conciliatory; but she looked and spoke at me as if | rior object in view, for the Professor of History was she had more respect for my heels than my head. infirm, and it was hoped that an arrangement might Seriously, I am pleased with all this; but I begin be made for Campbell to mount the chair 66 as, asto dread that I have got into too much good luck sistant and successor;" but this scheme failedby this princely acquaintance. I told the great per-how, Dr. Beattie does not inform us. Campbell sonage that I loved operas to distraction! Then why don't you go often to them? she demanded. never lectured in Scotland, but he gave a course at They are so expensive, quoth I. Next day a ticket Liverpool in 1818. for the season arrived! God help me! I shall be obliged to live in London a month to attend the opera-house-all for telling one little fib!-Vol. ii., p. 216. 66 In 1820 he undertook the editorship of Mr. Colburn's Magazine. His salary (to cover also six articles in verse and six in prose yearly) was 6001; and conceiving that it would be necessary to remove from Sydenham, he took a house in Seymour street West. Some months were to intervene ere he entered on office, and he employed them in a run to Germany, moved chiefly by the desire of collecting Poetry, which he meant to deliver at the institution, and then print in the magazine. He reached his old haunts at Ratisbon, went on to Vienna, and spent, on his way back, some useful and agreeable weeks at Bonn. Here he furbished up his Hebrew, with a view to commenting on the poetry of the Old Testament, and made acquaintance with W. A. Schlegel, of whose conversational merits we have this notice :— Another figure at the only court that could ever have at all suited Campbell-and, if all tales be true, a more highly favored one-was Sir Thomas Lawrence; and the great artist volunteered a portrait of the new laureate and terpsichorist of Black-materials for Lectures on Continental and Ancient heath. Campbell is about the same time described by Byron as a spruce high-priest of Apollo, looking as if the god had sent him a wedding-suit fresh from Olympus." At home rather slovenly, it would seem that when visiting, the smartness of his attire was always noticeable. Even as an elderly man he was curious in waistcoats and buttons. He had begun to get bald ere he saw London, and assumed a Brutus. This impaired his appearance ever after; if he had been as "knowing in wigs" as George IV., it would have done so; but his choice was abominable. It is pity that Lawrence did not insist on his depositing the incumbrance when he sat, but his pencil reproduces it without much embellishment. The features themselves required none. It is one of Lawrence's sterling works. Great was Campbell's own anxi ety on the occasion: 66 If you see Mr. Lawrence again, implore him to say what he decides about my lovely portrait." I have got so smoky and old-looking that I wish to get back my imaginary beauty, just to see how I shall look when I grow young again in heaven. That is the merit of Lawrence's painting; he makes one seem to have got into a drawing-room in the mansions of the blessed, and to be looking at oneself in the mirror.-Vol. ii., p. 222. In 1814 he visited Paris, then garrisoned by the English; but his letters contain nothing worth transcription. He was presented to the Duke of Wellington, but the duke was unluckily not told that he was the poet, and the poet was a little mortified at being received merely with the civility due to an ordinary gentleman of Clan Diarmid. In 1815 he was called to Scotland by an event of consequence the laird of Kirnan died; not a Campbell, but related to the family, his admiration of the allotting half the pension to the mother had made him set down his remote kinsman for a legacy of 5007., with a share of any unsettled overplus of personal estate. This bequest turned out to be worth 50007.; and henceforth there really ought to have been no more of pecuniary embarrassment. The capital sum, however, thanks to the terms of the will, remains at this day for the behoof of the poet's only surviving son. Being in Scotland, he had thoughts of repeating his lectures at Edinburgh; and Scott, in encouraging this notion, had an ulte Yes Schlegel is so attentive as to call every day; but he talks without listening even to questions, and upon subjects on which he has not information to make him edifying. He thinks he understands English politics, and pesters me with his crude speculations about our impending national bankruptcy and the misery of our lower orders! happier than the serfs of the feudal system—and I terday he asked me if I thought our peasantry asked him to-day what was the price of labor in Germany-in order to institute a comparison between the situations of the poor in both countries; but my German philosopher was too great a man to know anything. When he has nothing to say, he proses away like the clack of a mill when there is no corn to grind. One could take down a book from a shelf, ten times more wise or witty than almost any man's conversation. Bacon is wiser, Swift more humorous, than any person one is likely to meet with; but they cannot chime in with the exact frame of thought in which we may happen to take them down from our shelves. Therein lies the luxury of conversation; and when a living speaker does not yield us that luxury, he becomes only a book standing on two legs.—Vol. ii., p. 364. This strain smacks of Goldy; but whether the last touch be a crib from Sydney Smith's "Book in breeches," or Sydney had printed a waif of Campbell's, we are not sure. When he reäppears in London as editor of the New Monthly Magazine, Dr. Beattie-we believe a contributor to that work, and so originally introduced to him—is very luculent in his expatiations on the dignity and importance, also the success of the undertaking; he, moreover, ascribes great part of that success to Campbell's own papers, and he dwells on the delightful circle of coöperators now congregated around the chief-his fatherly kindness to them his enlarged hospitalities, and his exemplary discharge generally of all his new duties. To several of these things we demur. The magazine asylums; the doctor himself adding in a note, that there was an hereditary taint-and one of Mrs. Campbell's sisters was then in confinement; and elsewhere, that Campbell's difficulties about selecting a keeper for his poor boy were increased by the " very irritable" state of his wife's own nervous system. This was, indeed, a fatal blow to Campbell, for the malady proved incurable-and he had now no other child in life. For some time he would not, could not understand, that the case was fixed; but at last the conviction came, and thenceforth hope was none for him upon this earthover all the futurity gloom far blacker than death. In justice to Campbell it is quite necessary that this sad part of his history should be clearly apprehended and fully weighed. There was no occasion for Dr. Beattie to do more than state the broad facts; but while the correspondence and details of journeys to different asylums are worse than superfluous, the hesitating dimness of his main text on the whole subject is merely absurd. It is well known that the gentle mother herself, undermined by this great grief, sank into such a state of health that Campbell's house was in every sense the house of mourning during all the remainder of her life. It is a solemn thought, in how many cases the home of genius has been overshadowed, even within our own time, by reason of similar calamity. was in his time (as it continues to be) lively, va- | lower commence not allusions-but extracts upon ried, and popular; but though the editor's abridg-extracts from letters about the choice of lunatic ments of his Lectures were very fair articles, none of them made the least of what people call a sensation; and the only sensation ever made by his poetical novelties (with two exceptions, already alluded to) was far from flattering. Dr. Beattie acknowledges that Campbell's good nature led him often to insert articles which, when in print, he could not bear to look at. That is probably the case with most editors-but still it was wrong. Again, we are forced to infer that the new conglomeration of younger literati* was by no means a fortunate circumstance, that it encouraged and largely developed the ancient weakness of Campbell -the love of being in that sort of society where he could predominate at his ease. Like Jedediah Cleishbotham, "he was a man, and had been a schoolmaster;" we may add, that he seems to have been latterly as wedded to his pipe as Dr. Parr—but | lacked that awful pedagogue's potency to usher all his appendages into worshipful chambers of whigdom. Lastly, it is admitted that he did not conduct himself with due care in his relations with the publisher; for ere long he was in debt more than a year's salary-a very mischievous feature in editorship, as we need not hint to the initiated. Campbell's politics, of course, tinged the journal; though, as respected our domestic matters, not offensively. His Polish mania interfered more heavily. From even an earlier time his letters show him as preyed on by adventurers from that quarter and patriotic refugees of kindred souls. General Pepé, the Neapolitan hero, Colonel Macirone, the illustrious author of a Treatise on Street- | principal piece, Theodoric, was saluted by an unanfighting, barricades, pikes, &c., and we know not how many Italian and Spanish carbonari, now haunted him and his magazine. One foreign connection was, however, eminently useful to it-it had the distinction of including, in several successive numbers, Mr. Blanco White's first and only valuable work, "Doblado's Letters." This was indeed worth a wilderness of monkeys. Before he had been editor a year a terrible affliction befell Campbell. The subject is painfully delicate, but Dr. Beattie's mode of dealing with it is pitiable. In one page (ii. 401) we have him saying of the poet's first-born-" symptoms of a malady, to which we need not particularly allude, began to dispel the hopes," &c. &c.: two pages *Campbell's attempt to enlist men of letters of his own standing appear all to have failed. The replies of Moore and Smith are characteristic and diverting-especially "the preacher's:" * * "Foston, Dec. 13, 1820.-What line of conduct do you mean to hold on the subject of religion? I beg you to be quite explicit on this point. * Remember also that a Mag. is not supported by papers evincing wit and genius; but by the height of the tide at London Bridge -by the price of oats, and by any sudden elevation or depression in boiling-peas. If your Mag. succeeds, it will do so as much by the diligence and discretion you will impress upon your nature, as by the talents with which you were born. As for me, I am rusticated-indolentcut off from the society of clever men-and engaged in the E. R. But answer my question, and I will consider the matter. Will any political changes take place soon in Germany? Can you promise us any decapitation of High-Dutch princes? Yours truly, S.S." In 1824 he rallied his energies so far as to complete and carry through the press another volume of poetry; but this brought no comfort. The and imous verdict of Guilty without extenuating cir- (ii. 399,) which clustered around Campbell as the Magnus Apollo of the New Monthly. We are now favored with another chapter of mystery. Campbell had always regarded with dislike and jealousy our English universities. He had never, we dare say, been much of a Presbyterian, but, though a great admirer of our liturgy, he appears to have continued all along, in the main, an anti-Anglican; he moreover had a natural preference for the Scotch modes of instruction. It had for years been a reverie of his that it would be a noble achievement to found a liberal and latitudinarian university in London-that such an institution would, far more effectually than any other device of feasible attainment, skake the mediaval supremacies and superstitions of Cam and Isis, and help forward the grand sister causes of civil and ecclesiastical reform. In the troubled and ominous year 1825, he at length had the satisfaction to perceive that his expositions on this head were telling among reformers more qualified than himself to start such an enterprise and conduct it through initiatory struggles. The college in Gower street was founded; and great was the surprise when, of its readers. But we confess the whole chapter in the first formal announcement of its arrange-leaves rather a pathetic impression on our minds. ments, the name of the poet, universally known We should recollect Campbell's disappointments for the primary mover, did not appear. That he was to be installed as warden, and hold at the same time some professional chair, had been taken for granted out of doors. Why no such appointment was offered him remains, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, in obscuro; as do, we may observe, several other odd things in the early history of the institution. Dr. Beattie must, one might suppose, have heard Campbell relate his own views and impressions on a topic to him so important; but neither text nor margent, narrative nor correspondence, affords any light whatever. No one doubted, or can doubt, that Campbell was mortified; and it is possible that his mortification was too severe to be told for the sympathy of the brotherhood. and distresses. Ever nervous, ever jealously sensitive, the darkness of his domestic circumstances must have made him brood in many a melancholy hour over the comparison of what had once been expected and what had been done. This last was much, yet very inadequately answerable to the former. He had won a distinguished name-his genius had met with cordial acknowledgment; but others had far surpassed him in boldness of enterprise, in energy of toil, in grandeur of achievement, in extent of influence. He had not put his stamp on his age-he had gratified but not governed it; his small volume, exquisite and admired, might never have existed, and the blank would hardly have been noticeable. Lastly, his recent additions had been voted worthless by acclamation. Was he exhausted? Had he done his all? Had he really done enough for immortality? Could he be sure that he was not to sink step by step into actual oblivion? At such a moment to have his old renown hailed anew by a rising generation, and see himself enthroned by their hands where he won his earliest trophies, may well have been oil and balm to many a secret wound. And call they this Improvement?—to have changed, Lie sere and leafless now in summer's beam, He received consolation from a distant quarter. The agitations about academic changes in the south had been watched with very intelligble interest in the north; and the younger students there began to think the time was come for some quasi-democratic efforts on their part. The office of lord rector, of which we really do not know the original scope, had long been considered at Glasgow as merely affording the principal and professors an A genuine spark was awakened amidst the emopportunity of paying a compliment to some lead-bers. It was now that, surveying the haunts of ing gentleman in their vicinity; and when parties his youth, so much altered since he first wandered were nearly balanced, or politics in a lull, the among them, he penned these beautiful lines, the usual arrangement was to have a whig rector one last quite worthy of his pen that ever dropped year, a tory the next, whose duties we believe were from it :strictly limited to a procession across the quadrangle, a brief speech of formal civility delivered in an embroidered gown, and an orthodox evening in the refectory of the Sanhedrim. The election was with the students in certain classes-those we presume of the first foundation; these were all, however, very young students-the majority boys from twelve to sixteen; and they had for ages voted in their red togas and antique nations as their masters in conclave settled beforehand. The scheme was to make this undergraduate-poll a real one—to have lord rectors of their own free choice-and it was very natural and honorable for the Glasgow lads to think first of the originator of the London novelty, and the greatest literary name connected with their own college within living memory. Campbell was delighted when he heard of this rebellion against the senatus academicus, then mostly composed of tories—he and his whig friends in the north exerted every energy--the "ancient solitary reign" of the dignitaries fell at the first assault, and was (apparently) abolished forever. The poet's letters on this subject—the overflowing rapture he shows about "his dear boys"—and his proceedings when he went down to be installed, harangued the unwonted multitude in the great hali, banqueted with the humbled dons-who hedgingly created him LL. D.-and was regaled with honester zeal by the youthful members of a newborn "Campbell Club;" all these matters occupy large space in the book, and will probably be smiled over by many One heart free tasting Nature's breath and bloom whom? See, left but life enough, and breathing-room meal. Is this Improvement-where the human breed For Earth's green face, the untainted air of Heaven, | close by it, The Literary Union, which has either My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic Clyde! expired long ago, or perhaps adopted some more Greekish title. It is hardly unfair to surmise that he had been offended by the reluctance of the old committee to facilitate the admission of some of his Polish and Irish cronies. In the new house he had his heart's content he ruled supreme; and it continued, while he was in London, to enjoy whatever advantages his presence and patronage might imply. We need not go into his dreams, after the reform bill, about being M. P. for his native city. It is evident that he had been deluded by the young hot-bloods of "the Campbell Club," and was never seriously thought of among the bearded electors; but here again his The election was repeated next year, (this again, we believe, an innovation,) and the Lord Rector enjoyed the second celebration with no less fervor. His sky now much needed some rays of comfort, and these happy visits to his Alma Mater were among the last vouchsafed to him. His second and most promising boy was early lost. In 1828 his poor wife died. The troubles of his editor- disappointment was sore. Then he had a vision ship accumulated. Some indiscretions brought of being knighted-and we wonder how he esthreats of legal procedure against the bookseller, caped the Guelphic ribbon-but it was never ofand he began to look more narrowly into the state fered; and there was another pang. In the litof Campbell's account. The poet resigned in erary line he did nothing that is pleasant to recur 1831; and was unwise enough to engage in a to. The most trumpeted and the most flagrant failnegotiation about the property as well as editor- ure was his Life of Mrs. Siddons (1834.) Much ship of a rival Magazine, called "the Metropoli- was even then expected on this head; he had tan," which never acquired any very sound foot- been from his youth exceedingly intimate with ing, and died young. By 1834 this "bubble," as her and all that extraordinary family, and it was he terms it, and other causes, had surrounded him hoped that in reviewing her career he might exwith fresh embarrassments-worse than ever, in-hibit once more the chaste and tasteful critical deed-nor do we see how he could have escaped vein of his Specimens. But while his Ode on from them but for the generosity, never vainly ap- the Retirement of Kemble will always form our pealed to, of Mr. Rogers, and then the death (oth-great actor's best monument, the Siddons pyramid erwise a most afflicting blow) of his old friend Telford. The engineer left Campbell 1000l.; and, joyfully discharging his debt to the senior bard, he shook himself free from The Metropolitan. 66 greater variety of scene and action, he might has already crumbled into dust. Evil communications had cockneyfied the author of Hohenlinden. A short excursion to Algeria produced "Letters from the South," in 1836; but that work His day had begun to sink; the third volume does not tempt us to linger. It is impossible to is the record of his twilight-not an overgraceful consider the rich results of his early travels withtwilight-and which we shall be pardoned for out regretting deeply the narrow sphere within treating as rapidly as if it had been tropical. which most of his subsequent life was bound. What Dr. Beattie considers as redeeming glories That chapter proves abundantly that, though few of the declining hour seldom strike us in the same poets have trusted more to the impressions offered fashion. Of these, the foremost in the practical by books, yet none was more accessible to the department was the founding of the "Polish Lit-power of realities. Fed and stimulated by a erary (!) Association," which the Doctor pronounces one of the noblest triumphs of modern philanthropy," but in the history of which we discover little to interest us, except that it originated certainly in Campbell's fixedness of political creed, and was attended with many illustrations of his charitable temper. We are afraid there is reason for the general suspicion that it was made subservient to purposes not contemplated, or at least not well weighed, by the amiable founder. It became, Our readers, after what we have hinted, will we apprehend, instrumental to the designs of that not be astonished to find that his wife's death had knot of Republican conspirators who had then their been by no means an unmitigated addition to his head-quarters here in London, and who have lately list of afflictions. Some time afterwards it seemed had every opportunity of familiarizing the civilized as if he had made up his mind to start afresh in world with their true purposes and characters. A life. He took a house better than he had ever smaller matter was a new London clubhouse-one before had, and in a more fashionable situationof the numerous imitations of the Athenæum. one of the quiet old court-yards of Whitehall; This, instituted in 1823, had Campbell among its and here for one season he gave dinners and evenoriginal members, and for some years he was a ing parties of considerable pretension. It was pretty regular attendant. What special disgust then rumored, and Dr. Beattie now confirms the had effected him in 1829, Dr. Beattie does not report, that he indulged visions of a second matsay; but he quitted the Athenæum and set up, rimony. The brass buttons shone with renewed gayness; and though in letters of earlier date he | but one, and she too was dying his last hopes, on had expressed his wonder that "gentlemen of a certain age, if they will wear wigs at all, do not see the prudence of eschewing unmixed brown or black," his own head-dress was now as luxuri- Jam nec spes animi credula mutui, a point he would not name, were blighted. As for fame, it was a bubble that must soon burst. Earned his age, to its own solitary experience, it was bitfor others, shared with others, it was sweet; but at ter. Left in those chambers "alone with his glory," was it wonderful that his philosophy, at times, took fright? that he rushed into company-resorted to that which blunts, but heals no pang? and then sick of the world, dissatisfied with himselfshrank back into solitude! Yet he would tax no man's sympathy-he would get to the end of his journey as uncomplainingly as he could; he was weaker than other men-not, perhaps, more wicked. If censured for his faults, he would only say to his friends, "Strike-but hear me !"-Vol. iii., p. 410. We are under no temptation to enlarge on the topic thus dismissed by Dr. Beattie, whose evidence, however, in the opening of the extract, is important, and will be exceedingly welcome to many. His allusions to his friend's desolate hearth remind us of the lamentation of an ancient British bard: God hath provided unpleasant things for me: siduity that reverence could dictate. The con Nec vincire novis tempora floribus. His expenditure in that season had been unwise; the folly was brief-and never repeated; but Dr. Beattie clearly intimates that, notwithstanding the pension, now unburthened, the two legacies, and the proceeds of a last collective edition of his poems, which he was enabled to put forth in consequence of the expiring of the copyrights originally assigned he never was, while he remained in London, free from pecuniary annoyance. The constitution was broken long before he reSome public appearances-especially one at an unusupaired to Boulogne. The ensuing spring found him ally crowded dinner of the Literary Fund, Prince rapidly sinking. Dr. and Mrs. Beattie hastened Albert in the chair-gave deep pain to his friends, to his side, and joined Miss Campbell in every asand to multitudes who had known him only from his writings. There ensued even grave alarm upon his publishing in the newspapers (April, 1841) an advertisement signed T. C., and with the date of his residence, imploring for an interview with a little girl, quite a child, whose counThe strife is o'er-the pangs of nature close, tenance, contemplated for a moment at Spring And life's last rapture triumphs o'er her woes. Gardens Corner, had thrown the sexagenarian June 12th. He has passed a tolerable nightpoet into a portentous delirium of rapture (vol. sleeping at intervals. By his desire, I again read iii., p. 304.) We do not think we ever saw him the prayers for the sick-followed by various texts later than this; but well remember that there was of Scripture, to which he listened with deep attention-suppressing as much as he could the sound a very general satisfaction upon the intelligence of his own breathing, which had become almost lathat, after frequent change of house and lodging borious. At the conclusion he said-It is very in and near London, he had at last resolved to soothing! At another time I read to him passages retire abroad, with the attendance of a niece, who from the Epistles and Gospels-directing his attenhad recently been invited to live with him, and tion, as well as I could, to the comforting assurwho to the end watched over him with the affec-ance they contained of the life and immortality tionate care to which his conduct in all domestic relations had so well entitled him. He went in September, 1843; but the choice of Boulogne was not happy, as all who have any notion of the society of that place, and consider the following sentences, will easily comprehend. To habitual intemperance he was not addicted. They who said so were ungenerous, unjust; but he would not quarrel with their injustice; they had ground, no doubt, for the insinuation. Some minds remember nothing so distinctly as the failings of their unhappy friends. If there were moments of human life, when, in agony of mind, the maxims of prudence might be forgotten-the reins of selfcontrol suffered to drop from the hand-such moments he had known. He was alone in the world; his wife, and the child of his hopes, were dead; his only surviving child was consigned to a living tomb; his old friends-brothers-sisters were dead-all cluding chapter will be perused with more satisfaction than any other in the doctor's third volume. Sat est vixisse. The end was devout, serene, even happy. In his own words : done, I asked him, Do you believe all this? Oh This spirit shall return to Him And took the sting from death! Merdinn Wyltt-quoted by Mr. Herbert in his very curious book, the Cyclops Christianus, p. 79. |