nized, and that they should be no longer withheld from their place amongst his other poetical writings, to which they would form so valuable an accession.

JAMES BEATTIE.

JAMES BEATTIE was born on the 25th of October, 1735, at Laurencekirk, in the county of Kincardine, in Scotland. His father, who kept a small shop in that place, and rented a little farm near it, is said to have been a man of acquirements superior to his condition. At his death, the management of his concerns devolved on his widow. David, the eldest of her six children, was of an age to assist his mother. James, the youngest, she placed at the parish school of his native village, which about forty years before had been raised to some celebrity by Ruddiman, the grammarian, and was then kept by one Milne. This man had also a competent skill in grammar. His other deficiencies were supplied by the natural quickness of his pupil, and by the attention of Mr. Thomson, the minister of Laurencekirk, who, being a man of learning, admitted young Beattie to the use of his library, and probably animated him by his encourage

ment.

He very early became sensible to the charms of English verse, to which he was first awakened by the perusal of Ogilby's Virgil. Before he was ten years old, he was as well acquainted with that writer and Homer, as the versions of Pope and Dryden could make him. His schoolfellows distinguished him by the name of the Poet.

At the age of fourteen, he was sent to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he attended the Greek class, taught by Dr. Blackwell, author of the Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, and was by him singled out as the most promising of his scholars. The slender pittance spared him by his mother would scarcely have sufficed for his support, if he had not added to it one of the bursaries or pensions that were bestowed on the most deserving candidates. Of a discourse which he was called on to deliver at the Divinity Hall, it was observed, that he spoke poetry in prose. Thomson was censured for a similar impropriety in one of his youthful exercises; but Beattie gained the applause of his audience.

His academical education being completed, on the 1st of August, 1753, he was satisfied with the humble appointment of parish-clerk and schoolmaster at the village of Fordoun, about six miles distant from Laurencekirk. Here he attracted the notice of Mr. Garden, at that time sheriff of the county, and afterwards one of the Scotch judges, with the appellation

U

of Lord Gardenstown. In a romantic glen near his house, he chanced to find Beattie with pencil and paper in his hand; and, on questioning him, discovered that he was engaged in the composition of a poem. Mr. Garden desired to see some of his other poems; and doubting whether they were his own productions, requested him to translate the invocation to Venus at the opening of Lucretius, which Beattie did in such a manner as to remove his incredulity. In this retirement, he also became known to Lord Monboddo, whose family seat was in the parish; and a friendly intercourse ensued, which did not terminate till the death of that learned but visionary man. In 1758, he was removed from his employment at Fordoun, to that of usher in the Grammar School at Aberdeen, for which he had been an unsuccessful competitor in the preceding year, but was now nominated without the form of a trial.

At Aberdeen, his heart seems to have taken up its rest; for no temptations could afterwards seduce him for any length of time to quit it. The professorship of Natural Philosophy in the Marischal College, where he had lately been a student, being vacant in 1760, Mr. Arbuthnot, one of his friends, exerted himself with so much zeal in the behalf of Beattie, that he obtained that appointment; although the promotion was such as his most sanguine wishes did not aspire to. Soon after he was further gratified, by

being permitted to exchange it for the professorship of Moral Philosophy and Logic, for which he thought himself better fitted. In discharge of the duties belonging to his new function, he immediately entered on a course of lectures, which, as appears from his diary in the possession of Sir William Forbes, he repeated with much diligence for more than thirty years.

This occupation could not have been very favourable to his poetical propensity. He had, since his twentieth year, been occasionally a contributor of verse to the Scots Magazine; and in 1760, he published a collection of poems, inscribed to the Earl of Erroll, to whose intervention he had been partly indebted for the office he held in the college. Though the number of these pieces was not considerable, he omitted several of them in subsequent editions, and among others a translation of Virgil's Eclogues, some specimens of which, adduced in a letter written by Lord Woodhouselee, author of the Principles of Translation, will stand a comparison with the parallel passages in Dryden and Warton.

In the summer of 1763, his curiosity led him for the first time to London, where Andrew Millar the bookseller, was almost his only acquaintance. Of this journey no particular is recorded but that he visited Pope's house at Twickenham.

In 1765, having sent a letter of compliment to Gray,

then on a visit to the Earl of Strathmore, he was invited to Glammis Castle, the residence of that nobleman, to meet the English poet, in whom he found such a combination of excellence as he had hitherto been a stranger to. This appears from a letter written to Sir William Forbes, his faithful friend and biographer, with whom his intimacy commenced about the same time.

I am sorry you did not see Mr. Gray on his return; you would have been much pleased with him. Setting aside his merit as a poet, which, however, in my opinion, is greater than any of his contemporaries can boast, in this or in any other nation, I found him possessed of the most exact taste, the soundest judgment, and the most extensive learning. He is happy in a singular facility of expression. His conversation abounds in original observations, delivered with no appearance of sententious formality, and seeming to arise spontaneously, without study or premeditation. I passed two very agreeable days with him at Glammis, and found him as easy in his manners, and as communicative and frank as I could have wished.

Gray could not have requited him with such excess of admiration; but continued during the rest of his life to regard Beattie with affection and esteem.

It was not till the spring of this year, when his Judgment of Paris was printed, that he again appeared before the public as an author. This piece he