purpose. He had no family connections on whom he coulddepend for promotion, and the dreary prospect of a friendless probationer of the Scottish Kirk was little calculated to stir the ambition of the active and enthusiastic boy. The pious lessons of his parents had not been without their effect on his mind, however; and he appears at this time to have been seriously alive to the highest interests of religion, and the solemn responsibilities involved in the duties of the ministry. Among the evidences of the serious cast of his thoughts at this period, is the beautiful poem written at the age of sixteen, which, though not publicly acknowledged as his till after his death, had been admitted into the most select collections of sacred poetry.

known hymn beginning

"When Jordan hushed his waters still,
And silence slept on Zion hill;

This is the well

When Salem's shepherds through the night
Watched o'er their flocks by starry light."

"The first time," says an intimate friend of the Poet, in communicating his recollections of his father to his biographer, "that I drank tea in the house of Mr. Campbell, was in the winter of 1790. The old gentleman, who had been a great foreign merchant, was seated in his arm-chair, and dressed in a suit of snuff-brown cloth, all from the same web. There were present, besides Thomas, his brother and two sisters-Daniel, Elizabeth, and Isabella. The father, then at the age of fourscore, spoke only once to us. It was when one of his sons and I-Thomas, I think, who was then about thirteen, and of my own age-were speaking about getting new clothes, and descanting in grave earnest as to the most fashionable colours. Tom was partial to green; I preferred blue. 'Lads!' said the

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senior, in a voice which fixed our attention, if you wish to have a lasting suit, get one like mine.' We thought he meant one of a snuff-brown colour; but he added, 'I have a suit in the Court of Chancery, which has lasted thirty years, and I think it will never wear out.""

The influence of the good old man in the early training of his son must have been great, for he frequently referred in after life to his affectionate tenderness and the effects produced by his grave but gentle rebukes. Only a short time before his death (254)

he remarked that the language in which his father was wont to give expression to his devotional feelings in the daily rite of family worship, had produced such an indelible impression, that the words were still fresh in his mind. When the event occurred which deprived the old Virginia merchant of the chief fruits of a lifetime's industry, he had still enough left to afford the means of educating his sons, and enable them to provide for themselves with the best of all fortunes, the qualifications for honourably fulfilling the duties of the sphere in life for which they were destined. The anticipation of the old man, however, that the Chancery suit would last his lifetime, was not realized; and the adverse decision of it about the time when his youngest son was still hesitating in the choice of a profession, helped to add to the difficulties and trials of this important crisis of his life. He had already, like many others of the students of the Scottish universities, been in the habit of eking out his scanty funds by performing the duties of a family tutor, in aiding the studies of some younger or less forward than himself, and he was now compelled to devote a larger portion of his time to this irksome, yet not altogether profitless occupation. Meanwhile his choice oscillated among the various professions usually selected for the more promising cultivators of the higher studies, in which he already gave evidence of so much proficiency. His father urged him to look forward to the Scottish bar, but the loss of his pecuniary resources presented an insuperable impediment to the attempt. Medicine was next thought of, and some of the requisite studies engaged in; but the sensitive mind of the young Poet revolted at the surgical operations he was compelled to witness, and he was so much affected on one occasion that he could never afterwards sufficiently overcome his repugnance to resume his studies. Thus shut out, apparently, from every pursuit most congenial to his taste and acquirements, there seemed no other resource left than to join his elder brothers, and share in their mercantile pursuits in Virginia. The summer of his seventeenth year appears, accordingly, to have been spent in the counting-house of a Glasgow merchant, preparatory to his proceeding to America.

If the scenes which must necessarily be witnessed in the hospital and surgical wards were intolerable to the sensitive mind of Campbell, it may be readily supposed that the irksome routine

of a mercantile clerk's duties was not likely to prove much more congenial. We have no record of how long the labours of the desk were pursued, but we find him again, on the approach of the college summer vacation of 1794, consulting the professors of Greek and Moral Philosophy as to the course he ought to adopt. The result was his undertaking the duties of a tutor in the remote Hebrides. He parted then from some of his favourite college friends, to meet again under circumstances greatly changed. One of these was Gregory Watt, a younger son of the great engineer, a youth of high promise, who died at the early age of twenty-five. Another of them, Dr. Macfarlane, when they next met, was called upon, as Principal of the University, to receive his old college companion as its Lord Rector.

He

The removal of Campbell from the busy scenes of Glasgow, and the excitement of the College Green, to the solitary house of Sunipol, on the northern shore of Mull, was a change which might well be regarded as a banishment from civilized life, and, as one of his friends characterized it, being buried alive. had hardly arrived there, indeed, after finding his way on foot through many a tedious stretch of moor and glen, and crossing successive lochs and ferries in an open Highland boat, than he was practically taught the striking contrast of the change. His trunk being detained on the way, he was equally destitute of books and paper; and, in the utter absence of any possible means of communicating with his friends, he was at length reduced to the necessity of giving vent to his thoughts by scribbling them on the white-washed walls of his room. The change, however, was no inharmonious episode in the young Poet's career. To him the scenery around the wild Hebridean shores of Mull was pregnant with lessons no less valuable than those he had been so diligently pursuing in the university of his native town; and his own recollections of his sojourn there appear to have been altogether pleasing. He set out for his destination in company with a fellow-student equally hardy with himself, and the two youthful pedestrians made their way through the intricacies of Argyleshire, each with his little bundle slung on a stick over his shoulder. "The wide world," says Campbell, "contained not two merrier boys."

Continuing the narration in which this remark occurs, he says:" At Inverary I parted with my companion, and tra

row.

velled across Lochawe, under rain that soaked me to the marFrom Oban I crossed over to Mull; and, in the course of a long summer's day, traversed the whole length of the islandwhich must be nearly thirty miles-with not a footpath to direct me. At times I lost all traces of my way, and had no guide but the sun going westward. About twilight, however, I reached the Point of Callioch-the house of my hostess, Mrs. Campbell of Sunipol, a worthy, sensible widow lady, who treated me with great kindness. I am sure I made a conscience of my duty towards my pupils; I never beat them, remembering how much I loved my father for having never beaten me.

"At first I felt melancholy in this situation-missing my college chums and wrote a poem on my exile, as doleful as anything in Ovid's Tristia. But I soon got reconciled to it. The Point of Callioch commands a magnificent prospect of thirteen Hebrid-islands, among which are Staffa and Icolmkill, which I visited with enthusiasm. I had also, now and then, a sight of wild-deer sweeping across that wilder country, and of eagles perching on its shore. These objects fed the romance of my fancy, and I may say that I was attached to Sunipol before I took leave of it. Nevertheless, God wot, I was better pleased to look on the kirk-steeples and whinstone causeways of Glasgow than on all the eagles and wild-deer of the Highlands."

Such, it will be readily owned, was no bad schooling for the young Poet; and to it we probably owe, in some degree, the early production of the great poem by which his fame was so soon established: The ideas suggested in the above quotation from his journal, were embodied at the time in an elegy printed along with his collected poems; from the perusal of which, on bis introduction to the literary circles of Edinburgh two years afterwards, Dr. Anderson predicted his success as a great poet. There seems some reason to think that the first idea of the future poem, "The Pleasures of Hope," was also suggested to bim during his residence in Mull. In writing to his friend and correspondent, Hamilton Paul, he had complained of his solitary lot, and begged him to send some lines calculated to cheer a lone hermit, in return for some of his own metrical translations from the Greek. His friend accordingly returned to him a piece of twelve stanzas, entitled "The Pleasures of Solitude," enclosed in a letter, in which he remarks: "As you have almost brought

yourself to the persuasion that you are an anchorite, I send you a few lines adapted to the condition of a recluse. It is the sentiment of Dr. Moore, that the best method of making a man respectable in the eyes of others, is to respect himself. Take the lines, such as they are, and be candid, but not too flattering. "We have now three Pleasures,' by first-rate men of genius, namely, 'The Pleasures of Imagination;' 'The Pleasures of Memory;' and, The Pleasures of Solitude.' Let us cherish 'The Pleasures of Hope' that we may soon meet in Alma Mater!"

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Slight as was the hint thus thrown out, and forgot by its author as soon as written, it reached Campbell at a time when the means of occupation for his mind, either by social converse or literary study, were extremely limited; and there is good reason for believing that, in this passing hint, we may trace the first germ of the noble poem which only three years afterwards established his literary reputation. His correspondence during his residence in Mull furnishes extremely interesting indications of the fine schooling which his peculiar situation afforded for the young Poet. In one of his letters, dated from "Thules's Wildest Shore, 15th day of the Harvest Storm," he describes his visit to Staffa and Icolmkill, and the delight which he derived from looking on their wonders. The young Poet slept a night at Iona, and thus had abundant leisure to explore its venerable historical ruins, as well as to survey the sublime beauties of Fingal's Cave, and the wild grandeur of the surrounding scenery. The impressions produced by this early sojourn amid such remarkable scenery were never effaced, and some of them are embodied, with a vividness and truth of portraiture which cannot be mistaken, in his last poem, "The Pilgrim of Glencoe."

The recollections of his sojourn in Mull were always referred to by Campbell as altogether pleasant; for the petty cares and annoyances of daily life leave little lasting impression, if the general course of events be not ungenial. His cheerful society was doubtless valued as a welcome addition to the limited circle of Sunipol; his kindly manner with his pupils won their affection; and the constant marks of respect and attention which he received soon dissipated the sense of mortification with which he had originally viewed his banishment to the remote Isle of Mu!l.