FOOTNOTE [1] For May 1810, No. VI. The title of the Ballads are Bishop Thurston, and the King of Scots, Battle of Caton Moor, Murder of Prince Arthur, Prince Edward, and Adam Gordon, Cumner Hall, Arabella Stuart, Anna Bullen, the Lady and the Palmer, The Fair Maniac, The Bridal Bed, The Lordling Peasant, The Red Cross Knight, The Wandering Maid, The Triumph of Death, Julia, The Fruits of Jealousy, and The Death of Allen. * * * * * JAMES BEATTIE. James Beattie was born on the 25th of October, 1735, at Laurencekirk, in the county of Kincardine, in Scotland. His father, who kept a small shop in that place, and rented a little farm near it, is said to have been a man of acquirements superior to his condition. At his death, the management of his concerns devolved on his widow. David, the eldest of her six children, was of an age to assist his mother. James, the youngest, she placed at the parish school of his native village, which about forty years before had been raised to some celebrity by Ruddiman, the grammarian, and was then kept by one Milne. This man had also a competent skill in grammar. His other deficiencies were supplied by the natural quickness of his pupil, and by the attention of Mr. Thomson, the minister of Laurencekirk, who, being a man of learning, admitted young Beattie to the use of his library, and probably animated him by his encouragement. He very early became sensible to the charms of English verse, to which he was first awakened by the perusal of Ogilby's Virgil. Before he was ten years old, he was as well acquainted with that writer and Homer, as the versions of Pope and Dryden could make him. His schoolfellows distinguished him by the name of the Poet. At the age of fourteen, he was sent to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he attended the Greek class, taught by Dr. Blackwell, author of the Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, and was by him singled out as the most promising of his scholars. The slender pittance spared him by his mother would scarcely have sufficed for his support, if he had not added to it one of the bursaries or pensions that were bestowed on the most deserving candidates. Of a discourse which he was called on to deliver at the Divinity Hall, it was observed, that he spoke poetry in prose. Thomson was censured for a similar impropriety in one of his youthful exercises; but Beattie gained the applause of his audience.