The Poetical Works of James Beattie. James Beattie

hope none will be found that are now obsolete, or in any degree not intelligible to a reader of English poetry.

      To those who may be disposed to ask, what could induce me to write in so difficult a measure, I can only answer that it pleases my ear, and seems, from its Gothic structure and original, to bear some relation to the subject and spirit of the Poem. It admits both simplicity and magnificence of sound and of language beyond any other stanza that I am acquainted with. It allows the sententiousness of the couplet, as well as the more complex modulation of blank verse. What some critics have remarked, of its uniformity growing at last tiresome to the ear, will be found to hold true, only when the poetry is faulty in other respects.

       THE MINSTREL

      BOOK I

      Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musæ,

      Quarum sacra fero, ingenti perculsus amore,

      Accipiant. –                                     VIRG.

      THE MINSTREL; OR, THE PROGRESS OF GENIUS.

      BOOK I

I

      Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb

      The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar!

      Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime

      Has felt the influence of malignant star,

      And waged with Fortune an eternal war;

      Check'd by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown,

      And Poverty's unconquerable bar,

      In life's low vale remote has pined alone,

      Then dropt into the grave, unpitied and unknown!

II

      And yet the languor of inglorious days,

      Not equally oppressive is to all:

      Him who ne'er listen'd to the voice of praise,

      The silence of neglect can ne'er appall.

      There are, who, deaf to mad Ambition's call,

      Would shrink to hear the obstreperous trump of Fame;

      Supremely blest, if to their portion fall

      Health, competence, and peace. Nor higher aim

      Had he, whose simple tale these artless lines proclaim.

III

      The rolls of fame I will not now explore;

      Nor need I here describe, in learned lay,

      How forth the Minstrel far'd in days of yore,

      Right glad of heart, though homely in array;

      His waving locks and beard all hoary gray;

      While from his bending shoulder decent hung

      His harp, the sole companion of his way,

      Which to the whistling wind responsive rung:

      And ever as he went some merry lay he sung.

IV

      Fret not thyself, thou glittering child of pride,

      That a poor villager inspires my strain;

      With thee let Pageantry and Power abide:

      The gentle Muses haunt the sylvan reign;

      Where thro' wild groves at eve the lonely swain

      Enraptur'd roams, to gaze on Nature's charms:

      They hate the sensual, and scorn the vain,

      The parasite their influence never warms,

      Nor him whose sordid soul the love of gold alarms.

V

      Though richest hues the peacock's plumes adorn,

      Yet horror screams from his discordant throat.

      Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn,

      While warbling larks on russet pinions float;

      Or seek at noon the woodland scene remote,

      1

      "At his leisure hours he cultivated the muses. A journal kept by him, as well as some specimens of his poetry, are still in the possession of his descendants. This last circumstance is the more worthy of being noticed, as it proves that Dr. Beattie derived his poetical turn from his fat

1

"At his leisure hours he cultivated the muses. A journal kept by him, as well as some specimens of his poetry, are still in the possession of his descendants. This last circumstance is the more worthy of being noticed, as it proves that Dr. Beattie derived his poetical turn from his father." – Bower's Life of Beattie, 1804, p. 2.

2

According to Bower, Beattie was supported at college by the generosity of his brother David, who accompanied him to Aberdeen, when he first quitted Laurencekirk to commence his course at the University. "The peculiar mode of their conveyance to Aberdeen is a matter of very trifling moment. It may not be unacceptable to some, however, to be informed, that they rode on one horse; and at a season of the year not the most agreeable for undertaking a journey (when good roads were unknown in Scotland) of thirty English miles." —Life of Beattie, 1804, p. 17.

3

Life of Homer, Court of Augustus, &c.

4

Bower's Life of Beattie, 1804, p. 89.

5

Ibid. p. 100.

6

Lord Gardenstone was himself a votary of the muses, though his verses are now forgotten. As a satirical poet he is far from contemptible.

7

Robert Arbuthnot, Esq., Secretary to the Board of Trustees for Fisheries, Manufactures, and improvements in Scotland, who resided chiefly at Peterhead, where he carried on business as a merchant; a person of considerable taste and learning. He was nearly related to the famous Dr. Arbuthnot, the friend of Pope and Swift.

8

Sir William Forbes says it "had a rapid sale." Mr. A. Chalmers, however (Poets, vol. xviii. p. 519), doubts if it was ever published for sale, except in Beattie's Poems, 1766, in the Advertisement to which we are told that it "appeared in a separate pamphlet in the beginning of the year 1765." I have been unable to meet with the original edition.

9

I have been told that the poem consisted originally of only four stanzas, and that the two beautiful ones with which it now concludes were added, a considerable time after the others were written, at the request of Mrs. Carnegie, of Charlton, near Montrose. This lady, whose maiden name was Scott, was authoress of a poem called Dunotter Castle, printed in the second edition of Colman and Thornton's