"You would have been much pleased with Mr Gray. Setting aside his merit as a poet, which, however, is greater in my opinion than any of his contemporaries can boast, in this or 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."
It is curious to find that, during this trip to Scotland, Gray thus expressed himself to Dr Gregory of Edinburgh regarding the immortal poem to which his name is so endearingly attached; "he told me," says Dr Gregory, "with a good deal of acrimony, it owed its popularity entirely to the subject, and that the public would have received it as well if it had been written in prose."[1]
Beattie was at this period in a low state of health, being afflicted with a kind of giddiness, which defied all his efforts to banish it, and even threatened to interrupt his professional duties. In a letter to the honourable Charles Boyd, brother of the Earl of Errol, he thus playfully alludes to this, as well as several other personal peculiarities:
"I flatter myself that I shall ere long be in the way of becoming a great man. For have I not headaches like Pope? vertigo like Swift? grey hairs like Homer?[2] Do I not wear large shoes (for fear of corns) like Virgil? and sometimes complain of sore eyes (though not of lippitude) like Horace? Am I not, at this present writing, invested with a garment not less ragged than that of Socrates? Like Joseph the patriarch, I am a mighty dreamer of dreams; like Nimrod the hunter, I am an eminent builder of castles (in the air). I procrastinate like Julius Caesar; and very lately in imitation of Don Quixote, I rode a horse, lean, old, and lazy, like Rosinante. Sometimes, like Cicero, I write bad verses; and sometimes bad prose like Virgil. This last instance I have on the authority of Seneca. I am of small stature like Alexander the Great; somewhat inclined to fatness like Dr Arbuthnot and Aristotle; and I drink brandy and water like Mr Boyd. I might compare myself, in relation to many other infirmities, to many other great men; but if fortune is not influenced in my favour by the particulars already enumerated, I shall despair of ever recommending myself to her good graces."
Some time previous to September 1766, Beattie commenced a poem in the Spenserian stanza; a description of verse to which he was much attached, on account of its harmony, and its admitting of so many fine pauses and diversified terminations. The subject was suggested to him by the dissertation on the old minstrels, which was prefixed to Dr Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," then just published. In May, 1767, he informs his friend Blacklock at Edinburgh, that he wrote one hundred and fifty lines of this poem some months before, and had not since added a single stanza. His hero was not then even born, though in the fair way of being so; his parents being described and married. He proposed to continue the poem at his leisure, with a description of the character and profession of his ideal minstrel; but he was wofully cast down by the scantiness of the poetical taste of the age.
On the 28th of June, 1767, Dr Beattie was married at Aberdeen, to Miss Mary Dun, the only daughter of Dr James Dun, rector of the grammar-school of that city. The heart of the poet had previously been engaged in honourable affection to a Miss Mary Lindsay, whom, so late as the year 1823, the writer of
- ↑ Forbes' Life of Beattie, 4to. vol. i. p. 83.
- ↑ Hair, like Byron's, "grey at thirty!"
