which Reynolds was at that time painting. On that very morning when Robertson was showing Johnson Holyrood Palace, Reynolds began the allegorical picture in which he represented Truth and the amiable and harmonious Beattie triumphing together over scepticism and infidelity.[1] It was commonly said that in the group of discomfited figures could be recognized the portraits of Voltaire and Hume. Goldsmith, if we may trust Northcote, reproached Reynolds "for wishing to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie."[2] If Voltaire's face is to be found in the picture, the likeness is so remote that even he, sensitive though he was, could scarcely have take offence, while of Hume not even the caricature can be discovered. Feeble though the allegory is, the portrait of Beattie is a very fine piece of workmanship. In Marischal College, by the generosity of his grandnieces it has found its fitting resting-place, for here for many years he was Professor of Moral Philosophy. Here a few years earlier he had been visited by Gray, who, to quote Johnson's words, "found him a poet, a philosopher, and a good man."[3]
Slains Castle and the Bullers of Buchan.
(August 24-25.)
At Aberdeen Johnson had found awaiting him a letter from London which must have been six days on the road.[4] He did not receive another till he arrived at Glasgow, nearly ten weeks later. He was now going "to the world's end extra anni solisque vias, where the post would be a long time in reaching him," to apply to the Hebrides the words which four years later he used of Brighton.[5] It was only seven and twenty years before he drove out from Aberdeen that the Duke of Cumberland with six battalions of foot and Lord Mark Kerr's dragoons had marched forth along the same road to seek the rebels. With a gentle breeze and a fair wind his transports at the same time moved along shore.[6] Though no
- ↑ Forbes's Life of Beattie, p. 160.
- ↑ Northcote's Life of Reynolds (ed. 1819), i. 300.
- ↑ Johnson's Works, viii. 479.
- ↑ In 1786 the post despatched from Aberdeen on Monday reached London on Saturday. Travellers could reach Edinburgh in a day and a half by the Aberdeen and Edinburgh Fly, which set out from the New Inn at four o'clock in the morning, and arrived at Edinburgh next day to dinner; fare, £2 2s. Scottish Notes and Queries, i. 31.
- ↑ Piozzi Letters, i. 387.
- ↑ Ray's History of the Rebellion, p. 310.
