you and Mrs. Beattie, and that I wish your health better, and your life long. Try change of air, and come a few degrees southward; a softer climate may do you both good. Winter is coming on, and London will be warmer, and gayer, and busier, and more fertile of amusement than Aberdeen." In 1781, Beattie made another journey to London, taking with him his eldest son, James Hay Beattie.[V] While there, we find him writing thus to Sir William Forbes: "1st June. "I have been visiting all my friends again and again, and found them as affectionate and attentive as ever. Death has indeed deprived me of some since I was last here, of Garrick, and Armstrong, and poor Harry Smith; but I have still many left."... "Johnson grows in grace as he[Pg liv] grows in years. He not only has better health and a fresher complexion than ever he had before (at least since I knew him), but he has contracted a gentleness of manners which pleases every body." [Pg liv] "28th June. "I thought it my duty to appear at the levee before I left London; and accordingly the week before last I went to court. The king had not seen me for six years, and yet, to my surprise, knew me at first sight. He spoke to me with his wonted condescension and affability; and paid me a very polite compliment on the subject of my writings." His Dissertations, Moral and Critical, were published in 1783. A passage from a letter of the poet Cowper to the Rev. William Unwin, 5th April, 1784,[W] must not be omitted here: "If you have not his poem, called the 'The Minstrel,' and cannot borrow it, I must beg you[Pg lv] to buy it for me; for, though I cannot afford to deal largely in so expensive a commodity as books, I must afford to purchase at least the poetical works of Beattie." [Pg lv] His health impaired, and his peace of mind destroyed, by the melancholy condition of his wife (who, labouring under confirmed insanity, was now removed from her family), we need not wonder that Beattie should endeavour to forget his domestic griefs in the society of his English friends, to whom he was ever welcome. During the year 1784, after passing some time in London, he spent a month with Dr. Porteus (who had now attained the rank of Bishop of Chester), at the beautiful parsonage of Hunton, near
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