highest commendations; but I do not recollect that he ever spoke a syllable about publishing or suppressing it. But I have certainly tired you with so long a detail, about so trifling a matter as my works. However, I thought it necessary to say something by way of apology for them, for I find that your good opinion is of too much consequence to my peace, to suffer me to neglect any opportunity of cultivating it."

[Pg xxxiv]

The Essay on Truth being now finished, our author was desirous of selling the MS. to some bookseller, in order that he might avoid all risk to himself in the publication, and intrusted the care of this matter to Sir William Forbes and Mr. Arbuthnot. His two friends, however, having applied to the bookseller, whom they imagined the most proper person to publish the work, were vexed by his positive refusal to purchase it, although he had no objection to print it on Beattie's account. In this difficulty they generously resolved to become themselves the purchasers of the first edition. "I therefore," says Sir William Forbes, "wrote to him [Beattie] (nothing surely but the truth, although, I confess, not the whole truth,) that the manuscript was sold for fifty guineas, which I remitted to him by a bank bill; and I added, that we had stipulated with the bookseller who was to print the book, that we should be partners in the publication."[Pg xxxv]

[Pg xxxv]

At length in May, 1770, the Essay on Truth was given to the world. As it had been seen in manuscript by several eminent literary characters, and as it was understood to be a direct attack on the philosophy of Hume (who was then in the height of his popularity,) its appearance excited immediate notice. It has been said, that on its publication, Hume spoke of Beattie with great bitterness, complaining (and I am forced to allow that there was some cause for the complaint) that he had not used him like a gentleman: it has even been asserted that he could not endure the name of our author to be mentioned in his presence. I suspect that in all this there is great exaggeration. The placid temper of Hume was not likely to be much ruffled by any thing that might be written against his system; his friends and admirers were probably more disturbed by the attack than the philosopher himself. In less than four years five large editions of the Essay were circulated, and translations of it were made into French and other foreign languages.

From the rugged paths of philosophy Beattie turned once more into the flowery walks of poesy. In 1771, the First Book 

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