ECLECTIC MAGAZINE

JULY, 1851.

From the People's Journal.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

WITH A PORTRAIT.

With all that Nature's fire
Can lend to polish'd Art,
He strikes his graceful lyre,

To thrill or warm the heart.-MACNISH.

frey, imagining a book of Specimens of Bri- | tish poetry, to be edited and published some time next century, is more liberal in the quota he assigns to Campbell in that supposed anthology than to any of his contemporaries:-There," he says, " shall posterity hang with rapture on the half of Campbell, and the fourth part of Byron, and the sixth of Scott, and the scattered tithes of Crabbe, and the three per cent. of Southey-while some good-natured critic shall sit in our mouldering chair, and more than half prefer them to those by whom they have been superseded." It may be remarked, en passant, that the triumphant fifty per cent. which the above paragraph guarantees for Campbell, is not, as to quantity, more, if so much, as the poor three per cent. to which Southey is stinted.

Considering the expectations one had naturally formed upon such a subject, the Life of Campbell, by Dr. Beattie, is, we confess, upon the whole, one of the dullest books we ever essayed to read. Before the first bulky volume is nearly finished, one yawns portentously, drops expressions about "awfully slow work," and is only induced to abide the two other over-grown tomes by the hope of something piquant by way of relief-pippins and cheese to come. From it we learn that Thomas Campbell was born at Glasgow, A. D. 1777—at which time Scott was a sickly boy of six years oldf-and Charles Lamb a prattler of two, and Southey of three, and Coleridge of five-and Burns and Schiller were ardent youths of eighteen summers. At thirteen he appeared in print-again at fifteen and eighteen-but in each case prematurely. But before he was two-and-twenty, Campbell gave the world The Pleasures

* Edinburgh Review, March, 1819.

of Hope, and the world will never forget the
donation or the donor. Perhaps no poem of
this kind is so popular with the young.
Mr.
Tuckerman calls Campbell one of the kings
of school literature in America, as he also is
in our own country. "It would indeed be
difficult to name a modern English poet
whose works are more closely entwined with
our early associations, or whose happier ef-
forts linger more pleasantly in the memory."
For Campbell is a clear, lively, unaffected
minstrel, such as youthful hearts are at once
opened to, and upon whom youthful eyes
brighten and smile with glistening sympathy
as they gaze. They catch his meaning and
comprehend his beauties, far enough at least
to ensure them a delight in perusing his
graceful page-while they turn with a very
different feeling, that of listlessness and ennui
and quiet vexation, from the philosophy of
Wadsworth, the idealism of Shelley, the sen-
sationalism of Keats, the mysticism of Cole-
ridge, the scholasticism of Southey, the deli-
catesse of Rogers, and the platitudes of
Montgomery. Nowhere," says Mr. Gil-
fillan," shall we find the poetical feeling more
beautifully linked to the joyous rapture of
youth, than in the 'Pleasures of Hope.' It
is the outburst of genuine enthusiasm; and
even its glitter we love, as reminding us of
the shining morning face' of a schoolboy."*
This "glitter" is certainly more abundant in
Campbell's first poem than in Gertude of
Wyoming and subsequent efforts-an ob-
servation which may seem a truism when it
is remembered that it was his first poem,
and when did the dew of youth do other-
wise than glitter? Nor is this quality un-
concerned in the preference given by the
young to the Pleasures-it is bright enough
to reflect, and refine while it reflects, their
own radiant hopes, and they exult in the
sheen to which elder folks prefer a mellower,
chaster, more matured style. There is an
earnest warmth about the spirit of the
which the spring of life cannot resist, and
which has no slight power to thaw even the
frigor of age, the winter of discontent. It
comes from the heart of the poet, is dictated
by its eager beatings; colored, and deep-
ened, and ensanguined by its ruddy drops.
It is no mercenary piece-work, no nolens
volens taste-work of a laureate, bound to
write an ode for the bays, no mechanical
product of a cast-iron poet. It may not
have the robust, indomitable energy which

It was in this year that Mrs. Cockburn, au. thoress of the new version of the Flowers of the Forest, wrote to her minister, Dr. Douglass, as follows:-"I last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He has the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I made him read on; it was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm, He lifted his eyes and hands. There's the mast gone,' said he; crash it goes!--they will all perish!' After his agitation, he turns to me. "That is too melancholy,' said he; 'I had better read you something more amusing.' I preferred a little chat, and asked his opinion of Milton and other books he was reading, which he gave me wonderfully. Pray what age do you suppose this boy to be? Name it now, before I tell you. Why, twelve or fourteen. No such thing; he is not quite six years old."-Lockhart's Scott, chap. ii.

poem,