# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mercer, James

​MERCER, JAMES (1734–1804), poet and friend of Beattie, eldest son of Thomas Mercer, a cadet of the Mercer family of Aldie in Perthshire, was born in Aberdeen on 27 Feb. 1733–4. He was a second cousin to Hugh Mercer [q. v.] and of William Mercer, the correspondent of Warren Hastings (see Add. MSS. 29168–9 and 29172–3). James was educated at the high school, and afterwards at the Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he acquired a decided taste for Greek literature. Graduating M.A. in 1754, he proceeded to Paris, where his father, who had fought at Culloden and was an exile in the Stuart cause, was then residing. Returning to England on his father's death in 1756, after a brief experience as a volunteer in the disastrous expedition to Cherbourg, Mercer joined a British regiment, and served under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick through the early campaigns of the seven years' war. He distinguished himself at Minden, and was in 1761 presented by General Graeme with a company in the newly raised queen's regiment, but the corps was reduced on the peace of 1763. Shortly afterwards he purchased a company in the 49th regiment, and served for several years in Ireland. He won the friendship of Michael Cox, archbishop of Cashel, but declined the archbishop's pressing invitation to take orders and a fat living in his gift. In 1770 he purchased a majority in his regiment; in 1772, however, he lost the succession to Sir Henry Calder's lieutenant-colonelcy, and in a fit of disgust sold out of the army. He settled in the neighbourhood of Aberdeen, cultivated the friendship of Dr. Beattie and other literary and learned persons, and travelled for health, chiefly in the south of France. In 1777 he accepted a majority from the Duke of Gordon in the ‘Gordon Fencibles,’ and at Glasgow, where the regiment was stationed, he maintained intimate relations with Dr. Reid and Sir William Forbes, as well as with the duke and duchess. In 1799 Beattie appointed him one of his executors, together with their common friend, Robert Arbuthnot, kinsman of the well-known doctor. He subsequently settled at Sunny Bank, near Aberdeen, where he died on 27 Nov. 1804 (Scots Mag. 1804, ii. 974). Mercer married, on 13 Sept. 1763, Katherine Douglas, a lady of great beauty, and sister of Sylvester Douglas, lord Glenbervie; she died on 3 Jan. 1802.
Mercer produced privately in 1797 what his biographer calls ‘the secret of his poetical amusements.’ A second edition appeared in 1804, and the third and best edition was published posthumously in 1806, with the title ‘Lyric Poems by the late James Mercer, with an Account of the Life of the Author by Lord Glenbervie,’ London, 8vo. The volume contains an engraved portrait, by Picart after Irvine, and was praised without stint in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (January 1807) and by Sir James Macintosh, who describes the poems as ‘everywhere elegant and sometimes charming’ (Wilson, Macintosh, i. 17).
Beattie described Mercer somewhat exuberantly to the Duchess of Gordon as uniting the wit and wisdom of Montesquieu with the sensibility of Rousseau and the generosity of Tom Jones; in another letter he doubted if six gentlemen in Scotland knew Greek so well as the accomplished major, who is further described as correcting his partiality for French literature by unremitting attention to the best models of antiquity. Mercer does not appear to have composed in Latin or Greek, but in his English verses, of which the ‘Ode to Novelty,’ quoted by Sir Egerton Brydges (Censura, v. 213), is perhaps the least insipid, he seems to have aimed with small success at imitation of Horace. Sir William Forbes, who speaks of him as one of the pleasantest companions he ever met, relates how Mercer when a boy concealed himself in a chest, the lid of which fell down upon him and automatically locked. From the fate of Rogers's ‘Italian Bride’ he was fortunately delivered, but not until he had been nearly suffocated. A consequent dread of a living tomb caused Mercer to direct that before burial his heart should be pierced with a gold pin.
[Life prefixed to Lyric Poems, 1806; Sir William Forbes's Life of Beattie, 1807, i. 35, ii. 181, iii. 238–42; Gent. Mag. 1808 ii. 1142, 1809 ii. 1204; Brydges's Censura Literaria, ii. 383, v. 209–13; Chalmers's Biog. Dict.; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit. ii. 1266; Irving's Book of Scotsmen, p. 348; Bruce's Eminent Men of Aberdeen, p. 378 n.; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
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