LIFE OF JAMES BEATTIE. LL.D. By J. S. GIBB. JAMES BEATTIE, the author of "The Minstrel," was baptized at Laurencekirk, November 25, 1735, ten years before the thunder-cloud of war swept across Scotland, to dissolve in blood on the desolate heath of Culloden. His father, also bearing the name of James, had a small retail shop in Laurencekirk-at that time, and for thirty years after, merely a clachan or kirktown of six or seven houses. In addition to the shop, he rented Boroughmuir Hills, a small farm to the south-east of the village. By the united aid of these he strove to rear his family of six children, of whom James was the youngest, in that system of healthful domestic training, to which, in Scotland, the youth of a former age owed so much. In these efforts he was ably seconded by his wife, Jane Watson, who is said to have been a woman of informed and cultivated mind beyond the common. Indeed Beattie was fortunate in both his parents. "His father," says the writer of the article "Beattie" in the 99 66 'Biographie Universelle," was a simple farmer, but that did not hinder him from indulging a natural taste which he felt for poesy they preserve yet in his family some pieces of verse of his composition." This was written in 1811. In the life of Alexander Ross, schoolmaster of Lochlee in the same time remitting fifty guineas to the author as the price of the copyright. Sir William's opinion proved to be well founded. The book was a triumphant success. It was read everywhere, especially in England, and ran through a number of editions in a short time. It procured for its author two separate and comparatively lengthened interviews with royalty itself, followed by something more tangible still-a royal pension of £200 a year. He had his portrait first painted, and then presented to him, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which he is represented sitting in philosophic composure, clad in his doctor's robes, while the Angel of Truth, a most graceful and beautiful figure, is seen in the background driving error and sophistry down to the shades below. The University of Oxford bestowed upon him, unsolicited, the honorary title of LL.D. Besides, the "Essay on Truth" procured for its author the friendship of many eminent persons in England; among others Dr Samuel Johnson, Beilby Porteus, bishop of London, Lord Lyttelton, Mrs Montague, &c. He was offered preferment in the Church of England, if he would enter her pale. This he declined, from motives that do him honour. But though he refused to leave his chosen sphere of labour, he availed himself of the friendships thus formed, by frequently visiting England to reinvigorate his bodily frame by its softer and more genial climate, and to soothe and tranquillise his mind by experiencing the delights and pleasures of friendly intercourse. These relaxations were now become doubly necessary, from the cankerworm that had blighted and destroyed his domestic happiness; thus increasing, if not causing, a tenderness of constitution, which frequently rendered the least exertion painful and distressing in an extreme degree. This constitutional weakness took the shape of vertigo, or giddiness, from which he was seldom free during the rest of his life. Knowing this, it is amazing what an amount of work he accomplished. He kept up a voluminous correspondence with friends on personal and literary subjects; he joined readily in any movement affecting the community of which he was a member; he was at the service of any friend who required his aid, literary or otherwise; he was most assiduously and minutely attentive to his work as a professor; he carefully superintended the education and training of his children; and yet, amid all these conflicting calls upon his attention, with a constant burden of domestic care hanging over him and weighing him to the earth, and with a frame weakened by chronic disease, he could yet find time and inclination for the composition of works that the world will not willingly let die. In 1771 appeared the first part of "The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius," and in 1774 the second-a production that, by its delicacy of imagination, by the quiet beauty of its pastoral scenes, and by the exquisite melody of its language, at once gave its author an honourable place among the poets of Great Britain-a position which, most deservedly, he still retains. Dr Beattie had two sons, James and Montague. To their mental and moral training he devoted himself with all the earnest solicitude of a Christian parent. Nor had his pains been fruitless. The eldest was a young man of wondrous promise-so much so, that, at the request of the Senatus of the College, the Crown in 1787 appointed him colleague and successor to his father, while yet but in the nineteenth year of his age. The father's heart was bound up in his son, who returned his love with the eagerness and uniformity of deep filial affection. But, alas! the rarest plants are oftenest the first to droop before the cold breath of the pale horseman. James Hay Beattie died in 1790; and deep was the sorrow of the bereaved father. In one of his letters of this period, alluding to a monument erected to his dead son, he says: "I often dream of the grave that is under it; I saw with some satisfaction on a late occasion that it is very deep, and capable of holding my coffin laid on that which is already in it." He had still one son left, and round him his affections gathered with increased earnestness. Though without the extra capabilities of his elder brother, the talents of Montague Beattie were more than respectable; while his loving heart and lively disposition made up for the want of dazzling accomplishments. He was a universal favourite. Cheered by his watchful assiduity, Dr Beattie laboured on at his accustomed work. In 1790 appeared the first volume of his "Elements of Moral Science;" and in 1793 the second. These, with "Essays on Poetry and Music, Laughter and Ludicrous Composition, and the Use of the Classics," "Dissertations, Moral and Critical," and "Evidences of the Christian Religion," comprised the substance of his lectures to his students. For them, too, he drew up a small brochure on Scotticisms, which contains some shrewd verbal criticism. The only other works with which the name of Beattie is connected are one or two papers in The Lounger, a letter to Dr Blair on a proposed revisal of the Scottish metrical version of the Psalms, and an account of the life and character of his son, James Hay Beattie. This testimony of his paternal love was Beattie's last literary exertion. It was finished January 18, 1791. Five years afterwards Montague Beattie died. This stroke was more than his father's mind could bear. His intellect even was touched. He lost all memory of his son's death; would search through the house for him; and, not finding him, would say to his niece and housekeeper, Mrs Glennie, "You may think it strange, but I must ask you if I have a son, and where he is." He could only be brought to recollection by a recital of the sufferings of Montague's deathbed. When he looked for the last time upon the dead body, he said, "Now I have done with the world." And so it was in truth. He gave up all study, all recreation, and all correspondence with friends. The following year he became quite a cripple with rheumatism; and in 1799 he had a stroke of palsy, from which he never entirely recovered; and, finally, on the 18th of August 1803, he was released from his sufferings by the kindly hand of death. Dr Beattie's intercourse with the world was marked by the courtesy and forbearance of a Christian gentleman; or, if in aught, during the heat of controversy, he overstepped the bounds of propriety, the love he bore to virtue was in fault. In temper he was naturally gentle and placable; but from his close and long-continued study of polemics, it was noticed that, towards the close of his public life, he was in the smallest possible degree inclined to acerbity and sharpness. In his last years all this dross was purified; the original metal alone remained, gentle, radiant, and without alloy. In his character as a husband and father, Beattie manifested the same sterling qualities, though in a much higher and more attractive degree. Gentle and affectionate, ruling by love rather than fear, he had yet that clear-sighted firmness which kept him from injuring by over-indulgence. Sorely tried as he was by the melancholy fate of his wife, he never murmured nor complained. Even when the fondest hopes of his heart were buried in the grave of his sons, he bowed in silent submission to the decrees of an all-wise Providence. Though the stroke was hard to bear, there was no loud, rebellious grief. He calmly waited for the time when he would rejoin his lost ones, never more to leave them. Were we to sum up in a single word his character as a man, we could not better express it than the poet himself has done, in a stanza of an epitaph, written while in Fordoun : "Forget my frailties, thou art also frail; Forgive my lapses, for thyself mayest fall; As an author, Beattie is distinguished in his prose compositions for the smooth flow of his language and the easy gracefulness of his thoughts. In controversy he sometimes, |