- At the end of the year 1773, there was a proposal for tranferring him to a professorship in the university of Edinburgh, which he declined. The reason which he _ assigns in one of his letters, was the fearof hostility from . his infidel enemies ; a reason which has been exposedve. ry severely in a harsh. review of his life. There may be something in this declaration of the soreness respect ing his literary opponents, which was certainly a weak ness in Beattie ; but there is nothing in it worthy of serious reproach. The disciples of the sceptical phi losophy are, not entirely exempt from the human weakness of hating their literary antagonists ; and if . Beattie dreaded to encounter that spirit in Edinburgh, we need not wonder at his preferring to remain amidst the congenial orthodoxy of Aberdeen, rather than to trust himself among strangers, nor at his giving the reason for it in a confidential letter. His refusal of aliving•n the church of England, proffered to him by Dr Porteous in 1774, was dictated by disinterest ed motives, which have never been called in question. After this, there is little incident.in his life. He pub lished one volume of Essays in 1776, and another in 1783; alittle treatise on the Evidences of Christianity, in 1786 ; and the outline of his Academical Lectures in 1790. In the same year he edited at Edinburgh Addison's papers, and. rote a preface.. He was very unfortunate in his family. The situation of his wife precluded him from the enjoyment of visitors in his house at the time when his increased circumstances would have allowed him to exercise a limited hospi tality. The loss of his son, -James Hay Beattie, a young man of highly promising talents, and who had been actually conjoined with him in the professorship, was the greatest, though not the last, calamity of his life. - He made an effort to relieve his spirits by an 'other journey to England, and some of his letters from thence bespeak-a temporary composure and . cheerfulness; but the wound was never healed. Music was one of the great solaces of his leisure hours; but from that solace lie was cut off by the overwhelming associations which were excited by the amusement which his son and he had shared in common. At the end of six years, his second son, Montague Beattie, was also snatched from him in the flower of manhood. This crowning misfortune appears to have wholly crushed his spirits. With Ins wife in a mad-honse,• his sons dead, and his health broken, he might be par doned for saying, whilst lie looked upon the corpse of his youngest child," I have done with this world." He acted indeed as if be had felt so ; for although he performed the duties of his professorship till with in a short time of his death, he applied to no study, enjoyed no society or amusement, and answered but few letters of his friends. " Yet amidst the depth of his regret, he would sometimes express an acquies cence in his childless fate." How could I have borne," he would say, " to see their elegant minds mangled with madness I" A palsy, which struck him in 1799, terminated his sufferings, after repeated attacks, in 1803. " His person," says a writer of his life in the -Annual ,Register for 1805,-" was of the middle size,
. of a broad square make, which seemed to indicate.a more robust. constitution than lie really had. He was all his life subject to headaches, which, on many oc casions, interrupted his studies. His features were exceedingly regular ; his complexion somewhat dark ; his eyes had more expression than those of any person I ever remember to have seen." Beattie's Philological and Critical Essays are the most pleasing of his prose works. As a critic,.he has been preferred to Blair, by the poet Cowper. With out the severe and chaste dignity of Blair's prose, he is more animated, more diffusive and unequal, more il lustrative and more entertaining. His constitution as-a poet spoilt him for a metaphysician, and his moral phi losophy did no good to his poetry. In his Essay on Truth, he rails at the sceptics in rhapsodies and apos trophes, as if he could exorcise the hard-hearted spirits of metaphysics byanatliemas, or untie the knot of para doxes by cursing the hand which had tied them. .On the other hand; he loads the beautiful poem of The Minstrel, with explanations on free will and providence. A shepberd's son, arid a mountain minstrel, listens to the hermit's discourses, as if he were training,for a chair of. moral philosophy ; and comes to have his doubts cleared up, upon the moral disorder_of the world, at a time of.life when the genuine minstrel is more apt. to be troubled with doubts about the fidelity of his mistress. If .the character of.Edwin was too refined and elevated to be displayed in the tender passion, he might have discoursed with . the hermit on subjects more congenial to the'poetical character than these L. sombre discussions.
The true character of poetical genius is in love with the wild and the wonderful ; it has nothing to do with abstract views of nature, or moral actions ; it believes and enjoys implicitly, and delights neither in creating nor resolving doubts. The actual enjoyments of the poet arc inimitably pourtraycd in the first part of the Minstrel ; in the second part we leave him to the study of ethics, with as little interestas if he were discoursing with Adam Smith on the wealth of na tions, or with Malthus on the checks to population. Yet the moral tenets in the second part, though in aptly placed, are elegantly delivered. The first p3rt of the Minstrel is a gem of the purest water ; Edwin's character is a most interesting portrait of moral beau ty, supported without the aid of drama, dialogue, or action ; yet as finished, distinct, and original, as a dra matic or epic action could have made it. It is won. derful, at the end of sixty stanzas, to find what a new, yet recognizable being we have been made acquaint. ed with,—a being so unlike the world, and yet so na. tural. The writer who described Edwin might well felicitate himself, in the words of the French poet : -heureaz Is genie Qui Sans masque sans cothurne et sans illusion, D'un style simple ct erai fait puler la raison! it n'entend pas pour Ins rctentis la theiitre Des suffrages bruyants dune fouk idolatre; Nais le sage le lit. Le sage quelquefois Pour rercr once lui, s'enfonce dans les boil Et, charad de ses ters, n'en suspend lit lecture Que pour vair les Arets, lea deux et la•nature.