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announced to the public in a more humble manner than the present state of literature is thought to demand in similar cases. On the 18th of March 1760, not the volume itself, but Proposals for printing original Poems and Translations, were issued. The poems appeared accordingly on Feb. 16, 1761, and were published both in London and Edinburgh. They consisted partly of originals, and partly of the pieces formerly printed in the Scots Magazine, but altered and corrected, a practice which Mr. Beattie carried almost to excess in all his poetical works 3.

The praise bestowed on this volume was very flattering. The English critics, who then bestowed the rewards of literature, considered it as an acquisition to the republic of letters, and pronounced that since Mr. Gray (whom in their opinion Mr. Beattie had chosen for his model) they had not met with a poet of more harmonious numbers, inore pleasing imagination, or more spirited expression. This verdict they endeavoured to confirm by extracts from the Ode to Peace, and the Triumph of Melancholy. But notwithstanding praises which so evidently tended to give a currency to the poems, and which were probably repeated with eagerness by the friends who had encouraged the publication, the author, upon more serious consideration, was so dissatisfied with this volume as to destroy every copy he could procure, and I have been assured by many of his oldest friends that they have in vain endeavoured to obtain a sight of it 5. Nor was this a sudden or splenetic humour in our author. Some years after, when his taste and judgment became fully matured, he refused to acknowledge above four of them, namely Retirement, Ode to Hope, Elegy on a Lady, and the Hares, and these he almost re-wrote before he would permit them to be printed with the Minstrel.

But notwithstanding the lowly opinion of the author, these poems during their first circulation, which was chiefly in manuscript, contributed so much to the general reputation he had acquired, that he was considered as an honour to his country, and deserving of a higher rank among her favoured sons. Accordingly a vacancy happening in Marischal College, his friends made such earnest applications in his behalf, that in September 1760 he was appointed by his late majesty's patent professor of philosophy. His department in this honourable office extended to moral philosophy and logic; and it added, in his mind, a very affecting importance to it, that his was the last course of instruction previous to the students leaving college, and dispersing themselves in the world.

This promotion was sudden and unexpected; and it may be supposed that a youth of twenty-five must be ill prepared to give a course of lectures, and a train of instruction on subjects which have been but imperfectly treated by veteran philosophers. Yet it is evident from his printed works, that most of the subjects which belong to his province, had been familiarized to him by a long course of reading and thinking, and that he had very early accustomed himself to composition; and it is highly probable that he brought into the professor's chair such a mass of materials as might with very little trouble be moulded into shape for his immediate purpose. It is certain, however, that such was his diligence, and such his love of these studies, that within a few years he

3 The translations were from Virgil's Pastorals, the twenty-second Ode of Anacreon, Invocation to Venus from Lucretius, and two Odes of Horace. These he afterwards totally discarded, but they are now added to his other pieces. C.

4 Monthly Review, vol. xxiv. 1761. C.

5 He never spoke of it to his son, and seems to think he had never seen it. C.

was not only enabled to deliver an admirable course of lectures on moral philosophy and logic, but also to prepare for the press those works on which his fame rests; all of which, there is some reason to think, were written, or nearly written, before he gave the world the result of his philosophical studies in the celebrated Essay on Truth. It may be added likewise, that the rank he had now attained in the university entitled him to associate more upon a level with Reid and with Campbell, with Gerard and with Gregory, men whose opinions were in many points congenial, and who have all been hailed by the sister country among the revivers of Scotch literature. Yet their names, it is gratifying to recollect, are but a small part of that catalogue which has, in less than half a century, dispelled national prejudice, and has left none of the effects of comparison except a generous and beneficial emulation. With the gentlemen already mentioned, and a few others, he formed a society, or club, for the discussion of literary and philosophical subjects. A part of their entertainment was the reading a short essay, composed by each member in his turn. It is supposed that the works of Reid, Campbell, Beattie, Gregory and Gerard, or at least the outlines of them, were first discussed in this society, either in the form of essays, or of a question for familiar conversation.

In 1765 Mr. Beattie published The Judgment of Paris, a poem, in 4to. Its design was to prove that virtue alone is capable of affording a gratification adequate to our whole nature, the pursuits of ambition or sensuality promising only partial hap. piness, as being adapted not to our whole constitution, but only to a part of it. So simple a position seems to require the graces of poetry to set it off. The reception of this poem however was unfavourable, and although he added it to a new edition of his poems in 1766, yet it was never again reprinted, and even his biographer has declined reviving its memory by an extract. To this edition of 1766, he added a poem On the talk of erecting a Monument to Churchill in Westminster Hall, which, sir Wm. Forbes says, was first published separately and without a name. That it was printed separately, I am informed on undoubted authority, but I question if it was ever published for sale unless in the above mentioned edition of his poems. The asperity with which these lines are marked, induced his biographer, contrary to his first intention, to omit them, but they are now added to his other poems .

Although Mr. Beattie had now acquired a station in which his talents were displayed with great advantage, and commanded a very high degree of respect, the publication of the Essay on Truth was the great era of his life; for this work carried his fame far beyond all local bounds and local partialities. It is not, however, necessary to enter minutely into the history of a work so well known. Its professed intention was to trace the several kinds of evidence and reasoning up to their first principles, with a view to ascertain the standard of truth, and explain its immutability. He endeavours to show that his sentiments, however inconsistent with the genius of scepticism, and with

6" In the autumn of the year 1765, Mr. Gray came to Scotland on a visit to the late earl of Strathmore. Dr. Beattie, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Gray, as soon as he heard of his arrival, addressed to him a letter, which procured him an invitation to Glammis castle, and this led to a friendship and correspondence between these two eminent poets and amiable men, which continued without interruption, till the death of Mr. Gray." Sir Wm. Forbes, vol. i. p. 70. In the same year he became acquainted with his biographer, who has, by the Life of Beattie, raised a monument to the excellence of his owa character scarcely inferior to that he intended for his friend. C.

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the practice and principles of sceptical writers, were yet perfectly consistent with the genius of true philosophy, and with the practice and principles of those whom all acknowledge to have been the most successful in the investigation of truth; and he concludes with some inferences or rules, by which the most important fallacies of the sceptical philosophy may be detected by every person of common sense, even though he should not possess acuteness of metaphysical knowledge sufficient to qualify him for a logical confutation of them.

When this work was completed, so many difficulties occurred in procuring it to be published, that his friends sir William Forbes and Mr. Arbuthnot were obliged to become the purchasers, unknown to him, at a price with which they thought he would be satisfied. Sir William accordingly wrote to him that the manuscript was sold for fifty guineas, as the price of the first edition. So little of the spirit of enterprise was then among the booksellers; and, it may be added, such was the slender opinion of the author himself, that in a very grateful letter addressed to his friends, he says that "the price really exceeded his warmest expectations."

The first edition of this Essay was published in an octavo volume in 1770, and bought up with such avidity that a second was called for, and published in the following year. The interval was short, but as the work had excited the public attention in an extraordinary degree, the result of public opinion had reached the author's ear, and to this second edition he added a postscript, in vindication of a certain degree of warmth of which he had been accused, but which in our opinion does not appear, either in with-holding justice from his adversaries, or in treating them with a language unbecoming the importance of the subject. He engaged in no personal controversy, and except for Hume, could not be supposed to entertain any personal regard for the writers whose sophistry he endeavoured to expose. This postscript, however, is highly valuable on many accounts. It may be read detached from the work, and read with advantage. It is not only one of the most elegant specimens of writing in our language, but a more faithful summary of the general conduct and artifices of modern sceptics than we have any where seen; and it contains a prediction of the consequences of scepticism on the happiness of mankind, which all who have lived to witness infidelity let loose upon an infatuated nation, without limitation and without punishment, must acknowledge to be true in every respect.

The Essay on Truth, whatever objections were made to it, and it met with very few public opponents, had a more extensive circulation than probably any work of the kind ever published. This may be partly attributed to the charms of that popular style in which the author conveyed his sentiments on subjects which his adversaries had artfully disguised in a metaphysical jargon, the meaning of which they could vary at pleasure; but the eagerness with which it was bought up and read, arose chiefly from the just praise bestowed upon it by the most distinguished friends of religion and learning in Great Britain. With many of these, of high rank both in church and state, the author had the pleasing satisfaction of dating his acquaintance from the

The principal publication was Dr. Priestley's Examination of Dr. Reid on the Human Mind; Dr. Beattie on the Nature and Immutability of Truth; and Dr. Oswald's Appeal to common Sense, Oct. 1775. Dr. Priestley prefers the systemof Dr. Hartley, which he was then endeavouring to introduce; but the flippant and sarcastic style het sumed on this occasion was disapproved even by his own friends. C.

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