The Poetical Works of James Beattie. James Beattie

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2

According to Bower, Beattie was supported at college by the generosity of his brother David, who accompanied him to Aberdeen, when he first quitted Laurencekirk to commence his course at the University. "The peculiar mode of their conveyance to Aberdeen is a matter of very trifling moment. It may not be unacceptable to some, however, to be informed, that they rode on one horse; and at a season of the year not the most agreeable for undertaking a journey (when good roads were unknown in Scotland) of thirty English miles." —Life of Beattie, 1804, p. 17.

3

Life of Homer, Court of Augustus, &c.

4

Bower's Life of Beattie, 1804, p. 89.

5

Ibid. p. 100.

6

Lord Gardenstone was himself a votary of the muses, though his verses are now forgotten. As a satirical poet he is far from contemptible.

7

Robert Arbuthnot, Esq., Secretary to the Board of Trustees for Fisheries, Manufactures, and improvements in Scotland, who resided chiefly at Peterhead, where he carried on business as a merchant; a person of considerable taste and learning. He was nearly related to the famous Dr. Arbuthnot, the friend of Pope and Swift.

8

Sir William Forbes says it "had a rapid sale." Mr. A. Chalmers, however (Poets, vol. xviii. p. 519), doubts if it was ever published for sale, except in Beattie's Poems, 1766, in the Advertisement to which we are told that it "appeared in a separate pamphlet in the beginning of the year 1765." I have been unable to meet with the original edition.

9

I have been told that the poem consisted originally of only four stanzas, and that the two beautiful ones with which it now concludes were added, a considerable time after the others were written, at the request of Mrs. Carnegie, of Charlton, near Montrose. This lady, whose maiden name was Scott, was authoress of a poem called Dunotter Castle, printed in the second edition of Colman and Thornton's Poems by Eminent Ladies.

'Pentland Hills', for which Beattie wrote The Hermit, was an air composed by Mr. Tytler, of Woodhouselee, in imitation of the old Scottish melodies.

10

On one occasion, I have been informed, she took some China jars from the chimney-piece, and carefully arranged them on the top of the parlour door, in order that when Beattie opened it, they might fall upon his head.

11

Beattie's Verses were printed in the Aberdeen Journal, together with an introductory letter in prose also by him, signed "Oliver Oldstile." The writer of the Life of Ross, in that pleasing compilation, Lives of Scottish Poets, 3 vols. 1822, says: "The author of both productions was generally understood to be Dr. Beattie; and they have remained so long ascribed to him without contradiction, that there can be little doubt of their being from his pen." Part iii. p. 107. There is no doubt about the matter; Beattie owns them in a letter to Blacklock. – Forbes's Life of Beattie, vol. i. p. 153. ed. 1807. The Fortunate Shepherdess is a poem of great merit: to the second edition of it (and I believe to all subsequent editions) Beattie's verses are prefixed.

12

Dr. Reid.

13

Dr. Campbell.

14

Mr. Hume, who at an early period had been the patron of Blacklock. Long before the date of this letter they had ceased to have any intercourse.

15

"I have often wished," says Beattie, in a note on Gray's letter, "to alter this same word [garniture], but have not yet been able to hit upon a better."

16

See p. xv.

17

At a subsequent period, after the king had granted him a pension, he received two offers of church preferment in England – the one from Mr. Pitt, of Dorsetshire, of a living in that county worth £150 per annum, the other from Dr. Thomas, Bishop of Winchester, of a living in Hants, valued at £500 a year – neither of which he would accept. In the letter wherein he declines the second noble offer, he thus expresses himself:

"I wrote the 'Essays on Truth' with the certain prospect of raising many enemies, with very faint hopes of attracting the public attention, and without any views of advancing my fortune. I published it, however, because I thought it might probably do a little good, by bringing to nought, or, at least, lessening the reputation of that wretched system of sceptical philosophy, which had made a most alarming progress, and done incredible mischief to this country. My enemies have been at great pains to represent my views, in that publication, as very different: and that my principal, or only motive was to make a book, and, if possible, to raise myself higher in the world. So that, if I were now to accept preferment in the church, I should be apprehensive that I might strengthen the hands of the gainsayer, and give the world some ground to believe that my love of truth was not quite so ardent, or so pure, as I had pretended.

"Besides, might it not have the appearance of levity and insincerity, and, by some, be construed into a want of principle, if I were, at these years (for I am now thirty-eight), to make such an important change in my way of life, and to quit, with no other apparent motive than that of bettering my circumstances, that church of which I have hitherto been a member? If my book has any tendency to do good, as I flatter myself it has, I would not, for the wealth of the Indies, do any thing to counteract that tendency; and I am afraid that tendency might, in some measure be counteracted (at least in this country) if I were to give the adversary the least ground to charge me with inconsistency. It is true, that the force of my reasonings cannot be really affected by my character; truth is truth, whoever be the speaker; but even truth itself becomes less respectable, when spoken, or supposed to be spoken, by insincere lips.

"It has also been hinted to me, by several persons of very sound judgment, that what I have written, or may hereafter write in favour of religion, has a chance of being more attended to, if I continue a layman, than if I were to become a clergyman. Nor am I without apprehensions (though some of my friends think them ill founded) that, from entering so late in life, and from so remote a province, into the Church of England, some degree of ungracefulness, particularly in pronunciation, might adhere to my performances in public, sufficient to render them less pleasing, and consequently less useful."

18

So Beattie names the figures in one of his letters; but Sir William Forbes tells us they are supposed to mean Sophistry, Scepticism, and Infidelity. The worthy Baronet proceeds to observe:

"Because one of these was a lean figure and the [an] other a fat one, people of lively imaginations pleased themselves with finding in them the portraits of Voltaire and Mr. Hume. But Sir Joshua, I have reason to believe, had no such thought when he painted those figures."

Surely Sir William had never read all the letters which he printed in his Life of Beattie, for in vol. ii. p. 42, octavo ed., we find the great painter writing to our poet as follows, in February, 1774:

"Mr. Hume has heard from somebody that he is introduced in the picture, not much to his credit; there is only a figure, covering his face with his hands, which they may call Hume or any body else; it is true it has a tolerable broad back. As for Voltaire, I intended he should be one of the group."

This fine picture is now at Aberdeen, in the possession of Beattie's niece, Mrs. Glennie.

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When Beattie was in London, in 1773, and when it was doubtful whether government would ever make any provision for him, his friends there set on foot a subscription СКАЧАТЬ