CAMPBELL. 55 ing more, by reason of the sympathetic allusion to the woes of Poland: "Ah, bloodiest picture in the book of time! Strength in her arms nor mercy in her woe! And freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell! " Even at so late a date as the death of Campbell (1844), when they buried him in Westminster Abbey, close upon the tomb of Sheridan, some grateful Pole secured a handful of earth from the grave of Kosciusko to throw upon the coffin of the poet. But in addition to its glow of liberalism, this first poem of Campbell was, measured by all the old canons of verse, thoroughly artistic. Its pauses, its rhymes, its longs and shorts were of the best prize order; even its errors in matters of fact have an academic tinge-as, for instance, "On Erie's banks, where tigers steal along!" The truth is, Mr. Campbell was never strong in his natural history; he does not scruple to put flamingoes and palm trees into the valley of Wy oming. Another reason why the first poem of Campbell's, written when he was only twenty-one, came to such success, was the comparatively clear field it had. The date of publication was at the end of the century. Byron was in his boyhood; Scott had not published his Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805); Southey had printed only his Joan of Arc (1796), which few people read; the same may be said of Landor's Gebir, (1797) ; Cowper was an old story; Rogers's Pleasures of Memory (1792), and Moore's translation of Anacreon (1799-1800), were the more current things with which people who loved fresh poetry could regale themselves. The Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge had indeed been printed, perhaps a year or two before, down in Bristol; but scarce any one read these; few bought them; and yet-in that copy of the Lyrical Ballads was lying perdu — almost unknown and uncared for - the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." * De Quincey says that he was the only man in all Europe who quoted Wordsworth as early as 1802. Yet, per contra, the Lyrical Ballads had warm praises from Jeffrey (in Monthly Review) and from Southey (in Critical)—showing that the finer ears had caught the new notes from Helicon. Gertrude of Wyoming, a poem, written at Sydenham, near London, about 1807, and which, sixty years ago, every good American who was collecting books thought it necessary to place upon his shelves, I rarely find there now. It has not the rhetorical elaboration of Campbell's first poem; never won its success; there are bits of war in it, and of massacre, that are gorgeously encrimsoned, and which are laced through and through with sounds of fife and warwhoop; but the landscape is a disorderly exaggeration (I have already hinted at its palm trees) and its love-tale has only the ardors of a stage scene in it; we know where the tragedy is coming in, and gather up our wraps so as to be ready when the curtain falls. He was a born actor-in need (for his best work) of the foot-lights, the on-lookers, the trombone, the bass-drum. He never glided into victories of the pen by natural inevitable movement of brain or heart; he stopped always and everywhere to consider his pose. There is little of interest in Campbell's personal history; he married a cousin; lived, as I said, mostly in London, or its immediate neighborhood. He had two sons. one dying young, and the other of weak mind-lingering many years — a great grief and source of anxiety to his father, who had the reputation of being exacting and stern in his family. He edited for a long time the New Monthly Magazine, and wrote much for it, but is represented to have been, in its conduct, careless, hypercritical, and dilatory. He lectured, too, before the Royal Institute on poetry; read oratorically and showily-his subject matter being semi-philosophical, with a great air of learning and academically dry; there was excellent system in his discourses, and careful thinking on themes remote from most people's thought. He wrote some historical works which are not printed nowadays; his life of Mrs. Siddons is bad; his life of Petrarch is but little better; some poems he published late in life are quite unworthy of him and are never read. Nevertheless, this prim, captious gentleman wrote many things which have the ring of truest poetry and which will be dear to the heart of England as long as English ships sail forth to battle. WALTER SCOTT. 59 A Minstrel of the Border. Yet another Scotsman whose name will not be forgotten-whether British ships go to battle, or idle at the docks-is Walter Scott. * I scarce know how to begin to speak of him. We all know him so well-thanks to the biography of his son-in-law, Lockhart, which is almost Boswellian in its minuteness, and has dignity besides. We know as we know about a neighbor's child of his first struggles with illness, wrapped in a fresh sheepskin, upon the heathery hills by Smailholme Tower; we know of the strong, alert boyhood that succeeded; he following, with a firm seat and free rein amongst other game — the old wives' tales and border ballads which, thrumming in his receptive ears, put the Edinboro law studies into large confusion. Swift after this comes the hurry-scurry of a boyish lovechase-beginning in Grey Friar's church-yard; *Walter Scott, b. 1771; d. 1832; Lay of Last Minstrel, 1805; Marmion, 1808; Lady of the Lake, 1810; Waverley, 1814; Woodstock, 1826; Life of Napoleon, 1827; Life, by Lockhart, 1832-37. |