And showers | th[)e] st[=i]ll | sn[=o]w fr[)o]m | his hoary urns.Darwin, Botanic Garden, p. I, c. 2, 28.
Or dart | th[)e] r[=e]d | fl[=a]sh thr[)o]ugh | the circling band.Ibid. 361.
Or rests | h[)e]r fa[=i]r | ch[=e]ek [)o]n | his curled brows.Ibid. c. 2, 252.
Deserve | [)a] sw[=e]et | l[=o]ok fr[)o]m | Demetrius' eye.Shakspeare, Mid. N. D.
Infect | th[)e] so[=u]nd | p[=i]ne [)a]nd | divert his grain.Shakespeare, Tempest.
Which on | thy s[=o]ft | ch[=e]ek f[)o]r | complexion dwells.Shakspeare, Sonnet99.
To lay | th[)e]ir j[=u]st | h[=a]nds [)o]n | the golden key.Milton, Comus.
Or where they make the end of an iambic in the first, and the beginning of a spondee in the second foot, as
Th[)e] w[=a]n | st[=a]rs gl[=i]m|mering through its silver train.Botanic Garden, p. I, c. I, 135.
Th[)e] br[=i]ght | dr[=o]ps r[=o]l|ling from her lifted arms.Ibid. c. 2, 59.
Th[)e] p[=a]le | l[=a]mp gl[=i]m|mering through the sculptur'd ice.Ibid. 134.
H[)e]r fa[=i]r | ch[=e]ek pr[=e]ss'd | upon her lily hand.Temple of Nature, c. I, 436.
Th[)e] fo[=u]l | b[=o]ar's c[=o]n|quest on her fair delight.Shakspeare, Venus and Adonis, 1030.
Th[)e] r[=e]d | bl[=o]od r[=o]ck'd | to show the painter's strife.Ibid.Rape of Lucrece, 1377.
There is so little complexity in the construction of his sentences, that they may generally be reduced to a few of the first and simplest rules of syntax. On these he rings what changes he may, by putting the verb before its nominative or vocative case. Thus in the following verses from the Temple of Nature:
On rapid feet o'er hills, and plains, and rocks,Speed the sacred leveret and rapacious fox;On rapid pinions cleave the fields above,The hawk descending, and escaping dove;With nicer nostril track the tainted ground,The hungry vulture, and the prowling hound;Converge reflected light with nicer eye,The midnight owl, and microscopic fly;
With finer ear pursue their nightly course,The listening lion, and the alarmed horse.
Sometimes he alternates the forms; as
In Eden's groves, the cradle of the world,Bloom'd a fair tree with mystic flowers unfurl'd;On bending branches, as aloft it sprung,Forbid to taste, the fruit of knowledge hung;Flow'd with sweet innocence the tranquil hours,And love and beauty warm'd the blissful bowers.
Ibid.449.
The last line or the middle of the last line in almost every sentence throughout his poems, begins with a conjunction affirmative or negative,and, ornor; and this last line is often so weak, that it breaks down under the rest. Thus in this very pretty impression, as it may almost be called, of an ancient gem;
So playful Love on Ida's flowery sidesWith ribbon-rein the indignant lion guides;Pleased on his brindled back the lyre he rings,And shakes delirious rapture from the strings;Slow as the pausing monarch stalks along,Sheathes his retractile claws, and drinks the song.Soft nymphs on timid step the triumph view,And listening fauns with beating hoofs pursue;With pointed ears the alarmed forest starts,And love and music soften savage hearts.
Botanic Garden, c. 4. 252.
And in an exceedingly happy description of what is termed the picturesque:
The rush-thatch'd cottage on the purple moor,Where ruddy children frolic round the door,The moss-grown antlers of the aged oak,The shaggy locks that fringe the colt unbroke,The bearded goat with nimble eyes, that glareThrough the long tissue of his hoary hair,As with quick foot he climbs some ruin'd wall,And crops the ivy which prevents its fall,With rural charms the tranquil mind delight,And form a picture to the admiring sight.
Temple of Nature, c. 3, 248.
And in his lines on the Eagle, from another gem:
So when with bristling plumes the bird of Jove,Vindictive leaves the argent fields above,Borne on broad wings the guilty world he awes,And grasps the lightning in his shining claws.
Botanic Garden, p. I, c. I, 205.
where I cannot but observe the peculiar beauty of the epithet applied to the plumes of the eagle. It is the right translation of the word by which Pindar has described the ruffling of the wings on the back of Zetes and Calais.
[Greek:—pteroisin naeta pephrikontas ampho porphyreois.]
Pyth. 4, 326.
which an Italian translator has entirely mistaken;
Uomin' ambi, ch'orrore a' risguardantiFacean coi rosseggiantiVanni del tergo.
But Darwin could have known nothing of Pindar; and the word may perhaps he found with a similar application in one of our own poets.
As the singularity of his poems caused them to be too much admired at first, so are they now more neglected than they deserve. There is about as much variety in them as in a bed of tulips, of which the shape is the same in all, except that some are a little more rounded at the points than others; yet they are diversely streaked and freckled, with a profusion of gay tints, in which the bizarre (as it is called by the fanciers of that flower) prevails. They are a sight for one half hour in the spring, and no more; and are utterly devoid of odour.
* * * * *
William Julius Mickle was born on the 29th of September, 1734, at Longholm, in the county of Dumfries, of which place his father, Alexander Meikle, or Mickle, a minister of the church of Scotland, was pastor. His mother was Julia, daughter of Thomas Henderson, of Ploughlands, near Edinburgh. In his thirteenth year, his love of poetry was kindled by reading Spenser's Faery Queen. Two years after, his father, who was grown old and infirm, and had a large family to educate, by an unusual indulgence obtained permission to reside in Edinburgh, where Mickle was admitted a pupil at the High School. Here he remained long enough to acquire a relish for the Greek and Latin classics. When he was seventeen years old, his father unluckily embarking his capital in a brewery, which the death of his wife's brother had left without a manager, William was taken from school, and employed as clerk under the eldest son, in whose name the business was carried on. At first he must have been attentive enough to his employment; for on his coming of age, the property was made over to him, on the condition of paying his family a certain share of the profits arising from it. Afterwards, he suffered himself to be seduced from business by the attractions of literature. His father died in 1758; and, in about three years he published, without his name, Knowledge, an Ode, and a Night Piece, the former of which had been written in his eighteenth year. In both there is more of seriousness and reflection than of that fancy which marks his subsequent productions. Beside these, he had finished a drama, called the Death of Socrates, of which, if we may judge from his other tragedy, the loss is not to be lamented, and he had begun a poem on Providence. The difficulties consequent on his trusting to servants the work of his brewery, which he was too indolent to superintend himself, and on his joining in security for a large sum with a printer who failed, were now gathering fast upon him. His creditors became clamorous; and at Candlemas (one of the quarter days in Scotland) 1762, being equally unwilling to compound with them, as his brother advised him to do, and unable to satisfy their demands, he prevailed on them to accept his notes of hand, payable in four months. When the time was expired, he found himself, as might have been expected, involved in embarrassments from which he could devise no means of escaping. His mind was harassed by bitter reflections on the distress which threatened those whom his parent had left to his protection; and he was scared by the terrors of a jail. But they, with whom he had to reckon, were again lenient. He consoled himself with recollecting that his delinquency had proceeded from inadvertence, not from design, and resolved to be more sedulous in future: but had still the weakness to trust for relief to his poem on Providence. This was soon after published by Dodsley, and, that it might win for itself such advantages as patronage could give, was sent to Lord Lyttelton, under the assumed name of William Moore, with a representation that the author was a youth, friendless and unknown, and with the offer of a dedication if the poem should be again edited. This proceeding did not evince much knowledge of mankind. A poet has as seldom gained a patron as a mistress, by solicitation to which no previous encouragement has been given. It was more than half a year before he received an answer from Lyttelton, with just kindness enough to keep alive his expectations. In the meantime, the friendly offices of a carpenter in Edinburgh, whose name was Good, had been exerted to save his property from being seized for rent; but the fear of arrest impelled him to quit that city in haste; and embarking on board a coal vessel at Newcastle, he reached London, pennyless, in May, 1763. His immediate necessities were supplied by remittances from his brothers, and by such profits as he could derive from writing for periodical publications. There is no reason to suppose that he was indebted to Lyttelton for more than the commendation of his genius, and for some criticism on his poems; and even this favour was denied to the most beautiful among them, his Elegy on Mary, Queen of Scots. The cause assigned for the exclusion was, that poetry should not consecrate what history must condemn, a sacred principle if it he applied to the characters of those yet living, but of more doubtful obligation as it regards past times. When Euripides, in one of his dramas, chose to avail himself of a wild and unauthorized tradition, and to represent Helen as spotless, he surely violated no sanction of moral truth; and in the instance of Mary, Mickle might have pleaded some uncertainty which a poet was at liberty to interpret to the better part.
During his courtship of Lyttelton he was fed at one time by hopes of being recommended in the West Indies; and, at another, of being served in the East; till by degrees the great man waxed so cold, that he wisely relinquished his suit. His next project was to go out as a merchant's clerk to Carolina; but some unexpected occurrences defeating this plan also, he engaged himself as corrector of the Clarendon press, at Oxford. Here he published (in 1767) the Concubine, a poem, in the manner of Spenser, to which, when it was printed, ten years after, having in the meantime passed through several editions, he gave the title of Syr Martyn.
Early in life, his zeal for religion had shewn itself in some remarks on an impious book termed the History of the Man after God's own Heart; and in 1767, the same feelings induced him to publish A Vindication of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, in a Letter to Dr. Harwood; and, in the year following, Voltaire in the Shades, or Dialogues on the Deistical Controversy.
He was now willing to try his fortune with a tragedy, and sent his Siege of Marseilles to Garrick, who observed to him, that though abounding in beautiful passages, it was deficient in dramatic art, and advised him to model it anew; in which task, having been assisted by the author of Douglas, and having submitted the rifacciamento of his play to the two Wartons, by whom he was much regarded, he promised himself better success; but had the mortification to meet with a second rebuff. An appeal from the manager to the public was his unquestioned privilege; but not contented with seeking redress by these means, he threatened Garrick with a new Dunciad. The rejection which his drama afterwards underwent at each of the playhouses, from the respective managers, Harris and Sheridan, perhaps taught him at least to suspect his own judgment.
In 1772, being employed to edit Pearch's Collection of Poems, he inserted amongst them his Hengist and Mey, and the Elegy on Mary. About the same time he wrote for the Whitehall Evening Post. But his mind was now attracted to a more splendid project. This was a translation of the great Epic Poem of Portugal, the Lusiad of Camoens, which had as yet been represented to the English reader only through the inadequate version of Fanshaw. That nothing might hinder his prosecution of this labour, he resigned his employment at Oxford, and retired to a farm-house at Forrest-hill, about five miles from that city, the village in which Milton found his first wife, and where Mickle afterwards found his in the daughter of his landlord. By the end of 1775, his translation was completed and published at Oxford, with a numerous list of subscribers. Experience had not yet taught him wariness in his approaches to his patron. At the suggestion of his relative, Commodore Johnstone, in an unlucky moment he inscribed his book to the Duke of Buccleugh. This nobleman had declared his acceptance of the dedication in a manner so gracious, that Mickle was once more decoyed with the hope of having found a powerful protector. After an interval of some months, he learnt that his incense had not been permitted to enter the nostrils of the new idol, and that his offering lay, where he left it, without the slightest notice. For this disappointment he might have considered it to be some compensation that his work had procured him the kindness of those who were more able to estimate it. Mr. Crowe assisted him in compiling the notes; Lowth offered to ordain him, with the promise of making some provision for him in the church; and one, whose humanity and candour are among the chief ornaments of the bench on which Lowth then sate, Doctor Bathurst, soothed him by those benevolent offices which he delights to extend to the neglected and the oppressed. Nor were the public insensible to the value of his translation. A second edition was called for in 1778; and his gains amounted on the whole to near a thousand pounds, a larger sum than was likely to fall to the share of an author, who so little understood the art of making his way in the world. It was not, however, considerable enough to last long against the calls made on it for the payment of old debts, and for the support of his sisters; and he was devising further means of supplying his necessities by a subscription for his poems, when Commodore Johnstone (in 1779) being appointed to head a squadron of ships, nominated him his secretary, on board the Romney. Mickle had hitherto struggled through a life of anxiety and indigence; but a gleam of prosperity came over the few years that remained. A good share of prize-money fell to his lot; and the squadron having been fortunately ordered to Lisbon, he was there received with so much distinction, that it would seem as if the Portuguese had been willing to make some amends for their neglect of Camoens, by the deference which they shewed his translator. Prince John, the uncle to the Queen, was ready on the Quay to welcome him at landing; and during a residence of more than six months he was gratified by the attentions of the principal men of the country. At the first institution of the Royal Academy at Lisbon, he was enrolled one of the Members. Here he composed Almada Hill, an epistle from Lisbon, which was published in the next year; and designing to write a History of Portugal, he brought together some materials for that purpose.
When he had returned to England, he was so much enriched by his agency for the disposal of the prizes which had been made during the cruise, and by his own portion of the prize-money, that he was enabled to discharge honourably the claims which his creditors still had on him, and to settle himself with a prospect of independence and ease. He accordingly married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Robert Tompkins, of Forrest-hill, and took a house at Wheatley, a little village about five miles from Oxford. Some interruption to his tranquillity occurred from the failure of a banker, with whom his agency had connected him, and from a chancery suit, in which he too hastily engaged to secure a part of his wife's fortune. He then resumed his intention of publishing his poems by subscription, and continued still to exercise his pen. His remaining productions were a tract, entitled The Prophecy of Queen Emma, an ancient Ballad, &c., with Hints towards a Vindication of the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian and Rowley (in 1782), and some essays, called Fragments of Leo, and some reviews of books, both which he contributed to the European Magazine. He died after a short illness, on the 25th of October, 1788, at Forrest-hill, while on a visit at the house of his father-in-law; and was buried at that place. He left one son, who was an extra-clerk in the India House, in 1806, when the Life of Mickle was written by the Rev. John Sim, a friend on whom he enjoined that task, and who, I doubt not, has performed it with fidelity.
Mickle was a man of strong natural powers, which he had not always properly under controul. When he is satisfied to describe with little apparent effort what he has himself felt or conceived, as in his ballads and songs, he is at times eminently happy. He has generally erred on the side of the too much rather than of the too little. His defect is not so much want of genius as of taste. His thoughts were forcible and vivid; but the words in which he clothed them, are sometimes ill-chosen, and sometimes awkwardly disposed. He degenerates occasionally into mere turgidness and verbosity, as in the following lines:
Oh, partner of my infant grief and joys!Big with the scenes now past my heart o'erflows,Bids each endearment fair at once to rise,And dwells luxurious on her melting woes.
When his stanza forced him to lop off this vain superfluity of words, that the sense might be brought within a narrower compass, he succeeded better. Who would suppose, that these verses could have proceeded from the same man that had written the well known song, beginning "And are ye sure the news is true," from which there is not a word that can he taken without injury, and which seems so well to answer the description of a simple and popular song in Shakspeare?
—It is old and plain:The songsters, and the knitters in the sun,And the free maids that weave their threads with bone,Do use to chaunt it. It is silly sooth,And dallies with the innocence of love,Like the old age.
Syr Martyn is the longest of his poems. He could not have chosen a subject in itself much less capable of embellishment. But whatever the pomp of machinery or profuseness of description could contribute to its decoration has not been spared. After an elaborate invocation of the powers that preside over the stream of Mulla, a "reverend wizard" is conjured up in the eye of the poet; and the wizard in his turn conjures up scene after scene, in which appear the hopeful young knight, Syr Martyn, "possest of goodly Baronie," the dairy-maid, Kathrin, by whose wiles he is inveigled into an illicit amour, the good aunt who soon dies of chagrin at this unworthy attachment, the young brood who are the offspring of the ill-sorted match, his brother, an openhearted sailor, who is hindered by the artifices of Kathrin from gaining access to the house, and lastly, the "fair nymph Dissipation," with whom Syr Martyn seeks refuge from his unpleasant recollections, and who conspires with "the lazy fiend, Self-Imposition," to conduct him to the "dreary cave of Discontent," where the poet leaves him, and "the reverend wizard" (for aught we hear to the contrary) in his company. Mean and familiar incidents and characters do not sort well with allegory, which requires beings that are themselves somewhat removed from the common sphere of human nature to meet and join it a little beyond the limits of this world. Yet in this tale, incongruous and disjointed as the dream of a sick man, velut aegri somnia, he has interspersed some lines, and even whole stanzas, to which the poet or the painter may turn again and again with delight, though the common reader will scarce find them sufficient to redeem the want of interest that pervades the whole.
His elegy on Mary, Queen of Scots, is also a vision, but it is better managed, at once mournful and sweet. He has thrown a pall of gorgeous embroidery over the bloody hearse of Mary.
Wolfwold and Ella, of which the story was suggested by a picture of Mortimer's, is itself a picture, in which the fine colouring and spirited attitudes reconcile us to its horrors.
His tragedy is a tissue of love and intrigue, with sudden starts of passion, and unprepared and improbable turns of resolution and temper. Towards the conclusion, one of the female characters puts an end to herself, for little apparent reason, except that it is the fifth act, and some blood must therefore be shed; Garrick's refusal, in all likelihood, spared him the worse mortification of seeing it rejected on the stage. Yet there is here and there in it a masterly touch like the following:
Either my mind has lost its energy,Or the unbodied spirits of my fathers,Beneath the night's dark wings, pass to and fro,In doleful agitation hovering round me.Methought my father, with a mournful look,Beheld me. Sudden from unconscious pauseI wak'd, and but his marble bust was here.
Almada Hill has some just sentiments, and some pleasing imagery; but both are involved in the mazes of an unskilful or ambitious phraseology, from which it is a work of trouble to extricate them. It was about this time, that the laboured style in poetry had reached its height. Not "to loiter into prose," of which Lyttelton bade him beware, was the grand aim; and in their eagerness to leave prose as far behind them as possible, the poets were in danger of outstripping the understanding and feelings of their readers. It was this want of ease and perspicuity in his longer pieces, which prevented Mickle from being as much a favourite with the public, as many who were far his inferiors in the other qualities of a poet. When a writer is obscure, only because his reasoning is too abstruse, his fancy too lively, or his allusions too learned for the vulgar, it is more just that we should complain of ourselves for not being able to rise to his level, than of him for not descending to our's. But let the difficulty arise from mere imperfections of language, and the consciousness of having solved an involuntary enigma is scarcely sufficient to reward our pains.
The translation of the Lusiad is that by which he is best known. In this, as in his original poems, the expression is sometimes very faulty; but he is never flat or insipid. In the numbers, there is much sweetness and freedom: and though they have somewhat of the masculine melody of Dryden, yet they have something also that is peculiarly his own. He has in a few instances enriched the language of poetry by combinations unborrowed from any of his predecessors. It is doubtful whether as much can be said for Pope's translation of Homer. Almost all who have written much in the couplet measure, since Waller clipped it into uniformity, have been at times reduced to the necessity of eking out their lines in some way or other so as to make the sense reach its prescribed bound. Most have done it by means of epithets, which were always found to be "friends in need." Mickle either breaks the lines with a freedom and spirit which were then unusual, or repeats something of what has gone before, a contrivance that ought to be employed sparingly, and used chiefly when it is desirable to produce the effect of sweetness.
The preference which he sometimes claims in the notes for his author, above the other epic poets of ancient and modern times, is less likely to conciliate the good opinion than to excite the disgust of his readers. There is no artifice that a translator can resort to with less chance of success, than this blowing of the showman's trumpet as he goes on exhibiting the wonders of his original. There are some puerile hyperboles, for which I know not whether he or Camoens is responsible; such as—
The mountain echoes catch the big swoln sighs.The yellow sands with tears are silver'd o'er.
Johnson told him that he had once intended to translate the Lusiad. The version would have had fewer faults, but it may be questioned whether the general result would have been as much animation and harmony as have been produced by Mickle.
In addition to the poems, which were confessedly his, there are no less than seventeen in Mr. Evans's collection of Ballads, of which a writer in the Quarterly Review[1] some years ago expressed his suspicion that they were from the pen of Mickle. It has been found on inquiry, that the suggestion of this judicious critic is fully confirmed. One of these has lately been brought into notice from its having formed the groundwork of one of those deservedly popular stories, which have lately come to us from the north of the Tweed. It is to be wished that Mickle's right in all of them were formally recognized, and that they should be no longer withheld from their place amongst his other poetical writings, to which they would form so valuable an accession.
FOOTNOTE[1] For May 1810, No. VI. The title of the Ballads are Bishop Thurston,and the King of Scots, Battle of Caton Moor, Murder of PrinceArthur, Prince Edward, and Adam Gordon, Cumner Hall, ArabellaStuart, Anna Bullen, the Lady and the Palmer, The Fair Maniac, TheBridal Bed, The Lordling Peasant, The Red Cross Knight, TheWandering Maid, The Triumph of Death, Julia, The Fruits of Jealousy,and The Death of Allen.
* * * * *
James Beattie was born on the 25th of October, 1735, at Laurencekirk, in the county of Kincardine, in Scotland. His father, who kept a small shop in that place, and rented a little farm near it, is said to have been a man of acquirements superior to his condition. At his death, the management of his concerns devolved on his widow. David, the eldest of her six children, was of an age to assist his mother. James, the youngest, she placed at the parish school of his native village, which about forty years before had been raised to some celebrity by Ruddiman, the grammarian, and was then kept by one Milne. This man had also a competent skill in grammar. His other deficiencies were supplied by the natural quickness of his pupil, and by the attention of Mr. Thomson, the minister of Laurencekirk, who, being a man of learning, admitted young Beattie to the use of his library, and probably animated him by his encouragement. He very early became sensible to the charms of English verse, to which he was first awakened by the perusal of Ogilby's Virgil. Before he was ten years old, he was as well acquainted with that writer and Homer, as the versions of Pope and Dryden could make him. His schoolfellows distinguished him by the name of the Poet.
At the age of fourteen, he was sent to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he attended the Greek class, taught by Dr. Blackwell, author of the Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, and was by him singled out as the most promising of his scholars. The slender pittance spared him by his mother would scarcely have sufficed for his support, if he had not added to it one of the bursaries or pensions that were bestowed on the most deserving candidates. Of a discourse which he was called on to deliver at the Divinity Hall, it was observed, that he spoke poetry in prose. Thomson was censured for a similar impropriety in one of his youthful exercises; but Beattie gained the applause of his audience.
His academical education being completed, on the 1st of August, 1753, he was satisfied with the humble appointment of parish-clerk and schoolmaster at the village of Fordoun, about six miles distant from Laurencekirk. Here he attracted the notice of Mr. Garden, at that time sheriff of the county, and afterwards one of the Scotch judges, with the appellation of Lord Gardenstown. In a romantic glen near his house, he chanced to find Beattie with pencil and paper in his hand; and, on questioning him, discovered that he was engaged in the composition of a poem. Mr. Garden desired to see some of his other poems; and doubting whether they were his own productions, requested him to translate the invocation to Venus at the opening of Lucretius, which Beattie did in such a manner as to remove his incredulity. In this retirement, he also became known to Lord Monboddo, whose family seat was in the parish; and a friendly intercourse ensued, which did not terminate till the death of that learned but visionary man. In 1758, he was removed from his employment at Fordoun, to that of usher in the Grammar School at Aberdeen, for which he had been an unsuccessful competitor in the preceding year, but was now nominated without the form of a trial.
At Aberdeen, his heart seems to have taken up its rest; for no temptations could afterwards seduce him for any length of time to quit it. The professorship of Natural Philosophy in the Marischal College, where he had lately been a student, being vacant in 1760, Mr. Arbuthnot, one of his friends, exerted himself with so much zeal in the behalf of Beattie, that he obtained that appointment; although the promotion was such as his most sanguine wishes did not aspire to. Soon after he was further gratified, by being permitted to exchange it for the professorship of Moral Philosophy and Logic, for which he thought himself better fitted. In discharge of the duties belonging to his new function, he immediately entered on a course of lectures, which, as appears from his diary in the possession of Sir William Forbes, he repeated with much diligence for more than thirty years.
This occupation could not have been very favourable to his poetical propensity. He had, since his twentieth year, been occasionally a contributor of verse to the Scots Magazine; and in 1760, he published a collection of poems, inscribed to the Earl of Erroll, to whose intervention he had been partly indebted for the office he held in the college. Though the number of these pieces was not considerable, he omitted several of them in subsequent editions, and among others a translation of Virgil's Eclogues, some specimens of which, adduced in a letter written by Lord Woodhouselee, author of the Principles of Translation, will stand a comparison with the parallel passages in Dryden and Warton.
In the summer of 1763, his curiosity led him for the first time to London, where Andrew Millar the bookseller, was almost his only acquaintance. Of this journey no particular is recorded but that he visited Pope's house at Twickenham.
In 1765, having sent a letter of compliment to Gray, then on a visit to the Earl of Strathmore, he was invited to Glammis Castle, the residence of that nobleman, to meet the English poet, in whom he found such a combination of excellence as he had hitherto been a stranger to. This appears from a letter written to Sir William Forbes, his faithful friend and biographer, with whom his intimacy commenced about the same time.
I am sorry you did not see Mr. Gray on his return; you would have been much pleased with him. Setting aside his merit as a poet, which, however, in my opinion, is greater than any of his contemporaries can boast, in this or in any other nation, I found him possessed of the most exact taste, the soundest judgment, and the most extensive learning. He is happy in a singular facility of expression. His conversation abounds in original observations, delivered with no appearance of sententious formality, and seeming to arise spontaneously, without study or premeditation. I passed two very agreeable days with him at Glammis, and found him as easy in his manners, and as communicative and frank as I could have wished.
Gray could not have requited him with such excess of admiration; but continued during the rest of his life to regard Beattie with affection and esteem.
It was not till the spring of this year, when his Judgment of Paris was printed, that he again appeared before the public as an author. This piece he inserted in the next edition of his poems, in 1766, but his more mature judgment afterwards induced him to reject it. Some satirical verses on the death of Churchill, at first published without his name, underwent the same fate. The Wolf and the Shepherds, a Fable, and an Epistle to the Rev. Mr. Thomas Blacklock, which appeared in the second edition, he also discarded from those subsequently published. He now projected and began the Minstrel, the most popular of his poems. Had the original plan been adhered to, it would have embraced a much wider scope.
In 1767, he married Mary, the daughter of Dr. Dun, rector of the Grammar School at Aberdeen. This union was not productive of the happiness which a long course of previous intimacy had entitled him to expect. The object of his choice inherited from her mother a constitutional malady which at first shewed itself in capricious waywardness, and at length broke out into insanity.
From this misery he sought refuge in the exercise of his mind. His residence at Aberdeen had brought him into the society of several among his countrymen who were engaged in researches well suited to employ his attention to its utmost stretch. Of these the names of Reid, author of An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense—and Campbell, Principal of Marischal College, author of An Essay on Miracles, are the most distinguished. His own correspondence with his friends about this time evinces deep concern at the progress of the sceptical philosophy, diffused by the writings of Hobbes, Hume, Mandeville, and even, in his opinion, of Locke and Berkeley. Conceiving the study of metaphysics itself to be the origin of this mischief, in order that the evil might be intercepted at its source, he proposed to demonstrate the futility of that science, and to appeal to the common sense and unsophisticated feelings of mankind, as the only infallible criterion on subjects in which it had formerly been made the standard. That his meaning was excellent, no one can doubt; whether he discovered the right remedy for the harm which he was desirous of removing, is much more questionable. To magnify any branch of human knowledge beyond its just importance may, indeed, tend to weaken the force of religious faith; but many acute metaphysicans have been good Christians; and before the question thus agitated can be set at rest, we must suppose a certain proficiency in those inquiries which he would proscribe as dangerous. After all, we can discover no more reason why sciolists in metaphysics should bring that study into discredit, than that religion itself should be disparaged through the extravagance of fanaticism. To have met the subject fully, he ought to have shewn that not only those opinions which he controverts are erroneous, but that all the systems of former metaphysicians were so likewise.
The Essay on Truth, in which he endeavoured to establish his own hypothesis, being finished in 1769, he employed Sir William Forbes and Mr. Arbuthnot to negotiate its sale with the booksellers. They, however, refused to purchase it on any terms; and the work would have remained unpublished, if his two friends, making use of a little pious fraud, had not informed him that the manuscript was sold for fifty guineas, a sum which they at the same time remitted him, and that they had stipulated with the booksellers to be partakers in the profits. The book accordingly appeared in the following year; and having gained many admirers, was quickly followed by a second impression, which he revised and corrected with much pains.
In the autumn of 1771, he again visited London, where the reputation obtained by the Essay and by the first book of the Minstrel, then recently published, opened for him an introduction into the circles most respectable for rank and literature. Lord Lyttelton declared that it seemed to him his once most beloved minstrel, Thomson, was come down from Heaven refined by the converse of purer spirits than those he lived with here, to let him hear him sing again the beauties of nature and the finest feelings of virtue, not with human, but with angelic strains. He added his wishes that it were in his power to do Beattie any service. From Mrs. Montagu he on different occasions received more substantial tokens of regard.
Except the trifling emolument derived from his writings, he had hitherto been supported merely by the small income appended to his professorship. But the Earl of Dartmouth, a nobleman to whom nothing that concerned the interests of religion was indifferent, representing him as a fit object of the royal bounty, a pension of two hundred pounds a year was now granted him. Previously to his obtaining this favour, he was first presented to the King, and was then honoured by an interview with both their Majesties. The particulars of this visit were minutely recorded in his diary. After much commendation of his Essay, the sovereign pleasantly told him that he had never stolen but one book, and that was his. "I stole it from the Queen," said his Majesty, "to give it to Lord Hertford to read." In the course of the conversation, many questions were put to him concerning the Scotch Universities, the revenues of the Scotch clergy, and their mode of preaching and praying. When Beattie replied, that their clergy sometimes prayed a quarter or even half an hour without interruption, the King observed, that this practice must lead into repetitions; and that even our own liturgy, excellent as it is, is faulty in this respect. While the subject of his pension was under consideration, the Queen made a tender of some present to him through Dr. Majendie, but he declined to encroach on her Majesty's munificence, unless the application made to the crown in his behalf should prove unsuccessful. A mercenary spirit, indeed, was not one of his weaknesses. Being on a visit at Bulstrode, his noble hostess the Duchess of Portland, would have had him take a present of a hundred pounds to defray the expenses of his journey into England; but he excused himself, as well as he was able, for not accepting her Grace's bounty.
With his pension, his wishes appear to have been bounded. Temptation to enter into orders in our church was thrice offered him, and as often rejected; once in the shape of a general promise of patronage from Dr. Drummond, Archbishop of York; next, of a small living in Dorsetshire, in the gift of Mr. John Pitt: and the third time, of a much more valuable benefice, which was at the disposal of Dr. Thomas, Bishop of Winchester. In answer to Dr. Porteus, through whom the last of these offers came, and whose friendship he enjoyed during the remainder of his life, he represented, in addition to other reasons for his refusal, that he was apprehensive lest his acceptance of preferment might render the motives for his writing the Essay on Truth suspected. He at the same time avowed, that if "he were to have become a clergyman, the church of England would certainly have been his choice; as he thought that in regard to church-government and church-service, it had many great and peculiar advantages." Unwillingness to part from Aberdeen was, perhaps, at the bottom of these stout resolutions. It was confessedly one of the reasons for which he declined a proposition made to him in the year 1773, to remove to the chair of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh; though he was urged by his friends not to neglect this opportunity of extending the sphere of his usefulness, and the change would have brought him much pecuniary advantage. His reluctance to comply was increased by the belief that there were certain persons at Edinburgh to whom his principles had given offence, and in whose neighbourhood he did not expect to live so quietly as he wished. In the same year, he was complimented with the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, by the University of Oxford, at the installation of Lord North in the Chancellorship.
He now, therefore, lived on at Aberdeen, making occasionally brief visits to England, where he was always welcome, both at the court and by those many individuals of eminence to whom his talents and virtues had recommended him. In the summers he usually indulged himself with passing some time at Peterhead, a town situated on the most easterly promontory of Scotland, and resorted to for its medicinal waters, which he thought beneficial to his health; for he had early in life been subject to a vertiginous disorder, the recurrence of which at times incapacitated him for any serious application.
The second book of the Minstrel appeared in 1774. In 1776 he was prevailed on to publish, by subscription, in a more splendid form, his Essay on Truth, which was now accompanied by two other essays, on Poetry and Music, and on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition; and by Remarks on the Utility of Classical Learning. This was succeeded in 1783, by dissertations moral and critical, on Memory and Imagination, on Dreaming, on the Theory of Language, on Fable and Romance, on the Attachments of Kindred, and on Illustrations of Sublimity; being, as he states in the preface, "part of a course of prelections read to those young gentlemen whom it was his business to initiate in the elements of moral science." In 1786, he published a small treatise, entitled Evidences of the Christian Religion, at the suggestion of Porteus, who was now a bishop; and in 1790 and 1793 two volumes of Elements of Moral Science, containing an abridgment of his public lectures on moral philosophy and logic.
His only remaining publication was an edition of the juvenile works of the elder of his two sons, who was taken off by a consumption (November 1790), at the age of twenty-two. To the education of this boy he had attended with such care and discernment as the anxiety of a parent only could dictate, and had watched his unfolding excellence with fondness such as none but a parent could feel. At the risque of telling my reader what he may, perhaps, well remember, I cannot but relate the method which he had taken to impress on his mind, when a child, the sense of his dependence on a Supreme Being; of which Porteus well observed, that it had all the imagination of Rousseau, without his folly and extravagance.
"The doctrines of religion," said Beattie, "I had wished to impress on his mind, as soon as it might be prepared to receive them; but I did not see the propriety of making him commit to memory theological sentences, or any sentences which it was not possible for him to understand. And I was desirous to make a trial how far his own reason could go in tracing out, with a little direction, the great and first principle of all religion, the being of God. The following fact is mentioned, not as a proof of superior sagacity in him (for I have no doubt that most children would, in like circumstances, think as he did), but merely as a moral or logical experiment. He had 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 followed 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 me.' '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 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 greatly, and he never forgot either it or the circumstance that introduced it."
So great was the docility of this boy, that before he had reached his twentieth year, he had been thought capable of succeeding his father in his office of public professor. When death had extinguished those hopes, the comfort and expectation of the parent were directed to his only surviving child, who, with less application and patience, had yet a quickness of perception that promised to supply the place of those qualities. But this prospect did not continue to cheer him long. In March 1796, the youth was attacked by a fever, which, in seven days, laid him by the side of his brother. He was in his eighteenth year. The sole consolation, with which this world could now supply Beattie, was, that if his sons had lived, he might have seen them a prey to that miserable distemper under which their mother, whose state had rendered a separation from her family unavoidable, was still labouring. From this total bereavement he sometimes found a short relief in the estrangement of his own mind, which refused to support the recollection of such a load of sorrow. "Many times," says Sir William Forbes, "he could not recollect what had become of his son; and after searching in every room of the house, he would say to his niece, 'Mrs. Glennie, you may think it strange, but I must ask you, if I have a son, and where he is?'" That man must be a stern moralist who would censure him very severely for having sought, as he sometimes did, a renewal of this oblivion in his cups.
He was unable any longer to apply himself to study, and left most of the letters he received from his friends unanswered. Music, in which he had formerly delighted, he could not endure to hear from others, after the loss of his first son; though a few months before the death of the second, he had begun to accompany him when he sang, on his own favourite instrument, which was the violoncello. Afterwards, as may be supposed, the sound of it was painful to him. He still took some pleasure in books, and in the company of a very few amongst his oldest friends. This was his condition till the beginning of April 1799, when he was seized with a paralytic stroke, which rendered his speech imperfect for several days. During the rest of his life he had repeated attacks of the same malady: the last, which happened on the 5th of October, 1802, entirely deprived him of motion. He languished, however, till the 18th of August in the following year, when nature being exhausted, he expired without a struggle.
He was interred, according to his own desire, by the side of his two sons, in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, at Aberdeen, with the following inscription from the pen of Dr. James Gregory, Professor of Physic, at Edinburgh.
Memoriae. Sacrum.JACOBI. BEATTIE. LL.D.Ethices.In. Academia. Marescallana. hujus. Urbis.Per. XLIII. Annos.Professoris. Meritissimi.Viri.Pietate. Probitate. Ingenio. atque. Doctrina.Praestantis.Scriptoris. Elegantissimi. Poetae. Suavissimi.Philosophi. Vere. Christiani.Natus. est. V. Nov. Anno. MDCCXXXV.Obiit. XVIII. Aug. MDCCCIII.Omnibus. Liberis. Orbus.Quorum. Natu. Maximus. JACOBUS. HAY.BEATTIE.Vel. a. Puerilibus. Annis.Patrio. Vigens. Ingenio.Novumque. Decus. Jam. Addens. Paterno.Suis. Carissimus. Patriae. Flebilis.Lenta. Tabe. Consumptus. Periit.Anno. Aetatis. XXIII.GEO. ET. MAR. GLENNIE.H.M.P.
"In his person," says Sir William Forbes, "Doctor Beattie was of the middle size, though not elegantly yet not awkwardly formed, but with something of a slouch in his gait. His eyes were black and piercing, with an expression of sensibility somewhat bordering on melancholy; except when engaged in cheerful and social intercourse with his friends, when they were exceedingly animated." In a portrait of him, taken in middle life by Reynolds, and given to him as a mark of his regard by the painter, he is represented with his Essay on Truth under his arm. At a little distance is introduced the allegorical figure of Truth as an angel, holding in one hand a balance, and with the other thrusting back the visages of Prejudice, Scepticism, and Folly.
He is, I believe, the solitary instance of a poet, having received so much countenance at the Court of George the Third; and this favour he owed less to any other cause than to the zeal and ability with which he had been thought to oppose the enemies of religion. The respect with which he was treated, both at home and abroad, was no more than a just tribute to those merits and the excellence of his private character. His probity and disinterestedness, the extreme tenderness with which he acquitted himself of all his domestic duties, his attention to the improvement of his pupils, for whose welfare his solicitude did not cease with their removal from the college; his unassuming deportment, which had not been altered by prosperity or by the caresses of the learned and the powerful, his gratitude to those from whom he had received favours, his beneficence to the poor, the ardour of his devotion, are dwelt on by his biographer with an earnestness which leaves us no room to doubt the sincerity of the encomium. His chief defect was an irritability of temper in the latter part of his life, which shewed itself principally towards those who differed from him on speculative questions.
In his writings, he is to be considered as a philosopher, a critic, and a poet. His pretensions in philosophy are founded on his Essay on Truth. This book was of much use at its first appearance, as it contained a popular answer to some of the infidel writers, who were then in better odour among the more educated classes of society than happily they now are. If (as I suspect to have been the case) it has prevented men, whose rank and influence make it most desirable that their minds should be raised above the common pitch, from pursuing those studies by which they were most likely so to raise them, the good which it may have done has been balanced by no inconsiderable evil. One can scarcely examine it with much attention, and not perceive that the writer had not ascended to the sources of that science, which notwithstanding any thing he may say to the contrary, it was evidently his aim to depreciate. Through great part of it he has the appearance of one who is struggling with some unknown power, which he would fain comprehend, and at which, in the failure to comprehend it, his terror is changed into anger. The word metaphysics, or, as he oftener terms it, metaphysic, crosses him like a ghost. Call it pneumatology, the philosophy of the mind, the philosophy of human nature, or what you will, and he can bear it.
Take any shape but that, and his firm nervesShall never tremble.
Once, indeed, (but it is not till he has reached the third and last division of the essay) he screws up his courage so high as to question it concerning its name; and the result of his inquiry is this: he finds that to fourteen of the books attributed to Aristotle, which it seems had no general title, Andronicus Rhodius, who edited them, prefixed the words, ta meta ta physica, that is, the books placed posterior to the physics; either because, in the order of the former arrangement they happened to be so placed, or because the editor meant that they should be studied, next after the physics. And this, he concludes, is said to be the origin of the word metaphysic. This is not very satisfactory; and if the reader thinks so, he will perhaps, be glad to hear those who, having dealt longer in the black art, are more likely to be conjurors in it. Harris, who had given so many years of his life to the study of Aristotle, tells us, that "Metaphysics are properly conversant about primary and internal causes."[1] "Those things which are first to nature, are not first to man. Nature begins from causes, and thence descends to effects. Human perceptions first open upon effects, and thence by slow degrees ascend to causes."[2]
His own definition might have been enough to satisfy him that it was something very harmless about which he had so much alarmed himself. Still he proceeds to impute to it I know not what mischief; till at last, in a paroxysm of indignation, he exclaims, "Exult, O metaphysic, at the consummation of thy glories. More thou canst not hope, more thou canst not desire. Fall down, ye mortals, and acknowledge the stupendous blessing."
About Aristotle himself, he is scarce in less perplexity. He sets out by defining truth according to Aristotle's description of it in these fourteen dreaded books of his metaphysics. Again he tells us, "he is most admired by those who best understand him;" and once more refers us to these fourteen books. But afterwards it would seem as if he had not himself read them; for speaking ofmetaphysics, he calls it that which Aristotle is said to have called theology, and the first philosophy: whereas Aristotle has explicitly called it so in these fourteen books;[3] and when he is recommending the study of the ancients, he adds; "Of Aristotle, I say nothing. We are assured by those who have read his works, that no one ever understood human nature better than he." What are we to infer from this, but that he had not himself read them? For his distinction between common sense and reason, on which all his theory depends, he sends the reader to the fourth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, and to the first of his latter Analytics; and yet somewhere else he speaks of these as the most worthless of Aristotle's writings. As for Plato, who on such a subject might have come in for some consideration, we are told that he was as much a rhetorician as a philosopher; and this, I think, is nearly all we hear of him.
Beattie is among the philosophers what the Quaker is among religious sectaries. The [Greek: koinos nous], or common sense, is the spirit whose illapses he sits down and waits for, and by whose whispers alone he expects to be made wise. It has sometimes prompted him well; for there are admirable passages in the Essay. The whole train of his argument, or rather his invective, in the second part, against the sceptics, is irresistible.
Scalda ogni fredda lingua ardente voglia,E di sterili fa l'alme feconde.Ne mai deriva altrondeSoave finme d'eloquenza rara.—Celio Magno.
"What comes from the heart, that alone goes to the heart," says a great writer of our own day;[4] and there are few instances of this more convincing than the vehemence with which Beattie dissipates the reveries of Berkeley, and refutes the absurdities of Hume.
In the second edition, (1771) speaking of those writers of genius, to whom he would send the student away from the metaphysicians, he confined himself to Shakespeare, Bacon, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Few will think that other names might not well have replaced the last of these. In the fourth edition, we find Johnson added to the list. This compliment met with a handsome requital; for Johnson, soon after, having occasion to speak of Beattie, in his Life of Gray, called him a poet, a philosopher, and a good man.
In his Essay, he comforts himself with the belief "that he had enabled every person of common sense to defeat the more important fallacies of the sceptical metaphysicians, even though he should not possess acuteness, or metaphysical knowledge, sufficient to qualify him for a logical refutation of them." It is lamentable to see at how great a cost to himself he had furnished every person of common sense with these weapons of proof. In a letter to Sir William Forbes, written not long after, he makes the following remarkable confession. "How much my mind has been injured by certain speculations, you will partly guess when I tell you a fact that is now unknown to all the world, that since the Essay on Truth was printed in quarto, in the summer of 1776, I have never dared to read it over. I durst not even read the sheets, and see whether there were any errors in the print, and was obliged to get a friend to do that office for me."
As he proceeded, he seems to have become more afraid of the faculty of reason. In the second edition he had said, "Did not our moral feelings, in concert with what our reason discovers of the Deity, evidence thenecessityof a future state,in vain should we pretendto judge rationally of that revelation by which life and immortality have been brought to light." In the edition of 1776, he softened down this assertion so much, as almost to deprive it of meaning. "Did not our moral feelings, in concert with what reason discovers of the Deity, evidence theprobabilityof a future state, and that it is necessary to the full vindication of the divine government,we should be much less qualifiedthan we now are to judge rationally of that revelation by which life and immortality have been brought to light." There was surely nothing, except perhaps the wordnecessity, that was objectionable in the proposition as it first stood.
It may be remarked of his prose style in general, that it is not free from that constraint which he, with much candour, admitted was to be found in the writings of his countrymen.
Of his critical works, I have seen only those appended to the edition of his Essay, in 1776. Though not deficient in acuteness, they have not learning or elegance enough to make one desirous of seeing more. His remarks on the characters in Homer are, I think, the best part of them. He sometimes talks of what he probably knew little about; as when he tells us that "he had never been able to discover anything in Aristophanes that might not he consigned to eternal oblivion, without the least detriment to literature;" that "his wit and humour are now become almost invisible, and seem never to have been very conspicuous;" with more that is equally absurd, to the same purpose.
The few of his poems which he thought worthy of being selected from the rest, and of being delivered to posterity, have many readers, to whom perhaps one recommendation of them is that they are few. They have, however, and deservedly, some admirers of a better stamp. They soothe the mind with indistinct conceptions of something better than is met with in ordinary life. The first book of the Minstrel, the most considerable amongst them, describes with much fervour the enthusiasm of a boy "smit with the love of song," and wakened to a sense of rapture by all that is most grand or lovely in the external appearances of nature. It is evident that the poet had felt much of what he describes, and he therefore makes his hearers feel it. Yet at times, it must be owned, he seems as if he were lashing himself into a state of artificial emotion, as in the following lines:
O! Nature, how in every charm supreme!Whose votaries feast on raptures ever new!O! for the voice and fire of seraphim,To sing thy glories with devotion due!
We hear, indeed, too often of "nature's charms."
Even here he cannot let the metaphysicians rest. They are, in his mind, the grievance that is most to be complained of in this "vale of tears."
There was one other thing that Beattie detested nearly as much as "metaphysic lore." It was the crowing of a cock. This antipathy he contrived to express in the Minstrel, and the reader is startled by the expression of it, as by something out of its place.
Of the stanza beginning, "O, how canst thou renounce," Gray told him that it was, of all others, his favourite; that it was true poetry; that it was inspiration; and, if I am not mistaken, it is related of Bishop Porteus, that when he was once with Beattie, looking down on a magnificent country that lay in prospect before them, he broke out with much delight into the repetition of it. Gray objected to one word,garniture, "as suggesting an idea of dress, and what was worse, of French dress;" and the author tried, but tried in vain, to substitute another. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find a better for the place in which it stands. There is no ground of censure which a writer should admit with more caution, than that a particular word or phrase happens to suggest a ludicrous or unsuitable image to the mind of another person. Few probably would have thought of French dress on this occasion: and to some, a passage in our translation of the Bible might have occurred, where it is said, that "the Lordgarnishedthe heavens." Another of Gray's criticisms fell on the word "infuriate," as being a new one, although, as Sir William Forbes remarks, it is found not only in Thomson's Seasons, but in the Paradise Lost.
The second book of the Minstrel is not so pleasant as it is good. The stripling wanders to the habitation of a hermit, who has a harp, not a very usual companion for a hermit, to amuse his solitude; and who directs him what studies to pursue. The youth is pleased with no historian except Plutarch. He reads Homer and Virgil, and learns to mend his song, and the poet would have told us how he learnt to sing still better, if sorrow for the death of a friend had not put a period to his own labours. The poem thus comes abruptly to an end; and we are not much concerned that there is no more of it. His first intention was to have engaged the Minstrel in some adventure of importance, through which it may be doubted whether he could well have conducted him; for he has not shewn much skill in the narrative part of the poem.
The other little piece, called the Hermit, begins with a sweet strain, which always dwells on the ear, and which makes us expect that something equally sweet is to follow. This hermit too has his "harp symphonious." He makes the same complaint, and finds the same comfort for it, as Edwin had done in the first book of the Minstrel. Both are the Christian's comment on a well-known passage in the Idyllium of Moschus, on the death of Bion. Of his Ode on Lord Hay's Birth-day, Gray's opinion, however favourable, is not much beyond the truth; that the diction is easy and noble; the texture of the thoughts lyric, and the versification harmonious; to which he adds, "that the panegyric has nothing mean in it."
The Ode to Hope looks like one of Blair's Sermons cast into a lyrical mould.
There is, I believe, no allusion to any particular place that was familiar to him, throughout his poems. The description of the owl in the lines entitled Retirement, he used to say, was drawn from nature. It has more that appearance than any thing else he has written, and pleases accordingly.
Between his systems in poetry and philosophy, some exchange might have been made with advantage to each. In the former, he counted general ideas for nearly all in all. (See his Essay on Poetry and Music,p. 431.) In the latter, he had not learnt to generalize at all; but would have rested merely in fact and experience.
FOOTNOTES[1] Philosophical Arrangements, c. xvii. p. 409, 8vo. ed.[2] Hermes, p. 9, 8vo. ed. The same writer again thus defines the word."By the most excellent science is meant the science of causes, and,above all others, of causes efficient and final, as thesenecessarily imply pervading reason and superintending wisdom. Thisscience as men were naturally led to it from the contemplation ofeffects, which effects were the tribe of beings natural or physical,was, from being thus subsequent to those physical inquiries, calledmetaphysical; but with a view to itself, and the transcendanteminence of its object was more properly called [Greek: hae protaephilosophia], the first Philosophy." Three treatises (in a note), p.365. Ibid.—See also Mr. Coleridge's Friend, vol. i. p. 309.[3] Metaph. I. vi. c. I.[4] Mr. Coleridge.
* * * * *
The most remarkable incidents in Hayley's Life are to be collected from his Memoirs of himself, edited by his friend the Rev. Dr. Johnson, better known as the favourite kinsman of Cowper. The Memoirs, though somewhat more copious than many readers might have wished them, are yet far from being devoid of entertainment to the lovers of literary biography.
William Hayley was born at Chichester, on the 29th of October, 1745. His father was a private gentleman, son of one Dean of Chichester, and nephew to another. Having enriched himself by an union with the daughter of an opulent merchant, who died without leaving him any children, he married for his second wife, Mary, a daughter of Colonel Yates, a representative in Parliament for the city of Chichester, the mother of the poet.
His father dying when he was three years old, and his only brother soon after, William became the sole care of a discreet and affectionate woman. A similar lot will be found to have influenced the earlier years of many who have been most distinguished for their virtues or abilities in after life. He was taught to read by three sisters, of the name of Russell, who kept a girls' school at Chichester; and pleased himself by relating that, when in his 63rd year, he presented to one of them, who still continued in the same employment with her faculties unimpaired, a recent edition of his Triumphs of Temper. His first instructor in the learned languages was a master in the same city, who appeared to be so incompetent to the task he had undertaken, that Mrs. Hayley removed her son to the school of a Mr. Woodeson, at Kingston. He had not been long here, when he was seized with a violent fit of illness, which obliged his mother, who had now fixed her residence in London, to take him home, after having nursed him for some weeks at Kingston, with little hopes of life. Of the anxiety with which she watched over him, he has left the following pathetic memorial in his Essay on Epic Poetry.
Thou tender saint, to whom he owes much moreThan ever child to parent owed before,In life's first season, when the fever's flameShrunk to deformity his shrivel'd frame,And turn'd each fairer image in his brainTo blank confusion and her crazy train,'Twas thine, with constant love, through lingering years,To bathe thy idiot orphan with thy tears;Day after day, and night succeeding night,To turn incessant to the hideous sight,And frequent watch, if haply at thy viewDeparted reason might not dawn anew.
The first sign he gave of returning intellect, was an exclamation on seeing a hare run across the road as they were taking an airing in Richmond park. On his recovery, his mother provided him a private tutor in Greek and Latin, of the name of Ayles, formerly a fellow of King's College, Cambridge; while she herself, and his nurse, a faithful servant in the family for more than fifty years, encouraged his early propensity for English literature; the former by reading to him and the other by making him recite passages out of tragedies, of which the good woman was passionately fond.
In August, 1757, his mother placed him at Eton where he remained about six years, at the end of which time he was removed to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Like many others, he acknowledges the illusion of considering our school-boy days as the happiest of life. The infirmities, which his sickness had brought on, made him extremely sensible to the jibes and rough treatment of the bigger boys, and the accidental neglect of a Greek lesson exposed him to a flogging which he never quite forgave. One of his tutors at Eton was Dr. Roberts, author of Judah Restored, a poem, in which the numbers of the Paradise Lost are happily imitated. By him, the young scholar was confirmed in that love of composing verse which he could trace hack to his ninth year. There is little promise in the specimens he gives of his earlier attempts. His English ode on the birth of the present King, inserted in the Cambridge collection, is an indifferent performance, even for a boy. At the university, he describes himself to have studied diligently, to have given many of his hours to drawing and painting, and to have formed friendships which were dissolved only by death. On Thornton, a member of the same hall, the most favoured of these associates, whom he lost when a young man, he wrote an elegy, which is one of the best of his works. With him he improved himself in the Spanish and Italian languages, the latter of which they studied under Isola, a teacher at Cambridge, afterwards creditably known by an edition of the Gerusalemme Liberata. Hayley entered his name at the Middle Temple on the 13th of June, 1766, and in the following year quitted Cambridge without a degree. He now made some ineffectual attempts towards fixing his choice of a profession in life; but at last poetry, and especially the drama, were suffered to engross him. In October, 1769, he married Eliza, the daughter of Dr. Ball, Dean of Chichester. This lady had been the confidant of his attachment to another. The match was on his part entered on rather from disappointment than love; and was made contrary to the advice of his surviving parent, who represented to him the danger there was lest his wife should inherit an incurable insanity under which her mother long laboured. Many years after, he put her away, fancying himself no longer able to endure a waywardness of temper, which, as he thought, amounted nearly to the calamity that had been apprehended. In the summer of 1774, he retired with his wife and mother from Great Queen-street, where they had hitherto resided, to his paternal estate at Eartham in Sussex; but in the ensuing winter his mother went back to London for medical advice and there died.
He had endeavoured, but in vain, to bring several of his tragedies on the stage. Garrick, with some hollow compliments, rejected one, called the Afflicted Father, of which the story appears to have been too shocking for representation. It was that a father had supplied his son, under sentence of death, with poison, and when too late found that he was pardoned. Another called the Syrian Queen, which he had imitated from the Rodogune of Corneille, was refused with more sincerity by Colman. A third met no better reception from Harris. "Persuaded," as he says, "by his own sensations that he had a considerable portion of native poetic fire in his mind, he resolved to display it in a composition less subject to the caprice of managers, yet more arduous in its execution. In short, he determined to begin an epic poem." He chose for his subject the extorting of Magna Charta from King John. The death of his friend Thornton in 1780, who had watched the progress of this essay with much solicitude for its success, chiefly induced him to relinquish a design, which was in truth ill fitted to his powers. In the Essay on Epic Poetry, he recommended it to Mason, who was not much better able to accomplish it than himself. I am unwilling to detain my reader by an account of the numerous poems, which he either did not complete or did not commit to the press. His unpublished verses, as he told me a few years before his death, amounted to six times the number of those in print.
His first publication was the Epistle on Painting to Romney, in 1778. The two next in the following year were anonymous, the one A Congratulatory Epistle to Admiral Keppel on his Acquittal; the other An Essay on the Ancient Greek Model (as he called it) to Bishop Lowth, remonstrating against the contention which the bishop had entered into with Warburton, and which he thought unworthy so excellent a prelate. In 1780, he produced besides the Verses on the death of Mr. Thornton, an Ode to Howard, and the Epistles on History addressed to Gibbon, which gained him the intimacy of the historian and the philanthropist. The success of these works encouraged him to project the Triumphs of Temper, the most popular of all his poems, which he published in 1781. The next year saw the publication of his Essay on Epic Poetry; in the notes to which he introduced much information on the poetry of Italy and Spain, then less known among us than at present; and he endeavoured to rouse the spirits of Wright the painter at Derby, by an ode, which was printed for private circulation. In 1784, he published a volume of plays, consisting of tragedies and comedies, the latter of which were in rhyme. The gratification of seeing his dramas represented on the stage, which he had before solicited in vain, was now offered by Colman, who proposed through the author's bookseller to bring out a tragedy and comedy, Lord Russell, and The Two Connoisseurs, at the Haymarket. "A comedy in rhyme," the manager observed, "was a bold attempt; but when so well executed as in the present instance, he thought, would be received with favour, especially on a stage of a genius somewhat similar to that of a private theatre for which it was professedly written." Both tragedy and comedy were well received, but with so little emolument to the poet, that he had to pay for his own seat at the representation. Marcella, the other tragedy, was also acted, in 1789, when it was condemned at one house, and in three nights after applauded at the other. The author accounted for this whimsical change of fortune by supposing the piece to have been played only on a few hours' preparation by the manager at Drury-Lane, in order to get the start of Harris and prevent his success by having the play damned before it appeared on his theatre.