JAMES BEATTIE. THE name of Beattie, like an Italian landscape, requires only to be mentioned, to fill the mind, at once, with ideas of beauty, gentleness, and repose :"" Beattie,' as Cowper has charmingly described him," the most agreeable and amiable writer I ever met with; the only author I have seen whose critical and philosophical researches are diversified and embellished by a poetical imagination, that makes even the driest subject, and the leanest, a feast for an epicure in books; one so much at his ease too, that his own character appears in every page, and, which is very rare, not only the writer but the man; and the man, so gentle, so well tempered, so happy in his religion, and so humane in his philosophy, that it is necessary to love him, if one has any sense of what is lovely." James Beattie was the youngest son of a small farmer at Laurencekirk, in the county of Kincardine, and born on the 25th of October, 1735. He received at the school of his native village an education to fit him for the university, and, even at this early period, is said to have given such indications of the future "Minstrel," that he went among his school-fellows by the name of the Poet; that name by which he is most likely to live for future ages. Not only was his taste for poetry thus early evinced, but even the purity of that taste. His master preferred Ovid as a school-book for youth; young Beattie gave up all his soul to Virgil. In 1749, when but in his fourteenth year, he commenced his academical career at the Marischal college, Aberdeen; and as his finances were slender, his friends made interest to obtain for him one of those bursaries or exhibitions, which have been left by benevolent individuals to be annually bestowed on students whose relatives are unable to defray the entire expenses of an university education. Small in amount as these exhibitions are, seldom more than 51. and rarely 10l. per annum, they are of immense importance in a country like Scotland, where living is cheap, and the habits of the people singularly frugal ; ́ and many are the instances, besides that of Beattie, of humble talent, which, but for such aid, would never have been lifted into the road to preferment and fame. Were the obligations to this source oftener acknowledged, we might expect to see the number of liberal benefactions to it increased; but, from an excess of that pride so characteristic of our countrymen, and, in a general sense, so laudable, which makes them shrink ashamed from the idea of owing any thing to charity, the possession of a bursary is the last thing which a Scottish student is fond of avowing.* The church being, at that time, the chief field of * Let the undersigned, for one, make the amende honorable. He owes to an exhibition of this sort the foundation of all the little learning which he possesses. A. S. promise for the well-educated sons of poverty in Scotland, the studies of young Beattie received, almost as a matter of course, that direction. He first studied Greek under Principal Blackwell, well known to the erudite for his" Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer ;” a man of austere manners, but paternally kind to those who sought, by doing well, to deserve his esteem. In Beattie, the worthy professor thought he perceived a germ worthy of cultivation, and encouraged his progress by several strong marks of approbation. The memory of his goodness remained indelibly impressed on Beattie through the whole course of his after life; and he often declared, that Dr. Blackwell was the first person who ever gave him reason to believe that he possessed any genius. From the study of Greek he passed to that of philosophy, in which he had the benefit of the prelections of another eminent scholar, Dr. Alexander Gerard, author of "Essays on Genius and Taste." The interesting field into which he had now entered appears to have fixed the inclinations of Beattie. Agreeably to his original destination, he joined the divinity class; but, after a constrained attendance for three sessions, gave up pursuing that branch of knowledge. In 1753, he took the degree of M.A. and soon after accepted the appointment of school-master to the parish of Fordoun, distant about six miles from the place of his nativity. It is a sequestered spot, but of a scenic character, admirably suited to a mind of a poetic cast. It has wood, and water, and mountain; deep and silent glens; and heathery braes, on which the setting sun delights to linger. When not occupied by his scholastic duties, he used to wander forth to contemplate the romantic scenery which everywhere surrounded him; and, from what he saw, drew, as from the life, some of the finest descriptions and most striking pictures of nature to be found in his poetical compositions. Many short pieces which he wrote at this period, he sent to the Scot's Magazine; sometimes dated from Fordoun; at others, from Kincardineshire generally; or from Aberdeen. Among these fugitive pieces, which were not republished by Dr. Beattie, there was one composed on his reading the Declaration of War, made on the 17th of May, 1756. It will remind the reader of the Campaign of Addison; and it has been said, that, for vigor and fullness, it will not suffer greatly by a comparison with it. The following are the concluding lines : O, thou Supreme! whose hand the thunder forms, Beattie appears to have judged better of the merits of this piece than his eulogists; and it may serve as a specimen to satisfy us, that we have little reason to find fault with the discrimination which he exercised in selecting from his pieces those which he thought fit to live. Hexameters may have both "vigor and fullness" in them, without having one ray of poetry, and of this no one who reads these lines twice will probably have any doubt. The same thing, indeed, may be discovered from "The Campaign," one half of which is nothing but versified prose. After he had passed four years in the solitude of Fordoun, a vacancy occurring in one of the masterships of the grammar school at Aberdeen, he became a candidate for the situation. He did not however succeed, but acquitted himself so well on the competition, that on a second vacancy happening about a year afterwards, he was requested by the magistrates, who are the electors, to accept the office without any new trial of his qualifications. The removal to the grammar school of Aberdeen, was quickly succeeded by his advancement to a still more important dignity. In 1760, a chair in the Marischal College having become vacant, Mr. Arbuthnot, a gentleman with whom Beattie had contracted strong habits of intimacy, suggested to him the possibility of procuring the appointment for himself. Beattie heard the proposal with some amazement, it never having entered into his imagination to conceive that such a situation could be within his reach; it was, indeed, an immense stride of ambition, for a young man, of only twenty-five years of age, to think of leaping all at once from an under master's place in a grammar school to an university chair. Mr. Arbuthnot, however, willing to try what could be done, |