intellectual and imaginative faculties are nearly equal, whether it shall turn permanently to philosophy or to poetry. Such dilemmas or Hercules choices are not uncommon; and there is a period in life when the sight of a mountain, or a sunset, or an autumn river, amid its yellow woods, can have more power than even a book, or the influence of an older mind, or a young love-passion, in deciding them. Again, early intimacy with fine scenery furnishes the poetic mind with an exhaustless supply of images. These being sown in youth, sown broadcast, and without any effort of the mind to receive or retain them, bear fruit for ever. It is a shower of morning manna, which no after fervours of noon, or chills of evening, are able to melt or freeze. Or, shall we say the mind of the young, especially if gifted, is a daguerreotype plate of the finest construction, and when surrounded by romantic or lovely scenes, it receives and preserves them to the last, and can reproduce them, too, in ever-varying forms, and perpetual succession? And hence, in fine, it follows, that the greatest poets have either been brought up in the country, or have early come in contact with a beautiful nature, as the names of Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Milton, Thomson, Burns, Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Wilson, and Thomas Aird, abundantly prove.

Beattie employs the greater part of his first Canto of the

in showing the influence of Nature on the dawning mind of a poet. And there can be little doubt that it is the scenery of his own native region, and the progress of his own mind, that he has described. "The long, long vale withdrawn," is the Howe of the Mearns—the "uplands" whence he views it, are the hills of Garvock—the "mountain grey," is the Grampian ridge to the north-west—the "blue main" is the German Ocean, expanding eastward—and the "vale" where the hermit is overheard pouring out his plaint, may not inaptly be figured by that portion of Glen Esk, which meets the all-beautiful Burn, and where "rocks on rocks are piled by magic spell," and where, then as now,

And, besides, there is his famous piece of cloud scenery, beginning,