of praise came only from Lord Lyttelton, who vowed that in him Thomson had come back from the shades, much purified and refined by his Elysian sojourn! Beattie, we fear, was a little spoiled by the flatteries he received from Lyttelton and that peculiar clique which circled round him; and hence his prejudice in their favour, and the praise he reciprocates, are enormous. "Lord Lyttelton," says a writer, "is his private friend, and him he always calls the 'Great Historian,' though he is obliged to give his lordship's name afterwards, to let his readers know of whom he is speaking! From his letters it might appear that all the literary talent, all the taste, and all the virtue of the country, were confined to his circle of friends—Lord Lyttelton, Mrs Montague, Dr Porteous, and Major Mercer."
In 1773, he again visited London, and the climax of his renown seemed to be reached, when the University of Oxford gave him the degree of LL.D.—when three different times he refused the offer by bishops and archbishops of promotion in the English Church—and when (oh, brave!) he was admitted to an interview with their Majesties, complimented on his
Essay on Truth
by good old George III., who was much better qualified to judge of an essay on turnips, and gifted with a pension of £200 a year. About the same time he was urged to apply for the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, which he declined to do, apparently from a terror at the thought of coming so near David Hume—a terror which strikes us as exceedingly ludicrous, when we recollect that, most pernicious as were Hume's principles, he was in private as harmless, good-natured, and (
Scotticè
)
sonsy
a being as lived.
A few months after the
Essay on Truth