MR. JUSTICE TALFOURD AND DR. BEATTIE.
(Vol. ix., p 393.)
There is so much similarity of character, in respect of sympathy for the humbler position and the well-being of others, between this lamented judge and that of the professor who is depicted by his biographer in the following extract, that I hope you will agree with me in thinking it worthy of being framed, and hung up as a companion-sketch in your pages:
"As a Professor, not his own class only, but the whole body of students at the University, looked up to him with esteem and veneration. The profound piety of the public prayers, with which he began the business of each day, arrested the attention of the youngest and most thoughtless; the excellence of his moral character; his gravity blended with cheerfulness, his strictness joined with gentleness, his favour to the virtuous and diligent, and even the mildness of his reproofs to those who were less attentive, rendered him the object of their respect and admiration. Never was more exact discipline preserved than in his class, nor ever anywhere by more gentle means. His sway was absolute, because it was founded in reason and affection. He never employed a harsh epithet in finding fault with any of his pupils; and when, instead of a rebuke which they were conscious they deserved, they met merely with a mild reproof, it was conveyed in such a manner as to throw not only the delinquent, but sometimes the whole class into tears. To gain his favour was the highest ambition of every student; and the gentlest word of disapprobation was a punishment, to avoid which, no exertion was deemed too much. His great object was not merely to make his pupils philosophers, but to render them good men, pious Christians, loyal to their king, and attached to the British constitution; pure in morals, happy in the consciousness of a right conduct, and friends to all mankind."
This is the language of Dr. Beattie's biographer, who knew him intimately. Cowper, the poet, thus writes of him to the Rev. W. Unwin, from a knowledge of his works:
"I thanked you in my last for Johnson; I now thank you with more emphasis for Beattie—the most agreeable and amiable writer I ever met with—the only author I have seen whose critical and philosophical researches are diversified and embellished by a poetical imagination, that makes even the driest subject, and the leanest, a feast for an epicure in books. He is so much at his ease too, that his own character appears in every page; and, which is rare, we see not only the writer, but the man; and that man so gentle, so well-tempered, so happy in his religion, and so humane in his philosophy, that it is necessary to love him, if one has any sense of what is lovely."—Life of Dr. Beattie, by Sir William Forbes, Bart.
J. M.
Oxford.