THE LIFE AND Letters of THOMAS CAMPBELL, POETRY. BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHOM THE RAIN RAINS ON, No. VI. AT WHAT DO SLEEPING INFANTS THE VOICES.-A QUESTION AND ANSWER, VICTORIA, A DREAM OF THE PRESENT AND OF THE FUTURE, EXTRACTS AND INTELLIGENCE. ANNUAL LETter of the BISHOP OF JERUSALEM, CLERGY DISCIPLINE BILL, CHURCH CHRONICLE. JANUARY 1ST TO FEBRUARY 14TH,.. THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S PRIMARY CHARGE, 239 329 143 331 327 332 APPEAL FOR THE MEERPOOR MISSION, 79 .... 336 TRINITY COLlege, GlenaLMOND, THE BENARES MAGAZINE. JANUARY, 1850. I. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. The Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell; Edited by William Beattie, M. D. London. 3 vols. 8vo. 1849. THIS Life is a great deal too long. It is fluently written; a man gets through it somehow or another; but if he never cries flat! stale!' he must unprofitable!' pretty often, for these three large volumes contain a great deal of common place. Three large volumes! why the Memoirs of Methuselah' ought not to extend to greater length than this. And then it was such a mistake of Dr. Beattie; for Campbell's character was not one at all of striking interest to the psychologist, nor was his poetry of that nature, where, being but the reflex of the poet, it makes an intimate knowledge of his life, a most desirable key to his poems. It is true Campbell was one of the most distinguished of that band of poets which adorned the commencement of this century; true, that some productions of his pen his country will not willingly let die; true, that he had mingled with the most eminent men of his day; that he had been held in high honor in his own land, and had established a considerable reputation on the continent; that he had been connected with the formation of important institutions ;-there was much in his career which, concisely narrated, would have been gratefully received and eagerly read. But good Dr. Beattie, (for a generous, affectionate, modest person he evidently is) has forgotten that we have a great many books to read now-a-days, and that unrelieved domestic incidents which might have occurred to Robinson, or correspondence which Brown could have sustained without difficulty, cannot be sublimed even by the magic of a poet's name, and encum VOL. III. Α ber rather than set off the points of character, and circumstances of career with which we wish to become acquainted. However the book is before us, let us make such use of it as we can. Thomas Campbell, the eighth son and last child of Alexander and Margaret Campbell, was born at Glasgow, on the 27th of July, 1777. He was lineally descended from the Campbells of Kiznan, who could trace their origin to Gilespie-le-Camile, first Norman Lord of Lochawe, with whose name, we may venture to premise, some of the readers of this notice were not previously acquainted. His more immediate ancestor, his father, was a Virginian trader, who having lost the bulk of his property at the outbreak of the American war, gathered together such remnants as he might and sat down with a bold front to meet advancing years in straitened circumstances unchecred by the hope of improvement. The trader's wife supported him in his misfortunes with her uncomplaining firmness and noble submission to what was unavoidable, for which, added to an energetic manner and an honest love of her children, she is rather funnily compared by Dr. Beattie to the Mother of the Gracchi.' It has been often said that distinguished men have owed much of what they ultimately were to the influence of a mother, and it has undoubtedly been often true;-in Campbell's case we do not perceive any traces of this influence, unless indeed we owe some of his stirring lyrics to the early effect of favorite old songs which his mother used to sing with great spirit even in the very wane of life. The poet was baptized by Dr. Thomas Reid, the celebrated metaphysician, with whom his father was on terms of great intimacy : an acquaintance which of itself testifies to some intellectant qualities in the old merchant. Thomas was the only one of the eight brothers, who going successfully through the usual courses of education, entered upon a distinguished, though unchequered career. Archibald was soon away to the woods and swamps of Berbice; and though he did return, it was but to embark again for Virginia where he laid his bones. Alexander also passed thirty years of his life in this same Berbice; he came back to Scotland, but with a shattered constitution, and soon died. The grave of John, the third, is at Demerara, and that of Robert in Virginia. James was carried off at thirteen years; and Daniel, beginning quietly enough in a Glasgow manufactory, went mad about "Liberty and Equality", and settled in France, holding no communication with his family, and becoming at last, |