Scottish poet and educator, friend of Thomas Gray, associated with the Graveyard School and, thanks to his popular long poem The Minstrel, considered one of the forerunners of the Romantic period. As a philosopher, he is sometimes associated with the Scottish "Common Sense" school, an influential (especially in C19 America) reaction to the philosophical skepticism of David Hume.
Sites:
Biographical essay
[Electric Scotland]
Brief biographical note
[Wikipedia]
Biographical note
[1911 Encyclopedia]
Brief biographical note
[John W. Cousins, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910]
Brief biographical note
[Columbia Encyclopedia, Bartleby.com]
Brief note
Focuses on Beattie's philosophical Essay on Truth
Ah! Beauty's bloom avails not in the grave,
Youth's lofty mien, nor Age's awful grace;
Moulder unknown the monarch and the slave
Whelm'd in th' enormous wreck of human race.
The thought-fix'd portraiture, the breathing bust,
The arch with proud memorials array'd,
The long-liv'd pyramid shall sink in dust
To dumb Oblivion's ever-desart shade
— "The Triumph of Melancholy"
Youth's lofty mien, nor Age's awful grace;
Moulder unknown the monarch and the slave
Whelm'd in th' enormous wreck of human race.
The thought-fix'd portraiture, the breathing bust,
The arch with proud memorials array'd,
The long-liv'd pyramid shall sink in dust
To dumb Oblivion's ever-desart shade
— "The Triumph of Melancholy"