wood’s dramatic career” may be debatable, but it certainly reveals that his handling of dramatic poetry was far better than adequate. The'play may be overshadowed by A W oman K ille d W ith Kindness, but it is nevertheless a delightful, stageworthy piece of dramaturgy which also makes easy reading. One can well understand why it was played for the Queen and King three times in eight days to commence its career. h . A. H a r g r e a v e s / U niversity of Alberta Everard H. King, Jam es Beattie, Twayne’s English Authors Series, No. 206 (Boston: Twayne Publishers/G. K . Hall & Co., 1977). 190 (including index) The chief interest of this book lies in its reminder of the role Beattie’s poetry and criticism played in preparing the way for the poetic theories and prac tice of some of the major Romantic writers: Wordsworth, principally, and, to a lesser extent, Byron and Shelley. In this connection, there is good literary detective work in Chapter 8. The author has not resisted the tempta tion, however, to inflate Beattie’s reputation, and on the whole the book is written in a strain of panegyric rather than cool assessment. This is a pity, because Beattie’s story is a fascinating one of a clever man who achieved great commercial and social success for a time, despite ill health, severe family stress occasioned by a mentally disturbed wife, and a tendency to alcoholism. Making a mark, first as a schoolmaster and then as a university professor, Beattie sprang to fame with the publication of A n Essay on the N ature and Im m utability of T ru th ; in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism (1770; five edns. by 1776), essentially an abusive onslaught on Hume, which stung the normally urbane philosopher into calling his opponent, “ that bigotted silly Fellow.” The book was joyfully received by believers as a complete refutation of scepticism, and recognizing that he was no philosopher, Beattie may well have intensified its polemical tone during composition, following the policy said to have been adopted by an old Scotch minister for parts of his sermons: “Argument weak — shout loud.” The reputation of the Essay buoyed up the publication of Beattie’s poems, espe cially T h e M instrel: or, the Progress of Genius (1st bk. 1771, 2nd 1774; thirty-nine edns. by 1858, according to King), also the literary essays, and a final polemical work: Evidences of the Christian R eligion (1786; eight edns. by 1821). King does not seem to appreciate the literary and religious politics involved in these enterprises. 495 Indeed, in certain respects this study of Beattie is very limited on the biographical side, and on the background of ideas to his work. The Fettercairn Papers, in the National Library of Scotland, which contain the mate rials Sir William Forbes used for his L ife of Beattie (1806), including un published letters, appear not to have been consulted, nor the Creech m s s in the Scottish Record Office, containing Beattie’s letters to his publisher. No attempt is made to relate Beattie’s lectures to those given by his con temporaries in other Scottish University Chairs: e.g., Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart, and Hugh Blair, which were also seedbeds of the later Romantic aesthetics and poetics. T h e M instrel as a meditative-philosophic and rhapsodic work about poetic identity, the quest for wisdom, and the regenerative effect of landscape and natural forces is not connected with the “ Ossianic” poetry of James Macpherson, another Aberdeen student. The view that Beattie possessed (and possibly betrayed) cultural roots in a distinctive region of Scotland, that of the Northeast, with its linguistic frontier, strong ballad tradition, pockets of Episcopalianism and mysticism, and humanistic focus at Aberdeen University, is never examined. The weakness of the book’s approach is most clearly revealed, perhaps, in the treatment of the relationship between Beattie and Burns. It is assumed, uncritically, that the influence of the older poet was all for the good. In fact, Beattie’s patronizing attitude to Lallans and his sentimentality, as well as his pervasively genteel concept of...