BEATTIE, James, a Scottish poet and writer on philosophy, was born at Laurencekirk on the 25th October 1735. His father, a small farmer and shopkeeper, died when he was very young; but an elder brother took charge of the boy, and observing his aptitude for learning sent him to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he gained a bursary. In 1753 he was appointed schoolmaster of Fordoun, at the foot of the Grampian hills, amongst splendid scenery, which impressed itself deeply on Beattie’s somewhat poetical mind. In 1758 he obtained a situation as undermaster in the grammar school, Aberdeen, and two years later he was made professor of moral philosophy at Marischal College. Here he became closely acquainted with Reid, Campbell, Gerard, and others, who formed a kind of literary or philosophical society, in which speculative questions, above all the views of Hume, were canvassed and criticized. In 1770 Beattie published his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in which he attacked Helvetius and Hume, and advocated the doctrine afterwards familiarly known as that of Common Sense. The work had an astonishing success, and its author, when on a visit to London in 1773, was received with the greatest honour by the king himself. About the same time he received a pension of £200 a year. In 1773 and 1774 he published the first and second parts of The Minstrel, which were received with great favour, and gained for the author a fresh accession of popularity. His later writings are partly literary, such as the Essays, 1766; Dissertations, 1783, partly philosophical; Evidences of Christianity, 1781; Elements of Moral Science, 1790-93. Beattie was unfortunate in his domestic life. His wife, whom he married in 1767, was afflicted with insanity, a disease which she appears to have ...