BEATTIE, JAN1ES, an excellent poet and es sayist, was born on the 5th of November 1736, in the parish of Laurencekirk, Kincardineshire, Scotland. His father kept a small retail shop in the village of that parish, and at the same time rented a small farm in the neighbourhood, in which his forefathers had lived for many generations. The poet's mother was left a widow when young Beattie was only ten years of age ; but the loss of a protector was happily sup plied by his brother David, who sustained him in his school education, till he obtained, by his promising abilities, a bursary or exhibition at Marischal college, Aberdeen. Here lie studied Greek under Professor Blackwell, author of two works, entitled, the Court 9f Augustus, and the Life of Homer ; a man grie vously infected with the pedantry of Lord Shaftes hury's style; but possessed of considerable learning, and meriting mention in Beattie's life as the first who encouraged his early genius. Having taken the de. gree of master of arts, at the end of four years atten dance at the university, our poet filled the humble situation of schoolmaster in the neighbouring parish of Fordun. His employment here did not preclude him from that slight attendance to the study of divi nity which the preparation for holy orders requires in Scotland, nor from occasionally cultivating his muse. : Never did poetical talent ripen so slowly as with Beattie. Till the age of 25 he wrote indifferent verses; and within ten years from that period, he was, excepting Goldsmith, the purest and most majestic poet of his own time. Yet his early and indifferent pro ductions, which he transmitted to the Scottish Maga zine, gained him a little local celebrity. Mr Garden, a Scottish lawyer of some taste and ingenuity, after wards Lord Gardenstone, and at that time sheriff of Kincardincshire,•afforded him a sort of patronage, and introduced him to the tables of the gentry in that neighbourhood; an honour. not often extended to the. humble teacher of a parish school. In 1757, a va cancy occurred in the grammar school of Aberdeen, and Beattie stood competitor. He was foiled by a candidate who surpassed him in the minutiae of Latin grammar, but though unsuccessful, he retired with out disgrace; and a vacancy in the same schoorsoon after occurring, he was appointed without a trial. In.this new .situation his reputation extend ed with the sphere of his acquaintance ; he became known by his conversation and talents, among a dis cerning community ; and at 24 years of age, we find him obtaining, through the reputation of those abili ties, the professorship.of moral philosophy in the Marischal college of Aberdeen ; a place in which he became the associate of such eminent men as Dr Reid, Dr Campbell, and Dr Gregory, who then graced the university. in 1760, he published a small collection of poems, the most of which he was afterwards ashamed to.print, in company with his Minstrel. He actually bought up and destroyed as many copies as he could find of this unhappy volume in the days of his established fame. In 1763, he made his first visit
to London, but he seems at that time to have been unnoticed and unknown. In 1766, he married a Miss Dunn, a woman of some beauty and accomplishments, but with whom his union proved an abundant source of domestic misery—the dreadful malady of an here, ditary madness, which at last made it necessary to confine her, for a long time showed itself equivocally before it came to a crisis, in the caprice of her dispo sitions, and the inquietude of her temper.. In 1770, he published his Essay on Truth; and in the follow, ing year, the first part of his exquisite poem the strcl.
. During the summer of the latter year he paid a second visit to London, which he renewed in 1773. During this last visit he was made a doctor, of laws by the university of Oxford, and obtained the king's warrant for a pension of £200 a-year.. The.honours which were paid to him during this year, made it, at ' least in his own the most distinguishing era of his life. He was courted by peers and bishops as the most able champion of truth. The English church men and the orthodox gentry had been long indignant at the writings of Hume and the Scottish sceptics, and zealously applauded an antagonist who had un derstood or answered Hume no better than them selves. It did not occur to those pious people, that the scepticism which Beattie had answered by abuse and apostrophes, related to abstract questions wholly inapplicable to practical virtue or vice ; and they for got that Berkeley, at least as good a Christian as any of themselves, had gone half way in the very scepti . cism which Hume inculcated. Dr Reid, who has combated Hume with the hard sinews of argument and metaphysics, was not half so popular a champion to the church and lay alarmists at infidelity. He was not pathetic, outrageous, or abusive, and he required the trouble of thinking and study to follow him ; a pain which is ....holly spared to the readers of Beattie's Essay on Truth. At this flattered period of his life, Beattie was introduced to their majesties at Kew, and spent • an hour in familiar conversation with them. • The king congratulated him on having refuted Hume, and ruined the sale of his book. In the aristocracy , of literature, however, kings themselves have no pow e• of conferring rank; and while we admire a vener able sovereign encouraging and communing with an amiable man of letters, yet when we hear it announced in the royal closet, that Mr Hume's publishers had . been hurt by the writings of Beattie, we are apt to call to mind how seldom kings are told the truth. To have sunk the poet in the philosopher in com mending him, seems to be absolute satire. Yet though much of Beattie's splendid reception among the peers and bishops, was owing to his,over-rated merits as a metaphysician,, there was much of it also due to his amiable manners and his genius.