A few months after the "Essay on Truth" appeared, and while the echoes of its fame were beginning to spread through the world, there had appeared a thin anonymous quarto, entitled the "First Book of the Minstrel." It slid noiselessly as a star into the world's air. The critics, finding no name on the title page, were peculiarly severe, and peculiarly senseless, in their treatment of the unpretending volume, which would have been crushed under their heavy strictures, had not--rare event in those days--the public chosen to judge for itself, and to fall in love with the beautiful poem. It consequently soon ran through four editions, each edition containing some corrections and improvements; and in the year 1774 he published the second part, which, now that its author's name was known, was loudly praised by the Reviews, as well as by the general reader. He always meant to, but never did, add a third. From the date of his refusal of promotion in the English Church, Beattie had made up his mind to remain in Aberdeen, which is a beautifully built town, and which teemed to him with old associations. He spent his winters in diligently instructing his class, and in summer was often found at Peterhead, a town situated on the most easterly promontory of Scotland, and which was then noted for its medicinal waters. Beattie was troubled with a vertiginous complaint, which he found benefited by the use of the Peterhead Spa. He no doubt also admired and often visited the noble sea scenery to the south of that town.--Slaines Castle, standing on its rock, sheer over the savage surge, and begirt by the perpetual clang of sea-fowl and roar of billows, and the famous Bullers of Buchan, where the sea has forced its way through the solid rock, leaving an arch of triumph to commemorate the passage, and formed a huge round pot where its waters, in the time of storm, rage and fret and foam like a newly imprisoned maniac--a pot which Dr Johnson proposes to substitute for the Red Sea, in the future incarceration of demons. In 1776, he published, by subscription, a new and splendid edition of his "Essay on Truth," accompanied by two other essays, much more interesting, on "Poetry and Music," and on "Laughter and Ludicrous Composition," and by "Remarks on the Utility of Classical Learning." This was followed, in 1783, by a volume of "Dissertations on Memory and Imagination, Dreaming," &c. In 1786 he published a little treatise on the "Christian Evidences," which he had shown to Bishop Porteous in London, two years before, and been recommended by him to give to the world. Beattie himself preferred it to all his writings, in "closeness of matter and style." In 1790 and 1793, appeared two volumes on the "Elements of Moral Science," containing an abridgment of his lectures on Moral Philosophy and Logic. He wrote also, in the "Transactions" of the Royal Society, Edinburgh, a paper on the sixth book of the "Æneid", and contributed a few notes to an edition of Addison's works.