excess." The objections which have been urged against this doctrine are numerous, but no where are they set in so clear a light as in the work of Dr Good. This writer is inclined to agree with the first assumption, that the first effect of the causes of fever consists in a quiescence or torpor of the extreme arteries, a position far from being incontrovertible. On this account he admits the possibility of the explanation being applied to the phenomena of a single febrile paroxysm; but as it applies no further, it must be fundamentally erroneous. "For when the sensorium has exhausted itself of its accumulated irritability, the disease should cease." But this is not the case. It is therefore said, that in consequence of this exhaustion going too far, a second torpor, producing accumulation of energy, is brought on, and the new paroxysm is caused by the expenditure of the accumulation. "Admitting this, for a moment, it must be obvious that the first or torpid stage alone could ensue; for the system being now quite exhausted, the quiescence can only be supposed to recruit the common supply necessary for health; we have no reason to suppose, nor is any held out to us, that this quantity can again rise to a surplus. Yet it must be further remarked that, in continued fevers, we have often no return of torpor or quietude whatever, and, consequently, no means of reaccumulating irritability; but one train of preternatural action and exhaustion, till the system is completely worn out. To this objection, the Darwinian hypothesis seems to be altogether without a reply."

The treatise on the materia medica is arranged according to the effects of medicines upon the irritative motions. It is by no means so much deserving of notice as the former parts of the work, so that we may pass it over without further observation.'

James Beattie.

BORN A. D. 1735.-DIED A. D. 1803.

THE close of the eighteenth century presents us with four names of eminence in the annals of our poetical literature, though of very dif ferent merit, and possessing little in common with each other, these are Beattie, Darwin, Burns, and Cowper. We have already glanced at two of these, and we should now, in chronological order, take up Cowper; but we prefer to close the list of the poetical names of this century with that of Cowper, who forms a clearer connecting link betwixt the poets of the last and present century, than the author of 'The Minstrel,' and exercised a much greater influence on the poetical destinies of the succeeding generation.

Dr James Beattie was born in Kincardineshire in 1735. His father was a shopkeeper in the village of Laurencekirk, and also rented a small farm in the neighbourhood. James was the youngest of six children. He was sent to the university of Aberdeen in 1749, where he obtained a bursary by public competition, and remained four years en

'Edinburgh Encyclopædia. Darwin's Zoonomia.

Dict.

Brown's Observations. Aikin's The study of Medicine,' by John Mason Good, vol. ii.-Annals of Medicine for 1798. Blackwood's Magazine, vol. v. Stewart's Philosophical Essays.

gaged in preparatory studies for entering the ministry. He finished his course of study in a manner which gave the greatest satisfaction to his teachers; but his merits failed for a time to procure him any substantial patronage, and he was glad to support himself for a period of four years by teaching a small country school. In 1758 he obtained an usher's place in the grammar-school of Aberdeen, and was soon taken notice of by the distinguished men who at this time adorned the university, and by whose recommendation he was appointed at the early age of twenty-five professor of moral philosophy and logic in Marischal college, a situation which he filled till within a short period of his death. On his election to this chair Dr Beattie had such men as Campbell, Reid, Gerard, and Gregory, for his professorial associates, and he maintained an intimate friendship with all these great men to the close of their respective lives.

The first publication of Dr Beattie was a volume of juvenile poems, which appeared in 1760. The author has sufficiently marked his estimate of these effusions, by the fact that in subsequent editions of his poetical pieces they were nearly all of them omitted. His biographer, Sir William Forbes, has attempted to save a few of them from what he considers unmerited oblivion; but most readers will be of opinion that he had better consulted the reputation of his friend by resigning them to the fate their author desired for them. In 1763 he made his first visit to London. In 1765 he published a poem entitled 'The Judgment of Paris, which was not very favourably received. In this year he formed an acquaintance with the poet Gray. In 1767 he married, and appears to have begun his Minstrel,' and Essay on Truth.' The latter work was intended as an antidote to the sceptical philosophy of Hume then getting into fashion. It made its appearance in 1770, and took amazingly with the more serious portion of the public, especially in England. The dignitaries of the English church were beyond measure delighted with it, and pressing offers were made to him of speedy advancement if he would consent to take orders in the church of England. To an intimation by Dr Porteous that a living worth £500 was at his service, Dr Beattie replied in the following terms: “[ wrote the Essay on Truth,' with the certain prospect of raising many enemies, with very faint hopes of attracting the public attention, and without any views of advancing my fortune. I published it, however, because I thought it might probably do a little good, by bringing to nought, or at least lessening the reputation of, that wretched system of sceptical philosophy, which had made a most alarming progress, and done incredible mischief to this country. My enemies have been at great pains to represent my views, in that publication, as very different; and that my principal, or only motive was, to make a book, and if possible, to raise myself higher in the world. So that if I were now to accept preferment in the church, I should be apprehensive that I might strengthen the hands of the gainsayer, and give the world some ground to believe, that my love of truth was not quite so ardent, or so pure, as I had pretended. Besides, might it not have the appearance of levity and insincerity, and by some, be construed into a want of principle, if I were, at these years (for I am now thirty-eight) to make such an important change in my way of life, and to quit, with no other apparent motive than that of bettering my circumstances, that church of which

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I have hitherto been a member? If my book has any tendency to do good, as I flatter myself it has, I would not, for the wealth of the Indies, do any thing to counteract that tendency; and I am afraid that tendency might in some measure be counteracted, (at least in this country,) if I were to give the adversary the least ground to charge me with inconsistency. It is true, that the force of my reasonings cannot be really affected by my character: truth is truth, whoever be the speaker; but even truth itself becomes less respectable when spoken, or supposed to be spoken, by insincere lips. It has also been hinted to me, by several persons of very sound judgment, that what I have written, or may hereafter write, in favour of religion, has a chance of being more attended to, if I continue a layman, than if I were to become a clergyman. Nor am I without apprehensions (though some of my friends think them ill-founded) that, from entering so late in life, and from so remote a province, into the church of England, some degree of ungracefulness, particularly in pronunciation, might adhere to my performances in public, sufficient to render them less pleasing, and consequently less useful."

In the summer of 1771 Dr Beattie paid a second visit to London, and was introduced to all the literary society of the metropolis. He repeated his visit in 1773, on which occasion he was admitted an honorary doctor of law at Oxford, had an interview with royalty, and received a substantial mark of favour in an annual pension of £200. Towards the close of the year 1773, there was a proposal for transferring Dr Beattie to the university of Edinburgh: this he declined chiefly, it would appear, from the dread of having to encounter there many machinations and subtle inventions of the sceptical philosophers, whose head-quarters he deemed Edinburgh to be, and who, he appears to have thought, would certainly plot his destruction if he was so foolhardy as to place himself within their reach. The reader will often be reminded of poor John Dennis's dread of the French court in perusing that portion of Dr Beattie's voluminous correspondence which relates to this matter. "There are about thirty pages of anxious elaborate correspondence on this subject, which illustrate, more than any thing we have lately met with, the importance of a man to himself, and the strange fancies that will sometimes be engendered between self-love and literary animosity. With no better grounds of apprehension than we have already mentioned, Dr Beattie writes:- Even if my fortune were as narrow, &c. I would still incline to remain in quiet where I am, rather than, by becoming a member of the university of Edinburgh, place myself within the reach of those who have been pleased to let the world know that they do not wish me well;—not that I have any reason to mind their enmity, &c. My cause is so good, that he who espouses it can never have occasion to be afraid of any man.' If he had actually been in danger of poison or stilettoes, he could not have used other language. He proceeds afterwards: As they are singular enough to hate me for having done my duty, and for what I trust (with God's help) I shall never cease to do, (1 mean for endeavouring to vindicate the cause of truth, with that zeal which so important a cause requires,) I could never hope that they would live with me on those agreeable terms on which I desire to live with all good men,' &c. And in another epistolary dissertation on the same subject, he adds,

with some reference to the members of the Edinburgh university, which we are persuaded was without foundation. I should dislike very much to live in a society with crafty persons, who would think it for their interest to give me as much trouble as possible; unless I had reason to think that they had conscience and honour sufficient to restrain them from aspersing the innocent.'

·

Dr Beattie published a volume of Essays in 1776, and another in 1783; a treatise on the Evidences of Christianity in 1786, and an outline of his academical lectures in 1790. These constituted all his prose publications. The first canto of the Minstrel' was published in 1771. It took well, probably more in consequence of its author being already known by his Essay on Truth.' It is by no means a poem of the highest order; yet it contains some beautiful descriptions and fine sentiments, and will always be read with pleasure by gentle and cultivated minds. The author makes the following remarks upon his own poem in his letters to Lady Forbes: “ Again your ladyship must have observed, that some sentiments are common to all men; others peculiar to persons of a certain character. Of the former sort are those which Gray has so elegantly expressed in his Church-yard Elegy;' a poem which is universally understood and admired, not only for its poetical beauties, but also, and perhaps chiefly, for its expressing sentiments in which every man thinks himself interested, and which, at certain times, are familiar to all men. Now the sentiments expressed in the Minstrel,' being not common to all men, but peculiar to persons of a certain cast, cannot possibly be interesting, because the generality of readers will not understand, nor feel them so thoroughly as to think them natural. That a boy should take pleasure in darkness or a storm,—in the noise of thunder, or the glare of lightning; should be more gratified with listening to music at a distance, than with mixing in the merriment occasioned by it; should like better to see every bird and beast happy and free, than to exert his ingenuity in destroying or insnaring them, these, and such like sentiments, which, I think, would be natural to persons of a certain cast, will, I know, be condemned as unnatural by others, who have never felt them in themselves, nor observed them in the generality of mankind. Of all this I was sufficiently aware before I published the Minstrel,' and therefore never expected that it would be a popular poem." What follows, however, as it partakes of anecdote, will probably be more interesting to most readers. "I find you are willing to suppose, that, in Edwin, I have given only a picture of myself as I was in my younger days. I confess the supposition is not groundless. I have made him take pleasure in the scenes in which I took pleasure, and entertain sentiments similar to those, of which, even in my early youth, I had repeated experience. The scenery of a mountainous country, the ocean, the sky, thoughtfulness and retirement, and sometimes melancholy objects and ideas, had charms in my eyes, even when I was a school-boy; and at a time when I was so far from being able to express, that I did not understand my own feelings, or perceive the tendency of such pursuits and amusements; and as to poetry and music, before I was ten years old I could play a little on the violin, and was as much master of Homer and Virgil, as Pope's and Dryden's translations could make me."

In 1796 Dr Beattie lost a favourite son, his only surviving child.

This event, says his biographer, completely unhinged his mind," the first symptom of which, ere many days had elapsed, was a temporary but almost total loss of memory respecting his son. Many times he could not recollect what had become of him; 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?' She then felt herself under the painful necessity of bringing to his recollection his son Montagu's sufferings, which always restored him to reason. And he would often, with many tears, express his thankfulness that he had no child, saying, 'How could I have borne to see their elegant minds mangled with madness!' When he looked for

the last time on the dead body of his son, he said, 'I have now done with the world:' and he ever after seemed to act as if he thought so. For he never applied himself to any sort of study, and answered but few of the letters he received from the friends whom he most valued. Yet the receiving a letter from an old friend never failed to put him in spirits for the rest of the day. Music, which had been his great delight, he could not endure, after the death of his eldest son, to hear from others; and he disliked his own favourite violoncello. A few months before Montagu's death, he did begin to play a little by way of accompaniment when Montagu sung: but after he lost him, when he was prevailed on to touch the violoncello, he was always discontented with his own performance, and at last seemed to be unhappy when he heard it. The only enjoyment he seemed to have was in books, and the society of a very few old friends. It is impossible to read the melancholy picture which he draws of his own situation about this time, without dropping a tear of pity over the sorrows and the sufferings of so good a man thus severely visited by affliction." From this time Dr Beattie's health gradually declined. In 1799 he was struck with paralysis. He lingered in a hopeless state till June 1803, when death relieved him from all mortal infirmity.

A great portion of Dr Beattie's correspondence is before the public in Sir William Forbes's splendid biographical volumes. We are not sure that the Doctor's memory has reaped much advantage from the care and industry of his literary executor in this respect. They are full of trite criticisms and egregious common-places; and what is still worse, in many instances appear to have been nothing better than "a commerce of mutual flattery." An anonymous author says of this portion of Dr Beattie's literary remains, that "the reader is sometimes tempted to suspect that he has been called to be present at a farce, where the principal persons are flattering for a wager. During the perusal, we have been obliged again and again to endeavour to drive out of our imagination the idea of a meeting of Chinese mandarins,― where the first bows to the floor,-and then the second mandarin bows to the floor, and then the first mandarin bows again to the floor; and thus they go on till friendship is satisfied or tired."

Of his great work, the Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth,' little is now said. Indeed we question if it is read by one in twenty students of mental philosophy. It betrays greater warmth of temper than powers of reasoning, and abounds with such babyish interjections, as " Fy on it! Fy on it!" "Ye traitors to human kind !" Ye murderers of the human soul!" "Vain hypocrites !" &c. &c. What