in the use of wine. In a letter to Mr. Arbuthnot, he says, "With the present pressure upon my mind, I should not be able to sleep, if I did not use wine as an opiate; it is less hurtful than laudanum, but not so effectual." He may, perhaps, have had too frequent recourse to so palatable a medicine, in the hope of banishing for a while the recollection of his sorrows; and if, under any circumstances, such a fault is to be regarded as venial, it may be excused in one who was a more than widowed husband and a childless father.

VERUM

BONUM

[Pg lxxv]

The prose writings of Beattie appear of late years to have fallen into disrepute; and the once celebrated Essay on Truth is at present as much undervalued as it was formerly overrated.

His fame now rests upon The Minstrel alone. Since its first publication, many poems of a far loftier and more original character have been produced in England; yet still does it maintain its popularity; and still in Edwin, that happy personification of the poetic temperament, do young and enthusiastic readers delight to recognize a picture of themselves. Though we cannot fail to regret that Beattie should have left it incomplete, yet we do not long for the concluding books from any interest which we take in the story, such as is excited by some other unfinished works of genius, the tale of Cambuscan, for instance, or the legend of Christabel. In The Minstrel, indeed, there is but little invention; it is a poem of sentiment[Pg lxxvi] and description, conveying to us lessons of true philosophy in language of surpassing beauty, and displaying pictures of nature, in her romantic solitudes, painted by a master's hand. "On my once asking Dr. Beattie," says Sir William Forbes, "in what manner he had intended to employ his Minstrel, had he completed his original design of extending the poem to a third canto, he said, he proposed to have introduced a foreign enemy as invading his country, in consequence of which the Minstrel was to employ himself in rousing his countrymen to arms."[AC] But surely such a conclusion would have formed too violent a contrast to the repose of the earlier books; and the charm which attaches us to the meditative Edwin, while a wanderer among the lonely hills and groves, would have been broken, or at least weakened, by placing him amid the throng of warriors and the din of arms.

[Pg lxxvi]

With the exception of The Hermit and the following exquisite stanza[AD] of Retirement, there is little worthy of particular notice 

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