The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes — Reading Notes

Magazine was due, walking as far as the little height of Auchcairnie, to watch and weary for the long-expected carrier's cart wending its slow way from the south and, when the parcel reached his hand, with eager, trembling fingers, opening it up, to have all the joy of virgin authorship awakened in his soul. In these days a poetic production from the country seemed a phenomenon--as great, to use an expression of De Quincey's, as if "a dragoon horse had struck up 'Rule Britannia,'" and no doubt, many an eyebrow in Auld Reekie rose in wonder, and many a voice exclaimed, "Who can this be?" when verses so good by J. B. Fordoun, flashed upon the public from time to time. But, although his poetry procured him more fame than he was then aware of, it brought him nothing more, and his way to competence and elevation in society, seemed as completely 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.