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his grave. In her first visits to Edinburgh shops she had, it seems, been accustomed to give her address as "Mrs. Campbell of Kirnan," and though her husband never possessed a yard of the estate-nor indeed could have done so although it had remained with the old blood-the family name is so widely spread that the license might be excusable; but though she did not drop the “of Kirnan"—as sacred as a German Von-she now always added, in a raised voice, "mother of Campbell the poet-the author of the Pleasures of Hope." For this we thank Dr. Beattie.

We adhere in general to the opinions expressed concerning Campbell's poetry in an article on his Collective Edition of 1836, (Q. R., vol. 57;) and at any rate there is no room on the present occasion for a revisal of that criticism. Now instructed that in 1836 there was no vigor left to be stimulated, we may wish it had been given here and there in gentler terms-at the close, perhaps, in terms of somewhat broader approbation; but we do not anticipate that the judgment of posterity will be much different. The rapture of April, 1799, on the first appearance of the Pleasures of Hope, was very natural. Burns had lately died. Cowper was sunk in hopeless insanity, soon to be released. Their vivid examples had not sufficed to abolish the drowsy prestige of Hayley. Of the

Though Scott had printed nothing but a few translations from the German, he was well known for antiquarian and literary accomplishments, and his house was the centre already of a very extraordinary society. The Pleasures of Hope appeared in April, 1799-the author being then, as he himself notes, "exactly twenty-one years and nine months old ;" and neither the Lay of the Last Minstrel nor Childe Harold was welcomed with a readier chorus of admiration. Henry Mackenzie, Dugald Stewart, Dr. Gregory, Mr. Alison, (author of the Essay on Taste,) and Thomas Telford, (the engineer,) immediately called, and begged the honor of his acquaintance. Scott invited him to meet the whole remarkable knot of his friends (Leyden only excepted) at dinner; but Campbell being in Scotland much such a name as Smith is here, it seems the claims of the stranger were not suspected till the host rose and proposed the health of the poet whose work all present had been enjoying. Dr. Beattie clears up Scott's passing allusions to a feud between Campbell and Leyden. Campbell had fancied he traced to Leyden an absurd exaggeration of his earlier distresses-which at last, it seems, took the shape of a newspaper paragraph, detailing how he had been actually on his way to Leith to drown himself when he fell in with the schoolmaster Park, and that thus his very life was due to the first in-great constellation that has since illuminated us, terview with Dr. Anderson. Campbell's pride was grievously wounded, and he had for some time cut John Leyden. This stalwart borderer was then laboring zealously for Scott's assistance in the collection of the Minstrelsy, and on their first meeting, after the issue of the Pleasures, said, "You may tell Campbell that I hate him, but that, dash it! he has written the best poetry that has been penned for fifty years." Scott reports that he conveyed the message with the fidelity of a Homeric herald, and that Campbell replied, "Tell Leyden that I detest him, but know the value of his critical approbation." Scott adds, that he thought he saw his way to making up "that feud," but Leyden soon after started for London-and India-so there the matter remained. We have no belief that Leyden either invented the story or wrote the paragraph; but we can very easily understand that there was a repulsive instinct between that very rough subject and the pretty looking, probably somewhat prim little junior, originally no doubt introduced to his notice as the Pope of Glasgow.

but few of the more potent stars had ascended above the horizon. Crabbe, under a domestic sorrow, of which Campbell was destined to participate, had fallen into a dejected inactivity, and was all but forgotten. Rogers had some years earlier published the Pleasures of Memory, to which the Pleasures of Hope owed more than the suggestion of a title; but that genial effusion only promised the consummate graces since displayed, though too parsimoniously, by its now venerable author. Wordsworth and Coleridge had sent forth "Lyrical Ballads," some of them exquisitely beautiful, and in the aggregate most deeply influential ; but these were as yet, and for a long while after, appreciated only within a narrow circle; no one misunderstood and undervalued them more than did Campbell himself. Southey had produced nothing that survives in much vitality. Moore was at college or at Anacreon. Byron had not yet lain dreaming under the elm of Harrow-nor Wilson listened to "the sweet bells of Magdalen tower." The moment was fortunate, and the applause more creditable to the public than advan

Excitable as his temperament was, and joyously as it was excited at this brilliant season, there was always a thread of the national forecast in him; and his letters show that the first tumult had scarce subsided before he recurred to a grave contemplation of his own practical futurity. We hear noth

Campbell, in his Memoranda, reflects with some tageous (in the upshot) to the new poet. bitterness on having parted, for 607., with " a copyright which was worth to the bookseller for several years an annuity of full 2007. ;" but he candidly adds that Mundell gave him in free gift 501. on the forthcoming of each of the early reprints, and as there were two of these within the first year, and three in the second, the reinforcementing further of physic; but he speculates more and to resources like his must at the time have been most welcome. The delight of the parents may be imagined—or we should rather say of the mother, for the mild old man was now obsolete and near

more on the chances of success as a lecturer on the belles lettres, and we cannot doubt that what he really looked to as his ultimate establishment was a chair, classical or rhetorical, in one of the

Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep,

One has

been now for the first time reprinted from the newspaper. Campbell was struck with the chanting of a Latin ditty, in honor of Marshal Laudohn, by a troop of imperial dragoons whom he met in a forest. One of the officers gave him the words,

and he transmitted a free translation :

universities; nor can it be well doubted but that | land," was dispatched to glorify Perry. The if he had stuck to Scotland he would within rea- glance at our Martello system in sonable time have had the offer of such a position. But, caressed lion of the hour as he was, he could not mingle with the varied cultivation of Edinburgh and not recognize in himself the effects of imper- may have partly reconciled the editor to the prefect training and narrow society; he felt that vailing patriotism of the inspiration. It was at much was wanting before he could sustain in the Hamburgh, on this second visit, that he fell into general intercourse of life the rank which his po- company with some of the Irish who had been conetical success had opened for him. He had while cerned in the rebellion of 1798, and their distress yet in Mull read with envious but hopeless long-suggested the "Exile of Erin." The far more "Soldier's Dream" was sent from the ings of the continental wanderings of young Gold-pathetic smith; now, he thought, he had at command the same place. Some other pieces, then published means of travelling; and his acquaintance with in the Chronicle, have, like these, been included Scott having awakened curiosity about the lan- in numberless editions of his poetry. guage and literature of Germany, it was to that quarter that he was most desirous of turning. His whig allies in the parliament house suggested that while abroad he might be an useful correspondent for the Morning Chronicle then conducted with eminent spirit by a Scotchman who associated on intimate terms with the loftiest of the party aristocrats. Mr. Perry tendered handsome remuneration, and requested the recruit to visit him ere he embarked. Campbell assented, but the nervousness of self-distrust recurred-it would still be better that he should have rubbed himself a little more upon the world before hazarding his bow and his brogue to the criticism of London ;-and he took ship at Leith for Hamburgh in June, 1800. He yet designed to perform most of his travels in Goldsmith's pedestrian fashion; and this was realized. He does not seem to have been diligent as Perry's intelligencer; but he remained in Germany for ten months, acquired some facility in the language, conversed with Klopstock, and it must be supposed profited in various ways by his adventures. We owe to them a large proportion of his best poetry. The magnificent stanzas, On leaving a Scene in Bavaria, though not perhaps written till several years afterwards, are clearly foreshadowed in one of his letters to Richardson while voyaging on the Danube; but several very famous pieces were transmitted by post to Perry, and gave his newspaper such illumination as no other in recent times has owed to its " own correspondent." From the rampart adjoining a convent of Scotch Benedictines, who had received him with great cordiality, he witnessed the storming of Ingolstadt; and that vision of the realities of war gave its life to the noble lyric on Hohenlinden, which field he had traversed a fortnight before" the drum beat at dead of night." We may observe that he had some courteous intercourse with the officers of the French army when they occupied Ingolstadt, and was even introduced to their General and Madame Moreau. The Ode to Winter was another contribution. The rumors, first of Danish and then of Prussian adhesion to the designs of the First Consul, cut short his stay in the south. He has tened back by a different route to Hamburgh; and, on seeing the warlike appearances at Altona, the most popular of his songs," Ye Mariners of Eng

Rise, ye Croats, fierce and strong,
Form the front, and march along!
And gather fast, ye gallant men,
From Nona and from Warrasden.
"Whose sunny mountains nurse a line
Generous as her fiery wine!
Hosts of Buda! hither bring
The bloody flag and eagle wing:
Ye that drink the rapid stream
Fast by walled Salankeme!
Ranks of Agria!-head and heel
Sheathed in adamantine steel!
Quit the woodlands and the boar,
Ye hunters wild on Drava's shore!
The trumpets sound, the colors fly,
And Laudohn leads to victory!
Every baron, sword in hand,
Rides before his gallant band.
The vulture, screaming for his food,
Conducts ye to his fields of blood.
Men of Austria! mark around
Classic fields and holy ground-
For here were deeds of glory done,
And battles by our fathers won.
Heirs of plunder and renown,
Hew the squadrons-hew them down!
This is glory-this is life.
Champions of a glorious strife,
Moving like a wall of rock,
To stormy siege or battle shock!
Grenadiers! that fierce and large,
Stamp like dragons to the charge!
Foot and horsemen, serf and lord,
Triumph now with one accord!
Soon the rapid shot is o'er,
But glory lasts for evermore!

Vol. i., p. 339.

May the day not be remote when such really national choruses shall again resound wherever the standard of Austria is unfurled!

The poet embarked for Leith, but some alarm of privateers drove the convoy from its course; and finding himself in Yarmouth Roads with the prospect of detention, he quitted the vessel and took coach for London. He arrived with few shillings in his pocket; but Perry at once did

everything kind and flattering. It was now at tend the Sheriff of Edinburgh. The officer carried Perry's table that he first met John Kemble and a search-warrant, and he and his papers were conMrs. Siddons, whence two of his most valued veyed to the sheriff. That magistrate received friendships. Perry carried him to dine at Holland him with solemnity. One of his fellow-voyagers House, where the noble host made the same im- from the Elbe to Yarmouth had been a certain pression that always waited on his most polished Donovan, a croppy of 1798. Government had benevolence; and Mackintosh astonished him by been warned of this man's return by some Hamthe matchless affluence of his conversation, which | burgh inquisitor, who thought fit to add that he was yet less admirable than its modesty. Mackin- had for his companion the author of “the Exile tosh invited him to dine with "the King of of Erin" and other dangerous songs, a travelling Clubs," or "The Club"-the one instituted by agent of the Morning Chronicle, notorious when Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds; and here he met, in Germany for haunting rebel society, and veamong others, the two Smiths, Sydney and his hemently suspected of having conveyed to Moreau hardly less remarkable brother, Robert-com- intelligence concerning the movements of the Ausmonly called to the end by his Etonian style of trian troops. Donovan was now in the Tower, and Bobus. While intoxicated with this new bril- it might be necessary to confront his associate liancy, and negotiating for a regular connection with him. Campbell answered, that he had never with the newspaper which had been his open se-seen Donovan except on board the Hamburgh ship, samum, he received news of the death of his father and was wholly ignorant of his subsequent adven(ætat. 91); and his letter to the Rev. A. Alison, who had watched the old man's last hours and announced the event, has these natural and touching

sentences:

When I think that the father of so many sons was interred by strangers, I have no consolation but in one reflection, that in you he had the delegate of my affections, if the sentiments of nature can at all be transferred. But yet, to the bosom of confidence, I confess that a sore self-accusation lies on my heart. I left him in his last days! The thought is exceeding bitter. I should not have wept for his loss, if I had shared but his last benediction.-Vol. i., p. 361.

tures. The sheriff opened the trunk and began to examine the MSS. Innocent letters and diaries appeared, scraps of unfinished poetry, and, by and by, the original draft of "Ye Mariners," which this loyal functionary had not before heard of, and "Mr. now read with equal surprise and delight. Campbell," said he, " upon my word, I think we had better have a bottle of claret to sustain us through the rest of this batch of treason." The sequel can be guessed. To avoid another introduction of Mr. O'Donovan, we may as well say here that Campbell encountered him a twelvemonth later, evidently in poor plight, on the streets

of London:

not in confinement?"

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He was speedily in Edinburgh, where he found "Ha, Donovan," said I, "I wish you joy, my his mother's distress aggravated by the discovery good fellow, in getting out of the Tower, where I that the allowance from the Glasgow Merchants' was told they were likely to treat you like another House could not be continued. On this occasion, Sir William Wallace." Och," said he, good as on all others, Campbell's feelings of family love luck to the Tower! black the day that I was and duty were generously displayed. Precarious turned out of it. Would that any one could get me into it for life!" "My stars! and were you as his own position was, he undertook at once to ""Tschach! The governmake good the forfeited annuity; he also proposed ment allowed me a pound sterling a day as a state to two of his sisters that they should get rid of their prisoner. The Tower gaoler kept a glorious table; engagements, join their mother, and set up a board- and he let me out to walk where I liked all day long ing-school of their own in Edinburgh, he becom--perfectly secure that I should return at mealing bound for the larger house and new furniture times. And then, besides, he had a nice pretty requisite. The plan was adopted it insured com- daughter." "And don't you go and see her in the Tower?" 66 fort otherwise unattainable for the afflicted parent, Why, no, my dear fellow. The and for a time promised well for the sisters. covered that she had no money and she found out course of true love never yet ran smooth. I disUltimately their school did not prosper; and that my Irish estates, and all that I had told her Campbell, in his endeavors to support them in about their being confiscated in the rebellion, was their struggles, was forced to contract a debt " on sheer blarney. So, when the day arrived that Judaic terms," the burthen of which hung over your merciless government ordered me to be liberhim for many anxious years; but he never com- ated, I was turned adrift on the wide world, and glad to become a reporter to the newspapers."— plained. Vol. i., p. 366.

:

His arrangements were oddly interrupted. In the smack that brought him to Scotland was a lady passenger, who sat daily on deck with the Pleasures of Hope in her hand, and mentioned casually (the poet's person being known to none on board) that she had heard with regret a rumor of Mr. Thomas Campbell's imprisonment in the Tower on a charge of high treason. He laughed at this, and had forgotten it, when, as he was at dinner a week or two afterwards, he had a summons to at

To return to Edinburgh. On Campbell's arrival there, it struck Mr. Cuninghame that his continental trip had much assuaged the fervor of his liberalism. On the other hand, he was introduced about this time to the late Lord Minto, who had been enchanted with his first fruits, and manifested an earnest wish to be of service to him; and Campbell, feeling this kindness very sensibly, but also sensitive to other considerations, took an

not seem to have been modified by any subsequent experience, and its continuance could not well fail, in a country like this, of having some influence on the general shaping of his destiny, we shall make room for a specimen of these early confessions.

early occasion to inform the tory peer frankly that reader might anticipate; but as his feeling does his "opinions" were "republican." The earl, we dare say, cared nothing about Campbell's politics, except as fearing they might lessen his own chances of helping him. Meantime he was requested to visit Minto Castle; and this was done as soon as the mother's affairs had been all settled, and order taken as to a certain entanglement of his own, which now pressed. Ere he started for Germany, he had projected and begun a poem on a grand scale, to be entitled The Queen of the North; and his bookseller had advanced some moneys on the understanding that it

Aug. 28, 1802.-Lord Minto's politeness only twitches me with the sin of ingratitude for not being happier under his hospitable roof. But a lord's house, fashionable strangers, sofa'd saloons, and winding galleries, where I can hardly discover my own apartment, make me as wretched as my nature can be without being a tutor! Every one, it is true, is civil to me; the very servants are assiduous in putting me right when I lose my way in the galleries; but, degraded as I am to a state of second childhood in this new world, it would be insulting my fallen dignity to smile hysterically and pretend to be happy.

was to be finished abroad, and ready about this time for publication; but alas! the sheriff's search had discovered only fragments of The Queen, and Campbell was embarrassed by the nonfulfilment of his bargain. The result was, that on being released from the poetical bond he agreed to execute Sept. 4.-Lord Minto's company is uniformly a piece of humbler work for Mundell-to wit, himself, (though he affects neither wit nor learning,) agreeable; his conversation, when you get him by "Annals of Great Britain," a compendium of is replete with sincere enthusiasm and original inour history, from the accession of George III. to formation. But still this is a lord's house-althe opening of the century, in three octavos, for though his. His time is so much employed with each of which the allowance was to be £100. It strangers-fashionable, proud folks-who have a was at the same time arranged (the bookseller cer- slang of conversation among themselves, as unin tainly showing remarkable generosity on this telligible to plain sober beings as the cant of point) that there should be a new edition, the the gypsies, and probably not so amusing if one did understand it. A man of my lowly breedseventh, of the Pleasures of Hope, in a splendid ing feels in their company a little of what Burke quarto form, with engravings, to which all the calls proud humility, or rather humble contempt. subsequent poems, printed in the Chronicle or yet It has astonished me to see what a cold, repulsive in MS., were to be annexed; the book to be pub- atmosphere that little thing called quality can spread lished by subscription, and a considerable share of around itself, and make us believe that it exists at the aggregate profit assigned to the author. With least as a negative quality-like that of cold. But like these engagements, and the expectation of more little indifference on the side of the vulgar makes all other little passions this hauteur is cowardly-a regular gains from the newspaper in London, those minions of fashion open their eyes, half shut Campbell found his mind comforted; and after with affectation of pur-blindness, and look at least enjoying for a while the easy society of the Ali- more respectfully. As to conversation-the human sons, Gregories, Richardson, and so forth, he pro- mind at a certain elevation of rank grows more ceeded to Minto. It does not seem that he barren than the Alps. ever recurred to the Queen of the North, nor do either the hints now given of its scheme, or the few verses that we can examine, inspire much regret on that subject. The Queen was Edina. The poet was to survey the richly varied scenery from the Castle of Edinburgh, and, depicting all this in his verse, interweave the most striking episodes of history that could be connected with the panorama. When he set to work in Germany he soon discovered that his stock of national lore was neither large nor accurate; and now on the spot, with the Advocate's library at his elbow, it is easy to understand that he shrunk from the projected breadth of his canvass and a glimpse of the materials that must be digested before he could fill it up. But there was a radical fault in the plan; hardly any art could have disguised its artifice. He had proposed for something of epical dimensions a conception purely lyrical; and nothing so wearisome as an overgrown ode.

The ensuing visit to Teviotdale brought him to a near view of life and manners of which hitherto he had only read and heard, or obtained slight and casual glimpses. The impressions which his letters acknowledge are probably much what the

Campbell took final leave of Edinburgh and of Scotland (as his residence) at the opening of 1803; but what finally decided the step is left in some uncertainty. Dr. Beattie attributes a good deal to endless annoyances from some near connections, for whom he had done what he could, and, with his mother on his hands, could now actually do no more- -(we fear the cautious phrases used can leave little doubt as to who these connections were ;)—but nevertheless intimates that the superiority of London as a theatre of literary adventure must have had the chief sway. By whatever cause it was quickened, this step is still viewed regretfully by those who observed his earlier as well as maturer years. One of these writes thus

Had he now obtained a professorship, or settled as a lecturer on belles lettres, he might have been happy; for he would have been under the observation of those whose opinion he respected-the friends of his youth, and the admirers of his reputation.-Vol. i., p. 374.

On arriving in London he met Telford, and the kind engineer tells the not less affectionate Alison

minds becomes at last fatiguing, because it is unnatural and unsatisfactory. Every one of these brilliants goes there to shine; for conversational powers are so much the rage in London that no reputation is higher than his who exhibits them to advantage. Where every one tries to instruct there is but little instruction. Wit, paradox, eccentricity

If he will only do as well as we anxiously wish, he may become one of the most important-as he already is certainly one of the greatest-men of the age. I am so deeply interested in his welfare and fame that I am eternally giving him advice; but he knows it is from a downright affectionate regard. I have asked him to live with me at the Salopian, where I may have him constantly in check.-P.-even absurdity if delivered rapidly and facetiously

423.

man crazy.

Charing-cross was a convenient position for Telford, who had to do with parliamentary agents and all the substructure of road and bridge bills; but the poet did not long adhere to it. He says, the noise of the immense thoroughfare (in those pre-macadamite days) was enough to drive any It may be possible that the mathematical exactness of Telford's rules and notions proved also somewhat fatiguing to him; howbeit, he took a den for himself in dull and dingy South Molton street. When Lord Minto came to town he attended him every morning for an hour or two --as a sort of private secretary; but whether this continued during the whole session of Parliament, does not appear. We suppose it had not been possible for Perry to offer him quite such an engagement with the Chronicle as had been counted on; for he soon accepted one from Dr. Tulloch, proprietor of a heavier print, now remembered only by the Anti-Jacobin's couplet—

Thou Morning Chronicle, and Morning Post! Couriers and STARS, Sedition's Evening Host! This doctor was also owner of a Philosophical Magazine, and not unwilling to enliven its science with some admixture of general literature; so Campbell undertook to assist him in that department too. Tulloch, like Perry, was Scotch; and indeed, though Campbell had abandoned his old country, he always lived very much among his countryfolks. We have heard him defend himself for his truantry, on the ground that there were more of them in London than in Edinburgh -and, perhaps, fifty years ago this was hardly an exaggeration. His connection with Tulloch's paper and magazine lasted during many years. Now and henceforth some part of his day was regularly spent in the Star office. But he had by no means dropped his kindly intercourse with Perry; and occasional verses, and now and then a prose jeu d'esprit too pungent for grave Dr. Tulloch, were still welcomed by the Chronicle, and applauded at Brookes'. His visits to the King of Clubs were repeated, and he appeared from time to time at Holland House, where once at least he conversed at leisure with Mr. Fox, and left a very favorable impression on that excellent judge, especially by some criticisms on Virgil. But feelings not remote from those we have found confessed at Minto Castle come out in the letters that paint, to old intimates, his morning reflections on the brightest evenings of the highest and most accomplished London society.

Much as the wit and erudition of these men pleases an auditor at the first or second visit, the trial of

-takes priority of sound reason and delicate taste I have watched sometimes the devious tide of conversation, guided by accidental associations, turning from topic to topic, and satisfactory upon none. What has one learnt? has been my general question. The mind, it is true, is electrified and quickened, and the spirits are finely exhilarated; but one grand fault pervades the whole institution; their inquiries are desultory, and all improvement to be reaped must be accidental.—Vol. i., p. 384.

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In another page he wonders that Sydney Smith can endure so much of " the devil's drawing-room -London." But he does not advert to the other singularity, namely, that that drawing-room never tired of Sydney. Peradventure some light may be thrown on all this by a brief note from the worthy historian of the Scotch poets, Dr. David Irving, who, about the same time, met Campbell under no gilded ceilings, but at the plentiful board of Messrs. Longman and Co., in Paternoster-Row; a sort of ordinary maintained by that great firm for the benefit of its literary allies and subjects. The doctor says :—

Among other individuals, not so easily remembered, the company included Walter Scott, Thomas Young, Humphrey Davy, and George Ellis; and

I

may add without any hazard of contradiction that such guests as these could not now be assembled at any table in the kingdom. Scott had not then attained the height of his reputation; but he was at all times conspicuous for his social powers and strong practical sense. Upon that occasion he was full of good humor, and had many stories to tell. Ellis, possessing an ample fund of elegant literature, was a model of all that is pleasant in society. Young was alike distinguished in science and erudition. Davy, who was so great in his own department, seemed willing to talk in an easy and unpretending strain on any topic that was discussed. Among these men Campbell did not appear to much advantage; he was too ambitious to shine, nor was he successful in any of his attempts. He was much inclined to dilate on the subject of Homer, but on coolness by Dr. Young, who, in all probability, was various points was opposed with equal decision and familiarly acquainted with Wolf's Prolegomenawhich had been published eight years before, and introduced a new era in criticism. Davy was ready to interpose any remark that occurred to him, though it may be presumed that his chemical was superior to his classical analysis. On the subject to wax somewhat too earnest; but, finding that he of Greek poetry, Scott was silent. Campbell began did not attract all the attention to which he evidently thought himself entitled, he started from his seat at an early hour, and quitted the room with a very hasty step.-Vol. i., p. 434.

Dr. Beattie, who only knew Campbell in his later period, pronounces this scene of May, 1803, and its exit, very characteristic." We already

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