The Poetical Works of James Beattie. James Beattie
by Eminent Ladies.
'Pentland Hills', for which Beattie wrote
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,
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 [
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
"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
"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;
This fine picture is now at Aberdeen, in the possession of Beattie's niece, Mrs. Glennie.
19
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 for this work. "It was a thing," says he, in a letter to Lady Mayne, January, 1774, "of a private nature entirely; projected not by me, but by some of my friends, who had condescended to charge themselves with the whole trouble of it: it was never meant to be made public, nor put into the hands of booksellers, nor carried on by solicitation, but was to be considered as a
20
A spurious edition of his Juvenile Poems, with some which he never wrote, from Dodsley's
21
Perhaps it was not printed till the beginning of the following year. In a letter to Beattie, dated Feb. 1st, 1779, Mrs. Montagu says, "I was much pleased with your pamphlet on Psalmody."
22
He was born in 1768, and was named after James Hay, Earl of Errol, our author's early patron.
23
Writing from Edinburgh, 28th May, 1784, to his niece, Miss Valentine (now Mrs. Glennie), Beattie describes the sensation caused in that city by the performances of Mrs. Siddons. He says that he met her at the house of Lord Buchan; that he played to her many Scotch airs on the violoncello, with which she was much gratified; and that "she sung 'Queen Mary's Complaint' to admiration, and I had the honour to accompany her on the bass." – Forbes's
I am informed, by the incomparable actress in question, that the quotation just given contains an utter falsehood, which, when Forbes's Life of our author first appeared, in 1806, she read with astonishment. She remembers perfectly having been introduced to Beattie at Lord Buchan's, but she is quite certain she did
Qy. Has Beattie's letter been mutilated, the person who transcribed it for the press having by mistake omitted some lines? and do the words "she sung," in the concluding sentence, refer to some other more musical lady, and not to Mrs. Siddons?
24
He was so named after Mrs. Montagu. From one of Beattie's letters,