Author: Beattie, James
Biography:
BEATTIE, James (1735-1803: ODNB)
Poet and philosopher. He was born at Laurencekirk, Kincardineshire, to James Beattie, a shop-keeper and farmer, and Jean (Watson) Beattie, and attended the Laurencekirk parish school where he was early recognised as a scholar and poet. Awarded a bursary to attend Marischal College, Aberdeen, he graduated MA in 1753 and became schoolmaster and parish clerk at Fordoun, near Laurencekirk, before taking up a post at the Aberdeen grammar school in 1758. Through the influence of friends and admirers, he was named professor of moral philosophy and logic at Marischal College in 1760, and a member of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society. In the 1760s he wrote his two best-known and most influential works: Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth and The Minstrel (of which he never completed a projected third book). Visits to London in 1771 and 1773 allowed him to meet other culturally significant men and women, including Elizabeth Montagu who became a close friend, and he was awarded an annual pension of £200 by George III. Beattie’s home life was complicated by the mental illness of his wife (Mary Dun, married in 1767), and he was to outlive his three sons, including James Hay Beattie (q.v.). In later life, his focus was on prose writing and, although he revised some of his poetry, he rejected many of his poems and turned against the use of Scots dialect for verse. He suffered a series of strokes from 1799, and he died at Aberdeen. (ODNB 23 Feb. 2018; William Forbes, An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL.D. [1824])
Other Names:
- Beattie
- Dr. Beattie