to serious contemplation. He little knows the nature of her Grace's mind. The truth is, she is naturally of a se rious and religious temper; and her religion in general expresses itself in acts of rational devotion, in sup porting the cause of virtue and truth, and in works of beneficence very wide. ly extended. Not only does she employ much of her fortune in welljudged acts of charity, but I may say she writes more in recommending fit persons to the good offices of her friends in power, than some professed authors do for their daily bread. But a mind of this turn might readily, during bad health and low spi. rits, indulge too much in melancholy contemplation; and such was actually the case when the advice now mentioned was given. But from the gaiety and festivity of her Grace in public, the writer concludes there was little need to advise her against excessive seriousness. I have, how ever, had opportunity of knowing when the Duchess has been suffering severely with habitual head-ach, that she has yet, during a part of those very days, dispatched more effectual study, and business, than many persons who had nothing else to occupy their minds; and at other parts of the same days she has proved the animating spirit of cheerfulness and social happiness. It would be rare to find one who can so effectually suppress all appearance of pain and sorrow, as she can do, when she thinks her duty to society requires it. As to her friendship to Dr Beat tie, it was real, steady, and uninterrupted, to the day of his death. Nay what is remarkable, she was in his room, on a visit of tender friendship, while he lay a-dying; and ever since his death she never mentions his name without evident marks of respect and affection. That she should therefore expose his letters to the derision of her company is most unlikely; nor is it very probable that a person of

her mind would often have in her company any one capable of jeering at Dr Beattie's sentiments: and if, in the promiscuous assemblage that must sometimes be collected, such an one should happen to be present, she could easily silence his impertinence, or dexterously lead the conversation another way.

After what I have said of the characters of these two eminent per. sons, it is almost needless to refute the mean slander, that Dr Beattie "danced, or rather dangled attendance upon the Duchess, during the few years that she thought it worth her while to attend to him, in a manner not consistent with the dignity of phi losophy, &c." That Dr Beattie paid a respectful attention to the Duchess of Gordon is what he was proud to avow; and that it was repaid with equal respect, is not less certain. But that he paid any mean attention, unworthy of his character, I positively deny. Could he have been capable of it, her Grace esteemed him too much to have allowed it. Why indeed should he fawn on any person? He needed it not for courting the company of the great; for of that his merit had secured him an abun dant share spontaneously offered.— For worldly emolument he did not court any one; as may appear from his conduct in regard to the offers made to him by the Queen, by Bishop Thomas, and many others. The conversation of the Duchess of Gordon then could be his only motive, and to obtain that he had no need for mean observances. But what is still a stronger proof, how could Dr Beattie have preserved to the last the uninterrupted esteem of Sir William Forbes, and of the highest characters in the nation, had he been capable of such mean conduct? the thing is impossible. That contemptible slander could only have arisen from the circumstance of Dr Beattie's being invited, among a select party, every

night, to supper with the Duchess during her stay at one time in Aberdeen. In that feast of the mind all the wise and good who knew of it rejoiced by sympathy; but the vain and foolish envied the parties, and raised the absurd tale. Dr Beattie was admired, esteemed, and beloved, oyall good persons who really knew him; but, as usually happens in such cases, he was envied and hated by a party. The honest and respectable labours of Sir William Forbes have fixed his fame on an immovable basis. The Duchess of Gordon, also, though admired for her wit and beauty, esteemed for a character appropriate to her high rank, and blessed for her benignity, yet has not escaped the tongue of malice. Our sex naturally regarded. her with veneration and affection, as did the honest and candid of the other. Many of her own sex, however, could not forgive her for so far out. shining themselves. But if such disappointed females found any consolation for their inferiority in low slanders, it ill becomes grave reviewers, who profess to point out and patronise truth, to endeavour to give currency and permanency to base falsehoods. I have thought it incumbent upon me, therefore, who have been honoured with the friend. ship both of Dr Beattie and of the Duchess of Gordon, to bear testimony to the truth in the above respects, from my own knowledge, so that no person may persist in propagating these false and foolish stories through ignorance. Those who have been misled merely by popular reports, if they know me, will probably alter their sentiments: and if those who speak evil of these exalted charac. ters, through malignity, do not cease their practices, I ought not to be disappointed; nor shall I trouble them or myself any more, even though they should honour me also with a share of their contempt and abuse.

And now, Sir, I have answered the

question, which you, in your anxiety for the honour of Dr Beattie as a great and good man, proposed to me. In return, I have to beg of you as a favour, that you will make these observations as public as you can, that some reparation may be made to the injured character of two eminent persons, who have deserved well of all they could, and ill of none. I am, dear Sir,

Respectfully yours,

WILLIAM LAING M. D. Minister of St Peter's Chapel, Peterhead.

The publication of this attack on Dr Beattie's name appears to indicate an equal degree of malevolence and mental imbecility.

That unfounded scandal should be regarded as complete evidence. of demerit in a person of the highest literary eminence, and of a character till now unimpeached, is an outrage upon justice too gross to be endured. If such were universally to be received as the criterion by which talents and virtues were to be estimated, the most illustrious and exalted of our species might be embalmed in infamy. It betrays a credulity unusually susceptible, when a man takes the splenetic effusions of tea-table envy as the guide of his opinion: and I see little to admire in the sagacity, and less to approve in the morality, which cannot, or will not, discriminate between the servility of a sycophant and the affectionate kindness of friendship. And what, let me ask the reviewer, was the nature of the friendship which subsisted between Dr Beattie and the Duchess of Gordon? I produce to the world, the testimony of onewhom nobody will venture to contradict, that it was such an intercourse as was equally honourable to the Lady of rank and to the Man of letters ;that it was the reciprocal interchange of esteem and kindness, which takes place between congenial minds when they meet in Society;-that

it was a voluntary offering of applause to genius and to worth, on the one side; and on the other, the grateful but independent homage of a gentleman and a scholar to the brightest qualities that adorn the female-character. If in this there be any thing which could for a moment afford room for misconception, it must be the circumstance that the Lady was in an elevated rank: but although I do not think the possession of such accidental greatness deserved, or would have obtained the veneration of a mind like Dr Beattie's, I do not see why it should deprive a titled personage of the most precious and the proudest enjoyments of life. Perhaps, indeed, Dr Beattie may have mistaken the character of the Duchess of Gordon: but I should consider the man who had the most enviable opportunities of knowing it to be fully as well qualified to form an accurate estimate of its nature as the good citizens of Aberdeen, and their humble echo,-a writer in the Literary Journal.

Of all the crimes which the laws do not punish, there is none more atrocious than that which robs departed genius of its honour,-the anticipated treasure which, in moments of depression, is its dearest consola tion, and, too often, its only reward. To vilify the memory of him whose lips are scaled in eternal silence, to pour dishonour on the tomb, is indeed a mixture of cowardice and of wickedness for which language wants an appropriate epithet. Edinburgh. 7 7th Oct. 1806.

}

A. P.

SCOTTISH REVIEW. I. The Life of James Beattie, L. L. D. late Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen. By Sir William Forbes Bart. 2 vols. 4to. 21. 123. 6d. Constable & Co.

WE do not remember to have opened any work with more fa.

vourable prepossessions than we have done in the case of the present mémoir. The subject of it had become the object of a peculiar interest, both by the merit of his writings, by the beneficence of their tendency, and the amiable feelings which they, expressed. In regard to the author, whose singular worth has been so long known to the inhabitants of this city, it was agreeable to discover, both the respect he entertained for the memory of his departed friend, and that a life of useful industry and active benevolence were in him dignitied and adorned by the pursuit of letters and philosophy.

Considering the character of the writer as a man of business, and of the world, it cannot be supposed that his composition should be polished and adorned like that of a professed author. But he every where displays good sense, a careful attention to matters of fact, and a sincere at. tachment to the friend whose history he records; nor where the subject requires it, is his style deficient in energy and animation. And we may easily forgive a slight tincture of not unamiable vanity, which prompts him studiously to record the names of persons distinguished by genius and virtue with whom he enjoyed the intercourse of private friendship.

The greater part of these volumes is occupied with the letters of Dr Beattie. The worthy Baronet, following the example of Mason in his life of Gray, after giving an account of Dr Beattie's early life, has done little more than connect these letters by his narrative. We have perused them with a degree of pleasure which we have not always derived from the correspondence of literary men. Many, especially of the last age, have distinguished themselves by an affectation of smartness, and of saying every thing in a flippant, half-witty style, of little value, even where it appears in per

fection (as it does in the writings of Lady Mary Montague) but which is

ex

extremely aukward in the mouth of a recluse scholar. Such appears to us to be the fault of those of Pope and most of his contemporaries; nor are Gray's altogether free from the same blemish. Beattie indeed, where he attempts wit, either in prose or poetry, always fails; but the attempt is rare, and his letters are more frequently expressive only of unaffected good sense and natural feeling. Good sense indeed appears to us to be more characteristic of Dr Beattie's under standing than any extensive philosophical talents, so that we are disposed to prefer his letters, where it only is required, to most of his other prose compositions *

Dr Beattie was born at Lawrence kirk in Kincardineshire, then a very small village, though since, chiefly we believe through the exertions of Lord Gardenstone it has become a place of considerable importance. His fat ther was a small farmer, of very 're spectable character. At an early age he was sent to the parish school, and began to display his poetical genius. It is said to have been first roused by Ogilvy's translation of Virgil. Among his school fellows he went by the name of the Poet, and used, often, in the night-time, to get out of bed, and walk about his chamber, in order to write down any poetical thought that had struck his fancy.

In the year 1749, he went to the university of Aberdeen, and gained one of those bursaries which are bestored by a trial of merit. Here he was particularly noticed by Dr Blackwell, Professor of Greek, and author of several learned publications, who made him a present of a book, with an inscription importing that he considered him as the best of his scholars. He attended also the divinity lectures, when it was observed of his discourses, as it had been of Thomson's, that he spoke poetry in prose,

On finishing his course of study at the university, he was appointed

Oct. 1806.

to the humble office of schoolmaster of Fordoun, a small village about six miles from Lawrencekirk. Here he continued four years, which, the duties of his office excepted, were spent in solitude and meditation. Our author has given a very interesting account of what may be called the poetical education of the future bard, which we cannot forbear extrac ting.

In this obscure situation he must have

passed many of his hours in solitude; for, except that of Mr Forbes, the parish minister, who shewed him great kindness, and in whose family, he frequently visited, he had scarcely any other society than that of the neighbouring peasantry, from whose conversation he information. But he had a never-failcould derive little amusement, and no ing resource in his own mind, 'in those meditations which he loved to indulge, amidst the beautiful and sublime scenery of that neighbourhood, which furnished him with endless amusement. At a sidence, a deep and extensive glen, finesmall distance from the place of his rely cloathed with wood, runs up into the mountains. Thither he frequently repaired, and there several of his earliest pieces were written. From that wild and romantic spot he drew, as from the life, some of the finest descriptions, and most beautiful pictures of nature, in his heard to say, for instance, that the deHe has been poetical compositions. scription of the owl, in his charming poem on "Retirement,"

t

"Whence the scar'd owl, on pinions grey,

"Break's from the rustling boughs, "And down the lone vale sails away

"To more profound repose."

was drawn after real nature. And the seventeenth stanza of the second book of" the Minstrel," in which he so feelingly describes the spot of which he most approved, for his place of sepulture, is so very exact a picture of the situation of the churchyard of Lawrencekirk, and in which is the school house where which stands near to his mother's house, he was daily taught, that he must certainly have had it in his view at the time he wrote the following beautiful lines,

66 "Let

ly on my grave.

It was his supreme delight to saunter in the fields the live long night, contemplating the sky, and marking the approach of day; and he used to describe with peculiar animation the pleasure The received from the soaring of the lark in a summer morning, A beautiful landscape, which he has magnificently described in the twentieth stanza of the first book of "the Minstrel," corresponds exactly with what must have presented itself to his poetical imagination, on those occasions, at the approach of the rising sun, as he would view the grandeur of that scene from the hill in the neighbourhood of his native village. The high hill which rises to the west of Fordoun would, in a misty morning, sup. ply him with one of the images so beautifully described in the twenty-first stanza. And the twentieth stanza of the second book of "the Minstrel" describes a night - scene unquestionably drawn from nature, in which he probably had in view Homer's sublime descrip tion of the moon, in the eighth book of the Iliad, so admirably translated by Pope, that an eminent critic has not scrupled to declare it to be superior to the original. He used, himself, to tell, that it was from the top of a high hill in the neighbourhood that he first beheld the ocean, the sight of which, he declared, made the most lively impression on his mind.

It is pleasing, I think, to contemplate these his early habits, so congenial to the feelings of a poetical and warm ima. gination; and, therefore, I trust I shall

* Melmoth's Letters of Sir Thomas Fitzosborn, letter xx. p. 85.

be forgiven for having dwelt on them so long.

His first patron was the late Lord Gardenstown, who being at that time sheriff of the county of Kincardine, resided occasionally at Woodstock, a house in the neighbourhood of Fordoun. To Mr Garden, Beattie became accidentally known, by his having found him one day in his favourite glen, employed in writing with a pencil. On enquiring what he was about, and finding that he was employed in the composition of a poem, Mr Garden's curiosity was attracted, and from that period he took the young bard under, his protection. Dr Beattie has been frequently heard to mention an anecdote which took place in the early part of his acquaintance with that gentleman. Mr Garden, having seen some of his pieces in manuscript, and entertaining some doubt of their being entirely of his own composition, in order to satisfy himself of the abilities of the young poet, asked him, with politeness, to translate the invocation to Venus from the first book of Lucretius. In compliance with this request, Beattie retired into the adjoining wood, and in no long time produced the translation, bearing all the marks of original composition, for it was much blotted with alterations and corrections. It was printed in the first collection of Dr Beattie's poems in the year 1760, but omitted in all the subsequent edi tions.

He also became known at this time to Lord Monboddo (whose family seat is in the parish of Fordoun,) with whom he always maintained a friendly intercourse, although they essentially differed in some very material points, as must be very apparent to those who are conversant with their writings. P. 19.

This solitary and rural situation, in which he was placed during the most susceptible period of life, doubtless tended to strengthen that pensive cast, that devotion to the beauties of nature, and that tender melancholy by which his genius was

characterised.

In 1758 Beattie became usher to the grammar school of Aberdeen; and however small the promotion may appear, it was yet attended