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Of James Beattie it is enough to record. that he published incoherent fragments of a mock-antique "Minstrel," in Spenserian stanza.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 327.

His thought is nowhere great; it verges on originality, but is never conspicuously fresh and new. "The Minstrel" besides is defective in the execution of its plan. The idea at the root of it was a happy one; and Wordsworth subsequently gave partial proof of what might be done with it. But Beattie did not really carry out his purpose. The figure of Edwin remains. a mere shadow; and the reader cannot be said to behold the growth of a mind whose features are nowhere brought before his eye. WALKER, HUGH, 1893, Three Centuries of Scottish Literature, vol. II, p. 131.

"The Minstrel," like "The Seasons, abounds in insipid morality, the commonplaces of denunciation against luxury and ambition, and the praise of simplicity and innocence. -BEERS, HENRY A., 1898, A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, p. 305.

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"The Minstrel or the Progress of Genius" can satisfy only the most moderate expectations, or the least fastidious taste. There is absolutely no story; the expression is seldom or never striking, and the versification (it is Spenserian), though not contemptible, has no distinction. But all the objects of the early, confused, Romantic appetite-country scenes, woods, ruins, the moon, chivalry, mountainsare dwelt upon with a generous emotion, and with at least poetic intention. all, Beattie was important "for them," to apply once more one of the most constantly applicable of critical dicta. His time. could understand him, as it could not have understood purer Romanticism, and it is probable that, for an entire generation at least, and perhaps longer, "The Minstrel' served to bring sometimes near, and sometimes quite, to poetry, readers who would have found Coleridge too fragmentary, Shelley too ethereal, and both too remote. -SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 586.

GENERAL

Dr. Beattie's style is singularly free and perspicuous, and adapted in the highest degree to the purpose of familiar lecturing to his pupils; but for the author we

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should deem it something less than elegant, and something less than nervous. In early life he took great pains to imitate Addison, whose style he always recommended and admired. . . . In many parts of the letters, we are constrained to perceive a degree. of egotism inconsistent with the dignity of a philosopher or a man. The writer seems unwilling to lose any opportunity of recounting the attentions, the compliments, the testimonies of admiration, which he has received from individuals or the public. The complacency with which he expatiates on himself and his performances, is but imperfectly disguised by the occasional and too frequent professions of holding himself and those performances cheap. This is a very usual but unsuccessful expedient, with those who have reflection enough to be sensible that they have rather too much ostentation, but not resolution enough to restrain themselves from indulging in it.-FOSTER, JOHN, 1807, On Memoir- Writing, Critical Essays, ed. Ryland, vol. 1, pp. 27, 28.

He wrote English better than any other of his countrymen, and had formed his style and manner of composition on our Addison; but what he admired in him was his tuneful prose and elegant expression. He had no notion of that writer's original and inimitable humour.-HURD, RICHARD, 1808, Commonplace Book, Memoirs, ed. Kilvert, p. 244.

The few of his poems which he thought worthy of being selected from the rest, and of being delivered to posterity, have many readers, to whom perhaps one recommendation of them is that they are few. They have, however, and deservedly, some admirers of a better stamp. They soothe the mind with indistinct conceptions of something better than is met with in ordinary life. The first book of the "Minstrel," the most considerable amongst them, describes with much fervour the enthusiasm of a boy "smit with the love of song," and awakened to a sense of rapture by all that is most grand or lovely in the external appearance of nature. It is evident that the poet had felt much of what he describes, and he therefore makes his hearers feel it. Yet at times, it must be owned, he seems as if he were lashing himself into a state of artificial emotion.-CARY, HENRY FRANCIS, 1821-24-45, Lives of English Poets, p. 313.

On the whole, Beattie may be ranked beside, or near, Campbell, Collins, Gray, and Akenside. Deficient in thought and passion, in creative power, and copious imagination, he is strong in sentiment, in mild tenderness, and in delicate description of nature. Whatever become of his Essay on Truth, or even of his less elaborate and more pleasing Essays on Music, Imagination, and Dreams, the world can never, at any stage of its advancement, forget to read and admire the "Minstrel' and the "Hermit," or to cherish the memory of their warm-hearted and sorely-tried author. GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1854, ed. The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair and Falconer, p. xxiv.

Beattie, a metaphysical moralist, with a young girl's nerves and an old maid's hobbies.-TAINE, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, tr, Van Laun, vol. II, bk. iii, ch. vii, p. 220.

His style has considerable power of the rotund declamatory order; copious, highsounding, and elegant; occasionally in its appeals to established feeling throwing out rhetorical interrogations, followed by brief, abrupt answers.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 474.

His poems will ever hold a place among the classical writings of Great Britain. His "Minstrel" and his "Hermit" are exquisite poems of their kind: simple, graceful, tender, and leaving a peaceful and peace-giving impression on the mind; and therefore not likely to be appreciated by those whose tastes were formed by the passionate and startling style of poetry introduced in the next page by Byron, who was at school in Aberdeen while Beattie was in his declining years. His prose works do not exhibit much grasp or depth of thought, but are characterized by much ease and elegance. - MCCOSH, JAMES, 1874, The Scottish Philosophy, p. 234.

Beattie also wrote odes, but any interference with the dust that has settled upon them would be officious and unnecessary; it is by his "Minstrel" that he lives, so far as he can be said to live at all, for there is no great delight to be got from his other poems. "The Minstrel," however, has real merit. It was due in good part to the influence of Spenser, whom he greatly admired, but even in beautiful passages we

find such conventional phrases as "glittering waves and skies in gold arrayed." Yet in the first book we find very genuine love of nature expressed with real poetical skill. PERRY, THOMAS S., 1880, Gray, Collins and Beattie, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 46, p. 816.

Beattie is perhaps the most difficult poet of the eighteenth century for a nineteenthcentury reader to criticise sympathetically. His original poetical power was almost nil. But he had a delicate and sensitive taste, and was a diligent student of the works of Gray and Collins on the one hand, and of the ballads which Percy had just published on the other. His earlier poems are merely so many variations on the "Elegy" and the "Ode on the Passions." His "Judgment of Paris" and his "Lines on Churchill" are perhaps those of his works in which he was least indebted to others, and they are almost worthless intrinsically, besides being (at least the Churchill lines) in the worst possible taste.

SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, p. 396.

Beattie's odes are feeble echoes of "The Bard" of Gray and "The Passions" of Collins; his "Judgment of Paris" is mere rhetoric; his imitation of Shakespeare's "Blow, blow, thou winter wind" is chiefly remarkable for the number of technical faults compressed within so narrow compass. "The Minstrel" itself is more noteworthy as a symptom than for its intrinsic merits.-WALKER, HUGH, 1893, Three Centuries of Scottish Literature, vol. II, p. 130.

The author of the "Minstrel" was an honest man and a respectable poet, but he prided himself too much on what he called common sense, and failed to see that in the search after truth other and even higher faculties may be also needed.DENNIS, JOHN, 1894, The Age of Pope, p. 226.

His fame to-day is as a tale that is told. His prose works, so lauded in their generation, are forgotten. His "Minstrel" lingers still with a slender reputation after its days of glory, and its author is stamped with that disastrous title of mediocrity "a pleasing poet."-GRAHAM, HENRY GREY, 1901, James Beattie, Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century, p. 272.

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Joseph Ritson

1752-1803

Antiquary, born at Stockton-on-Tees, came to London in 1775, and practised as a conveyancer, but was enabled to give most of his time to antiquarian studies. He was as notorious for his vegetarianism, whimsical spelling, and irreverence as for his attacks on bigger men than himself. His first important work was an onslaught on Warton's "History of English Poetry" (1782). He assailed (1783) Johnson and Steevens for their text of Shakespeare, and Bishop Percy in "Ancient Songs" (1790); in 1792 appeared his "Cursory Criticisms" on Malone's Shakespeare. Other works were "English Songs" (1783); "Ancient Popular Poetry" (1791); "Scottish Songs" (1794); "Poems," by Laurence Minot (1795); "Robin Hood Ballads" (1795); and "Ancient English Metrical Romances" (1802).-PATRICK AND GROOME, eds., 1897, Chambers's Biographical Dictionary, p. 792.

PERSONAL

As bitter as gall, and as sharp as a razor,
And feeding on herbs as a Nebuchadnezzar,
His diet too acid, his temper too sour,
Little Ritson came out with his two volumes

more.

-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1823, Song of One Volume More.

Coarse, caustic, clever; and, am I to suppose, not amiable.-LAMB, CHARLES, 1823, Ritson Versus John Scott, the Quaker, p. 437.

This narrow-minded, sour, and dogmatical little word-catcher had hated the very name of a Scotsman, and was utterably incapable of sympathizing with any of the higher views of his new correspondent. Yet the bland courtesy of Scott disarmed even this half-crazy pedant; and he communicated the stores of his really valuable learning in a manner that seems to have greatly surprised all who had hitherto held any intercourse with him on antiqua rian topics. LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON, 1836, Life of Sir Walter Scott, ch. x.

Whose wild temper and vegetarian crotchets have found a more permanent place in history than his .collections.OLIPHANT, MARGARET O. W., 1882, The Literary History of England, XVIIIthXIXth Century, vol. II, p. 189.

One of the most interesting spots in all London to me is Bunhill Fields cemetery, for herein are the graves of many whose memory I revere. I had heard that Joseph Ritson was buried here, and while my sister, Miss Susan, lingered at the grave of her favorite poet, I took occasion to spy around among the tombstones in the hope of discovering the last resting-place of the curious old antiquary whose labors in the field of balladry have placed me. under so great a debt of gratitude to him.

But after I had searched in vain for somewhat more than an hour one of the keepers of the place told me that in compliance with Ritson's earnest desire while living, that antiquary's grave was immediately after the interment of the body levelled down and left to the care of nature, with no stone to designate its location. So at the present time no one knows just where vast enclosure where so many thousand old Ritson's grave is, only that within that souls sleep their last sleep the dust of the famous ballad-lover lies fast asleep in the bosom of mother earth.--FIELD, EUGENE, 1895, The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, p. 93.

Ritson combined much pedantry with his scholarship; but he sought a far higher ideal of accuracy than is common among accumulating information. Sir Walter antiquaries, while he spared no pains in principle about him which, if it went to Scott wrote that "he had an honesty of ridiculous extremities, was still respectable from the soundness of the foundation." But Scott did not overlook his friend's peculiarities, and in verses written for the Bannatyne Club in 1823 he referred to "Little Ritson"

As bitter as gall, and as sharp as a razor, And feeding on herbs as a Nebuchadnezzar. Ritson's impatience of inaccuracy led him to unduly underrate the labours of his contemporaries, and his suspicions of imposture were often unwarranted. But his irritability and eccentricity were mainly due to mental malady. He showed when in good health many generous instincts, and he cherished no personal animosity against those on whose published work he made his splenetic attacks. With Surtees, George Paton, Walter Scott, and his nephew he corresponded good-humouredly

to the end. He produced his works with every typographical advantage, and employed Bewick and Stothard to illustrate many of them. It is doubtful if any of his literary ventures proved remunerative. In person, according to his friend Robert Smith, Ritson resembled a spider. A caricature of him by Gillray represents him in a tall hat and a long closely buttoned coat. LEE, SIDNEY, 1896, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XLVIII, p. 330.

GENERAL

In Theron's form, mark Ritson next contend; Fierce, meagre, pale, no commentator's friend.

-MATHIAS, THOMAS JAMES, 1797, The Pursuits of Literature, Eighth ed., p. 100.

A man of acute observation, profound research, and great labour. These valuable attributes were unhappily combined with an eager irritability of temper, which induced him to treat antiquarian trifles with the same seriousness which men of the world reserve for matters of importance, and disposed him to drive controversies into personal quarrels, by neglecting, in literary debate, the courtesies of ordinary society. It ought to be said, however, by one who knew him well, that this irritability of disposition was a constitutional and physical infirmity, and that Ritson's extreme attachment to the severity of truth corresponded to the vigour of his criticisms upon the labours of others. SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1802-3, Ancient Minstrelsy, Introduction.

Hear how this puny worm lifts its feeble cry, to arraign the orders of nature, and scoff at the Omniscience, which, for wise purposes, though quite unknown to us, suffers it to crawl upon the earth.

Before taking leave of this nauseous performance, a few words remain to be added upon the style, in which so many absurdities are delivered. We do not mean to go farther than the external qualities, the matchless ludicrousness of the orthography and typography.

We now most joyfully leave the "Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food" to that oblivion which awaits it; and from which its singularities, however gross and wicked, are of too dull a cast to save it. -SMITH, SIDNEY, AND BROUGHAM, HENRY LORD, 1803, Ritson on Abstinence From Animal Food, Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, pp. 135, 136.

Ritson is the oddest, but most honest of all our antiquarians. SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1803, To S. T. Coleridge, March 14; Life and Correspondence.

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Mr. Joseph Ritson, unilluminated by a particle of taste or fancy, and remarkable only for the increasing drudgery with which he dedicated his life to one of the humblest departments of literary antiquities, and for the bitter insolence and foul abuse with which he communicated his dull acquisitions to the public. Whoever is acquainted with that strange, but not totally useless, book ["Bibliographia Poetica"], will wonder how it was possible for a man, with such a fund of materials before him, to compile a work so utterly lifeless and stupid, so uncheared by one single ray of light, or one solitary flower admitted even by chance from the numerous and varied gardens of poetry over which he had been travelling! But, poor unhappy spirit, thou art gone! Perhaps thy restless temper was diseased: and mayst thou find peace in the grave!— BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON, 1805, Censura Literaria, vol. 1, p. 54.

SYCORAX was this demon; and a cunning and clever demon was he! I will cease speaking metaphorically, but SYCORAX was a man of ability in his way. He taught literary men, in some measure, the value of careful research and faithful quotation; in other words, he taught them to speak the truth as they found her; and doubtless for this he merits not the name of demon, unless you allow me the privilege of a Grecian. That SYCORAX loved the truth must be admitted; but that he loved no one else so much as himself to speak the truth, must also be admitted.—DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1811, The Bibliomania; or, Book-Madness.

Ritson, the late antiquary of poetry (not to call him poetical) amazed the world by his vituperative railing at two authors of the finest taste in poetry, Warton and Percy; he carried criticism, as the discerning few had first surmised, to insanity itself; the character before us only approached it.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1812-13, The Influence of a Bad Temper in Criticism, Calamities of Authors.

As to the rabid Ritson, who can describe his vagaries? What great arithmetician. can furnish an index to his absurdities, or what great decipherer furnish a key to the

principles of these absurdities? In his very title-pages, nay, in the most obstinate of ancient technicalities, he showed his cloven foot to the astonished reader. Some of his many works were printed in Pall-Mall; now, as the world is pleased to pronounce that word Pel-Mel, thus and no otherwise (said Ritson) it shall be spelled for ever. Whereas, on the contrary, some men would have said: The spelling is well enough, it is the public pronunciation which is wrong. Volumes would not suffice to exhaust the madness of Ritson upon this subject. And there was this peculiarity in his madness, over and above its clamorous ferocity,that, being no classical scholar (a meagre self-taught Latinist and no Grecian at all), though profound as a black-letter scholar, he cared not one straw for ethnographic relations of words, nor for unity of analogy, which are the principles that generally have governed reformers of spelling. He was an attorney and moved constantly under the monomaniac idea that an action lay on behalf of misused letters, mutes, liquids, vowels, and diphthongs, against somebody or other (John Doe, was it, or Richard Roe?) for trespass on any rights of theirs which an attorney, might trace, and of course for any direct outrage upon their persons. Yet no man was more systematically an offender in both ways. than himself,-tying up one leg of a quadruped word and forcing it to run upon three, cutting off noses and ears if he fancied that equity required it, and living in eternal hot water with a language which he pretended eternally to protect.-DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, 1847-60, Orthographic Mutineers; Works, ed. Masson, vol. XI, pp. 441, 442.

A man of ample reading and excellent taste in selection, and who, real scholar as he was, always drew from original. sources. LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1871, Library of Old Authors, My Study Windows, p. 359.

Neither Percy nor Warton escaped the strictures of Ritson, that "black-letter dog," a tame and affected pedant of no critical importance, but far more careful as an editor than either of them.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 325.

I do not wonder that Ritson and Percy quarrelled. It was his misfortune that Ritson quarrelled with everybody. Yet Ritson was a scrupulously honest man; he was so vulgarly sturdy in his honesty that he would make all folk tell the truth even though the truth were of such a character as to bring the blush of shame to the devil's hardened cheek.-FIELD, EUGENE, 1895, The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, p. 101.

Joseph Ritson possessed all the enthusiasm, and even more than the share of eccentricity, which so often accompanies the genius of the antiquary.

Violent in all his notions, -religious, moral, and political, as well as critical,— he was always ready to fall upon others whose opinions were at variance with truth, or at least with his own view of it. As his learning was large and strictly accurate, and his style incisive, he was respected and disliked; and at different times Warburton, Johnson, Warton, and Steevens all felt the edge of his criticism. It will readily be supposed that Percy's ideas of the duties of an editor did not commend themselves to Ritson.-COURTHOPE, W. J., 1895, A History of English Poetry, vol. I, p. 428.

Samuel Hopkins

1721-1803

A Congregational clergyman of Newport, Rhode Island, the founder of what has been called Hopkinsian Divinity, which differed from Calvinism in maintaining the free agency of sinners, the moral inability of the unregenerate, and ascribing the essence of sin to the disposition and purpose of the mind. His views had great influence in the modification of contemporary thought. He was a strong opponent of slavery, and his influence procured the passage of a law prohibiting the importation of slaves into Rhode Island. The "System of Doctrine contained in Divine Revelation" is his principal work. Others are, "The True State of the Unregenerate;" "Nature of True Holiness;" "The Duty and Interest of American States to Emancipate their Slaves." See "Life" by Park; Mrs. Stowe's "Minister's Wooing;" Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit." -ADAMS, OSCAR FAY, 1897, A Dictionary of American Authors, p. 194.

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