"Some deem'd him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad;"

or in his curse upon the Cock, the line--

"And ever in thy dreams the ruthless fox appear;"

or the burst of description, how like the scene when the clouds suddenly
disperse, and show us

"the evening star.
And from embattled clouds emerging slow,
Cynthia came riding in her silver car:
And hoary mountain cliffs shone faintly from afar."


His smaller poems possess many felicitous lines. The "Ode to Peace"
closes splendidly, and the "Hermit" is little inferior to Gray's
"Elegy." Its burden is the doctrine of the Resurrection, and it breathes
a more evangelical spirit than Gray. It begins in gloom, but ends in
glory--a glory reflected from the revealed truth of Scripture, which,
once believed, seems then to the poet corroborated by those analogies of
nature which had previously ministered despair instead of hope--such as
the monthly death and resurrection of the moon, and the nightly
darkening and morning revelation of the beauties of the landscape. The
stanza commencing with "'Tis night," may be called perfectly beautiful;
and we shall not soon forget that Dr Thomas Brown never quoted it
without tears, and that he quoted it, in tones of deep and tremulous
pathos, in the last lecture he ever delivered to his students.

On the whole, Beattie may be ranked beside, or near, Campbell, Collins,