sound policy is another thing in an affair that does not imperiously press for discussion." He then spoke of Dr. Lushington's opinion, and then I remarked that the case was not altered one way or the other before the public by any legal opinion, that we often saw what absurdities were promulgated by ecclesiastical courts, and even those of common law, in cases involving conjugal disputes when witnesses were put on their words to prove the quantum of conjugal affection existing between parties up to a certain day or hour. That the public had a sentiment of the absurdity of professional opinions in analogous cases of individual feeling, and that what might be law might not be right. People, therefore, formed their own opinion, uninfluenced by that in which they justly had little faith. Campbell still persisted he was right, and became quite chivalrous in the matter. Knowing him so well, my apprehension then was for the mode in which he would set about his task. He had talked to me, as it was easy to see, with a foregone resolution. He was determined to be a championat-arms, though without practised weapons, and with reservations he could not use. The manuscript of the article, which I have preserved as a relic ever since, more than before satisfied me with what I had said and with the correctness of the view I had taken of the character of the championship. There was nothing like the singular style of this article in all that he had ever written before. If it were considered spontaneous and uncalled for, that was a matter of taste resting with himself, it was the ex cathedrâ manner in which it was dictated that called forth so much animadversion. It dealt in assertion, it controverted Moore in a mode the most strange and outré possible. It disproved nothing, that Lady Byron, the better authority, had not disproved before by her own assertions, supported by Dr. Lushington's opinions. It bore the character rather of replicatory spleen against Moore, a stranger as he then was to Campbell's information, a thing Campbell did not intend, than a defence of Lady Byron. The language, compared to Campbell's former simple and pure English, was inflated and verbose. He spoke almost in boast of his own courage, as if that had been called in question, or was ever likely to be in the matter. His phrases were any thing but those of Campbell, "planting the tic douloureux of domestic suffering in a weak woman's bosom ;" to "dirty and puddle the holy water of acknowledgment." "A blue stocking of chilblained learning," "keeping off sentimental mummeries from the hallowed precincts of a widow's character;" to "poach for the pathetic," were phrases that would have been sought previous to this ill-judged defence in the writing of any other literary man in England save Campbell himself. One of those impulses under which the poet sometimes did singular things, moved him to undertake a defence that defended nothing, and to make assertions that could go no way in settling any point. He said he had not read the work he attacked, or affected not to have done so : "I have not read it in your book, for I hate to wade through it; but they tell me, that you have not only warily depreciated Lady Byron, but that you have described a lady that would have suited him (Lord B.) If this be true, it is the unkindest cut of all-to hold up a florid description of a woman suitable to Lord Byron, as if in mockery over the forlorn flower of virtue that was drooping in the solitude of sorrow." As if he would have burlesqued the pathetic, and make use of that burlesque as an argument. To an old friend like Moore, this defence must have had a very singular appearance, an aspect incomprehensible. It is difficult to imagine what Campbell thought when he sat down to write in a mode so utterly at variance with his former self. Had he reasoned that he could communicate no more than Lady Byron had done, he would have seen that he really left the matter as it stood before, but he was moved, as usual, by feeling, rather than by fact or policy. In truth, the poet did not possess that versatility of talent which he imagined. Though what he did thus badly, too, was done with good-heartedness and in good faith, the execution never equalled the virtue of the motive, and he was always seen to a disadvantage when thus off his beaten track. This injudicious championship in behalf of Lady Byron did him great mischief, not on account of the subject, which any one. like Campbell, partial to standing well in the esteem of the fair sex, might have undertaken with or without the charge of injudiciousness, as the case happened, but from the discovery it operated, that Campbell had less judgment and talents as an advocate than was presupposed, that he was unable to make the best of a cause, and that he buried the purity of his literary taste in the zeal of overheated advocacy. Had he not undertaken such a task, he might still have had conceded to him the credit of possessing the requisite ability for its execution. Had he advanced the cause he undertook, he might have compensated for the singular manner in which it was undertaken. The publications thus sent into the world not only surprised the friends of Campbell, but seemed to have unsettled the poet himself for a considerable period afterwards. He appeared as if he could talk of no other subject, and became for a time at least incapable of application of any sort. But this was his way when any particular subject had occupied his attention. He visited much more than he had done previously, and expressed himself upon every occasion like a warm partisan who overleaps discretion on an all-engrossing topic. The singular way in which he dealt with his old friend Moore, in a style between censure and something akin to sneering in the article which was not at all intended, nor discovered by himself to carry that complexion, was not the least curious thing. There was a species of egotism used, which repelling hypothetical accusations of himself, placed Campbell, his motives, and his feelings prominently forward in the matter, instead of making the defence of the lady's cause and its concomitant grounds the end and In truth, Moore must have felt astonished when he perused the article scope of all. for the first time, while the eccentricity of the article itself, and its peculiar deviation from a particular and cautious discretion which until then had appeared a conspicuous quality in the writer, must have surprised him still more. That Moore was not acquainted with all the facts of the case was evident, he had done what every biographer does, he had relied with the regard of a friend in the present case, upon the statements made by Byron; he had, indeed, no other guide. without Under such circumstances, and any light but from the documents he possessed, he had written upon the best authority within his reach. It was rather out of the to treat him in any other mode than that of mild expostulation in the way first place, and then to enter calmly into an explanation of what there was to be said on the opposite side of the question. All this ought to have been done in place of what was done in a way more worthy of a long professed friendship upon which all the while I knew Campbell never dreamed of trenching. However, it is satisfactory to know that an old friendship was not severed, and that both the one and the other met some time afterwards on terms of customary cordiality. I have no aim but that of truth in this statement. It is impossible that I could promulgate one unkind sentiment in relation to a celebrated man with whom a long intercourse only served to make the balance of esteem greatly preponderate. The best course is that of impartiality; such a statement should be made on the ground of right feeling, because indifferent persons are interested in its correctness. I do not derogate from the poet's worth by relating an instance of the overflow of his zeal somewhat too wildly carried into effect. It is no test of kindness to the memory of the departed, to proclaim him faultless in the front of the acknowledged compact by which man is linked to his nature-the compact of a common imperfection. Lady Byron after all was only anxious, and very naturally so, to exculpate her father and mother from Lord Byron's censures, and she attempted to do no more than this. But this was not enough for Campbell, who undertook the task which the lady had expressly stated she had not undertaken. He championed her particular cause, and left it very much as he found it, although there could not be two opinions about her having justice upon her side, among those who knew the whole circumstances of the affair, of which Mr. Moore was at the moment, as well as the rest of the world, in utter ignorance. The last year of Campbell's Lord Rectorship at Glasgow had expired at the close of 1829. He left his old house in Seymour-street West in that year, with its airy situation, and at Michaelmas went to occupy a large but a gloomy dwelling in Middle Scotland Yard, under one of his restless impulses. I do not find that he visited Scotland at the conclusion of his official duties there, but conclude he did not, because I cannot find any letter or note from him dated from Scotland, or indeed out of London, for the entire year. He appeared more social and fonder of company at such seasons as the particular humour came upon him than usual; he devoted his time to study as irregularly, but his studies were on dry abstract subjects not calculated for the foundation of any work of public interest. This year he deemed it necessary to place his son under the care of Dr. Mathew Allen, at Epping. The consciousness of some kind of surveillance being exercised over young Campbell was all that was necessary. To a stranger rational enough, on some points well-informed, young Campbell was an agreeable chatty companion. There was nothing fatuitous in his look, and in society his conduct was exceedingly correct. At times he was flighty when in the domestic circle, and appeared to view the restraint of his father upon his actions in gloomy meditation, so his father felt, and fancied what perhaps had no real existence. The poet continually lamented that he should never be able to make any thing of him, there being no change after so many years of observation. But he had still kept him in his house, not liking for him to be absent from his own care, until at last he could not longer bear the way in which his son's eyes sometimes became fixed upon him when he was alone, as if he meditated mischief, a thing his mother had remarked to me long previously. The idea, foundationless no doubt, was painful to one of the father's sensitiveness. "I am going to send Tom to the care of Dr. Allen," he observed to me; "I can bear it no longer." The resolution was the more painful on account of the mild nature of the complaints, which would seem scarcely to have required removal to such an establishment to a superficial observer. "What can I do, I cannot leave my home without some watch being kept over him in my absence; and when I am present he becomes a subject of painful contemplation." No affection could be stronger towards a child than that of Campbell towards his son. Young Thomas was accordingly sent to the house of Dr. Allen, where he remained fourteen years and upwards. His father used to go occasionally and see him, and I have known the son walk into town with Dr. Allen and call upon his father. On such an occasion Dr. Allen told me once, on my asking for him at his establishment, that he was gone into the forest where he had been planning roads and scheming improvements. That he spent almost all his time in the open air if the weather was fine. "He comes in regularly to dinner at two o'clock," said the doctor. There was a good deal of feeling displayed by Campbell on this parting occasion, and perhaps I have been wrong in charging upon his wonted restlessness of temper his removal to Scotland Yard from Upper Seymour-street. It put him to considerable expense from the alterations and additions he had made to his house, by altering his library just before Mrs. Campbell's death. It is probable he felt at last much more painfully gloomy than he liked to confess, in a residence where he had so much to remind him of the past; where in fact he was now left alone to meditate on the loss he had sustained by the vicissitudes of life, and to suffer the more, because what he suffered was in vain. Certain it is that I imagined there was a good deal going on in his mind at the time, from observing a more than usual absence and inattention to business; but he let fall nothing that could afford a clue as to what was the real fact. There was a reserve about him that seemed to make it a matter of pride that he would bear even his grievances alone. He kept his mind in its own solitude, and would not suffer the precincts to be violated by one particle of that sympathy which others might communicate; the most philosophical, if not the most natural way of meeting the strokes of misfortune. He had been reading the Life of Madame Roland, and highly commended as a source of consolation under misfortunes that passage in which this remarkable lady spoke of resistance to them-a resistance which she so nobly exemplified on the scaffold. "We must look to ourselves for consolation, not to extraneous assistance," said Campbell. This seemed to me a clue to his feelings. A reference to the works of Madame Roland has enabled me to recover the passage to which he alluded, as it recurred to memory at once on seeing it. "Dans toutes les peines que j'ai essuyée la plus vive impression de douleur est presque aussitôt accompagnée de l'ambition d'opposer mes forces au mal dont je suis l'objet, et de la surmonter ou par le bien que je fais à d'autres, ou par l'augmentation de mon propre courage. Ainsi la malheur peut me poursuivre et non m'accable: les tyrans peuvent me persecuter; mais m'avilir? Jamais, jamais!" This sentiment the poet thought worthy of a great mind of antiquityand that it was the finer from being the doctrine of one who acted up to her high-minded convictions, and proved the value of her own philosophy. When any thing that touched his poetical works was alluded to in his presence, it was obvious how anxious he still was lest what might be even casually dropped should tend to their depreciation. Yet nothing of this was expressed in words, nor need it have been to one who knew the poet so well as myself. "You are not the first Campbell that has written upon Hope," said Pringle, "you had a predecessor, a Dr. Campbell, too, who wrote on the same subject in 1784." "Indeed!" and the poet seemed to prick up his ears. "I do not think you will find his rivalry very formidable. He only wrote three stanzas upon the subject. One of them invokes Hope as follows: My beating bosom is a well-wrought cage Whence thee, sweet goldfinch, never shalt elope, So soft the songs of sweet-deluding Hope! Campbell smiled himself out of an expression of feature that, at first, indicated alarmed sensibility, he feared that something like a borrowed thought, or line, had been detected, at least so I imagined. Then, as to Doctor Campbell, he had a detestation beyond example of being so denominated, it was his most particular aversion. Mrs. Campbell used to say to me, it was his peculiar detestation-" Don't call him doctor, any thing else.' When the remark was now made, that he was Doctor Campbell too, he looked grave on Pringle, and said, he was LL.D., but no friend of his would ever call him so. This was pride, honest pride; he felt that so dog-cheap an honour bestowed on any body for almost any thing, was no mark of merit on the owner's part, and was not worth a plain name that had worked out its own celebrity. No one can deny but that the poet was right; the continued abuse in the bestowal of these titles renders them of no value whatever-genius is its now better and more durable distinction. ON THE NEW HEIDELBERG BASTILLE BY CAPTAIN MEDWIN. PUT not your trust in princes. Now when man, Is this the consummation? Hark! I hear Of riveted bolts and bars, denoting fear Of tyrants. Lo! up towers the grim huge mound, And speak of sunless dungeons damp and cold, Strewn with the bones of captives soaked with blood, |