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VOL. XVII No. I.

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Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell. Edited by WILLIAM BEATTIE, M.D., one of his Executors. London, 1849.

FOR Something more than half a century the custom has been gradually increasing, of publishing with but little reserve, such letters of eminent men as have been written in the ordinary management of the affairs of life, or the careless confidence of domestic intimacy. In Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," we scarcely remember a single private letter being printed as illustrating any one statement in the work, or as affording an exhibition of the character of any one of the writers, whose lives he relates. A short time before the publication of "The Lives of the Poets," Mason had, in his Memoirs of Gray, introduced a new style of biography, which has affected, more or less, every work of the kind since written. The journals of Gray, a retired scholar, who took accurate notes of whatever he read, supplied much that was instructive and interesting to the earnest student; and Mason had the opportunity of selecting, from a correspondence conducted through the whole of Gray's life with one friend or another, a vast body of information,

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on a great variety of subjects. There were few personal details; and though Mason made great use of Gray's letters, yet there was scarcely a single letter published without omissions. The example given by Mason was followed in two remarkable instances by a writer whose poetry was once popular, and whose prose works, in spite of great affectation, which deforms everything he has written, are still very pleasing. Hayley, in his Life of Milton, has woven together passages from Milton's letters, calculated to make his readers sympathize with the great poet, and which give a wholly different aspect to his life from that which the readers of Johnson had received. Milton's minor poems had been published by Thomas Warton, with notes, curiously illustrative of the mental process by which Milton's poetical language was elaborated; but in those notes, and through the whole book, Milton's controversial writings were assailed in a temper of bigotry scarcely intelligible in our days, and which Hayley's "Life" did much to counteract. To an extent

which is quite surprising, he was enabled to effect what Michelet and others have done in the case of Luther, and thus Milton became his own biographer.

Some years after, in his Life of Cowper, Hayley gave to the public the very most interesting volumes of biography that have ever perhaps been published. The state of health which separated Cowper from the active business of life, was consistent with systematic study, and with the exertion of the poetical faculty. Cowper's residence at a distance from his relatives-the peculiar tenderness with which he was regarded-and some circumstances connected with his pecuniary affairs, created a correspondence which was the amusement, and, in some sort, the business of his life. These letters, above all comparison the most charming that have ever been published, and from which, as we best remember, every passage that it could be thought unreasonable to living persons to bring before the public had been first removed, rendered this style of biography popular. In formal autobiography there can seldom be absent some appearance of vanity. In passages selected from letters in which the author is unconsciously writing his life, this fault is at least absent, and for the last half century rarely any eminent man has died, whose friends have not been solicited for copies of such letters as accident has left undestroyed.

It was scarce possible that the great poet, Campbell, should have escaped the common lot; and a considerable mass of his letters are now given to the public by his friend and executor, Dr. Beattie. The volumes also contain some biographical notes drawn up by the poet at the request of Dr. Beattie, and though we can imagine this voluminous work improved both by compression and by omission, and though we think a more diligent inquirer, without taking very much trouble on the subject, might have given us more scenes from the London life of a man who lived so much in the eye of the publicwe yet think some gratitude is due to Dr. Beattie for many of the letters in these volumes. The book will aid us in appreciating the character of a man whose works will probably for many generations continue to give delight.

Campbell was a true and a great poet; he was, what is better, a true-hearted, generousminded and honorable man.

With all men life is a struggle. With such a man as Campbell-peculiarly sensitive the struggle was from adverse circumstances

more than ordinarily severe. He was the youngest of ten children. The father of the poet, Alexander Campbell, had for many years been a prosperous merchant in the Virginia trade. During the earlier part of his life he had lived at Falmouth in Virginia. He had come to the sober age of forty-five when he married Margaret Campbell, the sister of his partner in business. We will not follow Dr. Beattie in disentangling the intricate pedigree of the Campbells. Margaret was, it seems, of the same clan, but not a bloodrelation, of "the Campbells of Kirnan," to which family her husband belonged. "The Campbells of Kirnan," a locality with which the poet's people were connected by their traditions, and not by the fact of having ever resided there, was a sound that had its magic; and the mother of the poet would, late in life, when sending home an article from a shop, describe herself as Mrs. "Campbell of Kirnan," mother" of the author of the Pleasures of Hope." The union with England had opened the American trade to Scotland. Previously to that, Scotland could only deal with the colonies of England on the footing of a foreign nation. When the trade was once opened, the industry and intelligence of the Glasgow merchants gave them almost a monopoly of the business. The war with America drove trade into other channels; and among the houses ruined by the change was that of which the poet's father was the senior partner. The savings of forty years of industry, amounting to about twenty thousand pounds, were swept away in an hour. The old man was sixty-five, too old to commence a new score with the world. His eldest child was a daughter of nineteen. The poet, if we read dates aright, was not born for two years after his father's business had been broken up.

It would appear that the debts of the firm were paid, and that a small surplus remained. In addition to this, Mr. Campbell received a small annual sum from the Merchants' Society, and from a provident institution, of which he had long been a member. This was no doubt a very different amount of income from what he had enjoyed. His wife was a sensible woman, who instantly acted on the changed state of circumstanceslived with the most severe economy, and did what she could to educate her family. The floating traditions which Dr. Beattie has collected, describe her as "of slight but shapely figure, with piercing black eyes, dark hair, and well chiselled features". -"a shrewd observer of character-warm-hearted, strongly

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