While there, he wrote a few poetical pieces, which he sent with his initials, and the name of his place of abode, to the _Scots Magazine_. We can fancy him, like the immortal Peter Pattieson, on the day the Magazine was due, walking as far as the little height of Auchcairnie, to watch and weary for the long-expected carrier's cart wending its slow way from the south and, when the parcel reached his hand, with eager, trembling fingers, opening it up, to have all the joy of virgin authorship awakened in his soul. In these days a poetic production from the country seemed a phenomenon--as great, to use an expression of De Quincey's, as if "a dragoon horse had struck up 'Rule Britannia,'" and no doubt, many an eyebrow in Auld Reekie rose in wonder, and many a voice exclaimed, "Who can this be?" when verses so good by J. B. Fordoun, flashed upon the public from time to time. But, although his poetry procured him more fame than he was then aware of, it brought him nothing more, and his way to competence and elevation in society, seemed as completely blocked up as ever. It would seem that he had, from an early period of his life, looked forward to the Church as his profession; and, having taught for some time in Fordoun, he returned to Aberdeen, to prosecute those preparatory studies which he had for a while abandoned for a parish school and poetry. Here he attended the lectures of Dr Robert Pollock of Marischal College, and Professor John Lumsden of King's-and performed the exercises prescribed by both. It was at this time that he delivered a discourse in the Divinity Hall in language so lofty, that the Professor challenged him for writing poetry instead of prose--a story reminding us of similar facts in the history of Thomson, Pollok, and others whose names we do not mention--and corroborating the truth, that poetical genius and the halls of philosophy or theology are seldom congenial, and that "musty, fusty, crusty" old professors are in general harsh stepfathers to rising poets. Whether from chagrin on account of this criticism--and this is the more probable, because Beattie was all along very sensitive to depreciation or abuse--or from some other cause, he determined to abandon the study of Divinity, and to follow teaching as a profession. In 1757, a vacancy occurring in the Grammar School of Aberdeen, Beattie offered himself as a candidate, but failed in the preliminary examination, as he had himself expected, from a want of circumstantial and minute acquaintance with the Latin tongue. A few months after, however, a second vacancy having taken place in the same school, he was elected without the form of a trial, and entered on the discharge of his duties in June 1758. He was now in a more advantageous and a more reputable post--and while discharging its duties with exemplary diligence, he found time for the cultivation of his poetical gift.