Or he paints flowers with artist-like precision:

Let long-lived pansies here their scents bestow,
The violet languish, and the roses glow;

In yellow glory let the crocus shine,
Narcissus here his love-sick head recline:
Here hyacinths in purple sweetness rise,
And tulips tinged with beauty's fairest dyes.

In a man to whom all external phenomena were, and had ever been, one 'universal blank,' this union of taste and memory was certainly remarkable. Poetical feeling he must have inherited from nature, which led him to take pleasure even from his infancy in descriptive poetry; and the language, expressions, and pictures thus imprinted on his mind by habitual acquaintance with the best authors, and in literary conversation, seem to have risen spontaneously in the moment of composition.

Terrors of a Guilty Conscience.

Cursed with unnumbered groundless.
fears,

How pale yon shivering wretch appears!
For him the daylight shines in vain,
For him the fields no joys contain:
Nature's whole charms to him are lost,
No more the woods their music boast;
No more the meads their vernal bloom,
No more the gales their rich perfume.
Impending mists deform the sky,
And beauty withers in his eye.
In hopes his terrors to elude,
By day he mingles with the crowd,
Yet finds his soul to fears a prey,
In busy crowds and open day.

If night his lonely walks surprise,
What horrid visions round him rise!
The blasted oak which meets his way,
Shewn by the meteor's sudden ray,
The midnight murderer's lone retreat
Felt heaven's avengeful bolt of late:
The clashing chain, the groan profound,
Loud from yon ruined tower resound;
And now the spot he seems to tread,
Where some self-slaughtered corse was
laid;

He feels fixed earth beneath him bend,
Deep murmurs from her caves ascend;
Till all his soul, by fancy swayed,

Sees livid phantoms crowd the shade.

Ode to Aurora on Melissa's Birthday.

'A compliment and tribute of affection to the tender assiduity of an excellent wife, which I have not anywhere seen more happily conceived or more elegantly expressed.'-Henry Mackenzie.

Of time and nature eldest born,
Emerge, thou rosy-fingered morn;
Emerge in purest dress arrayed,

And chase from heaven night's envious
shade,

That I once more may pleased survey,
And hail Melissa's Latal day.

Of time and nature eldest born,
Emerge, thou rosy-fingered morn;
In order at the eastern gate
The hours to draw thy chariot wait;
Whilst Zephyr on his balmy wings,
Mild nature's fragrant tribute brings,
With odours sweet to strew thy way,
And grace the bland revolving day.

But, as thou lead'st the radiant sphere,
That gilds its birth and marks the year,
And as his stronger glories rise,
Diffused around the expanded skies,
Till clothed with beams serenely bright,
All heaven's vast concave flames with
light;

So when, through life's protracted day,
Melissa still pursues her way,
Her virtues with thy splendour vie,
Increasing to the mental eye;

Though less conspicuous, not less dear,
Long may they Bion's prospect cheer;
So shall his heart no more repine,
Blessed with her rays, though robbed o

thine.

JAMES BEATTIE.

JAMES BEATTIE was the son of a small farmer and shopkeeper at Laurencekirk, county of Kincardine, where he was born October 25, 1735. His father died while he was a child, but an elder brother, seeing signs of talent in the boy, assisted him in procuring a good education; and in his fourteenth year he obtained a bursary or exhibition (always indicating some proficiency in Latin) in Marischal College, Aberdeen. His habits and views were scholastic, and four years afterwards, Beattie was appointed schoolmaster of the parish of Fordoun. He was now situated amidst interesting and romantic scenery, which increased his passion for nature and poetry. The scenes which he afterwards delineated in his 'Minstrel' were, as Southey had justly remarked, those in which he had grown up, and the feelings and aspirations therein expressed were those of his own boybood and youth. In 1758, he was elected usher of the grammarschool of Aberdeen; and in 1760, professor of moral philosophy and logic in Marischal College. About the same time, he published in London a collection of his poems, with some translations One piece, 'Retirement,' displays poetical feeling and taste; but the collection, as a whole, gave little indication of the 'Minstrel.' The poems, without the translations, were reprinted in 1766, and a copy of verses on the Death of Churchill were added. The latter are mean and reprehensible in spirit. Beattie was a sincere lover of truth and virtue, but his ardour led him at times into intolerance, and he was too fond of courting the notice and approbation of the great. In 1770 the poet appeared as a metaphysician, by his Essay on Truth,' in which good principles were advanced, though with an unphilosophical spirit, and in language which suffered greatly from comparison with that of his illustrious opponent, David Hume.

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Next year, Beattie appeared in his true character as a poet. The first part of the Minstrel' was published, and was received with universal approbation. Honours flowed in on the fortunate author. He visited London, and was admitted to all its brilliant and distinguished circles. Goldsmith, Johnson, Garrick, and Reynolds were numbered among his friends. On a second visit in 1773, he had an interview with the king and queen, which resulted in a pension of £200 per annum. The university of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and Reynolds painted his portrait in an allegorical picture, in which Beattie was seen by the side of an angel pushing down Prejudice, Scepticism, and Folly! Need we wonder that poor Goldsmith was envious of his brother-poet? To the honour of Beattie, it must be recorded, that he declined entering the Church of England, in which preferment was promised him. The second part of the Minstrel' was published in 1774. Domestic circumstances marred the felicity of Beattie's otherwise happy and prosperous lot. His wife the daughter of Dr. Dun, Aberdeen-became insane, and

was obliged to be confined in an asylum. He had two sons, both amiable and accomplished youths. The eldest lived till he was twentytwo, and was associated with his father in the professorship: he died in 1790, and the afflicted parent soothed his grief by writing his life, and publishing some specimens of his composition in prose and verse. The second son died in 1796, aged eighteen; and the only consolation of the now lonely poet was, that he could not have borne to see their 'elegant minds mangled with madness'-an allusion to the hereditary insanity of their mother. By nature, Beattie was a man of quick and tender sensibilities. A fine landscape, or music-in which he was a proficient-affected him even to tears. He had a sort of hysterical dread of meeting with his metaphysical opponents, which was an unmanly weakness. Such an organization, physical and moral, was ill-fitted to insure happiness or fortitude in adversity. When his second son died, he said he had done with the world. He ceased to correspond with his friends, or to continue his studies. Shattered by a long train of nervous complaints, in April 1799 the poet had a stroke of palsy, and after different returns of the same malady, which excluded him from all society, he died on the 18th of August, 1803. His 'Life' was written by his attached friend, Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Baronet; it was published in 1805, and ranks high among the biographies of literary personages.

In the early training of his eldest and beloved son, Dr. Beattie adopted an expedient of a romantic and interesting description. His object was to give him the first idea of a Supreme Being; and his method, as Dr. Porteous, bishop of London, remarked, ‘had all the imagination of Rosseau, without his folly and extravagance.'

Imparting to a Boy the First Idea of a Supreme Being.

'He had,' says Beattie, 'reached his fifth (or sixth) year, knew the alphabet, and could read a little; but had received no particular information with respect to the author of his being, because I thought he could not yet understand such information, and because I had learned from my own experience, that to be made to repeat words not understood, is extremely detrimental to the faculties of a young mind. In a corner of a little garden, without informing any person of the circumstance, I wrote in the mould, with my finger, the three initial letters of his name, and sowing garden cresses in the furrows, covered up the seed, and smoothed the ground. Ten days after, he came running to me, and with astonishment in his countenance, told me that his name was growing in the garden. I smiled at the report, and seemed inclined to disregard it; but he insisted on my going to see what had happened. "Yes," said I carelessly, on coming to the place; "I see it is so; but there is nothing in this worth notice; it is mere chance ;" and I went away. He fol lowed me, and taking hold of my coat, said with some earnestness: "It could not be mere chance, for that somebody must have contrived matters so as to produce it." I pretend not to give his words or my own, for I have forgotten both, but I give the substance of what passed between us in such language as we both understood. "So you think," I said, "that what appears so regular as the letters of your name cannot be by chance?" "Yes," said he with firmness, "I think so." "Look at yourself," I replied, "and consider your hands and fingers, your legs and feet, and other limbs; are they not regular in their appearance, and useful to you?" He said they were. "Came you then hither," said I, "by chance?" "No," he answered; "that cannot be; something must have made ine." "And who is that something ?"

I asked. He said he did not know. (I took particular notice that he did not say, as Rousseau fancies a child in like circumstances would say, that his parents made him.) I had now gained the point I aimed at; and saw that his reason taught him-though he could not so express it-that what begins to be, must have a cause, and that what is formed with regularity, must have an intelligent cause. I therefore told him the name of the Great Being who made him and all the world, concerning whose adorable nature I gave him such information as I thought he could in some measure comprehend. The lesson affected him deeply, and he never forgot either it or the circumstance that introduced it.'

The Minstrel,' on which Beattie's fame now rests, is a didactic poem, in the Spenserian stanza, designed to trace the progress of a poetical genius, born in a rude age, from the first dawning of fancy and reason till that period at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a minstrel.' The idea was suggested by Percy's preliminary Dissertation to his Reliques.' The character of Edwin, the minstrel-in which Beattie embodied his own early feelings and poetical aspirations-is very finely drawn.

Opening of the Minstrel.

Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar;
Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime

Has felt the influence of malignant star,

And waged with Fortune an eternal war;

Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown,

And Poverty's unconquerable bar,

In life's low vale remote has pined alone,

Then dropped into the grave, unpitied and unknown!

And yet the languor of inglorious days

Not equally oppressive is to all;

Him, who ne'er listened to the voice of praise,

The silence of neglect can ne'er appal.

There are, who, deaf to mad Ambition's call,

Would shrink to hear the obstreperous trump of Fame;

Supremely blest, if to their portion fall

Health, competence, and peace. Nor higher aim

Had he, whose simple tale these artless lines proclaim.

The rolls of fame I will not now explore;
Nor need I here describe, in learned lay,
How forth the minstrel fared in days of yore,
Right glad of heart, though homely in array;
His waving locks and beard all hoary gray;
While from his bending shoulder, decent hung
His harp, the sole companion of his way,
Which to the whistling wind responsive rung:
And ever as he went some merry lay he sung.

Fret not thyself, thou glittering child of pride,
That a poor villager inspires my strain;
With thee let Pageantry and Power abide;
The gentle Muses haunt the sylvan reign;

Where through wild groves at eve the lonely swain
Enraptured roams, to gaze on Nature's charms.
They hate the sensual and scorn the vain;
The parasite their influence never warms,

Nor him whose sordid soul the love of gold alarms.

Though richest hues the peacock's plumes adorn,
Yet horror screams from his discordant throat.
Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn,
While warbling larks on russet pinions float:
Or seek at noon the woodland scene remote,
Where the gray linnets carol from the hill
O let them ne'er, with artificial note,
To please a tyrant, strain the little bill,

But sing what Heaven inspires, and wander where they will.

Liberal, not lavish, is kind Nature's hand;
Nor was perfection made for man below.

Yet all her schemes with nicest art are planned,
Good counteracting ill, and gladness woe.
With gold and gems if Chilian mountains glow,
If bleak and barren Scotia's hills arise;

There plague and poison, lust and rapine grow;
Here peaceful are the vales, and pure the skies,
And freedom fires the soul, and sparkles in the eyes.
Then grieve not thou, to whom the indulgent Muse
Vouchsafes a portion of celestial fire:

Nor blame the partial Fates, if they refuse
The imperial banquet and the rich attire.
Know thine own worth, and reverence the lyre.
Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined?
No; let thy heaven-taught soul to Heaven aspire,
To fancy, freedom, harmony, resigned;
Ambition's grovelling crew for ever left behind.

Canst thou forego the pure ethereal soul,
In each fine sense so exquisitely keen,
On the dull couch of Luxury to loll,

Stung with disease, and stupefied with spleen;
Fain to implore the aid of Flattery's screen,
Even from thyself thy loathsome heart to hide-
The mansion then no more of joy serene-
Where fear, distrust, malevolence abide,
And impotent desire, and disappointed pride?

O how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields !
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even,

All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of heaven,

O how canst thou rencunce, and hope to be forgiven? ....

There lived in Gothic days, as legends tell,

A shepherd swain, a man of low degree,

Whose sires, perchance, in Fairyland might dwell,

Sicilian groves, or vales of Arcady;

But he, I ween, was of the north countrie;

A nation famed for song, and beauty's charms;
Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms;

Inflexible in faith; invincible in arms.

The shepherd swain of whom I mention made,
On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;
The sickle, scythe, or plough he never swayed;
An honest heart was almost all his stock;