I

"Lord Monboddo's third volume* I have not yet seen. It will certainly be full of learning and ingenuity; but perhaps the author's excessive admiration of the Greek writers may lead him into some paradoxes, and make him too insensible to the merits of modern literature. have a great respect for Lord Monboddo; I know him to be a learned and a worthy man; and I am greatly concerned to see him adopt some opinions, which, I fear, are not very salutary.

"But I know nobody that has less occasion than yourself to study these authors, with a view to the formation of a good style. I beg your partiality to me may not so blind you to the faults of mine, as ever to make you think of studying it for a pattern. You are pleased to pay me compliments on this head, which I do not by any means deserve. The style of my letters, whatever you and Mr Arbuthnot may say, is not a good style; it has nothing of that accuracy, that ease, or that simplicity, which it ought to have. Nay, in the prose I have printed, my ex

* Origin and Progress of Language. See Vol. I. p. 30.

pression, after all the pains I have taken about it, is not what I wish it to be: it is too pompous, and, I fear, too visibly elaborate; and there is often a harshness and a stiffness in it, which I would fain avoid, but cannot. Even provincial improprieties, I know, I am not proof against, though few people have been more careful to keep clear of them. The longer I study English, the more I am satisfied that Addison's prose is the best model; and if I were to give advice to a young man on the subject of English style, I would desire him to read that author day and night. I know not what may be the opinion of others; but, in my own judgment, that part of my writings, which in the article of style has the least demerit, is An Essay on Laughter, which is now in the press; yet perhaps my partiality to it may be owing to this circumstance, that it is the last thing I corrected.”

The following letter to me was written after my recovery from a dangerous illness. It contains some important observations on a very solemn subject.

LETTER CXVIII.

DR BEATTIE TO SIR WILLIAM FORBES.

Aberdeen, 22d January, 1777.

"I shall not attempt, my dear Sir, to tell you, what a transition from grief to happiness I lately experienced, on occasion of your illness and recovery, Your own heart will teach you to conceive it, but I have no words to express it.

"The account you give me of your thoughts and feelings, when your disorder was at the height, is very interesting. That insensibility which you complain of, and blame yourself for, is, I believe, common in all similar cases; and a merciful ap

pointment of Providence it is. By deadening those affections, to which life is indebted for its principal charm, it greatly alleviates the pangs of dissolution. In fact, the pains of death to a man in health appear much more formidable than to a dying man. This at least is my opinion; and I have been led into it by what has been observed, of some people's displaying a fortitude, or composure, at the hour of death, who had all their lives been remarkably timorous and weak-minded. The proximate cause of this, I take to be that same stupor which gradually steals upon our senses, as our dissolution draws near. And that the approach of death should produce this stupor, needs not surprise us, when we consider, that the approach even of sleep has something of the same effect; and that the keenness of our passions and feelings, in general, depends very much, even when we are in tolerable health, upon our bodily habit. If sleep is found to disorder our reason, and give a peculiar wildness to our fancy; if memory may be hurt, as it certainly has been, by a blow on the head; if a superabundance of certain bodily humours give rise to certain passions in the mind; if drunkenness divest a man, for a time, of his character, and even of many of his

favourite opinions (for I have known a staunch Presbyterian, who was always a Roman Catholic in his liquor); if even a full meal gives a languor to the mind, and impairs a little our faculties of invention and judgment; we have good reason to think, that the connection between our soul and body is very intimate; and may therefore admit the probability of what I now advance, namely, that when the powers and energies of the human body are disordered by the near approach of death, it is scarcely possible that the soul should perceive or feel with its wonted acuteness. The stupor, therefore, you mention, was something in which your will had no part, but the natural and necessary effect of a cause purely material. I ask pardon for all this philosophy; which, however, I cannot conclude, without one remark more; which is, that this doctrine, if true, ought to be matter of comfort to a good man, as well as an alarm to such as are not of that character. To the former, it promises an easy dissolution; and it ought to teach the latter, that, of all places on earth, a death-bed is the most improper for devotion or repentance,

"You smile, perhaps, at the seriousness of these remarks; but I am led into them by read