PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND PLACE AS A POET
Something of Campbell’s person and character will have already been
gathered from the foregoing pages. His friends unite in praise of his eyes
and his generally handsome appearance as a young man. Lockhart says that
the eyes had a dark mixture of fire and softness which Lawrence’s pencil
alone could reproduce. Patmore speaks of his ‘oval, perfectly regular’
features, to which his eyes and his bland smile gave an expression such as
the moonlight gives to a summer landscape. The thinness of the lips is
commented upon by several writers; and it is even said that Chantrey
declined to execute a bust because the mouth could never look well in
marble. Gilfillan observes that there was nothing false about him but his
hair: ‘he wore a wig, and his whiskers were dyed’--to match the wig! Most
of his acquaintances remark on the wig, which in his palmy days was ‘true
to the last curl of studious perfection’; Lockhart alone declares that it
impaired his appearance because his choice of colour was abominable.
Byron’s picture of him as he appeared at Holland House in 1813 has often
been quoted: ‘Campbell looks well, seems pleased and dressed to sprucery.
A blue coat becomes him; so does his new wig. He really looked as if
Apollo had sent him a birthday suit or a wedding garment, and was witty
and lively.’
But the completest and most consistent description is to be found in Leigh
Hunt’s Autobiography. Hunt says: ‘His skull was sharply cut and fine, with
plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the reflective and
amative organs… His face and person were rather of 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 strain 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 on the male.’ After Mrs
Campbell’s death in 1828 he lost something of his old finical neatness,
but he continued to the last to be ‘curious in waistcoats and buttons.’
Madden speaks of him in his later years as ‘an elderly gentleman in a
curly wig, with a blue coat and brass buttons, very like an ancient
mariner out of uniform and his natural element.’ Before he left London for
Boulogne, he would be seen in the streets with an umbrella tucked under
his arm, his boots and trousers all dust and dirt, ‘a perfect picture of
mental and bodily imbecility.’
The best portrait of Campbell is the well-known one by Sir Thomas
Lawrence, engraved in most editions of his works. It was painted when he
was about forty years of age, and represents him very much as Byron
described him. Redding, who had good means of judging, says that, barring
the lips, which were too thick, it was ‘the perfection of resemblance.’
Campbell was somewhat vain of his appearance, and would never have asked,
like Cromwell, to be painted warts and all. He had, in particular, a sort
of feminine objection to an artist making him look old. Late in life he
sat to Park, the sculptor, when his desire to be reproduced _en beau_ made
him decline to take off his wig. Park made a very successful bust, but
Campbell disliked it just because of its extreme truthfulness. In the
Westminster Abbey statue by Marshall, the features, according to those who
knew him, are preserved with happy fidelity, though the attitude is
somewhat theatrical, and we get the notion of a much taller and more
athletic figure.
Campbell’s social habits have been variously described. There can be no
doubt that occasionally he took too much wine; so did most people at that
time. Beattie makes a long story about it, pleading this and that in
extenuation, but there is no need to enlarge on the matter now. It was
merely, as Campbell said himself, a case of being unable to resist ‘such
good fellows.’ He was never a solitary drinker, like De Quincey with his
opium. When he was left a widower he went more into company than he had
done before; and apart from his special temptations, there was the fact
that with his excitable temperament his last defences were carried before
a colder man’s outworks. Moreover, he found that wine gave an edge to his
wit, and hence he may often have passed the conventional bounds in the
mere endeavour to promote the hilarity of his friends.
His other indulgences seem to have been quite innocent. Hunt hints at his
love of a good dinner, which indeed has been seen from his letters. He was
almost as fond of the pipe as Tennyson, and he had even been known to chew
tobacco when he found it inconvenient to smoke. He liked music, though he
knew no more about the theory of the art than Scott. The national songs of
his country specially appealed to him; and he was severe upon Dr Burney,
the musical historian, because he had not done justice to the old English
composers. He played the flute--how wonderfully flute-playing has gone out
of fashion!--and could ‘strike in now and then with a solo.’ His early
‘vain little weak passion’ to have ‘a fine characteristic, manly voice’
was never realised, but with such voice as he had, he often gratified his
friends in a Scots song or in his own ‘Exile of Erin.’ ‘The Marseillaise’
was his favourite air, and when on his deathbed he several times asked his
niece to play it.
But Campbell gave himself very little time for recreation and social
enjoyment. Most of his waking hours were spent in his study, where he
dawdled unconscionably over the lightest of tasks. As a rule he attempted
verse only when in the mood. He told George Thomson, who had asked him for
some lyrics, that if he sat on purpose to write a song he felt sure it
would be a failure. On the other hand, he sat down to produce prose with
the clock-work regularity of Anthony Trollope. He wrote very slowly, and
would often recast a whole piece out of sheer caprice, the second version
being not seldom inferior to the first. Several of his friends speak of
his practice of adding pencil lines to unruled paper for making
transcripts of his verse. His habits of study were erratic and desultory.
He could not fix his thoughts for any length of time; yet he always
pretended to be prodigiously busy. Even the minutes necessary for shaving
he grudged: a man, he said, might learn a language in the time given to
the razor. Scott wondered that he did so little considering the number of
years he devoted to literature. But the reason is plain: he did not know
how to economise his time. His imagination was active enough, but it was
ill-regulated and flighty, and his incapacity for protracted exertion led
to the abandonment of many well-conceived designs. This instability, this
restless, wayward irresolution, was the weak point in his character. He
would start of a sudden into the country in order to be alone, and he
would be back in London next day. He would arrange visits in eager
anticipation of enjoyment, and when he arrived at his destination would
ask to be immediately recalled on urgent editorial business! ‘There is
something about me,’ he truly said, ‘that lacks strength in brushing
against the world, and battling out the evil day.’ And he was right when
he named himself ‘procrastination Tom.’
Campbell was not, in the usual sense of the term, a society man. He liked
the company of ladies, especially when they were pretty, but ‘talking
women’ he detested. Even Madame de Staël he disparaged because she was
fond of showing off. For the ‘high gentry,’ to use his own words, he had
an ‘unconquerable aversion.’ To retain their acquaintance, he said, meant
a life of idleness, dressing, and attendance on their parties. He censured
his own countrymen for their snobbish deference to the great, citing an
instance of Scott having become painfully obsequious in a company when
some unknown lordling arrived. Anything like formality, above all the idea
of being invited out for other than a social and friendly object, made him
silent and even morose. ‘They asked me to show me,’ he observed of a
certain function; ‘I will never dine there again.’ Lockhart, writing of
this phase of his character, says there was no reason why he should not
have been attentive to persons vastly his superiors who had any sort of
claim upon him; no reason why he should not have enjoyed, and profited
largely by enjoying, ‘the calm contemplation of that grand spectacle
denominated the upper world.’ As a society star, Lockhart is perhaps to be
excused for not sympathising with the position. Campbell had his bread to
make by his own industry, and he could not possibly fill his hours with
forenoon calls and nightly levees. But more than that, he was not formed,
either by habit or by mode of thinking, for the conventional round of
social life. A man who puts his knife in the salt-cellar--as, according to
Lady Morgan, Campbell once did at an aristocratic table--is not made for
associating with the ‘high gentry.’ The ‘upper world’ may indeed be, as
Lockhart says it is, ‘the best of theatres, the acting incomparably the
first, the actresses the prettiest.’ But Campbell seems always to have
felt as much out of place there as a country cousin would feel in a
greenroom. Various references in his letters suggest that he was troubled
with a nervous self-consciousness, the bourgeois suspicion that his
‘betters’ were laughing in their sleeve at him, and the natural result was
_gaucherie_ and sometimes incivility. But among his equals he was another
man. Hunt tells of one great day at Sydenham--a specimen, no doubt, of
many such days--when Theodore Hook came to dinner and amused the company
with some extempore drollery about a piece of village gossip in which
Campbell and a certain lady were concerned. Campbell enjoyed the fun
immensely, and ‘having drunk a little more wine than usual,’ he suddenly
took off his wig and dashed it at Hook’s head, exclaiming: ‘You dog! I’ll
throw my laurels at you.’ Little wonder that one who thus mingled vanity
with horse-play was not quite at home among duchesses!
No two authorities agree as to Campbell’s powers as a talker, but the
truth would seem to be that he shone only at his own table or among his
intimates, and even then, as already hinted, only when stimulated by wine.
He was indeed too reserved to be quite successful as a conversationalist.
One of his friends said he knew a great deal but was seldom in the mood to
tell what he knew. He ‘trifled in his table-talk, and you might sound him
about his contemporaries to very little purpose.’ As early as the year
1800 he remarked that he would always hide his emotions and personal
feelings from the world at large, and although we come upon an occasional
burst of confidence in his letters, he may be said to have kept up his
reserve to the end. Madden called him ‘a most _shivery_ person’ in the
presence of strangers; Tennyson said he was a very brilliant talker in a
_tête-a-tête_. According to an American admirer, he was quite commonplace
unless when excited; Lockhart found him witty only when he had taken wine.
Lytton was disappointed with him on such occasions as he met him in
general society, but spoke of an evening at his house when Campbell led
the conversation with the most sparkling talk he had ever heard. Nothing,
he said, could equal ‘the riotous affluence of wit, of humour, of fancy’
that Campbell poured forth.
To this may be added a second quotation from Leigh Hunt, which will serve
to bring out some other points. Hunt writes:
Those 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. Those Scotch poets have always something in
reserve … I know but of one fault he had, besides an extreme
cautiousness in his writings, and that one was national--a matter of
words, and amply overpaid by a stream of conversation, lively,
piquant, and liberal, not the less interesting for occasionally
betraying an intimacy with pain, and for a high and somewhat
overstrained tone of voice, like a man speaking with suspended
breath, and in the habit of subduing his feelings. No man felt more
kindly towards his fellow-creatures, or took less credit for it.
When he indulged in doubt and sarcasm, and spoke contemptuously of
things in general, he did it, partly, no doubt, out of actual
dissatisfaction, but more perhaps than he suspected out of a fear of
being thought weak and sensitive; which is a blind that the best men
commonly practise. He professed to be hopeless and sarcastic, and
took pains all the while to set up a University.
He seems to have had a very good opinion of his own powers as a talker,
and apparently he sometimes failed from sheer over-anxiety to shine. At
Holland House he used to set himself up against Sydney Smith. Of one visit
he says: ‘I was determined I should make as many good jokes and speak as
much as himself; and so I did, for though I was dressed at the
dinner-table much like a barber’s clerk, I arrogated greatly, talked
quizzically, metaphorically. Sydney said a few good things; I said many.’
This is, of course, all flummery, whether Campbell was really serious in
his assertion or not. Whatever wit he may have shown on rare occasions, he
was not, like Sydney Smith, naturally witty. As a writer his _forte_ lay
in the didactic and rhetorical, and when he attempted to move in a lighter
step he became ridiculous. ‘There never was a man,’ says Redding, ‘who had
less of the comic in his character than Campbell.’ Some of his friends
aver that he often had fits of punning, but such of his puns as have
survived do not lead us to believe that he can ever have been very
successful in that most mechanical form of wit. ‘I have only one muse and
you two, so you must be the better poet,’ he once said to Redding; the
explanation being that Campbell’s house had one mews while Redding’s house
had two. At another time Redding having complained that he could not get
into his desk for his cash because he had lost the key, Campbell replied:
‘Never mind, if nothing better turns up you are sure of a post among the
_lack-keys_.’ When Hazlitt published ‘The New Pygmalion’ he declared that
the title ought to have been ‘Hogmalion’; and he told a friend that the
East was the place to write books on chronology because it was the country
of _dates_. These are specimens of Campbell’s puns, from which it will be
gathered that humour was certainly not one of his endowments.
Nowhere does this lack of real humour come out more clearly than in his
letters, which are plain and ponderous almost to the verge of boredom.
There is nothing in them of that ever-glowing necessity of brain and blood
which makes the letters of Scott and Byron, for example, so humanly
interesting. He has no lightness like Walpole, no quiet whimsicality like
Cowper, no sidelights on literature and life like Stevenson. Lockhart’s
apology for him is that, chained so fast to the dreary tasks of
compilation, he could not be expected to have a stock of pleasantry for a
copious correspondence. But none of the brilliant letter-writers can be
suspected of having kept a choice vintage of epistolary Falernian in
carefully sealed bottles. A man’s individuality expresses itself in his
letters as naturally as a fountain flows. The truth is that Campbell was
too reserved, or too artificial, or both, to make a good letter-writer.
By all accounts he had not the best of tempers; indeed he admitted that to
many people he had been ‘irritable, petulant, and overbearing.’ Of
personal quarrels, however, he had very few; and although he said that he
had been several times on the point of sending challenges, he was not once
concerned in a duel. His chivalry led him to take the then bold step of
defending Lady Byron’s character against the strictures of her husband,
and when the press abused him he regarded it as a compliment. Of his
kind-heartedness there are many proofs, apart from the generous way in
which he dealt with his widowed mother and his sisters. No man was more
ready to perform a good deed. His charities were varied and widespread. He
held the view that in tales of distress one can never believe too much,
and naturally he was often imposed upon. When he was in the country he
seldom wrote without some confidential communication in the way of
largess, often in a pecuniary form. On one occasion he sent Redding a
couple of pounds for a poor unfortunate whom he had been trying to
reclaim. He made strenuous efforts to get the child of a couple who had
been condemned to death adopted by some kindly person; and there is a
story of him weeding out hundreds of volumes from his library to help a
penniless widow to stock a little book shop. When subscriptions were being
asked for a memorial to Lord Holland, he excused himself by saying that he
must give all he could spare to the Mendicity Society.
At the same time, in money matters he was almost criminally careless. The
British Consul at Algiers said that his servant might have cheated him to
any extent. He disliked making calculations of cash received or paid
away, and there were times when he knew nothing of the real state of his
finances. He would profess to be in great distress about money when, as a
matter of fact, he had a roll of bank notes in his pocket. In 1841
Beattie, while he was absent at Wiesbaden, found in an old slipper at the
bottom of a cupboard in his house a large number of notes twisted into the
form of ‘white paper matches.’ When reproached with this piece of
imprudence Campbell, admitting that the security was ‘slippery,’ remarked
that ‘it must have happened after putting on my night-cap.’ At certain
periods of his life, notably after his wife’s death, he was positively
miserly, but even then he had his wayward fits of generosity. He would
throw away pounds one day, and the next day grudge sixpences. Very often
he forgot what he had spent or given in charity, but he never forgot what
he owed.
One of the most charming traits in his character was his love for
children. As he put it in his ‘Child Sweetheart,’ he held it a religious
duty
To love and worship children’s beauty.
They’ve least the taint of earthly clod--
They’re freshest from the hand of God.
He could not bear to see a child crossed, to hear it cry, or have it kept
reluctantly to books. Once at St Leonards he drew a little crowd around
him on the street while trying to soothe a sick baby. What he called
‘infantile female beauty’ especially attracted him: ‘_he_-children,’ he
said, not very elegantly, ‘are never in beauty to be compared with _she_
ones.’ He saw a remarkably pretty little girl in the Park, and was
afterwards so haunted by the vision that he actually inserted an
advertisement in the _Morning Chronicle_ with the view of making her
acquaintance. Hoaxes were the natural result. One reply directed him to
the house of an old maid--‘a wretch who,’ as he used to say with peevish
humour, ‘had never heard of either me or my poetry.’ Campbell was a man of
sixty when this incident occurred. His friends not unreasonably suspected
his sanity; but he was only putting into practice the theory which he
propounded in the lines just quoted.
Politically Campbell was a Whig of the Whigs, with rancorous prejudices
which sometimes led him into unpleasant scrapes. On the question of
Freedom he held very pronounced opinions. He was called the bard of Hope,
but he was the bard of Liberty too. He abhorred despotism of all kinds.
‘Let us never think of outliving our liberty,’ he once wrote. The
emancipation of the negroes he termed ‘a great and glorious measure.’ He
does not seem to have been a perfervid Scot, though he speaks of something
offending his tartan nationality. We are told that he never spared the
disadvantages of his country’s climate, nor the foibles of the Lowlanders,
whatever these may have been; but just as Johnson loved to gird at
Garrick, though allowing no one else to censure him, so Campbell would not
permit his native country to be attacked by another. He once rejected an
otherwise suitable paper for the _New Monthly_ because something which the
writer had said about Edinburgh did not meet with his approval.
Of his religious views very little is to be learnt, certainly nothing from
his poems. Beattie says that as a young man he suffered great anxiety on
the subject of religion, and spent much time in its investigation before
he arrived at ‘satisfactory conclusions.’ What these conclusions were does
not exactly appear. Redding expressly affirms that he was sceptical,
adding that he was very cautious in discussing religious subjects with
strangers. His freedom from bigotry was generally remarked: he condemned
every form of intolerance, and never cared to ask a man what his creed
was. He told his nephew Robert, who seems to have had some misgivings on
the point, that he could get no harm by attending a Roman Catholic Church.
‘God listens to human prayers wherever they are offered up.’ The Catholics
might be mistaken, but persecution was not a necessary part of their
system; and if it were, did not Calvin and the Kirk of Geneva, ‘which is
the mother of the Scotch Kirk,’ get Servetus burnt alive for being a
heretic? Campbell himself seldom went to church in London, but when he was
in Scotland he did as the Scots did, and heroically sat out the sermon. It
is clear that his countrymen, of whose rigid righteousness he had many
good stories, did not regard him as heterodox, otherwise the General
Assembly would never have asked him, as they did in 1808, to make a new
metrical version of the Psalms ‘for the benefit of the congregations.’ Nor
is it certain that he was really sceptical, though it is very likely that
he hesitated upon some points of dogma. It is, however, only in his later
years that we get any indication of his religious sensibility, and then
only of the vaguest kind. When Mrs Campbell died he exclaimed, as if he
had doubted the fact before, ‘There _must_ be a God; that is evident;
there must be an all-powerful, inscrutable God.’ Again, when speaking of
the sufferings of the Poles, he remarked: ‘There _is_ a Supreme Judge, and
in another world there will be rewards and punishments.’ But we are not
justified in forming any conclusion about his settled religious
convictions from emotional outbursts resulting from special circumstances
and in the shadow of the tomb. In all likelihood he paid the conventional
observance to religion, and, if he thought about doctrines at all, took
care not to shock his family and prejudice his popularity with any
expression of heterodoxy.
Campbell’s literary pasturage does not appear to have been very wide or
very rich. Robert Carruthers, of Inverness, who wrote an interesting
account of some mornings spent with him, says his library was not
extensive. There were one or two good editions of the classics, a set of
the ‘Biographie Universelle,’ some of the French, Italian, and German
authors, the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, and several standard English works,
none very modern. Apparently he made no attempt to keep abreast of current
literature; he stuck by his old favourites, and would often be found
poring over Homer or Euripides. In his early days Milton, Thomson, Gray,
and Goldsmith were his idols among the poets. Goldsmith, it was said, he
could never read without shedding tears, another instance of his tendency
to snivel. Thomson’s ‘Castle of Indolence’ is frequently mentioned with
approbation in his letters--‘it is a glorious poem,’ he said to
Carruthers--and seems, indeed, to have been to some extent the model of
his ‘Gertrude.’ Allan Ramsay he called one of his prime favourites, but,
strange to say, he does not appear to have regarded Burns with any special
enthusiasm. Certainly he told the poet’s son that Burns was the
Shakespeare of Scotland, and ‘Tam-o’-Shanter’ a masterpiece; but, on the
other hand, he contended--unaccountably enough, for surely Burns’
nationality was the very fount of his inspiration--that Burns was ‘the
most un-Scotsman-like Scotsman that ever existed’; and in conversation he
was known to have denounced his own countrymen for their extravagant
adulation of the Ayrshire poet.
Campbell had something of Southey’s amiable weakness for minor bards, and
would often praise work which he must have known to be of poor quality. He
thought very highly of James Montgomery of Sheffield; and he once called
Mrs Hemans ‘the most elegant poetess that England has produced.’ He had no
great admiration for the Lake School of poets. He declared that while
doing some good in freeing writers from profitless and custom-ridden
rules, they went too far by substituting licentiousness for wholesome
freedom. For Coleridge’s poetry he evinced an especial distaste, due
partly, no doubt, to the fact that Coleridge had attacked ‘The Pleasures
of Hope’ in his lectures. Of his criticism he spoke more favourably, but
maintained that he had borrowed many of his ideas from Schlegel. In French
poetry his favourite was Racine, whose tenderness, he said, was unequalled
even by Shakespeare. But perhaps of all the poets his darling was Pope,
whom he defended in a manner described by Byron as ‘glorious.’ The ‘Rape
of the Lock’ he held to be unsurpassed. Of three American
writers--Channing, Irving and Bryant--he had the highest opinion. The
first he considered ‘superior as a prose writer to every other living
author,’ a statement at which we can only raise our eyebrows. Among the
novelists he specially extolled Smollett and Fielding. To the latter he
says he never did justice in his youth, but shortly before his death he
wrote that he had come to ‘venerate’ him, and to regard him as the better
philosopher of the two, the truer painter of life. All this shows no
exceptional critical discernment; and Sydney Smith was no less happy in
his phrase than usual when he said that Campbell’s mind had ‘rolled over’
a large field. A rolling stone gathers no moss. But that is more than
Smith could have meant.
And now what, it must be asked, is Campbell’s place as a poet? Before
trying to answer the question it is necessary to understand exactly what
we mean by it. If a poet’s place depends on the extent to which he is
read, then Campbell has no place, or almost none. He is not read, save by
school-children for examinations. Milton and many another, it might be
said, are in the same case; but there is a difference. Milton will always
remain a supreme model, or at least a suggestive fount of inspiration; and
the lover of poetry can be sure of never turning to him without some
pleasure, some gain. But Campbell’s pages are not turned to by the lover
of poetry for solace or refreshment, for inspiration or guidance. As
Horace Walpole said of two poems by writers to whom Campbell owed
something--Akenside and Thomson--‘the age has done approving these poems,
and has forgot them.’ What is this but to say that the poems in the main
are lacking in the one essential--the _poetic_? The well-spring of poetry
was not vouchsafed to Campbell. He worked from the outside, not from the
depths of his own spirit. He spoke of having a poem ‘on the stocks,’ of
beating out a poem ‘on the anvil.’ By these words does he not stand,
before the highest tribunal, condemned? We read of him polishing and
polishing until what little of original idea there was must have been
almost refined away. We never hear of him bringing forth his thoughts with
pain and travail. His letters are full of complaints about his vein being
dried up, of his mind being too much cumbered with mundane concerns to
have leisure for poetry; but we never once get a hint of any real
misgiving as to his powers. ‘There is no greater sin,’ said Keats, ‘than
to flatter oneself with the idea of being a great poet… How comfortable a
thing it is to feel that such a crime must bring its own penalty, that if
one be a self-deluder, accounts must be balanced!’
Time has brought in its revenges for Campbell. His poems enshrine no great
thoughts, engender no consummate expression. Felicities, prettinesses,
harmonies of a sort one may find; respectabilities, vigour, patriotic and
liberal sentiments declaimed with gusto. But these do not raise him above
the level of a third-rate poet. His war songs will keep him alive, and
that after all is no mean praise.
FOOTNOTES
[1] It may be convenient to set down in a note a list of Campbell’s
brothers and sisters, with dates of birth and death. The details are from
the family Bible: Mary, 1757-1843; Isabella, 1758-1837; Archibald,
1760-1830; Alexander, 1761-1826; John, 1763-1806; Elizabeth, 1765-1829;
Daniel, 1767-1767; Robert, 1768-1807; James, 1770-1783; Daniel, 1773-?
Archibald and Robert went to Virginia, and John to Demerara.
[2] As these sheets are passing through the press, Mr W. K. Leask reminds
me of Aytoun’s visit to the Scottish Monastery as recorded in the ‘Lays of
the Scottish Cavaliers.’ And of course the reference in ‘Redgauntlet’ is
well known.
[3] Since these lines were written, a memorial tablet has been placed on
the house in the Rue St Jean where Campbell resided. The tablet describes
him as ‘the celebrated English poet.’ Was he not, then, a Famous Scot?
INDEX
Algiers, Campbell’s visit to, 130.
Altona, Campbell at, 58.
Anderson, Dr Robert, 30, 37, 43, 67.
_Annals of Great Britain, The_, 75.
_Battle of the Baltic, The_, 64.
Boulogne, Campbell settles at, 139.
Campbell, Alexander, poet’s father, 10-13, 67.
----, Alison, poet’s son, 90, 99.
----, Archibald, poet’s grandfather, 10.
----, Margaret, poet’s niece, 136, 137.
----, Mrs, poet’s mother, 13, 99.
----, Mrs, poet’s wife, 80, 113, 119.
Campbell, Thomas, ancestry, 9;
birth, 11;
at Grammar School, 15;
his love for the classics, 16;
first verses, 17, 18;
at Glasgow University, 20-32;
his professors, 20;
his fellow-students, 21;
early turn for satire, 24;
first visit to Edinburgh, 25;
becomes a tutor, 27, 32;
falls in love, 29, 34;
second visit to Edinburgh, 36;
becomes a clerk, 37;
is introduced to literary society of capital, 37;
his first literary commission, 39;
‘Pleasures of Hope’ published, 43;
Continental travels, 51-62;
first visit to London, 62, 66;
returns to Edinburgh, 68;
visits Dr Currie at Liverpool, 70;
settles in London, 77;
his marriage, 81;
first child born, 83;
takes up house at Sydenham, 85;
his opinion of publishers, 89;
gets a Government pension, 91;
his ‘Gertrude of Wyoming’ published, 94;
introduced to Princess of Wales, 100;
lectures at Royal Institution, 100;
visits Paris, 102;
lectures at Liverpool and Birmingham, 106, 107;
visits Holland and Germany, 109;
founds London University, 115;
elected Lord Rector Glasgow University, 117;
active interest in Polish cause, 126;
visits Algiers, 130;
settles at Boulogne, 139;
his death, 139;
his appearance, 29, 37, 141;
social habits, 143;
not a society man, 78, 145;
as a conversationalist, 146;
his letters, 148;
his temper, chivalry, kind-heartedness, 149;
love of children, 150;
politics, 151;
religious views, 151;
literary tastes, 152;
place as a poet, 154.
Campbell, Thomas Telford, poet’s son, 83, 105, 112.
_Child and the Hind, The_, 137.
_Cora Linn_, 133.
Currie, Dr, 70, 77, 84.
_Exile of Erin, The_, 60.
_Gertrude of Wyoming_, 94.
Glasgow in Campbell’s young days, 14.
Glasgow University, Campbell Lord Rector of, 116.
_Glenara_, 98.
Hamburg, Campbell in, 52, 58, 115.
_Hohenlinden_, 57, 62.
Holland, Lord and Lady, 66.
Kant’s Philosophy, Campbell on, 61.
Kemble, J. P., 67, 71.
Klopstock, 52.
_Last Man, The_, 113.
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, Campbell’s projected Life of, 123.
_Letters from the South_, 130.
Leyden, John, 38, 63.
_Lines on leaving a Scene in Bavaria_, 64.
Literary Union (The) founded, 122.
_Lochiel’s Warning_, 72.
London University founded by Campbell, 115.
M’Cann, Tony (‘Exile of Erin’), 60.
Mackintosh, Sir James, 66.
Marryat, Captain, 125.
Melrose Abbey, Campbell on, 75.
_Metropolitan Magazine_, Campbell’s editorship of, 125.
Minto, Lord, 69.
Murray, John, publisher, 88, 93.
Napoleon, Campbell on, 67, 79.
Neukomm Chevalier, 126.
_New Monthly Magazine_, Campbell’s editorship of, 111, 123.
_O’Connor’s Child_, 98.
Paul, Hamilton, 21, 32.
Petrarch, Campbell’s Life of, 135.
_Pilgrim of Glencoe, The_, 137.
_Pleasures of Hope, The_, 42-48.
Poland, Campbell’s interest in, 126.
Ratisbon, Campbell at, 53, 110.
Redding, Cyrus, 111.
Reid, Dr Thomas, 12, 15.
Richardson, John, 55.
Rogers, Samuel, 67.
_Scenic Annual_, 133.
Schlegel, A. W., 103, 110.
Scottish Monastery, Ratisbon, 53, 54.
Shakespeare, Campbell’s edition of, 134.
Siddons, Mrs, 67;
Campbell’s Life of, 128.
_Soldier’s Dream, The_, 64.
_Specimens of the British Poets_, 84, 89, 93, 107.
_St Leonards, Lines on the View from_, 125.
Telford, Thomas, 71, 72, 77, 83, 130.
_Theodric_, 114.
Turner’s drawings for ‘Pleasures of Hope,’ 133.
Watt, Gregory, 22, 86.
_Wounded Hussar, The_, 40.
_Ye Mariners of England_, 64.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE “FAMOUS SCOTS” SERIES.
Of THOMAS CARLYLE, by H. C. MACPHERSON,
The _Literary World_ says:--
“One of the very best little books on Carlyle yet written, far
out-weighing in value some more pretentious works with which we are
familiar.”
Of ALLAN RAMSAY, by OLIPHANT SMEATON,
The _Scotsman_ says:--
“It is not a patchwork picture, but one in which the writer, taking
genuine interest in his subject, and bestowing conscientious pains
on his task, has his materials well in hand, and has used them to
produce a portrait that is both lifelike and well balanced.”
Of HUGH MILLER, by W. KEITH LEASK,
The _Expository Times_ says:--
“It is a right good book and a right true biography… There is a very
fine sense of Hugh Miller’s greatness as a man and a Scotsman; there
is also a fine choice of language in making it ours.”
Of JOHN KNOX, by A. TAYLOR INNES,
Mr Hay Fleming in the _Bookman_ says:--
“A masterly delineation of those stirring times in Scotland, and of
that famous Scot who helped so much to shape them.”
Of ROBERT BURNS, by GABRIEL SETOUN,
The _New Age_ says:--
“It is the best thing on Burns we have yet had, almost as good as
Carlyle’s Essay and the pamphlet published by Dr Nichol of Glasgow.”
Of THE BALLADISTS, by JOHN GEDDIE,
The _Spectator_ says:--
“The author has certainly made a contribution of remarkable value to
the literary history of Scotland. We do not know of a book in which
the subject has been treated with deeper sympathy or out of a fuller
knowledge.”
Of RICHARD CAMERON, by Professor HERKLESS,
The _Dundee Courier_ says:--
“In selecting Professor Herkless to prepare this addition to the
‘Famous Scots Series’ of books, the publishers have made an
excellent choice. The vigorous, manly style adopted is exactly
suited to the subject, and Richard Cameron is presented to the
reader in a manner as interesting as it is impressive… Professor
Herkless has done remarkably well, and the portrait he has so
cleverly delineated of one of Scotland’s most cherished heroes is
one that will never fade.”
Of SIR JAMES YOUNG SIMPSON, by EVE BLANTYRE SIMPSON,
The _Daily Chronicle_ says:--
“It is indeed long since we have read such a charmingly-written
biography as this little Life of the most typical and ‘Famous Scot’
that his countrymen have been proud of since the time of Sir Walter…
There is not a dull, irrelevant, or superfluous page in all Miss
Simpson’s booklet, and she has performed the biographer’s chief
duty--that of selection--with consummate skill and judgment.”
Of THOMAS CHALMERS, by W. GARDEN BLAIKIE,
The _Spectator_ says:--
“The most notable feature of Professor Blaikie’s book--and none
could be more commendable--is its perfect balance and proportion. In
other words, justice is done equally to the private and to the
public life of Chalmers, if possible greater justice than has been
done by Mrs Oliphant.”
Of JAMES BOSWELL, by W. KEITH LEASK,
The _Morning Leader_ says:--
“Mr W. K. Leask has approached the biographer of Johnson in the only
possible way by which a really interesting book could have been
arrived at--by way of the open mind… The defence of Boswell in the
concluding chapter of his delightful study is one of the finest and
most convincing passages that have recently appeared in the field of
British biography.”
Of TOBIAS SMOLLETT, by OLIPHANT SMEATON,
The _Weekly Scotsman_ says:--
“The book is written in a crisp and lively style… The picture of the
great novelist is complete and lifelike. Not only does Mr Smeaton
give a scholarly sketch and estimate of Smollett’s literary career,
he constantly keeps the reader in conscious touch and sympathy with
his personality, and produces a portrait of the man as a man which
is not likely to be readily forgotten.”
Of FLETCHER OF SALTOUN, by W. G. T. OMOND,
The _Leeds Mercury_ says:--
“Unmistakably the most interesting and complete story of the life of
Fletcher of Saltoun that has yet appeared. Mr Omond has had many
facilities placed at his disposal, and of these he has made
excellent use.”
Of THE BLACKWOOD GROUP, by Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS,
The _Weekly Citizen_ says:--
“It need not be said that to everyone interested in the literature
of the first half of the century, and especially to every Scotsman
so interested, ‘The Blackwood Group’ is a phrase abounding in
promise. And really Sir George Douglas fulfils the promise he
tacitly makes in his title. He is intimately acquainted not only
with the books of the different members of the ‘group,’ but also
with their environment, social and otherwise. Besides, he writes
with sympathy as well as knowledge.”
Of NORMAN MACLEOD, by JOHN WELLWOOD,
The _Star_ says:--
“A worthy addition to the ‘Famous Scots Series’ is that of Norman
Macleod, the renowned minister of the Barony in Glasgow, and a man
as typical of everything generous and broadminded in the State
Church in Scotland as Thomas Guthrie was in the Free Churches. The
biography is the work of John Wellwood, who has approached it with
proper appreciation of the robustness of the subject.”
Of SIR WALTER SCOTT, by GEORGE SAINTSBURY,
The _Pall Mall Gazette_ says:--
“Mr Saintsbury’s miniature is a gem of its kind… Mr Saintsbury’s
critique of the Waverley Novels will, I venture to think, despite
all that has been written upon them, discover fresh beauties for
their admirers.”
Of KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE, by LOUIS A. BARBÉ,
The _Scotsman_ says:--
“Mr Barbé’s sketch sticks close to the facts of his life, and these
are sought out from the best sources and are arranged with much
judgment, and on the whole with an impartial mind.”