Beattie wrote numerous prose dissertations and essays, one of which was in answer to the infidel views of Hume—­Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism.  Beattie was of an excitable and sensitive nature, and his polemical papers are valued rather for the beauty of their language, than for acuteness of logic.

William Falconer, 1730-1769:  first a sailor in the merchant service, he afterwards entered the navy.  He is chiefly known by his poem The Shipwreck, and for its astonishing connection with his own fortunes and fate.  He was wrecked off Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece, before he was eighteen; and this misfortune is the subject of his poem.  Again, in 1760, he was cast away in the Channel.  In 1769, the Aurora frigate, of which he was the purser, foundered in Mozambique Channels, and he, with all others on board, went down with her.  The excellence of his nautical directions and the vigor of his descriptions establish the claims of his poem; but it has the additional interest attaching to his curious experience—­it is his autobiography and his enduring monument.  The picture of the storm is very fine; but in the handling of his verse there is more of the artificial than of the romantic school.

William Shenstone, 1714-1763:  his principal work is The Schoolmistress, a poem in the stanza of Spenser, which is pleasing from its simple and sympathizing description of the village school, kept by a dame; with the tricks and punishment of the children, and many little traits of rural life and character.  It is pitched in so low a key that it commends itself to the world at large.  Shenstone is equally known for his mania in landscape gardening, upon which he spent all his means.  His place, The Leasowes in Shropshire, has gained the greater notoriety through the descriptions of Dodsley and Goldsmith.  The natural simplicity of The Schoolmistress allies it strongly to the romantic school, which was now about to appear.

William Collins, 1720-1756:  this unfortunate poet, who died at the early age of thirty-six, deserves particular mention for the delicacy of his fancy and the beauty of his diction.  His Ode on the Passions is universally esteemed for its sudden and effective changes from the bewilderment of Fear, the violence of Anger, and the wildness of Despair to the rapt visions of Hope, the gentle dejection of Pity, and the sprightliness of Mirth and Cheerfulness.  His Ode on the Death of Thomson is an exquisite bit of pathos, as is also the Dirge on Cymbeline.  Everybody knows and admires the short ode beginning

    How sleep the brave who sink to rest
    By all their country’s wishes blest!