Before the publication of An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism in 1770, James Beattie was an obscure poet and teacher in the north of Scotland; but by the time of his visit to London in the summer of 1771, when the second edition of his essay was published, the book had made him one of the most celebrated authors in Great Britain. The popularity of An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth endured well beyond Beattie's lifetime, with at least twenty-six editions up to 1852. Meanwhile, with the publication of the first book of The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius during the summer of 1771, many readers in England, as well as in Scotland, expressed amazement that the brilliant young philosopher, who had recently demolished the arguments of David Hume, George Berkeley, and others, was also an exciting, original poet...