Edwin wanders alone upon the mountains and in solitary places and is instructed in history, philosophy, and science—­and even in Vergil—­by an aged hermit, who sits on a mossy rock, with his harp beside him, and delivers lectures.  The subject of the poem, indeed, is properly the education of nature; and in a way it anticipates Wordsworth’s “Prelude,” as this hoary sage does the “Solitary” of “The Excursion.”  Beattie justifies his use of Spenser’s stanza on the ground that it “seems, from its Gothic structure and original, to bear some relation to the subject and spirit of the poem.”  He makes no attempt, however, to follow Spenser’s “antique expressions.”  The following passage will illustrate as well as any the romantic character of the whole: 

    “When the long-sounding curfew from afar
    Loaded with loud lament the lonely gale,
    Young Edwin, lighted by the evening star,
    Lingering and listening, wandered down the vale. 
    There would he dream of graves and corses pale,
    And ghosts that to the charnel-dungeon throng,
    And drag a length of clanking chain, and wail,
    Till silenced by the owl’s terrific song,
    Or blast that shrieks by fits the shuddering aisles along.

    “Or when the settling moon, in crimson dyed,
    Hung o’er the dark and melancholy deep,
    To haunted stream, remote from man, he hied,
    Where fays of yore their revels wont to keep;
    And there let Fancy rove at large, till sleep
    A vision brought to his entranced sight. 
    And first a wildly murmuring wind gan creep
    Shrill to his ringing ear; then tapers bright,
    With instantaneous gleam, illumed the vault of night.

    “Anon in view a portal’s blazing arch
    Arose; the trumpet bids the valves unfold;
    And forth a host of little warriors march,
    Grasping the diamond lance and targe of gold. 
    Their look was gentle, their demeanor bold,
    And green their helms, and green their silk attire;
    And here and there, right venerably old,
    The long-robed minstrels wake the warbling wire,
    And some with mellow breath the martial pipe inspire."[53]

The influence of Thomson is clearly perceptible in these stanzas.  “The Minstrel,” like “The Seasons,” abounds in insipid morality, the commonplaces of denunciation against luxury and ambition, and the praise of simplicity and innocence.  The titles alone of Beattie’s minor poems are enough to show in what school he was a scholar:  “The Hermit,” “Ode to Peace,” “The Triumph of Melancholy,” “Retirement,” etc., etc.  “The Minstrel” ran through four editions before the publication of its second book in 1774.

[1] Svend Grundtvig’s great collection, “Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser,” was published in five volumes in 1853-90.

[2] Francis James Child’s “English and Scottish Popular Ballads,” issued in ten parts in 1882-98 is one of the glories of American scholarship.