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Campbell's greatest difficulty at present was to settle upon any profession; but if his penchant for reciting poetry in the open air could have made him a poet, then indeed was his title clear. He told Scott some years after this that he repeated the 'Cadzow Castle' verses so often, stamping and shaking his head ferociously, while walking along the North Bridge of Edinburgh, that all the coachmen knew him by tongue, and quizzed him as he passed. The habit was mad enough in Edinburgh; in the Highlands it evidently suggested something like lunacy. His successor in the tutorship says that in Campbell's frequent walks along the shore he was often observed by the natives to be 'in a state of high and rapturous excitement,' of the cause and tendency of which they formed very strange and inconsistent ideas.

"Dear, precious name! rest ever unreveal'd, Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd."

You may well imagine how the consoling words of such a person warm my heart into ecstacy of a most delightful kind. I say no more at present; and, my friend, I rely on your secrecy.' Campbell's secret has been kept, for the identity of this particular Amanda has never been disclosed. Can it have been the adorable Caroline herself? Whoever she was, she had, if we may trust Beattie, a very favourable influence in promoting Campbell's appeals to the muse. Defeated in all other prospects, he took refuge in 'the enchanted garden of love,' and, in the interchange of mutual affection, found compensation for all his disappointments.

But Campbell had his duties as a tutor to attend to. His pupil was the future Sir William Napier of Milliken, a great-great-grandson of the celebrated Napier of Merchiston. He was now about eight years old, and was living with his mother at Downie, his grandfather's estate. His father, Colonel Napier, returned from the West Indies shortly after Campbell entered on his engagement. Campbell describes him as 'a most agreeable gentleman, with all the mildness of a scholar and the majesty of a British Grenadier.' The Colonel took an eager interest in the tutor's welfare, and did all he could to settle him in some permanent employment. 'He has,' says Campbell to Thomson, 'been active to consult, to advise, to recommend me, with warmth and success, and that to friends of the first rank.' With a local physician he united to obtain for him a favourable situation in the office of a leading Edinburgh lawyer, but unfortunately a combination of circumstances baffled the poet's aims in this direction; and, the term of his engagement having expired, he returned once more to Glasgow, in a state of the greatest concern about his future. 'I will,' he declared, with that unnecessary rhetoric to which he was prone, 'I will maintain my independence by lessening my wants, if I should live upon a barren heath.'

'THE PLEASURES OF HOPE'

Campbell was now at his wit's end about a profession. With whatever intention he had gone to the University, he had at last become alive to the stern fact that the University had done nothing for him in regard to a livelihood. 'What,' he wanted to know, 'have all these academical honours procured for me?' He was dissatisfied with himself for his admitted lack of resource; he was dissatisfied with his friends for their apathetic indifference. But something had clearly to be done, and after sundry ineffectual efforts to reach a solid standing ground, he again turned his attention to the law. 'That is the line which he means to pursue,' wrote his sister Elizabeth, 'and what I think nature has just fitted him for. He is a fine public speaker and I have no doubt will make a figure at the Bar.' His idea now was to combine law with literature. Let him once get into a lawyer's office and he would have no fear of working his way without the expense of entrance fees. He would write for the leading periodicals and establish a magazine. He had, besides, one or two translations from the classics nearly ready for the press, and for these surely some publisher, he told himself, would be willing to pay.

In this optimistic mood he went off to Edinburgh, the home of literature and law, where he arrived in May, 1797. His old pupil, Lord Cunninghame, was now preparing for the Bar, and to him Campbell applied for aid in finding employment. The employment was found, not in a law office--for Campbell had no regular training as a law clerk to recommend him--but in the Register House, where the University honours' man was set to the humble tasks of a copying clerk. A few weeks of extract making proved enough for him, and he threw up the situation for one slightly more comfortable, though not much better as to pay, in the office of a Mr Bain Whytt. There he remained, sucking sustenance through a quill, until Dr Anderson brought him forth to put him on the road to renown.

Campbell was introduced to Anderson by Mr Hugh Park, then a teacher in Glasgow, who had roused an interest in the poetical clerk by showing a copy of the elegy written in Mull. Miss Anderson was present at the first meeting, and Beattie subsequently obtained from her some recollections of the occasion. She remarked specially upon Campbell's good looks. His face, she said, was beautiful, and 'the pensive air which hung so gracefully over his youthful features gave a melancholy interest to his manner which was extremely touching.' This description, it may be observed, is in part corroborated from other quarters. The Rev. Dr Wardlaw, who had been one of Campbell's classfellows at Glasgow, said that though he was comparatively small in stature his features were handsome and prepossessing, and were characterised by an intelligent animation and a cheerful openness all the more noticeable that they gave place when he was not pleased to 'a gravity approaching to sternness.' Another friend speaks of him as an ardent, enthusiastic boy, much younger in appearance than in years. Unfortunately there is no portrait of him at this early age.

But Dr Anderson did more for Campbell than present him to his literary circle. Campbell, though he proclaimed his dislike of another tutorship, had expressed his willingness to accept almost any kind of literary work. Anderson accordingly introduced him to Mundell, the publisher, and the result was an offer of twenty guineas for an abridged edition of Bryan Edwards' 'West Indies.' This was not only Campbell's first undertaking for the press, but the first of his many pieces of literary task-work. He was now anticipating very much the later experience of Carlyle, who also tried the law in Edinburgh, and became a bookseller's hack when that 'bog-pool of disgust' proved impossible. But there the parallel ends.

Campbell went back to Glasgow, walking the distance as usual, to finish his abridgment. His mind was still exercised about the future. Anything in the law beyond the most laborious plodding he had seen to be quite out of his reach. 'I have fairly tried the business of an attorney,' he wrote, 'and upon my conscience it is the most accursed of all professions. Such meanness, such toil, such contemptible modes of peculation were never moulded into one profession... It is true there are many emoluments; but I declare to God that I can hardly spend with a safe conscience the little sum I made during my residence in Edinburgh.' This, of course, is not to be taken seriously: it is merely the petulant cry of a spoilt and conceited youth. Campbell confessed afterwards that at this time fame was everything to him. So far as at present appeared he was as likely to achieve fame as to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, and when he miscalled the lawyers as rogues and vagabonds he was only giving voice to his chagrin.

But youth is not easily dismayed. It was at this moment that, having saved a little money, Campbell gaily proposed to start a magazine. He invited some of his college familiars to join with him, declaring that he would undertake, if need be, three-fourths of the letter-press himself. 'We shall,' he remarked, 'set all the magazine scribblers at defiance--nay, hold them even in profound contempt.' But his friends were not so sanguine about sharing the favours of a 'discerning public,' and the magazine project, like so many other projects, fell to the ground. It shows the desperate frame of mind into which Campbell had sunk, that, in spite of his recent 'malediction upon the law and all its branches,' he still professed himself an amateur of the Bar. He tells Anderson that his leisure hours are employed on Godwin and the 'Corpus Juris.' The latter he had always regarded as a somniferous volume, but now he finds that there is something really amusing as well as improving in the book. It certainly does not seem a suitable work for stimulating the imagination of a poet, but Campbell was only playing with circumstances after all. Even yet he may have had some idea that the 'Corpus Juris' would prove professionally useful.

In the meantime he went on with his abridgment, and wrote a few verses. Among the latter was 'The Wounded Hussar,' a lyric suggested by an incident in one of the recent battles on the Danube. This ballad, now entirely forgotten, attained an extraordinary popularity. It had been published only a few weeks when all Glasgow was ringing with it. Subsequently it found its way to London, where it was sung on the streets and encored in the theatres. It seemed as if the fame for which the author hungered was to be his at last, but curiously enough, in this case he would have none of it. 'That accursed song,' he would say, and forbid his friends to mention 'The Wounded Hussar' again in his presence. About this time also he wrote his 'Lines on revisiting Cathcart,' besides a 'Dirge of Wallace,' which he sensibly excluded from his collected works as being too rhapsodical, though it was often printed against his wish in the Galignani editions.

In all these shifting plans and projects one discerns thus early what proved the chief defect in Campbell's character--that irresolution and that caprice which were so largely to blame for many of the vexations and disappointments of his later life. No doubt to some extent his friends were responsible for his unsteadiness of purpose. He was the Benjamin of his family, petted and pampered, applauded for his little clevernesses, and encouraged in his belief that he had been cut out for something great. Had he been alone in the world, and absolutely penniless, he would have had to exert himself to some purpose. As it was, he never stuck at an honest calling long enough to know what he could do at it; but having tried many things perfunctorily, and failed in them, he at length derived inspiration from his empty pocket, braced himself to what after all was most congenial to him, and in a sense, like Silas Wegg, 'dropped into poetry.'

The subject thus playfully suggested dwelt in Campbell's mind; and although there is nothing to show that he at once began the composition of the poem, there is every reason to believe that some parts of it had been at least drafted during his two periods of exile in the Highlands. At any rate, in his 'dusky lodging' in Rose Street he now set to work upon it in earnest; and by the close of 1798 it was being shown to his private circle as practically ready for the press. Campbell's intention appears to have been to publish it by subscription, and on that understanding a friend gave him ?15 to pay for the printing. Dr Anderson, however, intervened; and after he had discussed the merits of the poem with Mundell, the latter bought the entire copyright, as the note of agreement has it, 'for two hundred copies of the book in quires.' This would mean something over ?50, the volume having been published at six shillings. At the time Campbell probably thought the bargain fair enough, but he naturally took a different view of the case after some thousands of copies of the poem had been sold. It was, he said towards the end of his life, worth an annuity of ?200, but he added that he must not forget how for two or three years the publishers gave him ?50 for every new edition. When we recall the fact that for 'Paradise Lost' Milton got exactly ?10, we must regard Campbell as having been unusually well paid.

After being subjected to a great deal of correction, mainly at the instigation of Anderson, to whom it was dedicated, 'The Pleasures of Hope' was published on the 29th of April, 1799, when the poet was twenty-one years and nine months old. It had been announced as in the press some time before, and there was now a brisk demand for copies, four editions being called for in the first year. So early a success had only a near parallel in the case of Byron, who awoke to find himself famous at twenty-four. The author, it was remarked, had suddenly emerged like a star from his obscurity, and had thrown a brilliant light over the literary horizon of his country. His poem was quoted as 'an epitome of sound morals, inculcating by lofty examples the practice of every domestic virtue, and conveying the most instructive lessons in the most harmonious language.' One critic said it gave fair promise of his rivalling some of the greatest poets of modern times; another critic commended it for its sublimity of conception, its boldness of imagery, its vigour of language and its manliness of sentiment. And so they swelled the chorus, to the same tune of extravagant eulogy.

Further, too much stress must not be laid on the fact, already referred to, and always so carefully stated by the school editors, that the poem met with a phenomenal success on its first appearance. In literature popularity bears no strict proportion to merit. Neither Keats nor Shelley nor Wordsworth was ever 'popular'; of 'The Christian,' we are given to understand, a hundred copies were sold for every one of 'Richard Feverel.' The popularity of 'The Pleasures of Hope' might easily have been foretold by any one reading it before publication, not for any poetic excellence it possessed--though it was not without poetic excellence--but because it accorded so well with the prevalent moods and opinions of a large section of the public at the time. Given certain vulgar ideas, the power of fluent and forcible expression, and no great depth of thought or subtlety of imagination, and the breath of popular applause may generally be counted upon.

In poets youth, when not a virtue, is at least an extenuating circumstance. Campbell was very young when he wrote 'The Pleasures of Hope.' At an age when an Englishman is midway in his University course, and perhaps thinking of competing for the Newdigate, Campbell had finished his college career, won all the possible honours, and got himself accepted at his own valuation as 'demnition clever.' He was only a boy, a clever boy, with boyish enthusiasms, boyish crudities of thought, and, it must be confessed, a boyish weakness for fine-sounding words. His poem was not the spontaneous fruit of his imagination. There was no inward compulsion to poetic utterance as in the case of other poets who wrote at an equally early age. The clever boy was moping, without definite aims, when his friend's suggestion conjured up a vision of Thomas Campbell admitted to the company of Mark Akenside and Samuel Rogers. True, these names were not the brightest in the poetical galaxy, and it might perhaps have been better for Campbell if he had schooled himself by a diligent study of Milton and Spenser. But there was the goal, and there was the motive, and he set about his poem.

Undoubtedly he made the most of what could easily have proved a barren theme. The construction of the poem is certainly loose; part does not follow part in any inevitable order. But in a didactic poem this is perhaps an advantage, for, with all its defects, one can read 'The Pleasures of Hope' without the fatigue that accompanies a reading of 'The Pleasures of Imagination.' To analyse the poem would be superfluous. It faithfully reflected the common thought of the time, and assuredly does not, as Beattie said it did, give illumination to 'every succeeding age.' It will be sufficient to point out a few of its literary qualities with a view to an appreciation of Campbell's place as a poet.

And first it must be remarked that Campbell was subdued to the vicious theory of a poetical diction. To him a rainbow was an 'ethereal bow,' a musket a 'glittering tube,' a star a 'pensile orb,' a cottage a 'rustic dome.' It was a principle with him and his school that the ordinary name of a thing, the natural way of saying a thing, must necessarily be unpoetic. This comes out equally in his letters. When he refers to a railway train it is as 'a chariot of fire.' Instead of saying: 'I went to the club with his Lordship,' he must say: 'Thither with his Lordship I accordingly repaired.' When he wishes to speak of a thing being 'changed' into another, he says it is 'transported to the identity of' that other thing. In 'The Pleasures of Hope' this characteristic was no doubt due in some cases to the exigence of rhyme, which probably accounts also for the so-called obscurity of certain of his lines. For he is not really obscure; his stream is too shallow for obscurity. On that point it is curious to note how even Wordsworth was misled. Perhaps it may be worth while to quote what he says:

Campbell's 'Pleasures of Hope' has been strangely overrated. Its fine words and sounding lines please the generality of readers, who never stop to ask themselves the meaning of a passage. The lines--

Where Andes, giant of the western star, With meteor standard to the wind unfurled, Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world,

The explanation is, however, simple enough. Campbell obviously meant 'firmament' or 'hemisphere,' but wanting a rhyme to 'afar,' he put the part for the whole, and said 'western star.' This is not exactly obscurity; but for the fact that Campbell was always so careful to polish his verse we should call it clumsiness.

Before the publication of 'The Pleasures of Hope' Campbell was practically a nonentity; after that event he became a literary lion. His experience was that of Burns over again on a smaller scale; indeed some of the distinguished men who had hailed Burns' arrival in the capital were still alive to give their acclamations to Campbell, whom they may not unlikely have regarded as a possible successor. Scott invited him to dinner and proposed his health amid a strong muster of his literary friends. Dr Gregory--whose name has survived in connection with what Stevenson calls 'our good old Scotch medicine'--discovered his poem on Mundell's counter fresh from the printer, and at once sought him out. Everybody wanted to meet him; and invitations poured in upon him until, like Sterne after the publication of 'Tristram Shandy,' he found himself deep in social engagements for months ahead. How he bore it all we have no means of knowing. Thirty years later he speaks of himself as being at this time 'a young, shrinking, bashful creature,' though he is honest enough to add that he had a very high opinion of himself and his powers. Probably the right measure of his timidity was taken by the lady who described him as 'swaggering about' in a Suwarrow jacket.

The objects to be gained by this pilgrimage were perfectly plain to him. He would acquire another language, and he would enlarge his views of society. In the conversation of his travelled friends he could detect the advantages of intercourse with the foreigner, and in travelling, as they had travelled, he hoped to rid himself of the imputation that 'home-keeping youths have ever homely wits.' In spite of his recent poetic performance, he felt that he was still a raw youth, who would make but a poor figure in a company of London wits; and although he expected to be stared at for his awkwardness and ridiculed for his broken German, yet, to be 'uncaged from the insipid scenes of life,' to 'see the wonders of the world abroad,' to make first-hand acquaintance with that literature, so prominently represented by Goethe, which was then rising like a star on the intellectual world--all this he regarded as a compensation for greater evils than his friends could suggest or his fears imagine.

For one must not forget that the contemplated tour was not without some risks. The year 1800 was not exactly the time that one who valued above all things his personal comfort, perhaps even his personal liberty, would have chosen for a continental holiday. The long wars of the French Revolution had been in progress for some time, and Napoleon had just begun to make himself famous. England was at war with France; France was at war with Austria, and Russia had formed a coalition with Sweden and Denmark against England. In short, Europe was at the time in such a state of military unrest that no one knew what a day or an hour might bring forth. But Campbell, living at home at ease, thought very lightly of the hazards of war. He was tired of his 'dully sluggardised' existence, without definite aim or ambition; and so, in the beginning of June, he walked down to Leith, and, with a sheaf of introductions in his pocket, set sail for Hamburg.

CONTINENTAL TRAVELS

Campbell had a cordial reception from the British residents in Hamburg. He met Klopstock, and presented him with a copy of 'The Pleasures of Hope.' He describes the poet as 'a mild, civil old man,' one of the first really great men in the world of letters he ever knew, and adds that his only intercourse with him was in Latin, with which language he made his way tolerably well among the French and Germans, and still better among the Hungarians. How long he remained in Hamburg is not certain: as we shall see presently, he had arrived at Ratisbon in time to witness the startling military events of July. The political excitement was now at its height. Several of the Bavarian towns were in the hands of the French, and the upper valley of the Danube was under military government. 'Everything here,' says Campbell, writing soon after his arrival, 'is whisper, surmise, and suspense. If war breaks out, the bridge over the Danube is expected to be blown up. You may guess what a devil of a splutter twenty-four large arches will make flying miles high in the air and coming down like falling planets to crush the town!... Ratisbon will be shivered to atoms; and as no warning is expected, the inhabitants may be buried under the ruins.'

To be thus plunged, as it were, into the thick of the fray was hardly a pleasant experience for the British pilgrim. The richest fields of Europe desolated by contending troops; peasants driven from their homes to starve and beg in the streets; horses dying of hunger, and men dying of their wounds--such were the 'dreadful novelties' that Campbell had come from Edinburgh to see. He describes the whole thing very vividly in letters to his eldest brother. The following refers particularly to the action which gave the French possession of Ratisbon. He says:

In some notes relating to the same period he remarks that, in point of impressions, this formed the most important epoch in his life; but he adds that his recollections of seeing men strewn dead on the field, or what was worse, seeing them dying, were so horrible, that he studiously endeavoured to banish them from his memory.

There were, however, scenes of peace as well as of war. Some Hamburg friends had given him letters of introduction to the venerable Abbot Arbuthnot, of the Benedictine Scots College, under whose protection it was believed that he would have special opportunities for study and observation; and the hospitality of the monks now 'amused' him, as he puts it, into such tranquillity as was possible in that perilous time. The 'splendour and sublimity' of the Catholic Church service, notably the music, also affected him with all the attraction of novelty. But these things were at best only alleviations. Campbell had already begun to suffer from Johnson's demon of hypochondria, and when the novelty of his surroundings had worn off, he felt himself in the worst imaginable plight of the stranger in a strange land. The following programme of his day's doings affords a hint of his wretchedness:

So indeed it seemed. It was, however, Campbell's own fault. The brotherhood of the Schotten Kirche had welcomed him very heartily on his arrival; but they were Jacobites, and he was so indiscreet as to make open avowal of his Republican opinions. The result was unpleasant enough. One of the monks denounced him for his political heresies; others regarded him with ill-concealed suspicion and distrust. A countryman of his own, who bore the conventual name of Father Boniface, had recommended him to an unsuitable lodging at the house of a friend, and Campbell complained that he had been robbed there. Father Boniface met the complaint with abuse, and 'spoke to me once or twice,' says Campbell, 'in a manner rather strange.' One night the Father dogged him into the refectory and attacked him with the most blackguardly scurrility. 'I never,' writes Campbell, 'found myself so completely carried away by indignation. I flew at the scoundrel and would have soon rewarded his insolence had not the others interposed.' After an experience like this, it was only natural that he should declaim against the 'lazy, loathsome, ignorant, ill-bred' monks, whose society he had at first found so agreeable! The only one for whom he entertained a lasting regard was Dr Arbuthnot, whom he describes as 'the most commanding figure he ever beheld,' and to whom he unmistakably alludes in 'The Ritter Bann,' one of his later poems.

Being unable either to advance or retreat, and not knowing what to do with himself amid the gloom and excitement caused by the presence of two hostile armies, Campbell appears to have sunk into something like blank despair. 'Oh, God!' he exclaims in a letter, 'when the dull dusk of evening comes on, when the melancholy bell calls to vespers, I find myself a poor solitary being, dumb from the want of heart to speak, and deaf to all that is said from a want of interest to hear.' About the future he feels an insecurity and a dread which baffle all his efforts to form a scheme or resolution. Low-minded people suspect him, and debate about his character, and wonder what he can be doing in Ratisbon. He cannot settle himself to literary work of any kind. He sits down resolved to compose in spite of uncertainty and uneasiness, and looks helplessly for hours together at the paper before him.

Nevertheless, there was good reason for his being anxious about making a little money. His funds were fast giving out, and at present he did not quite see how he was to replenish his purse. He makes constant complaint about the uncertainty of remittances, and in one letter strikes his hand on his 'sad heart' as he thinks of himself starving far from home and friends. However, matters mended a little for a time: his spirits revived, he found himself able to work again; and the armistice having been renewed, he made various interesting excursions into the interior, getting as far as Munich, and returning by the valley of the Iser. 'I remember,' he says, speaking of these excursions in a letter quoted by Washington Irving, 'I remember how little I valued the art of painting before I got into the heart of such impressive scenes; but in Germany I would have given anything to have possessed an art capable of conveying ideas inaccessible to speech and writing. Some particular scenes were indeed rather overcharged with that degree of the terrific which oversteps the sublime; and I own my flesh yet creeps at the recollection of spring-waggons and hospitals. But the sight of Ingolstadt in ruins or Hohenlinden covered with fire, seven miles in circumference, were spectacles never to be forgotten.'

The reference to Hohenlinden here is somewhat puzzling. According to Beattie, Campbell left Ratisbon in the beginning of October, and went by way of Leipsic to Altona, where he remained until his return to England. He was certainly at Altona in the beginning of November, for his letters then begin to date from thence. But the battle of Hohenlinden was not fought until the 3rd of December, and it is therefore clear that Campbell, unless he made a journey of which we have no trace, could not have seen Hohenlinden 'covered with fire.' Beattie suggests that in the passage just quoted Hohenlinden may be a slip for Landshut on the Iser, Leipheim, near Gunzberg, or Donauwert, where battles and conflagrations took place during the summer campaign, the effects of which Campbell may have witnessed after his arrival on the Danube. He says that he often heard the poet refer to 'the sight of Ingolstadt in ruins,' but he never once heard him describe the field of Hohenlinden. Of course if he visited Munich at the time mentioned he may have made a cursory survey of the village; but until after the battle, travellers never thought of going out of their way to see Hohenlinden. It is a pity that there should be any dubiety upon this matter, for our interest in Campbell's stirring lines would have been heightened by the knowledge that he had been an eye-witness of the events which they describe.

The armistice which had been renewed at Hohenlinden on the 28th of September was for forty-five days. As the time for its termination approached Campbell thought it wise, in view of a resumption of hostilities, to secure his passports, and escape from Ratisbon. There was another determining point: his funds were now almost exhausted, and he wanted to be nearer home. He decided to go to Hamburg, whence, if remittances did not arrive, he could take passage for Leith. Of his journey from Ratisbon we hear practically nothing, though in one of his letters he gives an indication of his route by mentioning such towns as Nuremberg, Bamberg, Weimar, Jena, Leipsic, Halle, Brunswick, and Lunenburg. In his previous journey to Ratisbon in July he seems to have followed the course of the Elbe to Dresden, and thence proceeded through Zwickau, Bayreuth, and Amberg to the seat of war on the Danube; so that now he was, as he says, 'master of all to be seen' in a very considerable part of the country.

When he reached Hamburg he found a letter awaiting him from Richardson announcing that a 'blessed double edition' of 'The Pleasures of Hope' had been thrown off, thus entitling him to ?50, according to the understanding with Mundell. Relieved of all his pecuniary anxiety in this unexpected fashion, Campbell resolved to remain abroad for the winter. He took up his quarters at Altona, a town near Hamburg, which he describes as the pleasantest place in all Germany. His letters begin to show a more cheerful spirit. He has the prospect of 'useful and agreeable acquaintance, and a winter of useful activity,' and his portfolio, hitherto a chaos, is soon to be filled with 'monsters and wonders sufficient to match the pages of Bruce himself.' One of the new acquaintances promised to prove of substantial advantage to him. A gentleman of family preparing for a tour along the lower Danube, required a travelling companion, and having been introduced to Campbell, he offered him ?100 a year to accompany him and direct his studies. There was to be nothing like a formal tutorship; the poet was merely to make himself a 'respectable friend and useful companion.' Campbell professed to be at this time, like Burns, sorely touchable on the score of independence, but a man who has to content himself, as Campbell had now to do, with two meals a day, must find it convenient to swallow his pride occasionally; and Campbell, after a great deal of epistolary fuss about it, accepted the gentleman's offer.

Unfortunately the agreement was never carried out. Beattie's curt intimation is that 'sudden and important changes' took place in the views and circumstances of the anticipated patron. We get, however, an inkling of the real state of the case from a letter of Campbell's to Dr Anderson, written from London some months later--a letter which does equal honour to the poet's kind-heartedness and modesty. Speaking of his well-intentioned friend he says:

That valuable and high-spirited young man was humbled--after a struggle which concealed misfortunes--to reveal his situation and in sickness to receive assistance from one whose advancement and re-establishment in life he had planned but a few weeks before, when no reverse of fortune was dreaded. His situation required more than my resources were adequate to impart, but still it prevented his feelings being deeply wounded by addressing strangers. I did not regret my own share of the hardships, but I acknowledge that in those days of darkness and distress I had hardly spirit to write a single letter. I have often left the sick-bed of my friend for a room of my own which wanted the heat of a fire in the month of January, and on the borders of Denmark.

The failure of this enterprise was obviously a great disappointment to Campbell. The prospects of the tour had seemed to him peculiarly enticing, and he never ceased to deplore the necessity which led to its being abandoned.

Another acquaintance made at this time happily bore some fruit. A certain Anthony M'Cann, 'a brave United Irishman,' had, with other unfortunate fellow-countrymen who were engaged in the Rebellion of 1798, taken refuge on the banks of the Elbe. Campbell fell in with him and his fellow exiles, and passed a good part of his leisure in their society. The literary result was that pathetic if somewhat overrated song, 'The Exile of Erin,' which Campbell wrote after one evening finding Tony M'Cann more than usually depressed. Many years later an absurd claim to the authorship of this song was raised on behalf of an Irishman named Nugent, whose sister swore to having seen it in her brother's handwriting before the date of Campbell's continental visit. Campbell was naturally pained by the accusation, but he produced irrefragable proofs of his title to the song; and although the charge of plagiarism was revived after his death, there is not the slightest ground for doubting his authorship. The subject is fully dealt with by Beattie, but to discuss it nowadays would be altogether superfluous.

In connection with the continental sojourn thus hurriedly terminated, it remains now to consider the literary product of the nine months' absence from home. Like many another poet, Campbell will be remembered, if he is remembered at all, by his shorter pieces; and it is interesting to note that of these the best were written or at any rate conceived on alien soil. The 'Exile of Erin' has already been mentioned. 'Hohenlinden' did not appear until 1802, but there is every reason for believing that it was at least outlined shortly after the date of the occurrences which it so vividly pictures. Galt tells an amusing story of its rejection by a Greenock newspaper as not being 'up to the editor's standard'; but it took the fancy of Sir Walter Scott. When Washington Irving was at Abbotsford in 1817, Scott observed to him: 'And there's that glorious little poem, too, of "Hohenlinden"; after he had written it he did not seem to think much of it, but considered some of it d--d drum and trumpet lines. I got him to recite it to me, and I believe that the delight I felt and expressed had an effect in inducing him to print it.' The anecdote related by Scott in connection with Leyden is well-known. Campbell and Leyden, as we have seen, had quarrelled. When Scott repeated 'Hohenlinden' to Leyden, the latter said: 'Dash it, man, tell the fellow I hate him, but, dash it, he has written the finest verses that have been published these fifty years.' Scott did not fail to deliver the message. 'Tell Leyden,' said Campbell, 'that I detest him, but that I know the value of his critical approbation.'

Curiously enough, Carlyle, quoting in 1814 a poem of Leyden's on the victory of Wellington at Assaye, remarks that 'if there is anything in existence that surpasses this it must be "Hohenlinden"--but what's like "Hohenlinden"?' Leyden's verses in truth read somewhat tamely, but Carlyle's criticism of poetry was not to be depended upon, especially at this early date, when he preferred Campbell to either Byron or Scott. His impassioned liking for 'Hohenlinden' was, however, well justified by its merits. It has been described as the only representation of a modern battle which possesses either interest or sublimity. Sublimity is a word of which we are not particularly fond in these days, perhaps because it was so freely used by critics a hundred years ago. We prefer simplicity; and it is surely the simplicity of 'Hohenlinden' which mainly accounts for its effect. Each stanza is a picture--not a finished etching, but rather an 'impression'; no delicate shades of colour, but broad strokes of red and black on white. No word is wasted, no scene is elaborated; and if what is depicted is all pretty obvious--well, blood is red, and gunpowder is sulphurous, and there is little room for invention. To call it great art would be absurd; it is excellent scene-painting.

Next to 'Hohenlinden' among the pieces of this period must be placed 'Ye Mariners of England' and 'The Soldier's Dream.' The first was written at Altona when rumours of England's intention to break up the coalition began to spread. It was printed by Perry above the signature of 'Amator Patriae,' with an intimation that it was avowedly an imitation of the seventeenth century sea-song, 'Ye Mariners of England,' which Campbell used to sing at musical soirees in Edinburgh. It is one of the most stirring of his war pieces. 'The Soldier's Dream,' beginning 'Our bugles sang truce,' was not given to the public until the spring of 1804, but it is generally believed to have been written at Altona, and in any case it was inspired by the events which the poet witnessed during his residence at Ratisbon. Several other pieces were composed or revised at this time, but they are of little importance. Byron declared that the 'Lines on leaving a Scene in Bavaria' were 'perfectly magnificent,' but the praise is grotesquely extravagant. The lines certainly bear traces of genuine feeling, but the piece as a whole is obscure and unfinished.

WANDERINGS--MARRIAGE--SETTLEMENT IN LONDON

During his sojourn on the Continent Campbell had suffered incredible hardships, hardships such as he hesitated to divulge even to his friends. Now he was to experience an agreeable change--a transition from 'the tedium of cold and gloomy evenings, unconsoled by the comforts of life, and from the barbarity of savages to the elegant society of London and pleasures of every description.' He appears to have landed with little more than the Scotsman's proverbial half-crown in his pocket, but Perry, a Scot like himself, proved the friend in need. 'I will be all that you could wish me to be,' he said, and he kept his word. Calling upon him one day, Campbell was shown a letter from Lord Holland, inviting him to dine at the King of Clubs, a survival of the institution where Johnson used to lay down his little senate laws. 'Thither with his lordship,' says Campbell, writing in 1837, 'I accordingly repaired, and it was an era in my life. There I met, in all their glory and feather, Mackintosh, Rogers, the Smiths, Sydney, and others. In the retrospect of a long life I know no man whose acuteness of intellect gave me a higher idea of human nature than Mackintosh; and without disparaging his benevolence--for he had an excellent heart--I may say that I never saw a man who so reconciled me to hereditary aristocracy like the benignant Lord Holland.' Of Lady Holland, Campbell had an equally high opinion. She was, he said, a 'formidable woman, cleverer by several degrees than Buonaparte,' whose name, it is interesting to note, occurs again and again in his letters.

Among the other friends he made at this time were Dr Burney and Sir John Moore, Mrs Inchbald and Mrs Barbauld, J. P. Kemble, and Mrs Siddons. From a man so notoriously proud and reserved as Kemble he says he looked for little notice; but Kemble's behaviour at their first meeting undeceived him. 'He spoke with me in another room, and, with a grace more enchanting than the favour itself, presented me with the freedom of Drury Lane Theatre. His manner was so expressive of dignified benevolence that I thought myself transported to the identity of Horatio, with my friend Hamlet giving me a welcome.' Kemble's condescending kindness he ill-requited in 1817 with a set of wordy, inflated 'valedictory stanzas,' in which he displayed all his poetical apparatus of 'conscious bosoms,' 'classic dome,' 'supernal light,' and so forth. Mrs Siddons he describes as a woman of the first order, who sang some airs of her own composition with incomparable sweetness. In Rogers he found 'one of the most refined characters, whose manners and writing may be said to correspond.' Everybody and everything, in fact, delighted him; the pains of the past were forgotten, and the future began to look brighter than it had ever done before.

Unfortunately, just as he had got into this happy state of mind, he was startled by the news of his father's death. He had heard nothing of the old man's illness, and bitterly reproached himself for having left him in his last days. It was, however, some comfort to him to learn that Dr Anderson had watched at his bedside, and, when all was over, had seen his remains laid reverently in the cemetery of St John's Chapel. He died as he had lived, pious and placid, full of religious hope as of years. Campbell went home to console his mother and sisters, and to set their affairs in order. His father's annuity from the Glasgow Merchants' Society died with him; the sisters were good-looking but valetudinarian, and Campbell could only promise that if a new edition of 'The Pleasures of Hope' succeeded he would furnish a house in which they might keep boarders and teach school. Once in the house, he told them, they would have to trust in Providence.

The prospect certainly did not look promising, either for Campbell or his dependents. A thousand subscribers were required to make an edition of 'The Pleasures of Hope' safe and profitable, and as that number was not to be obtained in the north, Campbell was advised to go to London to canvass a larger public. Meanwhile he had to make both ends meet, and in default of precise information we must surmise that he turned out a deal of joyless, uncongenial work. Nor, with all his industry, did he succeed in relieving his straitened circumstances. The whole year was one of great privation, when the common necessaries of life were being sold at an exorbitant price, and 'meal-mob' rioters were parading the streets and breaking into the bakers' shops. People who had much more substantial resources than Campbell felt the temporary embarrassment. What Campbell should have done it would not be easy to say; what he did do it would be quite easy to censure. In spite of all his fine friends, for all the lavish promises of Perry and others, he was misguided enough to borrow money--on 'Judaic terms'--with, of course, the inevitable result. Beattie does not mention the sum borrowed, but he says it was nearly doubled by enormous interest, and could only be repaid by excessive application. Campbell was always notoriously careless in money matters, and even the concern he naturally felt as a devoted son and brother can hardly excuse the imprudence with which he added to his obligations at this period. But prudence, as Coleridge once pointed out, is not usually a plant of poetic growth.

In the midst of all his cares and anxieties, Campbell found some solace in the society of such literary and other friends as the Rev. Archibald Alison--the 'Man of Taste'--Professor Dugald Stewart, Lord Jeffrey, Dr Anderson, and the family of Grahames, of whom the author of 'The Sabbath' was the best known member. The fact of his having been at the seat of war gave his conversation a peculiar interest, and his pilgrimage generally was regarded as a subject of no little curiosity. His old pupil, Lord Cunninghame, remarks upon the change which his continental visit had evidently effected in his view of public affairs and the accepted order of things at home. Whatever youthful, hot-headed Republican notions he may have indulged before he went abroad, we gather that he had come back considerably sobered down, and now he deigned to express--he was still very young!--a decided preference for the British Constitution.

But literature was after all of more importance to him than politics. Such plans as he had formed at this time he freely discussed with Sir Walter Scott, from whom he received much encouragement and good advice. Lord Minto was another friend who proved of value. Minto had just returned from Vienna, where he had been acting as Envoy Extraordinary, and with the view perhaps of hearing his version of recent events in Germany, he invited the poet to his house at Castle Minto, some forty-five miles from Edinburgh. The visit turned out in every way agreeable, and when Campbell left, it was with the understanding that he would join Lord Minto in London in the course of the parliamentary session. A London visit promised many advantages, among them the opportunity of securing subscribers for the new edition of 'The Pleasures of Hope,' and Campbell returned to Edinburgh to make his preparations. He travelled overland, spending a few days in Liverpool with Currie, the biographer of Burns, and while there convulsing his friends by the nervousness he displayed on horseback. When he reached London he found that Minto had prepared a 'poet's room' for him at his house in Hanover Square, and there he took up his residence for the season, giving, it is understood, occasional service as secretary in return for the hospitality.

He says he found Minto's conversation very instructive, but Minto was a Tory of the Burke school, which Campbell regarded as inimical to political progress. Campbell na?vely remarks in one of his letters that at an early period of their acquaintance they had a discussion on the subject of politics, when he thought of giving Minto his political confession of faith. If it should not meet with Minto's approval, then the intimacy might end. Campbell does not appear to have rehearsed his whole political creed, but he went so far as to tell Minto that he was a Republican, and that his opinion of the practicability of a Republican form of government had not been materially affected by all that had happened in the French Revolution. Lord Minto was much too sensible a man to disturb himself about the political views of his overweening young guest, which, with a gentle sarcasm apparently unobserved by the poet, he set down as 'candid errors of judgment.' Still, there must have been some lively debates around the table now and again. The correspondence makes special mention of Touissant, the negro chieftain of San Domingo, as a subject of frequent wrangling. Campbell looked upon Touissant as a second Kosciusko, while Minto could only dwell upon the horrors that were likely to follow upon his achievements in the cause of so-called freedom.

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