The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair and Falconer | Page 3

blocked up as ever.
It would seem that he had, from an early period of his life, looked
forward to the Church as his profession; and, having taught for some
time in Fordoun, he returned to Aberdeen, to prosecute those
preparatory studies which he had for a while abandoned for a parish
school and poetry. Here he attended the lectures of Dr Robert Pollock
of Marischal College, and Professor John Lumsden of King's-and
performed the exercises prescribed by both. It was at this time that he
delivered a discourse in the Divinity Hall in language so lofty, that the
Professor challenged him for writing poetry instead of prose--a story
reminding us of similar facts in the history of Thomson, Pollok, and
others whose names we do not mention--and corroborating the truth,
that poetical genius and the halls of philosophy or theology are seldom
congenial, and that "musty, fusty, crusty" old professors are in general
harsh stepfathers to rising poets.
Whether from chagrin on account of this criticism--and this is the more
probable, because Beattie was all along very sensitive to depreciation
or abuse--or from some other cause, he determined to abandon the
study of Divinity, and to follow teaching as a profession. In 1757, a
vacancy occurring in the Grammar School of Aberdeen, Beattie offered
himself as a candidate, but failed in the preliminary examination, as he
had himself expected, from a want of circumstantial and minute
acquaintance with the Latin tongue. A few months after, however, a
second vacancy having taken place in the same school, he was elected
without the form of a trial, and entered on the discharge of his duties in
June 1758. He was now in a more advantageous and a more reputable
post--and while discharging its duties with exemplary diligence, he
found time for the cultivation of his poetical gift.
In 1760, through the exertions of his friends, especially the Earl of

Erroll, and Mr Arbuthnott, Beattie was appointed Professor of
Philosophy in Marischal College. It was thought at the time a startling
experiment to appoint a man so young--and who had given no proof of
peculiar proficiency in philosophical lore--to such an important chair;
and was no doubt stigmatised as one of those arrant 'jobs' by which the
history of Scotch Colleges has been often disgraced. In Beattie's case,
however, as well as in the kindred one of Professor Wilson, the issue
was more fortunate than might have been expected. He set manfully to
work to supply his deficiencies--read and wrote hard--and in a few
years had prepared a very respectable course of lectures--and became
able to front, without shame, such men as Gerard and Gregory,
Campbell and Reid--with whom he was now associated. In the same
year appeared, in a very modest manner, "Proposals for Printing
Original Poems and Translations." In 1761, the volume itself was
published--consisting of the pieces formerly printed in the 'Scots
Magazine', corrected and altered, and of some new productions. The
book appeared simultaneously in Edinburgh and London, and was
hailed with universal applause; the critics generally maintaining that no
poetry so good had been written since Gray's; which they thought
Beattie had taken for his model. He himself entertained, after a while, a
very different opinion of their merits; he was, in fact, seized with a
fastidious loathing for them; he destroyed every copy he could procure;
and on republishing his poetry before his death, he acknowledged only
four of these early effusions.
In 1765, he published, in quarto, his "Judgment of Paris," which met
with the unfavourable reception it deserved. He added it to an edition of
his poems printed in 1766; but afterwards refused to reprint it. We have
given it, however, as well as all his original minor poems, in our edition,
including a poem on Churchill, published by him in 1766, and which,
acrimonious and unjust as it is, is full of spirit, and shows Beattie in the
character of a "good hater."
In 1763, he had visited London, where almost his only acquaintance
was Andrew Millar, the bookseller, and where nothing remarkable
occurred except a visit to Pope's Villa at Twickenham. In 1765, he had
been invited by the Earl of Strathmore to meet with Gray, then on a

visit at Glammis Castle. Lovelier spot, or more appropriate for the
meeting of two poets, does not exist in broad Scotland than the Castle
of Glammis, with its tall, vast, antique structure, towering over its
ancient park, and shadowed by large ancestral trees--with its interior
full of the quiet memories, quaint paintings, and collected curiosities of
a thousand years--with its chapel situated in the very groin of the
edifice, and in whose dim religious light you see walls surrounded, by
some female hand of a past age, with curious pictures--and with its
leaden roof, commanding