writings and destiny. Campbell, also, with true poetical consistency, recoiled from the professions and commerce; and thus, by the force of circumstances as well as the promptings of genius, seemed destined for a literary life. This vague purpose was confirmed by the unprecedented success of his first poem. There is no instance, perhaps, in the annals of literature, of so instantaneous and complete a recognition of the advent of a poet as followed the appearance of the "Pleasures of Hope." It introduced him at once to fame and society; and it did this by virtue of the eloquent utterance it gave to feelings which then latently glowed in every noble heart. Like a bugle whose echoes speak the morning cheer which exhilarates the frame of the newly-roused hunter, it caught up, rendered musical and prolonged the strains of pity, hope, and faith, rife, though seldom audible, in the world.

It is essential to poetry of this nature that the sensibilities should be acted upon by some actual scene, person, or event; and accordingly we find that every successful composition of Campbell has a personal basis. To this, indeed, we may ascribe that spirit of reality which constitutes the distinction between forced and spontaneous verse. His muse, when herself, is awake, magnetic, and spirited; the sense of beauty, or the enthusiasm of love and freedom, being naturally excited, utter themselves in fervid strains. Thus the apostrophe to Poland, and the protest against scepticism, the appeal to the disappointed lover, the description of mutual happiness, and, in fact, all the animated episodes in the "Pleasures of Hope," grew directly out of the events of the day or the immediate experience of the poet. "Lochiel's Warning" embodies a traditionary vein of local feeling derived from the land of his nativity; the "Exile of Erin" consecrates the woes of a poor fellow with whom he sympathized on the banks of the Elbe; the "Beech Tree's Petition" was suggested by an interview with two ladies in the garden where it grew; the "Lines on a Scene in Bavaria" are a literal transcript from memory; "Ye Mariners of England" expresses feelings awakened by the poet's own escape from a privateer. It is a singular coïncidence that the draft of this famous naval ode, which was found among his papers, was seized, on his return from Germany, on the suspicion that his visit had a treasonable design. In the

freshness of youth he witnessed a battle, a retreat, and the field upon which the night-camp of an army was pitched; and the vivid emotions thus induced he eloquently breathed in "Hohenlinden" and the "Soldier's Dream." His dramatic tastes are finely reflected in the address to John Kemble, and his classical in the ode to the Greeks. We also trace the relation between the very nature of the man and whatever appealed to the sense of the heroic or the beautiful in his letters. The State Trials excited his deepest youthful sympathy. It is natural that to him the memorable experiences of life were such incidents as to hear Neukomm play the organ, and to stand with Mrs. Siddons before the Apollo Belvidere. The "Turkish Lady" was written while his mind was full of a project to visit the East; and his subsequent intention of joining his brother in America, with whom he kept up a regular correspondence, accounts for his choice of "The Valley of Wyoming" as the scene of Gertrude.

A critic, whose taste and organization fit him to seize upon the vital spirit of works of genius, says that in this poem there is "the best got-up bridal" in the whole range of English poetry. The zest and truthful beauty of the description is drawn from the bard's own experience of the conjugal sentiment. His biographer describes Miss Sinclair, who became his wife, as one of those women, who unite great vivacity of temperament with a latent tenderness and melancholy the very being to captivate permanently a man at once ardent and tasteful, like Campbell.

Even his defects point to the same impressible temper. Quickly aroused to anger, of which several curious instances occur in his memoirs, he as quickly yielded to the reäction of generous and candid feeling. The transition was as childlike as it was sincere, and in perfect accordance with the poetical character. The same is true of his alternate relish of severe intellectual labor and the most luxurious self-indulgence. Campbell by nature was a patriot and a philanthropist, a lover and a friend, an enthusiast and a scholar; impulsive and fastidious at the same time, generous and vain by turns, with sensibility and culture, now fagging and now soaring; and, thus constituted, we may imagine the effect upon him of being doomed to write in the prime of his life, "My son is mad, my wife dead, and my harp unstrung." Yet, like

nearly all the gifted men of his age, he was so singularly blessed with social privileges, that we are forcibly reminded of Scott's declaration that these constituted his real obligations to literature. In the course of Campbell's letters, we find him at different periods enjoying the society, first of Dr. Burney, Mrs. Inchbald, Dr. Gregory, Dugald Stewart, and the leading spirits of the past century; then of Klopstock, Schlegel, and Humboldt; and, on his return from his first continental visit, of Currie, Roscoe, Sydney Smith, Mackintosh, Rogers, and the habitués of Holland House in its palmy days; while Madame de Staël, Mrs. Siddons, Scott, and the last bright galaxy of British writers, were familiar associates.

In regard to the form of Campbell's poetry, we are immediately struck with his delicate and true feeling for the harmony of language. He knew instinctively how to follow Pope's rule, and cause the sound to be an echo to the sense. When a boy he expressed keen disappointment at not being able to make a lady appreciate the meaning of Homer by the sound of celebrated passages. We know of few specimens of English verse comparable to the best of Campbell's for effective rhythm. Contrast the spirit-stirring flow of the song of the Greeks with the organ-like cadence of "Hohenlinden," or the pathetic melody of "Lord Ullin's Daughter" with the deep-flowing emphasis of the "Battle of the Baltic." It is remarkable that this fine musical adaptation belongs to all his genuine pieces-we mean those naturally inspired; while his muse is never whipped into service, as in Glencoe and Theodric, without betraying the fact in her stiff or wayward movement. This only proves how real a poet Campbell was.

We demur, however, to the opinion frequently advanced that his poetic fire died out long before his life. One of his noblest compositions, lofty and inspiring in sentiment, and grandly musical in rhythm, is "Hallowed Ground," and one of his most striking pieces, "The Last Man;" both of which were late productions.

The personality so characteristic of genuine feeling is not only evident in the obvious inspiration, but in the verbal execution of his conceptions. Thus he constantly impersonates insensible objects. It is the bugles that sing truce, and he that lays him

self beneath the willow; the glow of evening is like, not the cheek and brow of woman, but of her we love. Throughout the intensity of the feeling personifies the object described, and gives human attributes to inanimate things, exactly as in the artless language of infancy and the oratory of an uncivilized people. Such is the instinct of nature; it is what separates verse from prose, the diction of fancy and emotion from that of affairs and science.

If any one is preeminently entitled to the name of poet, in its most obvious sense, it is he who so emphatically represents in verse a natural sentiment that his expression of it is seized upon by the common voice, and becomes its popular utterance. This direct, sympathetic, intelligent, and recognized phase of the art has been the most significant and effective, from the days of Job and Homer to those of Tasso and Campbell. The vivid rhetorical embodiment of a genuine feeling prevalent at the time, or characteristic of humanity, is the most obvious and the most natural province of the bard. The ballads of antiquity, the troubadour songs, and the primitive national lyric, evince how instinctive is this development of poetry. The philosophic combinations of the drama, the descriptive traits of the pastoral, and the formal range of the epic, are results of subsequent culture and more premeditated skill. This is also true of the refinements of sentiment, the mystical fancies, and the vague expression, which German literature, and the influence of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Coleridge, have grafted upon modern English verse.

If we were to adopt a vernacular poet from the brilliant constellation of the last and present century, as representing legitimately natural and popular feeling with true lyric energy, such as finds inevitable response and needs no advocacy or criticism to uphold or elucidate it, we should name Campbell. He wrote from the intensity of his own sympathies with freedom, truth, and love; his expression, therefore, is truly poetic in its spirit; while in rhetorical finish and aptness he had the very best culture, that of Greek literature. Thus simply furnished with inspiration and with a style, both derived from the most genuine sources, the one from nature and the other from the highest art, he gave melodious and vigorous utterance, not to a peculiar vein of imag

ination, like Shelley, nor a mystical attachment to nature, like Wordsworth, nor an egotistic personality, like Byron; but to a love of freedom and truth which political events had caused to glow with unwonted fervor in the bosoms of his noblest contemporaries, and to the native sentiment of domestic and social life, rendered more dear and sacred by their recent unhallowed desecration. It was not by ingenuity, egotism, or artifice, that he thus chanted, but honestly, earnestly, from the impulse of youthful ardor and tenderness moulded by scholarship.

It is now the fashion to relish verse more intricate, sentiment less defined, ideas of a metaphysical cast, and a rhythm less modulated by simple and grand cadences; yet to a manly intellect, to a heart yet alive with fresh, brave, unperverted instincts, the intelligible, glowing, and noble tone of Campbell's verse is yet fraught with cheerful augury. It has outlived, in current literature, and in individual remembrance, the diffuse metrical tales of Scott and Southey; finds a more prolonged response, from its general adaptation, than the ever-recurring key-note of Byron; and lingers on the lips and in the hearts of those who only muse over the elaborate pages of those minstrels whose golden ore is either beaten out to intangible thinness, or largely mixed with the alloy of less precious metal. Indeed, nothing evinces a greater want of just appreciation in regard to the art or gift of poetry, than the frequent complaints of such a poet as Campbell because of the limited quantity of his verse. It would be as rational to expect the height of animal spirits, the exquisite sensation of convalescence, the rapture of an exalted mood, the perfect content of gratified love, the tension of profound thought, or any other state, the very law of which is rarity, to become permanent. Campbell's best verse was born of emotion, not from idle reverie or verbal experiment; that emotion was heroic or tender, sympathetic or devotional-the exception to the every-day, the common-place, and the mechanical; accordingly, in its very nature, it was like angels' visits," and no more to be summoned at will than the glow of affection or the spirit of prayer.

That idleness had nothing to do with the want of productiveness of his muse, so absurdly insisted on, during his life, is evident from his letters. He was always busy; but unfortunately for