he had a lithographed notice sent round to his friends and affixed to the door of his rooms, deprecating interruption and excusing himself from communicating with the external world. However by the close of the same year, he had committed the task to another hand, and had moreover very abruptly broken off his connexion with the New Monthly Magazine. With regard to his Editorship of that Journal, though it must be confessed that during his superintendence it was highly distinguished, he was generally considered ill-suited for the task. The following passage in Mr. Justice Talfourd's "Final Memorials of Charles Lamb" presents a picture the truth of which has been corroborated by others. Speaking of Mr. John Scott and his singular abilities for the conduct of a Journal, he says "In this respect, Mr. Scott differed entirely from a celebrated poet, who was induced, just a year after, to undertake the Editorship of the " New Monthly Magazine," an office for which, it may be said, with all veneration for his poetic genius, he was the most unfit person who could be found in the wide world of letters-who regarded a Magazine as if it were a long affidavit or short answer in Chancery, in which the absolute truth of every sentiment and the propriety of every jest were verified by the editor's oath or solemn affirmation; who stopped the press for a week at a comma; balanced contending epithets for a fortnight; and at last, grew rash in despair, and tossed the nearest and often the worst article unwhipped of justice' to the impatient printer." Several however of Campbell's most beautiful lyrical pieces appeared in the pages of the New Monthly; and the withdrawal of his name, doubtless lowered the position which that Journal had previously held with respect to others. The taking of Warsaw in 1831, again aroused the sympathy Campbell had long felt with the Poles. We find the first notice of a "Polish Association" in a letter of the date of October in this year. In March 1832, however, the plan had been in a great measure carried out: "Our society" says the Poet in a letter to his sister" has taken chambers in Duke street, in James's Square, for the sitting of the Committee. I have been appointed permanent chairman. It is singular that, after we had taken our chambers, we found that they had been once tenanted by Milton, and that he wrote in them his Defence of the people of England' ". That the Polish institution did not acquire the influence Campbell expected it would may be true, but its actual success in relieving the wants of many of the Polish exiles is not a matter of doubt, and we cannot but highly honor the feeling which prompted the expense of money and time and deep sympathies on an object whose design at least was so lofty and expansive a one. This was perhaps the most busy time of Campbell's life; his editorship of the "Metropolitan" and his "Life of Siddons" now in progression occupied his literary attention, whilst the association was an object of absorbing interest: the "Literary Union" also, a Club which he had founded in London-claimed some portion of his regards. From these engagements, he sought occasional relief at St. Leonards, where he thoroughly enjoyed the sea, and has recorded his enjoyment in some very fine lines dated from that place. He was released, in June 1834 from his task, the "Life of Siddons", by its publication. He had considered it a pious duty, and had applied more than even his usual over scrupulous particularity; this made it a sufficiently burthensome affair, and he was glad to hurry to Paris as soon as he had finally emancipated himself. Whilst in France, he conceived a great desire to visit Algeria; he was enabled by the never failing kindness of Mr. Rogers to do so, and we find him the same winter at Algeria. He made an expedition to Oran and other places on the coast, caught a few glimpses of the Arabs in their wilder life, and altogether very intelligently used the short time he spent in Africa. His "Letters from the South", published first in the "New Monthly" and afterwards separately, relate the scenes and adventures of this journey. In 1837, we find him editing the "Scenic Annual:" up to this time we have had no instance of his making money by his name: he had been remarkably honest in this particular, and it is sad that his good resolutions should have failed him in advanced years. He knew this work was a bookseller's job; he says himself in a letter to Mr. Gray "you will hear me much abused; but as I get £200 for writing a sheet or two of paper, it will take a deal of abuse to mount up to that sum." In 1838 Mr. Moxon published an edition of Shakespeare in one volume, for which Campbell wrote an editorial preface. At this time too, the old poet was engaged on a "Life of Petrarch." "I was drawn in," he says 66 some time ago, to undertake the editing of a Life of Petrarch, by Archdeacon Coxe, left in M.S. But after having rashly promised to be the editor, I found it so stupid, that I offered in its place to write a Life of Petrarch myself." In 1841, he visited the continent, returning in September. The "Pilgrim of Glencoe," with a few shorter pieces, was published in the winter. It was a failure, as far as not selling is a criterion. After this his pecuniary matters became very embarrassed and he felt that he must leave London for some retirement, where he might husband his little means. It was not, however, till the Summer of 1843 that he finally started for Boulogne, and indeed by the time this place had been fixed upon, the necessity for his changing his residence at all had ceased to be urgent; for he had received £800 at the death of a sister; and a splendidly illustrated edition of his Poems, published at this time, had succeeded, to the fullest expectations of either himself or the bookseller. It soon became evident after his arrival at Boulogne, that Campbell was breaking up. His walks became very short, and he gradually broke off all social intercourse, and admitted no visitors. Still his tastes did not desert him; Miss Campbell his niece, and the faithful soother of his last days, still read at his request portions of favorite authors, and almost to the end, he was himself engaged upon a little Manual of Classical Geography. The accounts of his health had become so alarming in the summer of 1844 that Dr. Beattie thought it his duty to cross the Channel and offer such assistance as lay in his power. This he accordingly did, in company with Mrs. Beattie. Medical help however was now unavailing, and all the good Doctor could do was to lend his aid in soothing the last moments. On the 15th of June 1844, Thomas Campbell expired without a struggle. His body was removed to London, and on the 3rd of July was deposited in the Poet's corner of Westminster Abbey. Many of the noble and the eminent of the land paid their respect to the memory of the deceased by attending on this occasion. A handful of dust from the grave of Kosciusko was thrown on his coffin, by one of a party of Poles who were present. Thus the scene closed for ever over the Bard of Hope. As to private character, the great charm of Campbell was his genuineness. He was always in earnest; the purpose of the moment absorbed all his faculties. This characteristic, whilst it was the germ of his best parts, his affection, his self denial, his generous enthusiasm, was certainly also productive of many of his literary failings and perhaps of some of his moral. He fretted himself out of all judgment when he was writing; he checked and thwarted and weakened his genius, because he was always under terror of bad taste and classical inadmissibilities. Composition with him was a fever, and we may suppose that the re-action of these enthusiasms or the lack of sympathy with them, may not : : unfrequently have been the cause of the recourse he is alleged to have had, too often, to the fatal recruital of the bottle. His was an impassioned and sensitive heart, and yet not morbidly or unhealthily so. He was once, it is true, moved to an agony of tears on hearing Chevalier Neukomm play the organ; and another time he was so enchanted with a child's expression in the street, that he literally advertised in hopes of discovering its relations, and being again permitted to gaze on the face which had thus struck him but then the same man pensioned an aged mother from his own precarious income, and on the death of his sister Mary, it was discovered that he had continued her an annuity for thirty years. Considered as a Poet, it is our opinion that Campbell suffered from being born a little too soon. He got entangled in the meshes of the old school and was fettered and hampered with the old rules and stiff foolish formulas. Not that we think he would ever have excelled in the highest branches of the poetic art, creation, character, and the anatomy of the heart; but we should have had some splendidly bold descriptions, wilder and more striking images, and a general tone of freedom from constraint-the want of which somewhat burdens the readers of his Poems, as they are. There are two pieces of his later years which quite indicate that modern taste was affecting his style they might almost be put apart as specimens of a second manner. We mean the "Lines on the view from St. Leonards" and the "Dead Eagle, written at Oran." Campbell was himself con. scious of new power in the former of these-he selected it as his best poem in answer to a question of Mr. St. John at Algiers. The reader will find both pieces exhibiting great power-and singularly free from the rhetorical pomp of most of Campbell's longer poems; at any rate of the "Pleasures of Hope." That popular poem has now stood for fifty years the test of public opinion. And indeed it contains passages of powerful eloquence, and of thrilling language, with others of a sort of oratorical pathos. There is much in it that a man would like to shout out as he walked by the sea-shorebut little, we think, which he would store by him and cherish as what his own heart knew to be true. Madame De Staël indeed found great comfort in the episode of Conrad's daughter. "L'épisode" she says in a letter to Campbell, “L'épisode d'Ellinore allait tellement a mon cœur, que je pouerais la relire vingt fois, sans en affaiblir l'impression." We can only add, Reader, could you? The poem has one great merit, its distinctness you are : never troubled for the meaning. The connexion perhaps of passage and passage is not always clear; but in the passages themselves there is no obscurity. Campbell had a great gift of accumulating images of terror and desolation-and power in using suggestive language for this purpose. Speaking once of a poem he intended to write, he said "it will be as wild and horrible as Golgotha," adding in fun " but I loves to make people afraid." He showed this faculty very considerably in the "Pleasures," and more strikingly afterwards in the "Last Man," the "Spectre boat" and the "DeathBoat of Heligoland." The patriotic passages and those on Poland are well known in the " Pleasures of Hope;" the one on India is we think unjust, though difficult to meet as referring to events on which History is silent. For example, the minions of degenerate trade are stated to have locked their teeming store, “While famished nations died along the shore.” This maritime dissoluteness is not alluded to even by the searching Mill. The tenth descent of Vishnu (Kalki), in which great poetic use might have been made of the pale horse' on which he is to come, is changed with the assistance of a false quantity into the tenth Avatar of Brahma on a fiery horse. The Indian episode altogether is a very odd jumble. We shall extract one passage from the second part, which af fording scope to Campbell's best powers is, we think, one of the happiest in the Poem. "There live, alas! of heaven-directed mien, "Gertrude of Wyoming" was considered at the time, an entirely successful poem. It contained passages of rich description, others of great eloquence. The pathos, though delicate, is we think a little stiff and unnatural. Such can be the case; a sentiment may be graceful, and yet elevated by diction out of the region of our sympathies. This poem has been thought to come near the "Castle of Indolence"-but VOL. III. し |