_James Beattie_, 1735-1803: he was the son of a farmer, and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he was afterwards professor of natural philosophy. For four years he taught a village school. His first poem, _Retirement_, was not much esteemed; but in 1771 appeared the first part of _The Minstrel_, a poem at once descriptive, didactic, and romantic. This was enthusiastically received, and gained for him the favor of the king, a pension of £200 per annum, and a degree from Oxford. The second part was published in 1774. _The Minstrel_ is written in the Spenserian stanza, and abounds in beautiful descriptions of nature, marking a very decided progress from the artificial to the natural school. The character of Edwin, the young minstrel, ardent in search for the beautiful and the true, is admirably portrayed; as is also that of the hermit who instructs the youth. The opening lines are very familiar: Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar; and the description of the morning landscape has no superior in the language: But who the melodies of morn can tell? The wild brook babbling down the mountain side; The lowing herd; the sheepfold's simple bell; The pipe of early shepherd dim descried In the lone valley. Beattie wrote numerous prose dissertations and essays, one of which was in answer to the infidel views of Hume--_Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism_. Beattie was of an excitable and sensitive nature, and his polemical papers are valued rather for the beauty of their language, than for acuteness of logic. _William Falconer_, 1730-1769: first a sailor in the merchant service, he afterwards entered the navy. He is chiefly known by his poem _The Shipwreck_, and for its astonishing connection with his own fortunes and fate. He was wrecked off Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece, before he was eighteen; and this misfortune is the subject of his poem. Again, in 1760, he was cast away in the Channel. In 1769, the Aurora frigate, of which he was the purser, foundered in Mozambique Channels, and he, with all others on board, went down with her. The excellence of his nautical directions and the vigor of his descriptions establish the claims of his poem; but it has the additional interest attaching to his curious experience--it is his autobiography and his enduring monument. The picture of the storm is very fine; but in the handling of his verse there is more of the artificial than of the romantic school.