1777-1844
[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_.]
“They who knew Mr. Campbell only as the author of _Gertrude of
Wyoming_, and the _Pleasures of Hope_, would not have suspected him
to be a merry companion, overflowing with humour and anecdote, and
anything but fastidious.... When I first saw this eminent person, he
gave me the idea of a French Virgil. Not that he was like a Frenchman,
much less the French translator of Virgil. I found him as handsome as
the Abbé Delille is said to have been ugly. But he seemed to me to
embody a Frenchman’s ideal notion of the Latin poet; something a little
more cut and dry than I had looked for; compact and elegant, critical
and acute, with a consciousness of authorship upon him; a taste
over-anxious not to commit itself, and refining and diminishing nature
as in a drawing-room mirror. This fancy was strengthened, in the course
of conversation, by his expatiating on the greatness of Racine. I think
he had a volume of the French poet in his hand. His skull was sharply
cut and fine; with plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the
reflective and amative organs; and his poetry will bear them out. For a
lettered solitude, and a bridal properly got up, both according to law
and luxury, commend us to the lovely _Gertrude of Wyoming_. His face
and person were rather on a small scale; his features regular; his eye
lively and penetrating; and when he spoke, dimples played about his
mouth, which, nevertheless, had something restrained and close in it.
Some gentle puritan seemed to have crossed the breed, and to have left
a stamp on his face, such as we often see in the female Scotch face
rather than in the male. But he appeared not at all grateful for this;
and when his critiques and his Virgilianism were over, very unlike a
puritan he talked! He seemed to spite his restrictions, and, out of the
natural largeness of his sympathy with things high and low, to break at
once out of Delille’s Virgil into Cotton’s, like a boy let loose from
school. When I had the pleasure of hearing him afterwards, I forgot
his Virgilianisms, and thought only of the delightful companion, the
unaffected philanthropist, and the creator of a beauty worth all the
heroines in Racine.”--About 1809.
[Sidenote: Patmore’s _Sketch from Real Life_.]
“The person of this exquisite writer and delightful man is small,
delicately formed, and neatly put together, without being little or
insignificant. His face has all the harmonious arrangement of features
which marks his gentle and refined mind; it is oval, perfectly regular
in its details, and lighted up not merely by ‘eyes of youth,’ but
by a bland smile of intellectual serenity that seems to pervade and
penetrate all the features, and impart to them all a corresponding
expression, such as the moonlight lends to a summer landscape; the
moonlight, not the sunshine; for there is a mild and tender pathos
blended with that expression, which bespeaks a soul that has been
steeped in the depths of human woe, but has turned their waters (as
only poets can) into fountains of beauty and of bliss.”
[Sidenote: Beattie’s _Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell_.]
“He was generally careful as to dress, and had none of Dr. Johnson’s
indifference to fine linen. His wigs were always nicely adjusted,
and scarcely distinguishable from natural hair. His appearance was
interesting and handsome. Though rather below the middle size, he
did not seem little; and his large dark eye and countenance bespoke
great sensibility and acuteness. His thin quivering lip and delicate
nostril were highly expressive. When he spoke, as Leigh Hunt has
remarked, dimples played about his mouth, which, nevertheless, had
something restrained and close in it.... In personal neatness and
fastidiousness--no less than in genius and taste--Campbell in his
best days resembled Gray. Each was distinguished by the same careful
finish in composition--the same classical predilections and lyrical
fire, rarely but strikingly displayed. In ordinary life they were both
somewhat finical--yet with greater freedom and idiomatic plainness in
their unreserved communications--Gray’s being evinced in his letters,
and Campbell’s in conversation.”