LECTURES AND TRAVELS
Having got ‘Gertrude’ off his hands, Campbell returned to his literary
carpentering. He was now in his thirty-third year, and had produced the
two long poems and the short pieces upon which his fame, such as it is,
rests. Were it not for his lines on ‘The Last Man,’ it would have been
much better for his reputation had he never again put pen to paper. It was
a remark of Scott’s that he had broken out at once, like the Irish rebels,
a hundred thousand strong. But unfortunately he had no sustaining power;
he could not keep up the attack. His imaginative faculty, never robust,
decayed much earlier than that of any other poet who ever gave like
promise; and we have the sorry spectacle of a man still under forty living
in the shadow of a reputation made when he was little more than out of his
teens.
One says it regretfully, but it is the sober truth that Campbell became
now a greater hack than ever. He declared in the frankest possible manner
that he did not mean to think of poetry any more; he meant to make money,
a desire which was very near his heart all along. He had been working
fourteen hours a day for some time, but the weak flesh began to complain,
and four hours had to be cut off. In 1810 he lost his youngest child,
Alison, and overwhelmed himself with grief. Before he had recovered from
the shock his mother passed away in Edinburgh. She had been suffering from
paralysis, and so far as we can learn Campbell had nothing more touching
to say of her death than to express his ‘sincere acquiescence’ in the
dispensation of Providence.
One or two little incidents helped to revive his spirits after the
snapping of these sacred ties. He had been presented to the Princess of
Wales by Lady Charlotte Campbell, who thoughtfully, as he tells a
correspondent--but why thoughtfully?--kept the Princess from making an
‘irruption’ into his house. The Princess summoned him to Blackheath, where
he had the felicity of dancing a reel with her, and thus ‘attained the
summit of human elevation.’ An onlooker remarked upon this performance
that Campbell had ‘the neat national trip,’ but we have no other evidence
of his dancing accomplishments. Campbell was delighted with himself; but
he soon discovered that his good luck in making a royal acquaintance might
prove embarrassing. He had unthinkingly remarked to the Princess that he
loved operas to distraction. ‘Then why don’t you go to them?’ she
inquired. Campbell made some excuse about the expense, and next day a
ticket for the season arrived. ‘God help me!’ he says, in recounting the
incident, ‘this _is_ loving operas to distraction. I shall be obliged to
live in London a month to attend the opera-house--all for telling one
little fib.’
As a matter of fact, Campbell had now something more serious to think
about than attending the Opera. He had been engaged, at his own
suggestion, to give a course of lectures on Poetry at the Royal
Institution, the fee to be one hundred guineas for the course. When Scott
heard of the undertaking he expressed the hope that Campbell would read
with fire and feeling, and not attempt to correct his Scots accent. But
Campbell did not agree with Scott on the latter point. He tells Alison
that he has taken great pains with his voice and pronunciation, and has
laboured hard to get rid of his Caledonianisms. Sydney Smith, he says,
patronised him more than he liked about the lectures, and gave him what,
in Campbell’s case, was clearly a wise hint against joking. In truth he
seems to have had more than enough of advice from his friends, but he went
his own way, and he was amply justified by the result.
The first lecture, delivered on the 24th of April 1812, proved a great
success. According to a contemporary account, the hall was crowded, and
the ‘eloquent illustrations’ of the lecturer received the warmest praise.
Campbell says his own expectations were more than realised, though he had
been so far from a state of composure that he playfully threatened to
divorce his wife if she attended! At the close of the lecture
distinguished listeners pressed around him with compliments. ‘Byron, who
has now come out so splendidly, told me he heard Bland the poet say, “I
have had more _portable_ ideas given me in the last quarter of an hour
than I ever imbibed in the same portion of time.” Archdeacon Nares
fidgetted about and said: “that’s new; at least quite new to _me_.”’ And
so on. Campbell’s friends were less critical than kind. The modern reader
of his lectures will not find anything so new as Nares found, nor anything
so very portable as Bland carried away. The lectures form a sort of
chronological, though necessarily imperfect, sketch of the whole history
of poetry, from that of the Bible down to the songs of Burns. The scheme
was magnificent, but it was too vast for one man, especially for a man of
Campbell’s flighty humour, and he broke away from it before he had well
begun. What he has to say about Hebrew and Greek verse is of some value,
but generally speaking the thought and the criticism are quite
commonplace. Madame de Staël, it is true, told Campbell that, with the
exception of Burke’s writings there was nothing in English so striking as
these lectures. But then it was Madame de Staël who solemnly declared that
she had read a certain part of ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ twenty times, and
always with the pleasure of the first reading! She must have known how
well praise agreed with the poet. A second course of lectures was
delivered at the same institution in 1813, but of these it is not
necessary to say more than that, in the conventional language of the day,
they were ‘applauded to the echo.’
Towards the close of 1813 Campbell’s health got ‘sadly crazy’ again, and
he went to Brighton for sea bathing. There he soon found his lost
appetite: the fish, he wrote, was delicious, and the library quite a
pleasant lounge with the added luxury of music. He called upon Disraeli,
‘a good modest man,’ and was invited to dine with him. He was also
introduced to the venerable Herschel and his son, the one ‘a great,
simple, good old man,’ the other ‘a prodigy in science and fond of poetry,
but very unassuming.’ The astronomer seemed to him like ‘a supernatural
intelligence,’ and when he parted with him he felt ‘elevated and
overcome.’ In such lofty language does Campbell intimate his very simple
pleasures and experiences.
But the Brighton holiday was only the prelude to one much longer and much
more interesting. During the short-lived peace of 1802 Campbell had often
expressed a wish to visit the scenes of the Revolution and above all the
Louvre; and now that the abdication of Buonaparte, the capture of Paris,
and the presence of the allied armies had drawn thousands of English
subjects to the French capital, he resolved to carry out the
long-cherished plan. On the 26th of August 1814, he was writing from
Dieppe, where one of the rabble called after him: ‘Va-t’-en Anglais! vous
cherchez nous faire perir de faim.’ On the way to Paris he halted for two
days at Rouen, where he found his brother Daniel--‘poor as ever’--with
whom he had parted at Hamburg in 1800. Landing in Paris, he met Mrs
Siddons, and in her company visited the Louvre and the Elysian Fields,
which he held to be as contemptible in comparison to Hyde Park and the
Green Park as the French public squares and buildings are superior to
those of London.
At the Louvre, where he spent four hours daily, he grandiloquently says he
was struck dumb with emotion, his heart palpitated, and his eyes filled
with tears at the sight of that ‘immortal youth,’ the Belvidere Apollo.
Next to the Louvre in interest, he mentions the Jardin des Plantes, ‘a
sight worth travelling to see.’ The Pantheon he describes as ‘a
magnificent place,’ adding that the vaults of Voltaire and Rousseau are
the only cleanly things he has seen in Paris; so neat and tidy that they
remind him rather of a comfortable English pantry than of anything of an
awe-inspiring nature. Versailles is ‘very splendid indeed,’ but the palace
is ‘not large enough for the basis, and the trees are clipped with
horrible formality.’ He is not lost in admiration of the French women.
‘There are two sorts of them--the aquiline, or rather nut-cracker faces,
and the broad faces; both are ugly.’ On the other hand, he finds that the
handsomest Englishmen are inferior to the really handsome Frenchmen. The
Englishman always looks very John Bullish; and nothing that the French say
flatters him so much as when they declare that they would not take him for
_un Anglois_. The Opera he describes as ‘a set of silly things, but with
some exquisite music’; the French acting in tragedy he does not relish,
but their comic acting is perfection. Of notable people whom he met he
mentions the elder Schlegel, Humboldt, Cuvier, Denon the Egyptian
traveller--‘a very pleasing person’--and the Duke of Wellington. To the
latter he was introduced merely as ‘Mr Campbell,’ and the Duke afterwards
told Madame de Staël that he ‘thought it was one of the thousands of that
name from the same country; he did not know it was _the_ Thomas.’ Schlegel
he describes as a very uncommon man, learned and ingenious, but a
visionary and a mystic. He and Humboldt, ‘after much entreaty,’ made him
repeat ‘Lochiel.’ When Schlegel came to England, he was generally
Campbell’s guest, and the two, notwithstanding that their characters and
tastes were so dissimilar, appear to have entertained a sincere regard for
each other.
After a two months’ stay in Paris, Campbell returned to England, with, as
Beattie pompously phrases it, a rich and varied fund of materials for
reflection. He found his work much in arrear, and had just begun to make
some headway with it when the unlooked-for intelligence reached him that
by the death of his Highland cousin, MacArthur Stewart of Ascog, he had
fallen heir to a legacy of nearly £5000. The will described him as ‘author
of “The Pleasures of Hope”‘; but it was not for the honours of authorship
that he was rewarded. ‘Little Tommy, the poet,’ said the testator, ‘ought
to have a legacy because he was so kind as to give his mother sixty pounds
yearly out of his income.’
Stewart died at the end of March 1815, and by the middle of April Campbell
was in Edinburgh--whither he had gone to look after his interests--feeling
‘as blythe as if the devil were dead.’ After seeing his old friends in the
capital, he went to Kinniel on a visit to Dugald Stewart, and then, taking
the Canal boat from Falkirk, set out for Glasgow, where he made a round of
his relations. He spent a very happy time altogether, and when he returned
to Sydenham, it was, as he thought, to look out on a future of prosperity
and comparative ease. A few days after his arrival, Waterloo decided the
fate of Europe, and for a time he did nothing but speak and write of the
prodigies of British valour performed on that field. Some tributary
stanzas written to the tune of ‘The British Grenadiers’ show that while he
did not fancy being taken for an Englishman in Paris, he was very proud to
appear as a John Bull jingo at home.
Under his improved prospects he seems to have had some difficulty in
settling down to his old literary tasks. We hear of him working again at
the eternal ‘Specimens,’ but otherwise his pen seems to have lain idle.
The American heir was coming over in August to take possession of the
Ascog estates; and Campbell hoped to reap some additional pecuniary
advantages for himself and his sisters. The heir was a cousin of the poet
and a brother of the Attorney-General for Virginia. Beattie suggests that
if Campbell’s elder brother had been aware of the law which rendered
aliens to the Crown of Great Britain incapable of inheriting entailed
property, and had made up his title as the nearest heir, he might have
been proprietor of the old estates, which were afterwards sold for
£78,000. But no such luck was to befall the Campbell family. The heir came
into possession, and neither Campbell nor his sisters benefited further by
his stroke of fortune. Campbell reported that he was an amiable gentleman,
but, so far as he could see, was not inclined to be generous. Very likely
he considered that Campbell had been well provided for already. At any
rate the poet had to content himself, as he might well do, with his
pension and his legacy and continue his literary cobbling as before.
His interests now became somewhat more varied. His surviving son had been
sent to school, but having had to be removed on account of his health,
Campbell set to teach the boy himself. He got up at six every morning and
by seven was hammering Greek and Latin into the youth’s head. It was all
nonsense, he declared, but in his son’s interests he dared not act up to
his theory, which was to leave Greek and Latin, and instruct him in ‘other
things.’ In Campbell’s view it was a vestige of barbarism that ‘learning’
only means, in its common acceptation, a knowledge of the dead languages
and mathematics. Later on he speaks of his intention to drill the lad in
‘epistolary habits,’ but this intention he was, alas! never able to
realise.
While the Greek and Latin lessons were going on, some of Campbell’s
friends were busy with plans for his benefit. Scott, avowedly anxious to
have his personal society, proposed that he should allow himself to be
engineered--it was a delicate matter of supplanting an inefficient
professor--into the Rhetoric Chair in Edinburgh University. The post was a
tempting one, worth from £400 to £500 a year; but nothing is left to show
how Campbell took the suggestion. In 1834 he was again urged to appear as
a candidate for an Edinburgh professorship, but declined because he
expected to live only ten years longer, and it would take him half that
time to prepare his lectures. It is not unlikely that he would have
regarded the present proposal with favour, but his thoughts were
immediately turned in a different direction by the disinterested action of
another friend. The Royal Institution had just been opened in Liverpool,
and Roscoe was anxious that Campbell should give a dozen lectures there.
Some preliminary hitch occurred about the fee, but this was got over, and
Campbell ultimately drew no less a sum than £340 from the course.
Considering that the lectures were practically those already delivered at
the Royal Institution of London, he might compliment himself on being
remarkably well paid; yet it is said that when he was afterwards pressed
to deliver a second course at Liverpool, presumably on the same terms, he
declined.
Campbell made his appearance in Liverpool at the end of October 1818. The
lecture-room, wrote one of the listeners some thirty years later, was
‘crowded by the _élite_ of the neighbourhood.’ The lecturer’s prose ‘was
declared to be more poetic than his poetry; his glowing imagination gave a
double charm to those passages from the poets which he cited as
illustrations. The effect and animation of his eye, his figure, his
voice, in reciting these passages are still vividly remembered.’ From
Liverpool he went on to Birmingham, where he received £100 for repeating
the lectures there. At Birmingham ‘it pleased fate that Thomas should take
the measles,’ and Campbell himself had to get blisters applied to his
chest to relieve his breathing. Under the circumstances he could not be
expected to visit much; but he was introduced to Miss Edgeworth, who
captivated him by the unassuming simplicity of her manner, and he ‘met
L--d [Lloyd], the quondam partner of L--b [Lamb] in poetry--an innocent
creature, but imagines everybody dead.’ He called upon Gregory Watt’s
father--_the_ James Watt--with whom, though he was then eighty-three, he
says he spent one of the most amusing days he ever had with a man of
science and a stranger to his own pursuits.
Suggestions had reached him from Glasgow and Edinburgh that he should
deliver his lectures in these towns, but although, with his usual
facility, he had come to think that lecturing was likely to be his
_metier_, at present he literally had not a voice to exert without
imminent hazard. And there was another danger. ‘I know well,’ he says,
‘what would happen from the hospitality of Glasgow or Edinburgh… I should
enjoy the hospitality to the prejudice of my health. For though I now
abstain habitually from even the ordinary indulgence in eating and taking
wine, yet the excitement of speaking always hurts me.’ And so, partly to
avoid the conviviality which Dickens and Thackeray enjoyed later as
lecturers in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Campbell declined the invitations from
the north, and went home to Sydenham.
While he was absent on this literary tour, the long-delayed ‘Specimens of
the British Poets’--Miss Mitford makes very merry over the time spent on
the work--had at length been published in seven octavo volumes. It proved
only a moderate success. The plan was well conceived, but Campbell
committed the initial mistake of deciding to print, not the best specimens
of his authors, but only such pieces mainly as had not been printed by
Ellis and by Headley. Of Sir Philip Sidney, for example, he says: ‘Mr
Ellis has exhausted the best specimens of his poetry; I have only offered
a few short ones.’ The absurdity of this procedure need not be pointed
out. People do not go to a book of specimens for examples of a writer in
his second-best manner. They want the cream of a poet, not, as Campbell
has too often given them, the skimmed milk of his genius.
But the work was faulty on other grounds. Its biographical and
bibliographical information was notoriously incorrect and imperfect.
Campbell had no taste for the drudgery of antiquarian research: not in his
line, he boldly announced, was the labour of trying to discover the number
of Milton’s house in Bunhill Fields. His facts as a natural consequence
were never to be depended upon. In the ‘Specimens’ the inaccuracies are
more than usually abundant, and would, even if the work were otherwise
satisfactory, entirely discount its value. ‘Read Campbell’s Poets,’ said
Byron in his Journal; ‘marked the errors of Tom for correction.’ Again:
‘Came home--read. Corrected Tom Campbell’s slips of the pen.’ Some of
Tom’s errors were, no doubt, mere slips; but more were clearly
attributable to ignorance and laziness. If, for example, he had been at
the trouble to take his Shakespeare from the shelf he would never have
been guilty of such a misquotation as the following:
To gild refined gold, to paint the _lily_,
_To throw a perfume on_ the violet.
The work absolutely bristles with errors of this kind. Of the introductory
essay and the prefatory notices of the various writers it is possible to
speak somewhat more favourably. The essay, though written in an affected
style, is still worth reading, especially the portions dealing with Milton
and Pope. The lives, again, are marked by a fair appreciation of the
powers of the respective poets, from the point of view of the old school;
and although there is nothing subtle in the criticisms, there is welcome
evidence of that sympathetic spirit which loves poetry for its own sake.
This is the most that can be said for a work which Lockhart unaccountably
eulogised as ‘not unworthy to be handed down with the classical verse of
its author.’ No second edition of it was called for before 1841, when
Campbell had some difference with Murray about its revision. Murray’s
original agreement with Campbell had been for £500, but when the work was
completed he doubled that sum and added books to the value of £200 which
Campbell had borrowed. This munificent generosity Campbell rewarded by
refusing to correct his own errors, though he was offered a handsome sum
to do so; and the result was that he had to submit to the ‘Specimens’
being silently revised by another hand. The incident, which is not a
little damaging to Campbell’s character, proves again that Campbell was
treated by the booksellers far more liberally than he deserved.
Having disposed of the ‘Specimens,’ he was free to look about for other
work. At the beginning of 1820 he tells a friend that he has a new poem on
the anvil, with several small ones lying by, and only waits until he has
enough for a volume to publish them. He is to lecture again at the Royal
Institution in the Spring, and as both his fellow-lecturers have been
knighted, he thinks it not unlikely that he will be knighted too. On the
whole he was in excellent spirits; and the necessity for unremitting toil
having been removed, he began to arrange for a holiday. This time he
decided to revisit Germany, and having let his house furnished for a year,
and concluded his lecture course, he embarked with his family for Holland
in the end of May.
Landing at Rotterdam, with the view of which from the Maas he was ‘much
captivated,’ he proceeded by the Hague and Leyden to Haarlem, where he was
‘transported’ with the famous organ in the Cathedral. From Amsterdam he
wrote to say that the faces of the people were as unromantic as the face
of their country, but he was pleased to see their houses ‘so painted and
cleaned’ that poverty could have no possible terrors for them. At Bonn he
renewed his acquaintance with Schlegel, who on this occasion bored him
sadly. Schlegel, it seems, was ludicrously fond of showing off his
English. He thought he understood English politics, too, and pestered
Campbell with his crude speculations about England’s impending bankruptcy
and the misery of her lower orders. ‘I had no notion,’ says Campbell,
‘that a great man could ever grow so wearisome.’
Leaving his son, now in his sixteenth year, with Professor Kapp, who was
to board and instruct him for £5 a month, he went to Frankfort, visiting
on the way the Rolandseck, where he wrote his ‘Roland the Brave.’ At
Frankfort he had daily lessons in German from a Carthusian monk, who was
rather surprised at his strange plan of overcoming the difficulties of the
language by dint of Greek. At Ratisbon he revived many memories. Of the
twelve monks whom he had known at the Scots College in 1800, only two were
now alive; but their successors were ‘very liberal of their beer, and it
is by no means contemptible.’ When he got to Vienna--where he read Hebrew
with a Jewish poet named Cohen--he found that his fame had preceded him.
His arrival was publicly announced, translations of ‘Ye Mariners’ and the
Kirnan ‘Lines’ appeared in one of the leading journals, and invitations
showered in upon him from the best people in the capital. He met a large
number of the Polish nobility, who crowded about him with affectionate
zeal. He forgot all his sorrows listening to the organ in St Stephen’s.
The theatres he found tiresome. The actors indeed were good, but what
could they make of such a language? From Vienna he returned to Bonn
through Bavaria. He was now impatient to be home; and, having transferred
his son to the care of Dr Meyer, he bade farewell to his friends, and was
in London by the end of November.
Before leaving for the Continent he had entered into an agreement with
Colburn for editing the _New Monthly Magazine_ for three years, from
January 1821. He was to have £500 per annum, and was to furnish annually
six contributions in prose and six in verse. Campbell had not shown any
special fitness for the duties of an editor, but he knew the value of his
own name, which, indeed, was probably the reason of Colburn’s applying to
him. He had, as Patmore says, the most extensive and the most unquestioned
reputation of the writers of the day, and the proprietor’s judgment was
soon proved by the unprecedented popularity of the magazine. Campbell
certainly showed some zeal at the start. He got together a very efficient
staff of contributors, with Mr Cyrus Redding as his sub-editor. Moreover,
in order to be near the office he decided to exchange his Sydenham house
for one in town, and he took private lodgings in Margaret Street until a
permanent residence could be found. There, shutting himself up from
outside society, he ‘received and consulted with his friends, cultivated
acquaintance with literary men of all parties, answered correspondents,
pretended to read contributions, wrote new and revised old papers, and, in
short, identified his own reputation and interests with those of the
magazine.’ The _New Monthly_, for the time being, became the record of his
literary life.
With all this show of work, Campbell, by every account, proved a very
unsatisfactory editor, though no more unsatisfactory than Bulwer Lytton
and Theodore Hook who succeeded him. Allowing for the probable
exaggeration of his own importance as sub-editor, there is enough in
Redding’s reminiscences to show that he found his position difficult
enough. Campbell had so little acquaintance with periodical literature
that he declares he never saw a number of the _New Monthly_ until Colburn
put one into his hands! He gave no attention to the topics of the day, and
his knowledge of current literature was so limited that contributors often
foisted on him articles which they had furtively abstracted from
contemporary writers. Of method he had none. His papers lay about in
hopeless confusion, and if he wanted to get rid of them for the time, he
would jumble them into a heap, or cram them into a drawer. Articles sent
by contributors would be placed over his books on the shelves, slip down
behind and lie forgotten. He always shied at the perusal of manuscripts,
and he kept the printer continually waiting for ‘copy.’ Talfourd says he
would balance contending epithets for a fortnight, and stop the press for
a week to determine the value of a comma. In short, he was the very worst
imaginable kind of editor, especially from the contributor’s point of
view. Nevertheless, he soon drew a strong brigade of writers around
him--among them Hazlitt, Talfourd, Horace Smith, and Henry Roscoe--and
placing implicit confidence in their work, he made his editorship a snug
sinecure. ‘Tom Campbell,’ said Scott, ‘had much in his power. A man at the
head of a magazine may do much for young men, but Campbell did nothing,
more from indolence, I fancy, than disinclination or a bad heart.’ That
was the true word; Campbell, to use the expressive term of his countrymen,
simply could not be ‘fashed.’
While things were proceeding thus in the editorial sanctum a painful
crisis was approaching in Campbell’s domestic affairs. He had not long
returned from the Continent when reports of his son began to give him
uneasiness. Thomas, he says, talks of going to sea, which indicates that
he is not disposed to do much good on land. Early in the spring of 1821
the youth turned up in London. He had been transferred from Bonn to
Amiens, but disliking the place and the people, he had run away from his
instructor. Campbell was greatly affected by his unexpected arrival, but
Tony M’Cann, who was in the house, proposed to celebrate the event by
killing the fatted calf! In the autumn the boy was sent to a school at
Poplar, at a cost to his father of £120 per annum, but he had not been
many weeks there when symptoms, the meaning of which had hitherto been
mistaken, became so pronounced that he had to be removed to an asylum. It
is a distressing subject, and there is no need to go into details. Young
Campbell was ultimately placed under the care of Dr Matthew Allen at High
Beech, Essex. There he chiefly remained until three months after his
father’s death in 1844, when he was liberated by the verdict of a jury
declaring him to be of sound mind. The taint of insanity clearly came from
the mother’s side. One of her sisters had been deranged for many years
before her death; and indeed it has been hinted that Mrs Campbell herself
suffered from some ‘mental alienation’ during her last days. A writer in
Hogg’s _Weekly Instructor_ for April 12, 1845, expressly says so. He seems
to have known Campbell, but his statement, so far as can be ascertained,
is uncorroborated.
In 1822 Campbell removed to a small house of his own at 10 West Seymour
Street--a ‘beautiful creation,’ with ‘the most amiable curtains, the
sweetest of carpets, the most accomplished chairs, and a highly
interesting set of tongs and fenders.’ Here he wrote one of his best
things and one of his worst. ‘The Last Man’ was published in the _New
Monthly_ in 1823. Gilfillan calls it the most Christian of all Campbell’s
strains. It is, in fact, one of the most striking of his shorter
productions. The same idea was used by Byron in his ‘Darkness,’ and this
led to some controversy as to which of the two poets had been guilty of
stealing from the other. Campbell maintained that he had many years before
mentioned to Byron his intention of writing the poem, and there is no
reason to doubt his word. Of course the idea of one man, the last of his
race, remaining when all else has been destroyed, is quite an obvious one;
and in any case Campbell treated it in a manner altogether different from
Byron, of whose daring misanthropy he was completely innocent.
It has been said that at West Seymour Street Campbell also wrote one of
his worst poems. This was his ‘Theodric,’ not ‘Theodoric,’ as it is
constantly mis-spelled. He seems to have been engaged on it early in 1823;
but he confesses that so far from being in a poetic mood he is barely
competent for the dull duty of editorship. It is well to remember this in
judging the poem. He had begun it at a time when horrible dreams of his
son being tortured by asylum attendants disturbed his rest; he had
finished it with the obstreperous youth temporarily at home--outrageous,
dogged, and disagreeable, ‘excessively anxious to convince us how very
cordially he hates both his mother and me.’ He knew that ‘Theodric’ had
faults, but he regarded these as so little detrimental that he believed
when it recovered from the first buzz of criticism it would attain a
steady popularity. It appeared in November 1824, but the popularity which
Campbell anticipated never came to it. ‘I am very glad,’ he says, ‘that
Jeffrey is going to review me, for I think _he_ has the stuff in him to
understand “Theodric.”’ But neither Jeffrey nor anybody else understood
‘Theodric’; certainly nobody appreciated it. The wits at Holland House
disowned it; the _Quarterly_ called it ‘an unworthy publication’; and
friend joined foe in the chorus of condemnation. An anonymous punster
referred to it as the ‘odd trick’ of the season; and its excessively
overdone alliterations (such as ‘Heights browsed by the bounding
bouquetin’) were made the subject of scornful hilarity. The poem, in
truth, was a sad failure, and the universal censure with which it met was
thoroughly deserved. Campbell had ‘attempted to imitate the natural
simplicity and homely familiarity of the style of Crabbe and Wordsworth,’
and had only succeeded in becoming elaborately tame and feeble.
Just before the publication of ‘Theodric,’ he had paid a short visit to
Cheltenham for his health’s sake; now he went to Lord Spencer’s at
Althorp, ‘a most beautiful Castle of Indolence,’ tempted by the hope of
seeing books which he could not see elsewhere. He really wanted to study,
yet he capriciously complained that after breakfast the company, including
his Lordship, went off to shoot and left him alone! In short, he was no
sooner at Althorp than he wished himself home again.
When he returned to town, in January 1825, it was to take part in what he
afterwards called the only important event in his career. This was the
founding of the London University, the idea of which he appears to have
conceived during his recent intercourse with the Professors of Bonn. The
scheme was discussed at various private and public conferences during the
spring and summer, and the financial basis of the undertaking being
apparently assured, Campbell proceeded to Berlin in September to ascertain
how far the University there might serve as a model for London. He spent a
week in the Prussian capital, which he compares unfavourably with London
in everything but cookery, and came away with ‘every piece of information
respecting the University,’ and every book he wished for. At Hamburg he
was given a public dinner by eighty English residents, and was driven
about the town by his old _protégé_, the ‘Exile of Erin.’ Back in London,
he appeared at a meeting in support of the Western Literary and Scientific
Institution, and in an eloquent speech declared that if his plan of a
Metropolitan University succeeded he would ask for no other epitaph on his
grave than to be celebrated as one of its originators. The plan,
fortunately, did succeed, and although Lord Brougham, to serve his own
political ambitions, tried to rob him of the honour, there cannot be a
doubt that it rightly belongs to Campbell. Moreover, King’s College would
never have existed but for the London University, so that Campbell, as he
used to remark, did a double good.
Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1826, he was interesting himself in certain
domestic affairs. He was having a spacious study constructed, and he
proposed to treat himself to a new carpet and some elegant leather chairs.
Every volume was to be removed from the drawing-room; and henceforth he
was to smoke in a garret, not in his study. His fancy also rioted by
anticipation in ‘a geranium-coloured paper with gold leaves to harmonise
with the glory of my gilded and red-bound books.’ But there his purse and
his vanity were at loggerheads. While the masons were hammering in the
house, the Glasgow students had decided to ask Campbell to allow himself
to be put forward as their Lord Rector. At first he complied, but as the
time approached he began to waver in his decision. He was not well, his
son’s malady distressed him, and his pecuniary affairs--thanks in a great
measure to his own reckless extravagance--were again in deep water.
Writing on November 6 (1826) he says: ‘I got in bills on Saturday morning
for the making up of my new house, treble the amount expected; and also
confirmation of an acquaintance being bankrupt, for whom I had advanced
the deposits on three shares in the London University. I could not now
accept the Rectorship if it were at my option. If I travelled it must be
on borrowed money. Friends I have in plenty who would lend, but I fear
debt as I do the bitterness of death.’ This seemed decisive enough, and
yet nine days later the Principal of Glasgow University was announcing to
him that he had been elected Lord Rector by the unanimous vote of the four
‘nations.’
The rival candidates were Mr Canning and Sir Thomas Brisbane, and the
contest had proved more than usually exciting, from the fact that all the
professors except Millar and Jardine were opposed to Campbell on the not
very solid ground of ‘political distrust.’ Some enemy even sought to
damage his cause by circulating a report that his mother had been ‘a
washerwoman in the Goosedubs of Glasgow.’ Wilson, referring in the ‘Noctes
Ambrosianæ’ to this incident, remarked that in England such baseness would
be held incredible; but Wilson forgot that the fight was practically a
political one, and in politics any stick is, or was, good enough to beat a
dog with. Campbell’s triumph was, however, all the greater that it was
achieved under such conditions; and we can easily imagine the glow of
pride with which he went down to Glasgow in the succeeding April (1827).
He landed on the 9th of the month, after a journey which he had cause to
remember from the circumstance that Matilda brought ‘seventy parcels of
baggage,’ and on the 12th he delivered his inaugural address in the old
College Hall. There is abundant evidence of his high spirits in an
incident recorded by Allan Cunningham. Snow lay on the ground at the time,
and when Campbell reached the College Green he found the students pelting
each other. ‘The poet ran into the ranks, threw several snowballs with
unerring aim, then, summoning the scholars around him in the Hall,
delivered a speech replete with philosophy and eloquence.’ The snowballing
was not very dignified perhaps, but it was strictly in character, and must
have added immensely to Campbell’s popularity with the ‘darling boys’ of
his Alma Mater. The Rectorial address was received with intense
enthusiasm. One listener describes it as elegant and highly poetical, and
says that it was delivered with great ease and dignity. Another, a
student, writes: ‘To say we applauded is to say nothing. We evinced every
symptom of respect and admiration, from the loftiest tribute, even our
tears--drawn forth by his eloquent recollections of olden times--down to
escorting him with boisterous noise along the public streets.’
Campbell remained in Glasgow until the 1st of May, banqueting with the
Professors and the Senatus (who, by the way, created him an LL.D., a title
which he never used), hearing explanations by the Faculty, and coaching
himself up in University ordinances and finance. For Campbell filled the
Rectorial office in no sinecure fashion. Perhaps, as Redding says, he made
more of the post than it was worth, out of a little harmless vanity and
somewhat of local attachment. But at any rate he did not spare himself. He
got his inaugural address printed, and sent every student a copy of it,
inscribed with his autograph. He wrote a series of Letters on the Epochs
of Greek and Roman Literature, which, after running through the _New
Monthly_, he presented to the students in volume form. He investigated the
rights of the students too, and secured them many advantages of which they
had been unjustly deprived. All these duties he performed in person, thus
involving several special journeys to Glasgow; so that, on the whole, it
may safely be said that he conducted himself like a model Lord Rector.
The result was seen in his re-election, not only for a second but for a
third term, which was almost unprecedented, and indeed was said to be
contrary to the statutes and usage of the University. His popularity with
the students all through was very great. They founded a Campbell Club in
his honour; commissioned a full-length portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence;
and presented him with a silver punch-bowl, which figures in his will as
one of his ‘jewels.’ When he was elected for the third time they went wild
with delight. Campbell was staying with his cousin, Mr Gray, in Great
Clyde Street, a few paces from the river. There the students gathered to
the number of fourteen hundred, and a speech being called for, Campbell
appeared at the window. ‘Students,’ he said, ‘sooner shall that
river’--pointing to the Clyde--‘cease to flow into the sea, than I, while
I live, will forget the honour this day done to me.’ There is but one step
from the sublime to the ridiculous. At this stage an old washerwoman
passing on the outskirts of the crowd was arrested by the sight of what
she conceived to be a lunatic speaking from a window. ‘Puir man!’ she
remarked to a student, ‘can his freends no tak’ him in?’ A royal time it
must have been for the poet in Glasgow altogether. He was naturally much
attached to the city, and although he complains of feeling melancholy
while walking about his old haunts, yet it was a melancholy not without
alleviations. The Rectorship had been ‘a sunburst of popular favour,’ the
‘crowning honour’ of his life; and as for Glasgow itself, why it flowed
with ‘syllogisms and ale.’
The third year of Campbell’s Rectorship expired in the autumn of 1829, but
meanwhile, in May 1828, he had lost his wife. Mrs Campbell had been ailing
for some time, and his anxiety on her account darkens all the
correspondence of the period. For several months he acted both as
housekeeper and sick-nurse, and seldom crossed his door except to get
something for the invalid. Mrs Campbell’s death was an irreparable loss to
him. She had been an affectionate, even a childishly adoring wife (she
used to take visitors upstairs on tiptoe to show the poet ‘in a moment of
inspiration’!) and it does not surprise us to read of the bereaved husband
relieving his feelings with tears at the sight of a trinket or a knot of
ribbon that belonged to her. Mrs Campbell had tributes from many
quarters. Redding said that no praise could be too high for her good
management and her general conduct in domestic life. Mrs Grant of Laggan,
writing of Campbell’s pecuniary embarrassments, remarked that ‘his good,
gentle, patient little wife was so frugal, so sweet-tempered, that she
might have disarmed poverty of half its evils.’ It was maliciously hinted
in Scotland that she lived unhappily with her husband, but upon that point
we may safely accept the testimony of Redding. ‘I never,’ he says, ‘found
Mrs Campbell out of temper. I never saw a remote symptom of disagreement,
though I entered the poet’s house for years at all times, without
ceremony. I believe the tale to be wholly a fiction.’
Mrs Campbell’s death sent the poet out into the world and into company
very different from that with which he had been used to associate. Redding
makes touching reference to the change at his fireside. The recollection
of Mrs Campbell’s uniform cheerfulness and hospitality, the sight of her
tea-table without her presence, her vacant chair, that inexpressible lack
of something which long custom had made like second nature--these things
gave to Campbell’s home a melancholy colouring which his old friends never
cared to contemplate. ‘Man,’ says Lytton, ‘may have a splendid palace, a
comfortable lodging, nay, even a pleasant house, but man has no home where
the home has no mistress.’ Henceforward Campbell had practically no home.
He moved about from house to house, always seeking the comfort which he
never found, his books and his papers and his general belongings getting
ever into a greater state of confusion for want of the hand that had so
quietly and skilfully ordered his domestic affairs.
The literary product of these years of bereavement and the Glasgow
Rectorship was naturally very slight. Indeed the letters to the students,
already mentioned, formed almost the only writings of any importance. In
concert with the elder students he projected a Classical Encyclopædia, but
for some unexplained reason the project was allowed to drop. The victory
of Navarino in October 1827 produced some stanzas which he not inaptly
called ‘a rumble-tumble concern,’ and the ‘Lines to Julia M----,’ as well
as the short lyric, ‘When Love came first to Earth,’ seem to have been
written in 1829. It was, however, an essentially barren period, unmarked
by a single piece above the average of the third-rate writer.