female relation, who was at this time on a visit with them, says, 'they were greatly attached. Mrs. C. studied her husband in every way. As one proof, the poet being closely devoted to his books and writing during the day, she would never suffer him to be disturbed by questions or intrusion, but left the door of his room a little ajar, that she might every now and then have a silent peep at him. On one occasion, she called me to come softly on tiptoe, and she would show me the poet in a moment of inspiration. We stole softly behind his chair -his eye was raised-the pen in his hand, but he was quite unconscious of our presence, and we retired unsuspected."

He thought for a while of Edinburgh for a residence, but London or its neighborhood was the only place where the kind of employment he wanted was to be obtained. He had formed a connection with the Star newspaper; we believe, translating for them matter from the foreign journals, which gave him four guineas a week. He also wrote for Reviews; and he seems to have been anxiously looking round him to purchase a share in some magazine, thinking something might be made by adding the publisher's profits to those of the literary man. His health, and that of his young family, rendered it desirable to live in the country; and he found a house at a moderate rent at Sydenham Common, from which he rode into town every day. He could scarcely have placed himself in any situation more favorable for health or for study; and society was, in every sense of the word, good. He could reckon on two hundred a year from the Star" and the "Philosophical Magazine;" both of which were conducted by the same proprietor. This did little to supply his wants, when out of it it is considered he had to keep a horse. He took whatever employment he could get. He wrote a vast deal. "Dispirited," he says, "beneath all hope of raising my reputation by what I could write, I contracted for only anonymous labor, and, of course, at an humble price." Overwork produced restlessness at night, and the necessity of having recourse to opiates. His Edinburgh friends continued to obtain subscriptions for his poems. Richardson--a friend of his who yet survives-was indefatigable, and Scott was active. There are some letters from Campbell to Scott, in which two or three projects of publishing lives of the British poets, and large editions of their works, in partnership, are suggested; they failed. In one of the letters to Scott,

66

we have the "Battle of Copenhagen," the first form of the "Battle of the Baltic." Some exceedingly spirited stanzas are omitted in the recast, still the second poem is far superior to the first. Dr. Beattie has also given us the opportunity of comparing "Lochiel's Warning," as it now stands, with the original draft. The "Battle of Copenhagen" is cut down to a third of its original dimensions. "Lochiel" is amplified by additional incidents, and the pictures are throughout heightened. Both poems are greatly improved; and to young poets, we think, the comparison of these works in their first and in their finished state, would be a most useful study.

A letter to Scott, dated October 2, 1805, concludes with the postscript, "His Majesty has been pleased to confer a pension of £200 a year on me. GOD SAVE THE KING."

Campbell himself, and other writers who have addressed the public through the various channels of periodical literature, have been the main instruments in creating

public, and thus giving the chance of respectable bread to those who may select this unobtrusive way of communicating instruction. It is probable that the author will at all times be less highly paid than the clergyman or the physician, but that he has the means of living at all, with the ordinary decencies of life, is due to Johnson above all other men, and, after him, to those who have rendered it impossible that men shall consent to do without intellectual food. There is not a nook of Scotland which is not better for having produced Burns. His poems and Campbell's would not, in all probability, have been published at all, if it were not for local subscriptions. The love of letters, now diffused everywhere, renders such patronage no longer necessary; and there now is, probably, a stronger feeling against an expedient of the kind than suggested itself to any one in the year 1805. However this be, at the time when Campbell obtained the pension, which, as far as is known, was given by Fox at Lord Holland's solicitation, it did not appear unbecoming to his friends to seek to make some permanent provision for his family, by again publishing a subscription edition of his poems. Horner worked hard for him, and with good success. In a letter to Richardson, Horner says, "It may do you good, among the slaves in Scotland, to let it be known that Mr. Pitt* put his name to the subscription

Pitt died three weeks after the date of this letter.

when he was at Bath, and we hope that most of the ministers will follow him."

"With this letter," says Beattie, "closed the year 1805-an eventful year to Campbell. It left him in improved health, with new friends, a settled income, and cheering prospects."

There appears strong reason to believe that Fox did not intend his favors to Campbell to end with the pension. It was small, and it was reduced by taxation and fees of office to £168 a year. Lord Grenville interested himself for him, and his friends thought their success certain, when Fox's death defeated their hopes. It is probable that Fox himself would have felt delight in serving Campbell. Campbell tells of a dinner in company with Fox at Lord Holland's the poet was charmed with him. "What a proud day," he says, "to shake hands with the Demosthenes of his time-to converse familiarly with the great man, whose sagacity I revered as unequalled; whose benevolence was no less apparent in his simple manners--and to walk arm in arm round the room with him." They spoke of Virgil. Fox was pleased, and said at parting, "Mr. Campbell, you must come and see me at St. Anne's Hill; there we shall talk more of these matters." Fox, turning to Lord Holland, said, "I like Campbell; he is so right about Virgil."

Campbell, we said, rode each day into London. This became fatiguing; there were frequent invitations to dinner parties which could not well be refused. His health was unequal to the slightest excess, and "the foundation was laid for habits that in after years he found it hard, or even impossible to conquer."

It would appear that the variety of his engagements, and still more the perplexity of his circumstances, prevented his writing any poetry for some two or three years. He looked round him for some German poem to translate, and asked Scott to direct his attention to something in that way. It is fortunate that he found none, as we should probably not have had his Gertrude of Wyoming, which was now commenced.

Among Campbell's most intimate friends at Sydenham was a family of the name of Mayo, and in a letter to one of the ladies of the family he tells her, that in his description of the father of Gertrude, Wynell Mayo, the father of his correspondent, was represented.

He quotes a few lines of the poem from

"How reverend was the look, serenely aged,
Undimmed by weakness, shade, or turbid ire,
When all but kindly fervors were assuaged:
Such was the most beloved, the gentlest sire:
And though amid that calm of thought entire
Some high and haughty features might betray
A soul impetuous once, 'twas earthly fire,
That fled composure's intellectual ray,
As Etna's fires grow dim before the rising day."

We regret that Dr. Beattie seems unable to tell us anything about the origin of Gertrude, the most elaborate and the most beautiful of Campbell's works. This is the more provoking, as, from the complexity of the stanza alone, it is impossible that it should not have undergone, in almost every line, repeated changes.

The con

A passage from La Fontaine's romance of Barneck and Saldorf, is printed by Dr. Beattie, from some fancied resemblance to the story of Gertrude. We have not read La Fontaine's romance, but there is nothing in the passage quoted which would suggest the slightest obligation from either writer to the other, and there is not any evidence that Campbell ever saw La Fontaine's work, which, from the date given by Beattie, would appear to have been printed in Berlin only a year or two before. Between Campbell's poem of Gertrude and Chateaubriand's Atala, there are some points of resemblance, not in the story, but in the general picture of American scenery and of Indian manners. trasts of savage and social life are also brought out in very much the same kind of feeling. The "Areouski" and the "Manitous" are, perhaps necessarily, common property; and the mention of the God to whom the Christians pray, in the same language, does not show more than that each imitates, with such skill as he can, the reputed dialect of the native tribes. same may, perhaps, be said of "the feverbalm and sweet sagamite ;" and the sound of Outalissi, as a name for an Indian warrior, may have equally affected both poets; but these are resemblances of a different kind, and we think that the study of Chateaubriand, more than anything else, has misled Campbell into the few instances of false painting that surprise us in Gertrude. Chateaubriand's scene is in Florida. This, Campbell forgets; and we suspect that some of the plants and birds of Florida are by this accident brought into Pennsylvania.

The

The deep untrodden grot,

vert, montant sans branche jusqu'à leur cime, ressemblaient à de hautes colonnes, et formaient

wore,"

was closed by mountains to the east, and and open to the west. It was a spot where the native tribes in days of old might perhaps "explore their father's dust, or lift their voice to the Great Spirit."

"Rocks sublime,

To human art a sportive semblance bore, And yellow lichens colored all the clime, Like moonlight battlements and towers decayed by time.

"But high in amphitheatre above,

Gay-tinted woods their massy foliage threw; Breathed but an air of heaven, and all the grove As if instinct with living spirit grew, Rolling its verdant gulfs of every hue. And now suspended was the pleasing dinNow from a murmur faint it swelled anew, Like the first note of organ-heard within Cathedral aisles-ere yet the symphony begin."

Chateaubriand's description of the Indian cemeteries, in a passage which we are compelled to quote at length, we cannot but think suggested the passage we have quoted from Campbell.

"De-là nous arrivâmes à une gorge de vallée ou je vis un ouvrage merveilleux: c'était un pont naturel, semblable à celui de la Virginie, dont tu a peut-être entendu parler. Les hommes, mon fils, surtout ceux de ton pays, imitent souvent la nature, et leurs copies sont toujours petites; il n'en est pas ainsi de la nature quand elle a l'air de vouloir imiter les travaux des hommes, mais en leur offrant en effet des modèles. C'est alors qu'elle jet des ponts du sommet d'une montagne au sommet d'une autre montagne, suspend les chemins dans les nues, refond les fleuves pour canaux, sculpte des monts pour colonnes, et pour

bassins creuse de mers.

"Nous passâmes sous l'arche unique de ce pont, et nous nous trouvâmes devant une autre merveille. C'était le cimetière des Indiens de la Mission, ou les bocages de la Mort. Le père Aubry avait permis à ses néophytes d'ensevelir leurs morts à leur manière et de conserver à leur sépulture son nom sauvage. Le sol en était

divisé, comme le champ commun des moissons, en autant de lots qu'il y avait de familles. Chaque lot faisait à lui seul un bois, qui variait selon le goût de ceux qui l'avaient planté. Un ruisseau serpentait sans bruit au milieu de ces bocages; on l'appelait le ruisseau de la paix; ce riant asile des ames etait fermé à l'orient par le pont sous lequel nous avions passé : deux collines le bornaient au septentrion et au midi: il ne s'ouvrait qu'à l'occident ou s'élevait un grand bois des sapins. Les troncs de ces arbres, rouges, marbrés de

régnoit un bruit religieux semblable au sourd mugissement d'une église Chrétienne: mais lorsqu'on pénétrait au fond du sanctuaire on n'entendait plus que les hymnes des oiseaux, qui célébraient à la mémoire des morts une fête éternelle."

The remarkable expression of the forests rolling their "verdant gulfs," we have in another passage:

"J'entrâinai la fille de Simagham aux pieds des côteaux, que formaient des golfes de verdure, en avançant leur promontoires dans la savane."

In Campbell's description of Pennsylvanian scenery minute inaccuracies have been shown, but in the descriptions of a terrestrial paradise this is a permitted license, and the general effect is true. An American who met him at Dr. Beattie's in 1840, told him it was as true to nature as if written on the spot. "I read," said Campbell, "every description I could find of this valley and could lay hands on, and saw several travellers who had been there. I should wish to see it, but am too old to undertake the voyage, and yet I don't like the idea that I am too old to do anything I wish. My heart is as young as ever." His American friend told him of a pilgrimage that he and others were led to make to the spot, from their admiration of Campbell's genius. Campbell's genius. "It was autumn, and the quiet shores of the lake were bathed in the yellow light of Indian summer. Every day we wandered through the primeval forests, and, when tired, we used to sit down under their solemn shade, among the falling leaves, and read Gertrude of Wyoming.' It was in these thick woods, where we could hear no sound but the song of the wild birds, or the squirrel cracking his nuts, away from the busy world, that I felt the power of Campbell's genius." Campbell took his hand, pressed it, and said, "God bless you, sir, you make me happy, although you make It is dearer to me than all the praise I have me weep. This is more than I can bear. had before; to think that in that wild American scenery I have had such readers. I will go to America yet." When they parted, Campbell gave him a copy of the illustrated edition of his poems. Take it with you," were his words, and if, with your Gertrude,' you ever go again to the valley of Wyoming, it may be a pleasure to her to hear you say, Campbell gave me this.""

Some fourteen or fifteen years after the publication of Gertrude, Campbell found himself engaged in a correspondence with the son of Brandt, the Indian chief, who was represented by the poet as the leader of a savage party, whose ferocity gave to war more than its own horrors. Campbell had abused him, almost in the language of an American newspaper.

"The mammoth comes-the foe-the monster Brandt

With all his howling, desolating band."

It was rather a serious moment when a gentleman, with an English name, called on Campbell, demanding, on the part of the son of Brandt, some explanation of this language, as applied to his father. A long letter from Campbell is printed in Stone's "Life of Brandt," addressed to the Mohawk chief, Ahyonwalghs, commonly called John Brandt, Esq., of the Grand River, Upper Canada, in which he states the various authorities which had misled him into the belief of the truth of the incidents on which his notion of Brandt's character was founded, and which it seems misrepresented it altogether. It was no doubt a strange scene, and the poet could with truth say, and with some pride, too, that when he wrote his poem, it was unlikely that he should ever have contemplated the case of the son or daughter of an Indian chief being affected by its contents. He promises in future editions to correct the involuntary error; and he does so, by saying in a note, that the "Brandt" of the poem is a pure and declared character of fiction. This does not satisfy Mr. Stone's sense of justice, who would have the tomahawk applied to the offending rhyme, and who thinks anything less than this is a repetition of the offense. Beattie ought to have published the correspondence.

The next poem of Campbell's was O'Connor's Child. "The theme," says Dr. Beattie, "was suggested by seeing a flower in his own garden, called Love lies bleeding.'" Beattie, in communicating this information, uses inverted commas, but does not say whether he gives us the poet's words or not, and we should wish to know the fact, as it would in some degree affect our estimate of the poem. Nothing can be more perfect than this poem is throughout. In one or two passages of "The Pleasures of Hope," and in a few wild words at the close of the "Battle of the Baltic," the student of Campbell's poetry might be prepared for lines expressive of

what Schiller, or one of his translators, calls "the fancifulness of despair."*

"Let us think of them that sleep,
Full many a fathom deep,
By thy wild and stormy steep,
Elsinore.

"Soft sigh the winds of Heaven o'er their grave!
While the billow mournful rolls,
And the mermaid's song condoles,
Singing glory to the souls
Of the brave!"

The wildness of the fancies through the whole poem the leading thought of her lover's death everywhere re-appearing, and linked with the flower that first grew upon his grave, is, we think, almost more beautifully conceived, and more beautifully expressed, than anything we know in English poetry. The old fancies of the hyacinth and Shakspeare's little western flower-" before, milk-white, now purple with love's wound"-fade into nothingness before it.† Campbell himself has been known to say that he preferred "O'Connor's Child" to any other of his poems. It was, he said, rapidly written-the work of a fortnight. In the illustrated edition of the poems, there are two misprints, which, as they alter the meaning, we had better point out. One is,

"And I behold, Oh God! Oh God! His life-blood oozing from the sod."

The other is,

"Dragged to that hated mansion back,
How long in thraldom's grasp I lay

I knew not, for my soul was black,
And knew no change of night or day."
*See a translation of the "Kindesmörderinn" in
Merivale's Schiller.

A fancy of the same kind now and then appears in the old ballads or poems published as such. In a Jacobite song of 1745, printed in Cromek's Remains, we have the lines:

"My father's blood's in that flower tap.

My brother's in that harebell's blossom:
This white rose was steeped in my luve's blood,
And I'll aye wear it in my bosom."

For Shakspeare's "little western flower," the reader who has the opportunity of referring to Halpin's "Essay on the Vision of Oberon," published by the Shakspeare Society, or Craik's "Romance of the Peerage," will probably receive great pleasure and instruction from their examination of the allegory. We do not say that we quite agree with them, or either of them. Craik's "Romance of the Peerage" is a most important and valuable addition to our

historical literature. Much of it is drawn from sources hitherto neglected, or very imperfectly explored.