In 1779, he published "Select Satires of Horace, translated in English Verse, adapted to the present Times and Manners." Contrary to expectations, he realized £100 by the venture, which, with help from other sources, enabled him to pay his debts. Having refused to discontinue his intimacy with the parish minister of Cullen, and an occasional attendance at the parish church, he was suspended from his office, when he resolved, to the great regret of his flock, to remove to London. Before leaving Scotland, the University of Aberdeen conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. By the influence of Lord Traquair he was appointed officiating priest in the chapel of the Austrian Embassage. He now recurred to his early idea of a new translation of the Bible, for the use of English Catholics; and with the assistance of Lord Petre, who undertook to give him £200 a-year while he was of the Tweed a necessity. A mutual attachment had sprung up between the young priest and a lady relative of Lord Traquair, and the promptings of nature had to yield to the vows of celebacy. He retired to France, where he remained for about a year, prosecuting his Biblical studies in the libraries of Paris, and then returned to his native country, where he was put in charge of the Catholic congregation of Auchinhalrig. The church and parsonage were in a most dilapidated condition; yet his taste, management, and even mechanical skill, were energetically applied, and a new chapel and restored parsonage soon rewarded his labours. Having secured the confidence of his people, he next won their affections, and then tried to imbue them with his own liberal and charitable views of the precepts of their religion; but he forgot that the spirit of his religion was not always the spirit which animated his Church, and his fraternizing with his Protestant neigh-engaged upon it, he began his task, bours, and brother scholars of other denominations, brought him under the censure of his bishop. He had also incurred obligations on account of the improvements of his chapel and parsonage, which began to embarrass him; but on hearing of his case the Duke of Norfolk generously enabled him to extinguish these. He then took a farm in his neighbourhood, and added a chapel, which in a short time brought him again into a worse financial condition than before. And now, with a view to be extricated from his difficulties, he resolved upon an expedient which most people would conclude was more likely to increase them. and issued a plan of his design. In 1781, he visited Scotland, and while residing at Traquair, wrote "Linton; a Tweeddale Pastoral," in honour of the birth of a son and heir to the noble house of Traquair. He wove into his pastoral a prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer, to the effect "that when an eagle should be the offspring of a raven and a rook, joyful tidings were to arise for the bonny men of Tweeddale." Geddes ingeniously and curiously found the solution of this enigma in the crest of Traquair, which is a rook, and that of the Countess' family (Ravenscroft) which contains a raven. In 1785, the Society of Antiquaries But happily for Beattie's fame it does not rest on his philosophical dissertation; for that is now of little account amongst students of philosophy, except as a landmark. It is as the author of the Minstrel, the first book of which he issued anonymously in 1771, that he is now remembered. Its reception was so flattering that its authorship cannot have been long concealed, and his friend and fellow-poet, Gray, characterized it in the most ardent terms of praise. In 1773, Beattie visited London, and was lionized in the highest literary and social circles. He was presented to the king and queen; received a pension of £200 a-year; got his portrait painted by Reynolds in the allegorical attitude of suppressing prejudice, scepticism, and folly; and had the degree of LL.D. conferred on him by the University of Oxford. He was even invited to join the Church of England, with flattering prospects of advancement; but this he wisely declined to be enticed into doing. of twenty-two, in 1790. His last literary work was an account of his son's life and character. In 1796, his second son also died, in his eighteenth year-an event which caused him to relinquish all interest in worldly affairs. In this forlorn condition he lived till 1803, when he died. He was buried by the side of his sons in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Aberdeen. Beattie's "Life," by his friend Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, was published in 1805, and, while a labour of love, ranks high as a literary biography. His conduct in all the relations of life leave the very highest impression of his character as a man. We have already indicated our opinion of his position as a poet; but more specially as regards the Minstrel as his chief poem, it may be noted that it is simply a poetical register of the development of the predominant phase of his own mind. Its strength and weakness are in its being so sentimental that his descriptive and imaginative powers are held subdued. Consequently, original The second book of the Minstrel ap-ity and analytical depth and vigour are peared in 1774, with the author's name. But while thus buoyed on the gale of popular applause as a poet and philosopher, his domestic circumstances were of the most distressing kind to one of such tender sensibilities. His wife became insane, and, after long and anxious attendance on his part, had at last to be committed to an asylum. His family consisted of two sons, to whose training and development he devoted the greatest care. The eldest became his colleague in the professorship, but to his great grief was cut off at the age awanting. We have given what we consider its best pieces. It is to be regretted that he did not write more than one piece in the Scotch vernacular; for the specimen he has left, and which we give, not only shows great ease in the use of the language, but an evident love of it. This is also shown in his two excellent verses (stanza vi.) to that admirable Scotch song, "There's nae Luck about the House." Regarding his critical and philosophical writings, which do not come How forth the Minstrel fared in days of Did guide and guard their wanderings, yore, wheresoe'er they went. |
