labouring to pervert Scripture, in order to vindicate one of the most impious and inhuman practices that ever disgraced the sublunary creation. He, good man! would not for the world offer an apology for any injustice, oppression, or cruelty, that may have been practised by dealers in slaves; he would only justify what he calls "the Afri66 can slave-trade in the abstract." I know not Whether I understand this. But, if he will remove all oppression, cruelty, and injustice, from that trade, I promise him I shall not object to his abstract notions: the trade will then be a mere idea; as harmless as those now are, to which we give the names of ostracism, crusade, &c.; and will no more make negroes miserable, and slave-mongers cruel, than the second book of the Eneid' will burn their towns. The misfortune is, that from this vile traffic, oppression, injustice, and cruelty, are inseparable. These crimes have, from the beginning of it, formed its basis, and without them it can no more subsist, than a house without a foundation. "that makes no noise," says a clown in Shakespeare to a company of fiddlers, "pray let us "have it; but we cannot endure any other." So say I to Mr Harris. If you can give us an Afri

If you have any music

can slave-trade, that has nothing cruel, oppressive, or unjust in it, with all my heart; let it be set a-going as soon as possible. To such a trade the British legislature will have no objection; and I trust they will never tolerate any other. They have entered into this business with a generous alacrity, that does them infinite honour; and will soon, I hope, make such regulations as will render my zeal and my arguments unnecessary, and even unseasonable.”

LETTER CCV.

DR BEATTIE TO SIR WILLIAM FORBES.

Peterhead, 10th July, 1788.

"I am much obliged to you for the quotation from Mrs Piozzi's letters, and to that lady for speaking of me with so much kindness.* I was introduced to her and Mr Thrale by Dr Johnson, and received many and great civilities from both.

* The paragraph in question is as follows: "Dr Beattie is as

charming as ever. "Doctor will get his pension.

Mr Thrale was a most respectable character; intelligent, modest, communicative, and friendly: and I greatly admired his wife for her vivacity, learning, affability, and beauty: I thought her indeed one of the most agreeable women I ever saw; and could not have imagined her capable of acting so unwise a part as she afterwards did.

"What she says of Goldsmith' is perfectly true. He was a poor fretful creature, eaten up with affectation and envy. He was the only person I ever knew who acknowledged himself to be envious. In Johnson's presence he was quiet enough; but in his absence expressed great uneasiness in hearing him praised. He envied even the dead; he could not bear that Shakespeare should be so much admired as he is. There might, however, be something like magnanimity in envying Shakespeare and Dr Johnson; as in Julius Cæsar's weeping to think, that at an age at which he had

"smith, who says he cannot bear the sight of so much applause as we all bestow upon him. Did he not tell us so himself, "who would believe he was so exceedingly ill-natured?" ||

Mrs Piozzi and Dr Johnson's Letters, Vol. I. p. 186.

done so little, Alexander should have done so much. But surely Goldsmith had no occasion to envy me; which, however, he certainly did, for he owned it (though, when we met, he was always very civil); and I received undoubted information, that he seldom missed an opportunity of speaking ill of me behind my back. Goldsmith's common conversation was a strange mixture of absurdity and silliness; of silliness so great, as to make me sometimes think that he affected it. Yet he was a genius of no mean rank somebody, who knew him well, called him, an inspired idiot. His ballad of Edwin and 'Angelina' is exceedingly beautiful, and well conducted; and in his two other poems, though there be great inequalities, there is pathos, energy, and even sublimity."

LETTER CCVI.

DR BEATTIE TO THE DUCHESS OF GORDON.

Aberdeen, 8th August, 1788.

"It delights me to hear that Lord Huntly is to go to Oxford or Cambridge. An English university is the best place on earth for study; and, what is of still greater consequence, especially to a person of high rank, it supplies the best opportunities of contracting those early connections of friendship, which one remembers with exquisite pleasure to the end of life; and which often contribute, more than any thing else, to a great man's influence and popularity. Mr Pitt, great as he is by hereditary right, and greater still by his own genius and virtue, would, I am persuaded, readily acknowledge how much he owes to Cambridge. There he was from the first a general favourite; and there he found many valuable friends, who, I am told, still adhere to him with a fervency of zeal, in which it is difficult to say, whether admiration or fondness be the most