THOMAS CAMPBELL 1777-1844 SOME poets by a sort of chance have identified themselves with the national life. Public opinion finds itself unconsciously thinking along the lines their verse has traced. They are of very various degrees of merit. Writers superior to many among them do not belong to the number. Campbell, from his first appearance as a poet, vindicated his right to be included. Throughout he had the gift of crystallizing speech into proverbs and watchwords. From time to time he made himself the voice of a people. He had started on his course by storming public admiration with the Pleasures of Hope. The poem is full of passages stored once in every cultivated mind. The noble protest against the iniquitous massacre of Polish independence has never ceased to echo : Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time, Dropp'd from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear, And Freedom shriek'd-as Kosciusko fell! 1 Again and again he repeated his triumph; and on fresh ground, and with new weapons. His first pro That is the special feature of his career. duction doubtless was written in emulation of The Pleasures of Memory; and the two have been popularly bracketed. The works have little similarity of spirit. They have, however, an affinity in belonging in manner to the school of Pope. Rogers never altogether quitted it, though he infused the sweetness of Goldsmith. Campbell changed with his generation which had adopted a new style or styles. He gave up being Georgian, without either establishing a sect of his own, or affiliating himself to one of the many revolutionary fraternities in poetry. It would be difficult to trace in his multiform verse any predominant contemporary influence, whether of Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Shelley, or Keats. He neither kept to his first fashion, nor frankly adopted another. Yet never in his changes. did he lose touch with the popular taste. At intervals he gave to the world poems of some length. The world invariably read and applauded; and, on the whole, none can say that the praise was undeserved. In Gertrude a Garden of Eden was painted, as by Watteau : Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies, The happy shepherd swains had nought to do Why wanders she a huntress wild- was acknowledged to be as full of melody as of sadness. A noble picture of devotion and supernatural deliverance was presented in the legend of the Norseman's raid upon holy Iona, with its chastisement, and the fate of the bride of the chief of the dark-robed Culdees, Reullura, Star of the morn and eve ! 4 Generally grace of character-and-landscape-drawing abounds; and its charm was recognized. Even Theodric— an admitted failure as a whole-had its eulogists—and not without good cause-for lines such as: Her fingers witched the chords they passed along, Probably inferior work occasionally was accepted from him in expectation of better to come. At all events, he was never deposed from the rank he had gained. It is very different now from when, whatever keys he struck, and at whatever length, he was sure of an audience. The present age unkindly discriminates. His longer pieces are remembered principally by their titles. The cruel doom of happy Wyoming, its gentle villagers, and fairest Gertrude, with the flitting, stately shadow of the Indian warrior, A stoic of the woods-a man without a tear,6 no longer interests. Reullura is forgotten, and even the Pleasures of Hope, unless for lines here and there. Happily that has not been the fate of the lyrics. For the most part they survive to us, if, some, with the strange, mummylike fragrance hanging round them of imprisoned rosepetals. Though the poet after his original fortunate venture shook off the formal tradition of Pope, he frequently recurred in tone of sentiment to the period from which he had emerged. We feel the eighteenth-century element in his address to The Rainbow: Triumphal arch, that fill'st the sky I ask not proud Philosophy To teach me what thou art Still seem, as to my childhood's sight, A midway station given For happy spirits to alight Betwixt the Earth and Heaven." When the south wind obeys the summons to gather all his wild wood's sweets about the name of Caroline, and, in her service, Where'er thy morning breath has played, Whatever isles of ocean fanned, Come to my blossom-woven shade, Thou wandering wind of fairy-land,8 it is as if on its way the kindly breeze had strayed about ancient bookshelves on which Shenstone and his fellows repose. The same well-preserved old-world flavour is perceptible alike in the gay frolicking with Love's fickleness: Bind the sea to slumber stilly, Bind its odour to the lily, Bind the aspen ne'er to quiver, Then bind Love to last for ever; 9 in the melancholy grace of the beech-tree's petition: Of rosy blush, or yellow hue; Yet leave this barren spot to me; Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree! 10 and in the mannered simplicity of the lines to the Star that bringest home the bee, And sett'st the weary labourer free! 11 Old-fashioned, again, though not after the Pope or Shenstone type, are Exiles of Erin, Wounded Hussars, Field Flowers-little wildings of June '-possibly, too, the vigorous ballad, Lord Ullin's Daughter, and-though it surprises even myself to add the name-The Last Man. I recollect days when The Last Man blazed in the front of lyrics. It was an inspired anthem; deemed worthy to rank for loftiness of thought with Intimations of Immortality, and judged to possess twice the fire. Certainly it has its sublime lines, which must live : The Sun's eye had a sickly glare, The Earth with age was wan, Some had expired in fight-the brands In plague and famine some! Earth's cities had no sound nor tread; The meagre proportion of the leading idea to the splendour of diction puts it irretrievably out of date. A combination of reflection and fancy in modern inspiration, British and American, has made the present age intolerant of English verse in which a just balance is, as here, not kept. Perhaps something of the same charge might be brought against the majesty of Lochiel's Warning, though, for myself, I cannot consent to part from its ringing melody: Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn? From his home, in the dark rolling clouds of the north? But down let him stoop from his havoc on high ! |