Alexander Beattie

“ Towards the end of April, 1773, Beattie, accompanied by his wife, set out again for London. This journey was undertaken partly for the sake of his health and partly with a view to another object—the bettering of his circumstances. The emolument which he had derived from his writings bore unfortunately no proportion to the fame he had acquired; and the small income arising from [Pg xl] his professorship afforded him the only means for supporting his family. ”

“ O ne'er may Care distract that placid mien!
Ne'er may the shades of Doubt o'erwhelm thy soul!
Vain wish! for lo, in gay attire conceal'd,
Yonder she comes! the heart-inflaming fiend!
(Will no kind power the helpless stripling shield?)
Swift to her destin'd prey see Passion bend!
O smile accurs'd, to hide the worst designs!
Now with blithe eye she wooes him to be blest,
While round her arm unseen a serpent twines—
And lo, she hurls it hissing at his breast!
And, instant, lo, his dizzy eyeball swims
Ghastly, and reddening darts a frantic glare ”

“ He was in high favour too with Mrs Montagu and the other bas bleus. Beattie was unfortunate in his domestic life. Mary Dunn, whom he married in 1767, became insane, and his two sons died just as they were attaining manhood. The elder, James Hay Beattie, a young man of great promise, who at the age of nineteen had been associated with his father in his professorship, died in 1790. In 1794 the father published Essays and Fragments in Prose and Verse by James Hay Beattie with a 584 touching memoir. The younger brother died in 1796. Beattie never recovered from this second bereavement. ”

“ Before returning to Scotland, the travellers went to Bath, and from thence to Sandleford, the seat of Mrs. Montagu. [Pg lxii]
The second volume of the Elements of Moral Science appeared in 1793. During the same year the sudden death of his favourite sister, Mrs. Valentine, increased the domestic sorrows of Beattie. His health was at this period so greatly impaired, that being unable to attend to his duties of Professor in the Marischal College, he engaged his old pupil, Mr. ”

“ The friend of his earlier years, Professor Blackwell, had sunk into the grave; but he had soon the good fortune to become intimately acquainted with several persons of acknowledged talents and learning, connected with the Marischal and King's Colleges, as also with various well educated gentlemen, inhabitants of the town.
In 1760, a chair in the Marischal College becoming vacant, it was suggested to Beattie by his friend, Mr. Arbuthnot, [G] that he should en [Pg xiii] deavour to procure the appointment for himself. ”

“ He is represented in his Oxford gown of Doctor of Laws, with his famous Essay under his arm; while beside him is Truth, habited as an Angel, holding in one hand a pair of scales, and with the other thrusting down three frightful figures, emblematic of Prejudice, Scepticism, and Folly. [R] [Pg l] Of this picture Sir Joshua made a present to Beattie, who set a due value on so noble a composition, and preserved it with the utmost care.
After an absence of a little more than five months, he returned to Aberdeen. ”

“ In 1761 Beattie made his first appearance in print, in his own character, by publishing a small volume, dedicated to the Earl of Erroll, entitled Original Poems and Translations. It consisted partly of some of the verses which he had formerly sent to the Scots Magazine, and partly of pieces which he had recently composed. "This collection," says his good-natured and not very tasteful biographer, Sir William Forbes, "was very favourably received, and stamped Dr. Beattie with the character of a poet of great and original genius." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many an hour was now spent by Beattie in perfect solitude; the family of Mr. Forbes, the minister, being almost the only society, save the surrounding peasantry, which his situation allowed him to enjoy. But his days went happily by. When not occupied by his public duties, he appears to have devoted a portion of his time to the study of the classics; [D] and occasionally he amused himself by composing little poems, a few of which were printed in the Scots Magazine. His fondness for music had ever been decided ”

“ Never had such a father a son less the inheritor of his temperament and nature; and this same disappointment rankling on through life—a disappointment that embittered all intercourse, and went so far as to make him disparage the high abilities of his son—created a gulf between them that Beattie knew could never be bridged over. He doubted, too, whether as a doctor he could conscientiously introduce a theme so likely to irritate and excite. As he pondered, he opened the two miniatures, and looked at them. ”

“ She is such a patient creature, and does all she is told; but at one time we hardly dared to hope that she would be spared to us. Poor papa was quite in despair; and as for Beatrix, she has been no use at all, she quite upset us the first evening by the way she clung to us. It is sad to see a girl of her age so entirely without control. The doctor still looks very grave over darling Flo, and I fear we shall be condemned to a winter in the south of France; in that case I shall send Beattie home to papa, for her crying and fretting only harass one. ”

“ I will follow your advice, Beattie.’
‘That’s right. You won’t repent doing so, I am sure. It’s the only sensible thing to do. And now, I see you are very tired and worried, so I’ll say good-night.’
‘What a Quixotic fellow!’ said Beattie to himself, as he sat in his own room half an hour later, and opened a certain drawer in his writing-table. ‘To give up two hundred and fifty thousand pounds for a mere freak! I suppose if his uncle’s will had said that the money was to have been thrown into the sea [Pg 21] he would have thought it his duty to do it. ”

“ Alec was getting a little tired of his friend’s cynicism, so he rose to go.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said he to himself, as he made his way home. ‘There are plenty of fellows, fellows who have got on too, who wouldn’t do a dirty thing to save their lives. If it is impossible—well, so be it.’
William Beattie was soured by disappointment. He would not allow for the natural advantages which those before him in the race derived from wealth and business connections. He hated his employers, because they showed no disposition to ‘give him his articles,’ and make him a member of the firm. ”

“ Flushed by its success, Beattie, in 1771, revisited London, and obtained admission to the best literary circles—sate under the "peacock-hangings" of Mrs Montague—visited Hagley Park, and became intimate with Lord Lyttelton—chatted cheerily with Boswell and Garrick—listened with wonder to the deep bow-wows of Johnson's talk—and as he watched the rich alluvial, yet romantic mountain stream of thought, knowledge, and imagery that flowed perpetually from the inspired lips of Burke, perhaps forgot Gray and Glammis Castle, and felt "a greater is here." ”

“ No sooner did Beattie hear of his arrival than he addressed to him the following letter:
Marischal College of Aberdeen, 30th August, 1765.
"If I thought it necessary to offer an apology for venturing to address you in this abrupt manner, I should be very much at a loss how to begin. I might plead my admiration of your genius, and my attachment to your character; but who is he that could not, with truth, urge the same excuse for intruding upon your retirement? I might plead my earnest desire to be personally acquainted with a man whom I have so long and so passionately admired in his writings ”

“ Nor did his own self-estimate, high as it was, make the picture in which he figured less striking, nor less memorable his concluding words, as he said, 'These fellows are all in history, Beattie,—every man of them. There are statues to them in our highways, and men visit the spots that gave them birth ”

“ I cannot allow. The truth is, it does not contain a single poem which rises much above mediocrity; and if Beattie had never touched the lyre with a more powerful hand, a [Pg xv] memoir of his life would not have been required for the Aldine Poets. So lightly, indeed, did he himself afterwards think of the collection in question, that he used to destroy all the copies of it which he could procure, and would only suffer four pieces from it (and these much altered and improved) to stand in the same volume with The Minstrel. ”

“ Become, Betty, a philosopher. Love thyself—faith, all others are unworthy—and thy neighbour in a merely Christian spirit. So——”
“I wonder sometimes if you are a man at all!” cried Betty fiercely.
“To myself I seem sometimes divine,” my lord admitted.
“And to others—la! to others—God save us.”
My lord shook back his ambrosial black curls and stretched himself. “I argue,” he observed, “that I seem to you wanting. In what, my Queen Rhadamantha?”
Betty sprang up, a tall maid and lovely in her wrath, “Was it one of your name, then, my lord, that rode with Sir Bevil Grenville?” she cried. ”

“ BEATTIE, WILLIAM, M.D. (1793–1875) , was born at Dalton, Annandale. His father, James Beattie, had been educated as an architect and surveyor, but his real occupation was that of a builder. He lost his life by an accident in 1809. It has been said that his son inherited from him his classical, and from his mother his poetical, tendencies. The Beatties had been settled in Dumfriesshire for several generations. When just fourteen he went to school at Clarencefield Academy in Dumfriesshire, and during his stay there of six years, under the rector, Mr. ”

“ As to Beattie’s reasons for marrying me, well, Dion, I haven’t asked what they were and I never shall. Women are mysterious, and I believe it’s wisdom on our part not to try to force the locks and look into the hidden chambers. I’ll do what I can to make up to Beattie for this terrible disappointment. ”

“ Beattie was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, London, and established himself in Hampstead, where for eighteen years he enjoyed an extensive practice. In 1836 and 1836 he travelled in Switzerland and in the land of the Waldenses, and in the former year was in Paris at the time of Fieschi's attempt upon the life of Louis-Philippe, and in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. ”

“ In the autumn of 1765 Beattie addressed a letter in terms of extravagant flattery to the poet Gray, who was on a visit to the Earl of Strathmore at Glammis Castle. 'Will you permit us,' he wrote, 'to hope that we shall have an opportunity at Aberdeen of thanking you in person for the honour you have done to Britain and to the poetic art by your inestimable compositions?' In response arrived a letter of invitation to Glammis; a very cordial meeting followed, and a lasting friendship sprang up between the poets. A new edition of Beattie's poems appeared in 1766. ”

“ The intense thought which Beattie had devoted to the composition of the Essay on Truth having materially injured his health, he was advised by his physicians to try the remedy of change of scene. He accordingly set out on a journey to London, and arrived there in the beginning of autumn, 1771. He was no longer the obscure individual who had visited it in 1763; [P] he was now the triumphant adversary of scepticism, and the author of the admired Minstrel; a man whom the most distinguished characters in the literary and fashionable world were prepared to treat with attention and respect. ”

“ Beattie, William, M.D., Scottish physician, poet, and miscellaneous writer, born in 1793, died at London 1875. He was author of the standard Life of Thomas Campbell, whose intimate friend he was; published several poems, including John Huss, The Heliotrope, and Polynesia; wrote a series of descriptive and historical works, beautifully illustrated by his friend and fellow-traveller, W. H. Bartlett, on Switzerland, Scotland, &c. He had a very extensive and lucrative medical practice.
Beatty, Admiral of the Fleet, Earl, born in 1871. ”

“ The subject of this memoir was born on the 25th of October, 1735, at Laurencekirk, in the county of Kincardine, Scotland. His father, James Beattie, who kept a small shop in the village at the same time that he rented a little farm in the neighbourhood, was a man of considerable talents and acquirements: [A] his mother, too, was distinguished for her abilities. ”

“ Beattie, the greatest credit was due for the way in which the arrangements were made, and the work executed on that side. Mr. Beattie’s labours were so arduous, and his efforts so untiring, that he died of fatigue within six weeks after the completion of the work—a victim, absolutely, to his unparalleled exertions. The only favour in connection p. 158with these works which the Duke of Newcastle ever granted at our request, he granted to the family of this lamented gentleman. ”

“ Oh, Beattie knew how to do his work expeditiously, and fat he waxed on the proceeds. In his later days marrying became the passion of his life, and he never saw a man and a maid together without creeping up behind them and beginning the marriage service. ”

“ They discussed it frankly enough between themselves later on. "It can't be me, you know, because I'm already engaged," said Beatrix, "and it can't be Barbara, because she's too young. So it must be you, Caroline, and I don't think you could do much better. He's [Pg 294] really nice, and he won't be grumpy and bearish like old Sir Alexander when he gets old. That's very important. You must look ahead before you're caught. Of course when you are caught nothing makes any difference. If I thought René was going to turn into a grump when he gets old I shouldn't mind. ”