The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair and Falconer | Page 8

whom he had brought to the threshold, within the
sanctuary of song, and consecrating him the "High Priest of the Nine,"
by baptizing him into the Christian faith. The poem is a dream as well
as a fragment--no poetic mind was perhaps ever so thoroughly
insulated as that of his hero--but the "dream is one," it is consistent
with itself, and is painted with trembling truth of touch and delicate
tenderness of feeling. We feel it to be destitute of profound
suggestiveness and massive thought, but its verse is solemnly dignified,
its imagery is chastely grand, and a rich chiaroscuro rests like a tropical
night upon the whole. Besides the stanzas we have already alluded to, it
has some of those brief touches which show the master's hand: such
as--
"Some deem'd him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad;"
or in his curse upon the Cock, the line--
"And ever in thy dreams the ruthless fox appear;"
or the burst of description, how like the scene when the clouds
suddenly disperse, and show us

"the evening star.
And from embattled clouds emerging slow,

Cynthia came riding in her silver car:
And hoary mountain cliffs
shone faintly from afar."
His smaller poems possess many felicitous lines. The "Ode to Peace"
closes splendidly, and the "Hermit" is little inferior to Gray's "Elegy."
Its burden is the doctrine of the Resurrection, and it breathes a more
evangelical spirit than Gray. It begins in gloom, but ends in glory--a
glory reflected from the revealed truth of Scripture, which, once
believed, seems then to the poet corroborated by those analogies of
nature which had previously ministered despair instead of hope--such
as the monthly death and resurrection of the moon, and the nightly
darkening and morning revelation of the beauties of the landscape. The
stanza commencing with "'Tis night," may be called perfectly beautiful;
and we shall not soon forget that Dr Thomas Brown never quoted it
without tears, and that he quoted it, in tones of deep and tremulous
pathos, in the last lecture he ever delivered to his students.
On the whole, Beattie may be ranked beside, or near, Campbell, Collins,
Gray, and Akenside. Deficient in thought and passion, in creative
power, and copious imagination, he is strong in sentiment, in mild
tenderness, and in delicate description of nature. Whatever become of
his Essay on Truth, or even of his less elaborate and more pleasing
Essays on Music, Imagination, and Dreams, the world can never, at any
stage of its advancement, forget to read and admire the "Minstrel" and
the "Hermit," or to cherish the memory of their warm-hearted and
sorely-tried author.
We now bid the author of the "Minstrel" farewell! We love to think of
him wandering in youth through the black plantations of firs, which
border on his birthplace, or climbing grey Garvock Hill, and fixing his
dark pensive eyes on the distant white sails, hovering like rare wings
over the rounded blue-green German deep, or crossing those dreary
moors which lie between Stonehaven and Aberdeen, a solitary
pedestrian, in search of learning and distinction, in that noble old
city--or teaching his son to "consider the cresses of the garden 'how
they grow,'" and to find in them something worth a thousand homilies

or elaborate arguments for the being of a God--or taking his last look of
the dead body of his last son, Montague, and saying, "Now I have done
with the world." He had many of the powers, all the virtues, and
scarcely one of the faults generally supposed to be connected with the
character, mind, and temperament of a poet.
BEATTIE'S POEMS.
THE MINSTREL;
OR,
THE PROGRESS OF GENIUS.
PREFACE.
The design was, to trace the progress of a Poetical Genius, born in a
rude age, from the first dawning of fancy and reason, till that period at
which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a
MINSTREL, that is, as an itinerant poet and musician:--a character
which, according to the notions of our forefathers, was not only
respectable, but sacred.
I have endeavoured to imitate Spenser in the measure of his verse, and
in the harmony, simplicity, and variety of his composition. Antique
expressions I have avoided; admitting, however, some old words,
where they seemed to suit the subject: but I 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 I am
acquainted