[1] Two of his later acts, allowing the defendant in an action for
libel to prove _veritas_, and giving a right of action to the
representatives of persons killed through negligence, also deserve
mention.
[2] Greville in his _Memoirs_ says that Campbell got this post on
condition that he should not expect the ordinary promotion to the
bench; a condition which, it if were so, he immediately violated by
claiming the vice-chancellorship on the death of Sir John Leach.
Pepys (Lord Cottenham) and Bickersteth (Lord Langdale) were both
promoted to the bench in preference to Campbell.
[3] "There can be no doubt that old Wynton was at the bottom of it
all, and persuaded Lord Grantley to urge it on for mere political
purposes."--Greville, iii. 351.
[4] See thereon J.B. Atlay, _The Victorian Chancellors_ (1908), vol.
ii. p. 174.
[5] In 1842 he published the _Speeches of Lord Campbell at the Bar
and in the Home of Commons, with an Address to the Irish Bar as Lord
Chancellor of Ireland_ (Edin., Black).
[6] It was of this book that Sir Charles Wetherell said, referring to
its author, "and then there is my noble and biographical friend who
has added a new terror to death." See _Misrepresentations in
Campbell's "Lives of Lyndhurst and Brougham" corrected by St
Leonards_ (London, 1869).
CAMPBELL, JOHN FRANCIS, of Islay (1822-1885), Gaelic scholar, was born
on the 29th of December 1822, heir to the beautiful Isle of Islay, on
the west coast of Argyllshire. Of this inheritance he never became
possessed, as the estate had to be sold by his father, and he began life
under greatly changed conditions. Educated at Eton and at Edinburgh
University, he occupied at various times several minor government posts.
His leisure was largely employed in collecting, translating and editing
the folklore of the western Highlands, taken down from the lips of the
natives. The results of his investigations were published in four
volumes under the title _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_
(1860-1862), and form a most important contribution to the subject, the
necessary precursor to the subsequent Gaelic revival in Great Britain.
Campbell was also devoted to geology and other scientific pursuits, and
he invented the sunshine recorder, used in most of the British
meteorological stations. He died at Cannes on the 17th of February
1885.
CAMPBELL, JOHN McLEOD (1800-1872), Scottish divine, son of the Rev.
Donald Campbell, was born at Kilninver, Argyllshire, in 1800. Thanks to
his father he was already a good Latin scholar when he went to Glasgow
University in 1811. Finishing his course in 1817, he became a student at
the Divinity Hall, where he gained some reputation as a Hebraist. After
further training at Edinburgh he was licensed as preacher by the
presbytery of Lorne in 1821. In 1825 he was appointed to the parish of
Row on the Gareloch. About this time the doctrine of Assurance of Faith
powerfully influenced him. He began to give so much prominence to the
universality of the Atonement that his parishioners went so far as to
petition the presbytery in 1829. This petition was withdrawn, but a
subsequent appeal in March 1830 led to a presbyterial visitation
followed by an accusation of heresy. The General Assembly by which the
charge was ultimately considered found Campbell guilty of teaching
heretical doctrines and deprived him of his living. Declining an
invitation to join Edward Irving in the Catholic Apostolic Church, he
worked for two years as an evangelist in the Highlands. Returning to
Glasgow in 1843, he was minister for sixteen years in a large chapel
erected for him, but he never attempted to found a sect. In 1856 he
published his famous book on _The Nature of the Atonement_, which has
profoundly influenced all writing on the subject since his time. His aim
is to view the Atonement in the light of the Incarnation. The divine
mind in Christ is the mind of perfect sonship towards God and perfect
brotherhood towards men. By the light of this divine fact the
Incarnation is seen to develop itself naturally and necessarily as an
atonement; the penal element in the sufferings of Christ is minimized.
Subsequent critics have pointed out that Campbell's position was not
self-consistent in the place assigned to the penal and expiatory element
in the sufferings of Christ, nor adequate in its recognition of the
principle that the obedience of Christ perfectly affirms all
righteousness and so satisfies the holiness of God. In 1859 his health
gave way, and he advised his congregation to join the Barony church,
where Norman McLeod was pastor. In 1862 he published _Thoughts on
Revelation_. In 1868 he received the degree of D.D. from Glasgow
University. In 1870 he removed to Roseneath, and there began his
_Reminiscences and Reflections_, an unfinished work published after his
death by his son. Campbell was greatly loved and esteemed by a circle of
friends, which included Thomas Erskine, Norman McLeod, Bishop Alexander
Ewing, F.D. Maurice, D.J. Vaughan, and he lived to be recognized and
honoured as a man whose opinion on theological subjects carried great
weight. In 1871 a testimonial and address were presented to him by
representatives of most of the religious bodies in Scotland. He died on
the 27th of February 1872, and was buried in Roseneath churchyard.
(D. Mn.)
CAMPBELL, LEWIS (1830-1908), British classical scholar, was born at
Edinburgh on the 3rd of September 1830. His father, Robert Campbell,
R.N., was a first cousin of Thomas Campbell, the poet. He was educated
at Edinburgh Academy, and Glasgow and Oxford universities. He was fellow
and tutor of Queen's College, Oxford (1855-1858), vicar of Milford,
Hants (1858-1863), and professor of Greek and Gifford lecturer at the
university of St Andrews (1863-1894). In 1894 he was elected an honorary
fellow of Balliol. As a scholar he is best known by his work on
Sophocles and Plato. His published works include: Sophocles (2nd ed.,
1879); Plato, _Sophistes_ and _Politicus_ (1867), _Theaetetus_ (2nd ed.,
1883), _Republic_ (with Jowett, 1894); _Life and Letters of Benjamin
Jowett_ (with E. Abbott, 1897), _Letters of B. Jowett_ (1899); _Life of
James Clerk Maxwell_ (with W. Garnett, new ed., 1884); _A Guide to Greek
Tragedy for English Readers_ (1891); _Religion in Greek Literature_
(1898); _On the Nationalisation of the Old English Universities_ (1901);
Verse translations of the plays of Aeschylus (1890); Sophocles (1896);
_Tragic Drama in Aeschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare_ (1904);
_Paralipomena Sophoclea_ (1907). He died on the 25th of October 1908.
CAMPBELL, REGINALD JOHN (1867- ), British Congregationalist divine,
son of a United Free Methodist minister of Scottish descent, was born in
London, and educated at schools in Bolton and Nottingham, where his
father successively removed, and in Belfast, the home of his
grandfather. At an early age he taught in the high school at Ashton,
Cheshire, and was already married when in 1891 he went to Christchurch,
Oxford, where he graduated in 1895 in the honours school of modern
history. He had gone to Oxford with the intention of becoming a
clergyman in the Church of England, but in spite of the influence of
Bishop Gore, then head of the Pusey House, and of Dean Paget (afterwards
bishop of Oxford), his Scottish and Irish Nonconformist blood was too
strong, and he abandoned the idea in order to take up work in the
Congregational ministry. He accepted a call, on leaving Oxford, to the
small Congregational church in Union Street, Brighton, and quickly
became famous there as a preacher, so much so that on Joseph Parker's
death he was chosen as his successor (1903) at the City Temple, London.
Here he notably enhanced his popularity as a preacher, and became one of
the recognized leaders of Nonconformist opinion. At the end of 1906 he
attracted widespread attention by his vigorous propagation of what was
called the "New Theology," a restatement of Christian beliefs to
harmonize with modern critical views and beliefs, and published a book
with this title which gave rise to considerable discussion.
CAMPBELL, THOMAS (1777-1844), Scottish poet, eighth son of Alexander
Campbell, was born at Glasgow on the 27th of July 1777. His father, who
was a cadet of the family of Campbell of Kirnan, Argyllshire, belonged
to a Glasgow firm trading in Virginia, and lost his money in consequence
of the American war. Campbell was educated at the grammar school and
university of his native town. He won prizes for classics and for
verse-writing, and the vacations he spent as a tutor in the western
Highlands. His poem "Glenara" and the ballad of "Lord Ullin's Daughter"
owe their origin to a visit to Mull. In May 1797 he went to Edinburgh to
attend lectures on law. He supported himself by private teaching and by
writing, towards which he was helped by Dr Robert Anderson, the editor
of the _British Poets_. Among his contemporaries in Edinburgh were Sir
Walter Scott, Henry Brougham, Francis Jeffrey, Dr Thomas Brown, John
Leyden and James Grahame. To these early days in Edinburgh may be
referred "The Wounded Hussar," "The Dirge of Wallace" and the "Epistle
to Three Ladies." In 1799, six months after the publication of the
_Lyrical Ballads_ of Wordsworth and Coleridge, _The Pleasures of Hope_
was published. It is a rhetorical and didactic poem in the taste of his
time, and owed much to the fact that it dealt with topics near to men's
hearts, with the French Revolution, the partition of Poland and with
negro slavery. Its success was instantaneous, but Campbell was deficient
in energy and perseverance and did not follow it up. He went abroad in
June 1800 without any very definite aim, visited Klopstock at Hamburg,
and made his way to Regensburg, which was taken by the French three days
after his arrival. He found refuge in a Scottish monastery. Some of his
best lyrics, "Hohenlinden," "Ye Mariners of England" and "The Soldier's
Dream," belong to his German tour. He spent the winter in Altona, where
he met an Irish exile, Anthony McCann, whose history suggested "The
Exile of Erin."[1] He had at that time the intention of writing an epic
on Edinburgh to be entitled "The Queen of the North." On the outbreak of
war between Denmark and England he hurried home, the "Battle of the
Baltic" being drafted soon after. At Edinburgh he was introduced to the
first Lord Minto, who took him in the next year to London as occasional
secretary. In June 1803 appeared a new edition of the _Pleasures of
Hope_, which some lyrics were added.
In 1803 Campbell married his second cousin, Matilda Sinclair, and
settled in London. He was well received in Whig society, especially at
Holland House. His prospects, however, were slight when in 1805 he
received a government pension of L200. In that year the Campbells
removed to Sydenham. Campbell was at this time regularly employed on the
_Star_ newspaper, for which he translated the foreign news. In 1809 he
published a narrative poem in the Spenserian stanza, "Gertrude of
Wyoming," with which were printed some of his best lyrics. He was slow
and fastidious in composition, and the poem suffered from
over-elaboration. Francis Jeffrey wrote to the author: "Your timidity or
fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give
your conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as they present
themselves; but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth,
till half their nature and grandeur is chiselled away from them. Believe
me, the world will never know how truly you are a great and original
poet till you venture to cast before it some of the rough pearls of your
fancy." In 1812 he delivered a series of lectures on poetry in London at
the Royal Institution; and he was urged by Sir Walter Scott to become a
candidate for the chair of literature at Edinburgh University. In 1814
he went to Paris, making there the acquaintance of the elder Schlegel,
of Baron Cuvier and others. His pecuniary anxieties were relieved in
1815 by a legacy of L4000. He continued to occupy himself with his
_Specimens of the British Poets_, the design of which had been projected
years before. The work was published in 1819. It contains on the whole
an admirable selection with short lives of the poets, and prefixed to it
an essay on poetry containing much valuable criticism. In 1820 he
accepted the editorship of the _New Monthly Magazine_, and in the same
year made another tour in Germany. Four years later appeared his
"Theodric", a not very successful poem of domestic life. He took an
active share in the foundation of the university of London, visiting
Berlin to inquire into the German system of education, and making
recommendations which were adopted by Lord Brougham. He was elected lord
rector of Glasgow University three times (1826-1829). In the last
election he had Sir Walter Scott for a rival. Campbell retired from the
editorship of the _New Monthly Magazine_ in 1830, and a year later made
an unsuccessful venture with the _Metropolitan Magazine_. He had
championed the cause of the Poles in _The Pleasures of Hope_, and the
news of the capture of Warsaw by the Russians in 1831 affected him as if
it had been the deepest of personal calamities. "Poland preys on my
heart night and day," he wrote in one of his letters, and his sympathy
found a practical expression in the foundation in London of the
Association of the Friends of Poland. In 1834 he travelled to Paris and
Algiers, where he wrote his _Letters from the South_ (printed 1837).
The small production of Campbell may be partly explained by his domestic
calamities. His wife died in 1828. Of his two sons, one died in infancy
and the other became insane. His own health suffered, and he gradually
withdrew from public life. He died at Boulogne on the 15th of June 1844,
and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Campbell's other works include a _Life of Mrs Siddons_ (1842), and a
narrative poem, "The Pilgrim of Glencoe" (1842). See _The Life and
Letters of Thomas Campbell_ (3 vols., 1849), edited by William
Beattie, M.D.; _Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell_
(1860), by Cyrus Redding; _The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell_
(1875), in the Aldine Edition of the British Poets, edited by the Rev.
W. Alfred Hill, with a sketch of the poet's life by William Allingham;
and the "Oxford Edition" of the _Complete Works of Thomas Campbell_
(1908), edited by J. Logie Robertson. See also _Thomas Campbell_ in
the Famous Scots Series, by J.C. Hadden, and a selection by Lewis
Campbell (1904) for the Golden Treasury Series.