| Administrative History | James Hay Beattie [1768-1790]. Eldest son of Beattie. Named, with permission, after Beattie's patron James Hay, Earl of Erroll. His childhood is lovingly recorded in many letters, which show that Beattie was always a deeply involved parent, and in the memoir Beattie wrote shortly after James Hay's death. His childhood and adolescence were marred by his mother's mental illness, and her total disasppearance from his life when he was aged about eleven. He attended Aberdeen Grammar School, and then Marischal College from 1781 to 1786. He considered entering the church, but Beattie secured his appointment on 28 Spetember 1787 as his own assistant and successor. James Hay sometimes taught the Arts class, but was already ill with tubercolosis, of which he died on 19 November 1790. His father assembled a substantial volume of his prose and verse, printed in an edition of 200 copies for circulation among his friends in 1794, and subsequently published with Beattie's own poems in 1799 |
| Description | Letter from James Hay Beattie, in verse, entitled 'Delphinum sylvis appingit'. With note at head of letter stating that this was 'Supposed to have been intended as an invitation of Dryden's versification'.
"Dolphin, approach: and leave the dainty shrine
Of Pope, and rest a while secure at mine.
Let Pope the chain'd antithesis prolong,
and trimly trip it in laborious song:
Despising low penurians art, I call
The Muse to join wild nature's medrigal;
I see the Lark his little plume display,
and sing, and soar, and vanish into day;
I roam the savage mountain's howling tracts,
Hear ocean rage, and tumbling cataracts: -
and shall I curb my rapid view, to themes
of leaves and flowers, of grottoes, groves and streams?
No: for I scorn the prostituted lays;
And surly blame prefer to fawning praise.
No: I will sing of pipes, where water runs,
By Leslie hewn, and varnish'd, and made guns;
Redoubts; and grim artillery yawning o'er
The cripple hermit's paint - bespatter'd door;
Triumphal arches of eternal brick,
Full six feet high, and full ten inches thick.
A Dolphin once, inspired by verse divine,
Plough'd with his boring snout the watery brine: -
And O, if dolphins yet a song can move,
There awful eyesores from my seat remove;
So every work of thine thy poet shall approve.
Else at the barn let me my post maintain,
To scare the chattering sparrows from thy grain:
and , as the battle's front must threaten here,
Plant in my place you blowsy grenadier". |