JAMES BEATTIE. 1735-1803. During the latter half of the eighteenth century the literary traditions of the most northerly university town of Scotlandthe city of John Barbour and of Hector Boece-were honourably upheld by a small knot of poets. Of these the most academic remains the most famous. Poet and professor, philosopher and man of letters, James Beattie was no less distinguished in his time by his "Minstrel" and his prose "Essay on Truth" than by the encouragement and help which he constantly afforded to men of genius less fortunately placed. Not only were Ross and Blacklock substantially indebted to him for the furtherance of their literary fortunes, but constantly in the literary history of the time one comes upon hints and helps given now to one poet and now to another, which again and again bore valuable fruit. Beattie indeed may be said to have been for forty years a gentle and more generous Johnson, at once the literary dictator and the Mæcenas of the far north. The author of "The Minstrel " was the son of a considerable farmer, and was born at Laurencekirk in the county of Kincardine. After taking his degree at Marischal College in 1753, he was for a time schoolmaster at Fordoun, and became later a teacher in the grammar school of Aberdeen. In 1760 he was chosen Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic in his alma mater; and from that time onward his public life was that of the prosperous academic and man of letters. A year after taking his chair he printed his first volume of poetry, but though it was handsomely received by the critics, it was afterwards suppressed by the author himself. In 1765 he appeared again before the public with a poem "The Judgement of Paris," in which the classic story was made, parablewise, to shadow forth an ethical lesson. His chief prose work was his great Essay on Truth." This was considered perhaps the most masterly treatise of its day, and a powerful counterblast to the philosophy of Hume, and it brought its author not only a European renown, but no fewer than two invitations from the highest ecclesiastical quarters to accept preferment in the Church |