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LITERARY CELEBRITIES 
 
 BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 OF 
 
 WORDS WORTH — CAMPBELL 
 MOORE — JEFFREY 
 
 QRASMERE 
 
 W. & R. CHAMBERS 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH 
 
 1887 
 
The four biographical and critical papers of which this 
 volume is composed appeared originally in Chambers's 
 Papers for the People. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 7 
 
 THOMAS CAMPBELL 74 
 
 THOMAS MOORE 149 
 
 FRANCIS JEFFREY 217 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 william Wordsworth Frontispiece 
 
 RYDAL MOUNT 7 
 
 WINDERMERE PROM ABOVE AMBLESIDE 12 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY 25 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 33 
 
 THOMAS CAMPBELL 74 
 
 YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND 98 
 
 LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER 110 
 
 THOMAS MOORE 148 
 
 LORD BYRON 163 
 
 THE VALE OP AVOCA 174 
 
 FRANCIS JEFFREY 216 
 
 CRAIGCROOK CASTLE 258 
 
Etdal Mount. 
 
 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 HIS poet, whose works now occupy so large 
 a space in English literature, was born at 
 Cockermouth in Cumberland, April 7, 1770. 
 His father was law-agent to the Earl of Lonsdale, 
 and that noble family in after-years always kept a 
 kindly watch over the welfare of the son. One of 
 his brothers, Christopher, was afterwards well known 
 as Dr Wordsworth, the master of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge. The poet dedicated the Sonnets to the 
 
8 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Duddon to him, and at his death committed to 
 his son the preparation of his biography. Another 
 brother was commander of the Abergavenny East 
 Indiaman, and perished in that ill-fated vessel. He 
 seems to have been a man of susceptible tempera- 
 ment, and of a gentle and affectionate disposition, 
 and his untimely fate was among the heaviest blows 
 William ever experienced. His sister Dorothy was 
 the constant companion of the poet, and has left 
 one or two of her poetical effusions mingled among 
 his. She was a woman of exquisite sensibility, 
 and of pure and well-stored mind, and was a great 
 favourite not only with her brother, who has com- 
 memorated her in numerous beautiful pieces, but 
 of all with whom she came in contact. Coleridge, 
 one of the finest judges of female character, was 
 charmed with her, and has left in one of his letters 
 a delightful sketch of her manners and appearance. 
 She kept a journal of a tour made in Scotland, in 
 1803, with her brother, which was published in 1874, 
 and which threw a new and illustrative light on 
 Wordsworth's Scottish poems, and supplied a faithful 
 commentary on the character of the poet, and his 
 mode of life. Wordsworth seems to have considered 
 the domestic hearth too sacred for defined por- 
 traiture, and he has left no picture of his father, 
 and, except in the Prelude, only a single one of 
 his mother. It depicts her watching him with 
 fluttering heart, as he appeared before the vicar 
 with t his companions — ' a trembling, earnest com- 
 pany :' 
 
 How fluttered then thy anxious heart for me, 
 Beloved mother I Thou whose happy hand 
 
WILLIAM WOKDSWOKTH. 9 
 
 Had bound the flowers I wore with faithful tie : 
 Sweet flowers, at whose inaudible command 
 Her countenance, phantom-like, doth reappear ; 
 Oh lost too early for the frequent tear, 
 And ill-requited by this heartfelt sigh. 
 
 It was into the bosom of this cultivated English 
 family that the old English spirit chose to descend 
 in one of its noblest and purest forms. 
 
 In due time the young poet was sent to Hawkshead 
 Grammar School, which was then under the master- 
 ship of a relative. We have few notices of his 
 schoolboy life, but it is stated that he prosecuted 
 with great zeal the study of the classics; and 
 there can be no doubt, from such poems as Dion 
 and Laodamia, that the stately and sculptural spirit 
 of the highest classic poetry must have entered 
 into and become a part of his very being. It is 
 not unlikely that this would combine, with his 
 passionate devotion to nature, to heighten his radical 
 disinclination to join in the e very-day occupations 
 and sympathise with the ordinary interests of the 
 world. If there be no high moral law by which 
 a great poet is produced in immediate contact with 
 the scenes most fitted to develop his peculiar 
 genius — a law in no degree more inconceivable 
 than that by which the camel is located among 
 the sands of Arabia — it was, at all events, a happy 
 accident which cast Wordsworth's lot among the 
 lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland. 
 
 That whole district may be said to stand single 
 in the world, and to have in the peculiar character 
 of its beauty no parallel elsewhere. It is in the 
 concentration of every variety of loveliness into a 
 
10 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 compass which in extent does not greatly tax the 
 powers of the pedestrian, that it fairly defies 
 rivalry, and affords the richest food to the poetical 
 faculty. There every form of mountain, rock, lake, 
 stream, wood, and plain, from the conformation 
 of the country, is crowded with the most prodigal 
 abundance into a few square miles. Coleridge 
 characterises it as a ' cabinet of beauties.' ' Each 
 thing,' says he, ' is beautiful in itself ; and the very 
 passage from one lake, mountain, or valley to 
 another is itself a beautiful thing again.' Words- 
 worth, in his own Description of the Country of 
 the Lakes, dwells with the zest and minuteness 
 of idolatry upon every feature of that treasury of 
 landscape. 
 
 The idea he gives of the locality is very perfect 
 and graphic. If the tourist were seated on a cloud 
 midway between Great Gavel and Scafell, and only 
 a few yards above their highest elevation, he 
 would look down to the westward on no fewer 
 than nine different valleys, diverging away from 
 that point, like spokes from the nave of a wheel, 
 towards the vast rim formed by the sands of the 
 Irish Sea. These vales — Langdale, Coniston, Duddon, 
 Eskdale, Wastdale, Ennerdale, Buttermere, Borrow- 
 dale, and Keswick — are of every variety of char- 
 acter ; some with, and some without lakes ; some 
 richly fertile, and some awfully desolate. Shifting 
 from the cloud, if the tourist were to fly a few 
 miles eastward, to the ridge of old Helvellyn, he 
 would find the wheel completed by the vales of 
 Wythburn, Ullswater, Haweswater, Grasmere, Bydal, 
 and Ambleside, which bring the eye round again 
 
i^^slBMs^^B^mSi^2ZL 2 
 
 JUak 
 
 WINDERMERE, FROM ABOVE AMBLESIDE. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 13 
 
 to Windermere, in the vale of Langdale, from which 
 it set out. From the sea or plain country all round 
 the circumference of this fairy-land, along the 
 gradually swelling uplands, to the mighty mountains 
 that group themselves in the centre, the infinite 
 varieties of view may be imagined — varieties made 
 still more luxuriant by the different position of 
 each valley towards the rising or setting sun. Thus 
 a spectator in the vale of Windermere will in 
 summer see its golden orb going down over the 
 mountains, while the spectator in Keswick will 
 at the same moment mark it diffusing its glories 
 over the low grounds. 
 
 In this delicious land, dyed in a splendour of 
 ever-shifting colours, the old customs and manners 
 of England still lingered in the youth of Words- 
 worth, and took a firm hold of his heart, modifying 
 all his habits and opinions. Though a deluge of 
 strangers had begun to set in towards this retreat, 
 and even the spirit of the factory threatened to 
 invade it, still the dalesmen were impressed with 
 that character of steadiness, repose, and rustic 
 dignity, which has always possessed irresistible 
 charms for the poet. Their cottages, which, from 
 the numerous irregular additions made to them, 
 seemed rather to have grown than to have been 
 built, were covered over with lichens and mosses, 
 and blended insensibly into the landscape, as if 
 they were not human creations, but constituent 
 parts of its own loveliness. In this old English 
 Eden, all his schoolboy days, Wordsworth wandered 
 restlessly, drawn hither and thither by his irresistible 
 passion for nature, and receiving into his soul 
 
14 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 those remarkable photographs which were after- 
 wards to delight his countrymen. There can be 
 no doubt that the charms of this lake scenery- 
 added still more strength to the poet's peculiar 
 tendencies, and developed a conservative sentiment, 
 which, though temporarily overcome, afterwards 
 reared itself up in haughtier majesty than before. 
 The poet was naturally led to indulge much in 
 out-of-door wanderings and pastimes, such as skating, 
 of which he has left a picture unapproachable in 
 its vividness and precision. 
 
 Considering the effect of Wordsworth's subsequent 
 theories upon his style, it is remarkable how pure, 
 unaffected, and dignified it was at this time. Indeed, 
 so far as style is concerned, he never, even in the 
 vigour of manhood, excelled his juvenile productions. 
 In 1786 he wrote some verses in anticipation of 
 leaving school, which are chaste and sweet. Thus, 
 in illustration of the idea that, wherever he might 
 be, he would ever turn his look backward to his 
 native regions, he says : 
 
 Thus while the sun sinks down to rest 
 Far in the regions of the west, 
 Though to the vale no parting beam 
 Be given, not one memorial gleam, 
 A lingering light he fondly throws 
 On the dear hills where first he rose. 
 
 Among his sonnets there is one written in very 
 early youth, which is remarkable for precocious 
 maturity of diction : 
 
 Calm is all nature as a resting wheel : 
 The kine are couched upon the dewy grass ; 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 15 
 
 The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass, 
 
 Is cropping audibly his later rneal : 
 
 Dark is the ground ; a slumber seems to steal 
 
 O'er vale and mountain and the starless sky. 
 
 Now in this blank of things a harmony, 
 
 Home-felt and home-created, comes to heal 
 
 That grief for which the senses still supply 
 
 Fresh food, for only then when memory 
 
 Is hushed am I at rest. My Friends ! restrain 
 
 Those busy cares that would allay my pain ; 
 
 Oh leave me to myself, nor let me feel 
 
 The officious touch that makes me droop again ! 
 
 In the year 1789 also, two small pieces were 
 produced which in simplicity and melody he never 
 afterwards surpassed. The one is that beginning, 
 ' Glide gently, thus for ever glide/ which has been 
 always much admired ; the other is brief enough 
 for quotation. It is entitled, Lines written while 
 Sailing in a Boat at Evening : 
 
 How richly glows the water's breast 
 Before us, tinged with evening hues, 
 While, facing thus the crimson west, 
 The boat her silent course pursues ! 
 And see how dark the backward stream ! 
 A little moment past so smiling ; 
 And still perhaps with faithless gleam 
 Some other loiterers beguiling. 
 
 Such views the youthful bard allure ; 
 But heedless of the following gloom, 
 He deems their colours shall endure 
 Till peace go with him to the tomb. 
 And let him nurse his fond deceit ; 
 And what if he must die in sorrow ? 
 Who would not cherish dreams so sweet, 
 Though grief and pain may come to-morrow ? 
 
16 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 In 1787 Wordsworth went to Cambridge, but at 
 every convenient opportunity he seems to have 
 made his escape, and walked about among his 
 beloved lakes and mountains. Even at this early 
 date he had fixed on Grasrnere as his future place 
 of abode. In the Evening Walk, which he was 
 engaged in composing during this and the two 
 following years, and which consisted of a series 
 of very striking pictures of the Lake country, he 
 thus alludes to this darling object of his life : 
 
 Even now she decks for me a distant scene 
 (For dark and broad the gulf of time between), 
 Gilding that cottage with her fondest ray 
 (Sole bourne, sole wish, sole object of my way ; 
 How fair its lawns and sheltering woods appear ! 
 How sweet its streamlet murmurs in mine ear ! ) 
 Where we, my friend, to happy days shall rise, 
 Till our small share of hardly paining sighs 
 (For sighs will ever trouble human breath) 
 Creep hushed into the tranquil breast of death. 
 
 He varied these trips by a tour among the magnificent 
 mountains of Wales with Mr Jones, afterwards a 
 clergyman of the Church of England ; and in 1790 
 the two made a pedestrian journey through France 
 and Switzerland to the north of Italy. The Descrip- 
 tive Sketches arose out of this ramble. It is strikingly 
 illustrative of the effect of the first French Revolu- 
 tion on the European mind, that even the inflexible 
 intellect of Wordsworth was carried away in the 
 general whirl. Indeed he seems at this time to 
 have been subject to a subdued melancholy, or 
 even misanthropy, in looking on the ordinary ways 
 of men, and particularly of politicians. The uprising 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 17 
 
 of the French stirred his blood like 'the sound 
 of a trumpet ; ' and in common with all the young 
 and ardent spirits of the time, he looked for the 
 advent of a new and more blessed era. He seems 
 by the tone of his Sketches to have thought with 
 Kousseau, that the ' state of nature ' is the condition 
 most favourable to virtue and dignity; and with 
 Shelley, that it is the rulers of the world who ' blast 
 the human flower in its bud.' 
 
 Southey and Coleridge, no less eagerly than 
 Byron, were gazing across the Channel on the great 
 drama enacting before the eyes of an excited world ; 
 while Wordsworth, strange to say, more impetuous 
 than any of them, placed his knapsack on his back, 
 and with staff in hand, set out on his pilgrimage 
 to the promised land. All France was in a delirium 
 of enthusiasm : everywhere the rattle of arms and 
 the • flapping of the tri-coloured banner. Every 
 warlike sound was music to Wordsworth's ear as 
 he plodded along the endless avenues of elms. To 
 him it seemed that 
 
 From every cot the watchful bird 
 Crowed with ear-piercing power till then unheard. 
 
 The following prayer shows how deeply the youth- 
 ful poet had imbibed the revolutionary infec- 
 tion: 
 
 Grant that every sceptred child of clay 
 Who cries, presumptuous, ' Here the flood shall stay ! ' 
 May in its progress see thy guiding hand, 
 And cease the acknowledged purpose to withstand ; 
 Or swept in anger from the insulted shore, 
 Sink with his servile bands to rise no more. 
 B 
 
18 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 In this wild exultation of feeling he ascended among 
 the mists and cataracts of the Swiss mountains; 
 and the style and language in which he has 
 embodied his recollections are totally unlike those 
 usual to him, and sometimes remind one of flames 
 crackling and forcing upward through the narrow 
 crater of a volcano. Still, however, his exquisite 
 poetical taste enabled him to extract from his tour 
 more pleasure than is possible to the ordinary 
 pedestrian. He has recorded his experiences and 
 ideas 'of such perambulations in lines which ought 
 to be learned by rote, as the poetic manual of 
 all travellers on foot. 
 
 Thus between desultory study and perpetual 
 wandering his college time was spent. He has him- 
 self recorded, in his posthumous work the Prelude, 
 the development of his mind at Cambridge, so far 
 as it was possible to do so with accuracy, looking 
 back from a more mature period of life. In his 
 first session he seems to have given himself up with 
 all the zest of a novice to the boatings, the drivings, 
 the fetes, and the frivolities that enlivened the 
 banks of the Cam. These unusual gaieties relaxed 
 to some extent the tone of his imagination; and 
 even the delight he felt on first revisiting the scenes 
 of his boyhood scarcely reawakened the poesy within 
 him. But the old familiar objects, and the impres- 
 sive changes that had passed during his brief 
 absence over many dear friends among the mountains, 
 tended to solemnise his thoughts; and when he 
 returned to the university, it was with a deeper 
 love towards the spiritual world of books. His 
 studies, however, do not appear to have been pursued 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 19 
 
 on any rigid system. He affected, as his inclinations 
 led him, occasionally the classics, and occasionally 
 the abstract sciences ; and even in his riper years 
 he felt it difficult to determine whether this care- 
 less roving of the intellect tended more to strengthen 
 or to debilitate. 
 
 In 1793 he published his first poetical venture, 
 The Evening Walk, and Descriptive Sketches, already 
 referred to. These works contained no trace what- 
 ever of any tendency to that theory which after- 
 wards led him to adopt a style sometimes bordering 
 on the mean. On the contrary, the style was 
 remarkably dignified and forcible, the faults being 
 too much luxuriance and splendour rather than 
 meagreness and vulgarity. The matter consisted 
 merely of descriptions of scenery, intermingled with 
 a few pensive reflections, and some crude and juvenile 
 theories, if they merit so dignified a title, of man 
 and the world. 
 
 The best criticism on these pieces in the smallest 
 compass is by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. That 
 extraordinary man laid his hands on them in 1794, 
 while spending his last session at Cambridge, and 
 at once discovered the indisputable marks of an 
 original poetic genius. 'There is,' says he in his 
 Biographia, f a harshness and acerbity connected 
 and combined with words and images all aglow 
 which might recall those products of the vegetable 
 world where gorgeous blossoms rise out of a hard 
 and thorny rind or shell, within which the rich 
 fruit is elaborating. The language is not only 
 peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and con- 
 torted, as by its own impatient strength; while 
 
20 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 the novelty and struggling crowd of images, acting 
 in conjunction with the difficulties of the style, 
 demand always a greater attention than poetry, 
 at all events than descriptive poetry, has a right 
 to claim/ A few lines will exemplify the golden 
 splendour of the diction, and prove that their 
 writer did not adopt the meagre phraseology of 
 one or two of the lyrical ballads from poverty of 
 fancy : 
 
 Here half a village shines in gold arrayed, 
 Bright as the moon ; half hides itself in shade ; 
 While, from amid the darkened roofs, the spire, 
 Restlessly flashing, seems to mount like fire : 
 There, all unshaded, blazing forests throw 
 Rich golden verdure on the lake below. 
 Slow glides the sail along the illumined shore, 
 And steals into the shade the lazy oar ; 
 Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs, 
 And amorous music on the waters dies. 
 
 After leaving the university in 1791, when he 
 had taken his degree of B. A., Wordsworth, who 
 was uneasy about his future lot, planted himself 
 down in the midst of the metropolis. He had often 
 heard of it in his schoolboy days as of some city 
 paved with gold, and peopled with princes. Even 
 now he plunged amid its crowds with the eagerness 
 and delight of a child. He rushed to every sight, 
 and frequented every spectacle and every place 
 of public resort. His imagination was deeply im- 
 pressed with London ; and he found an unlimited 
 field of thought in its endless variety of character. 
 It is curious how little its wonders permanently 
 affected or modified his mind, and how few con- 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 21 
 
 tributions to his poesy appear to be drawn from 
 this era in his activity. Perhaps this may be 
 partly explained by the fact, that his whole soul 
 was now riveted on the scenes that were rapidly 
 succeeding each other on the other side of the 
 Strait — the drama of France was fast rising into 
 breathless interest. The Royalist legions were 
 mustering in masses on the far bank of the Rhine, 
 and the fate of the new-born Liberty trembled in 
 the balance. 
 
 The suspense was too great for the poet. He 
 could not breathe in England. Its atmosphere was 
 too stagnant for his wild hopes, and he hurried across 
 the strip of water that severed him from the 
 Revolution. He fixed his abode on the banks of 
 the Loire, where he resided for two successive 
 winters. During all this time he was lapped in a 
 delicious day-dream. He believed that the old world 
 was passing away, and that all things were to 
 become new. His unsuspecting faith is affecting 
 even in the mere faint description of it given by 
 himself when its ardour had passed away before the 
 stern realities of the world. He principally associ- 
 ated with some Royalist officers, and was favoured 
 with their confidences. But he only smiled at their 
 menaces and their prayers for the destruction of the 
 patriots. All Wordsworth's sympathies were with 
 the latter ; and one military man, a patriot, of whom 
 he has left a charming picture, was frequently the 
 companion of his walks. The delighted pair talked 
 in rapt language of the approaching millennium. 
 One day they met a poor half-starved and half- 
 naked girl ; the patriot pointed to the sad object, and 
 
22 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 said it was their mission to banish such spectacles. 
 Wordsworth believed it, and his heart warmed. 
 
 The old and new systems were now in the death- 
 grapple. The crisis speedily came. The Royalists 
 were driven over the frontier. The imprisonment of 
 the king and the September massacres followed. 
 Wordsworth hurried up to Paris while the blood of 
 the unhappy victims was scarcely yet dried upon the 
 streets. He had never anticipated such libations to 
 freedom. His mind was at this period wrought up 
 to a kind of half-frenzy. He listened to all the street 
 orators as well as to the orators of the Legislature. 
 He saw what kind of men were at the head of affairs, 
 and divined too truly what was to come. He felt in 
 his solitary attic as if the air of Paris was too stifling 
 for him to breathe. Yet he never once faltered in 
 his republican faith ; and he has himself solemnly 
 left it on record, that if he had had even ordinary 
 qualifications as an orator, or as a political writer, he 
 would have plunged at once into the heat of the 
 struggle as the enemy of the faction of Robespierre, 
 and probably have perished obscurely in that terrible 
 convulsion. Fortunately, it was otherwise ordained ; 
 and the poet fled from the blood-stained soil of 
 France back to his own country. He did not, how- 
 ever, abandon one jot of his creed. 
 
 The Girondins perished ; things went into utter 
 confusion ; horror followed horror, yet still Words- 
 worth, afterwards so conservative, clung with 
 undiminished fervour to the fortunes of the republic. 
 The intervention of Great Britain filled him with 
 abhorrence. He retired more deeply into his inner 
 speculations, and fell into a state of utter doubt, in 
 
William Wordsworth. 23 
 
 which the best-establishecl maxims and doctrines 
 were subjected to a merciless scrutiny. This painful 
 condition proved very prejudicial to his higher 
 poetical powers ; and it was long till the conversa- 
 tion of his sister, and communion with his beloved 
 nature, produced a renovating process of reaction 
 in his spiritual frame. He then turned himself 
 from his excited dreams to investigate the heart of 
 man, and examine what true hope it might afford 
 him of a more glorious future, and thus gradually 
 attained that firm faith in mankind, and in the pro- 
 gress of the people, to which he may be said, through 
 his posthumous publications, to give melodious utter- 
 ance from the sepulchre. This whole episode in 
 Wordsworth's inward history is worthy of attention, 
 both morally and psychologically. Coleridge's Gallo- 
 mania had subsided before 1793 ; Wordsworth's 
 lasted for some years afterwards. Indeed his mind 
 appears, if we are to trust his Prelude, to have been 
 in a continual mood of gloomy discontent with 
 established institutions : 
 
 I rejoiced, 
 Yea afterwards — truth most painful to record ! — 
 Exulted in the triumph of my soul, 
 When Englishmen by thousands were o'erthrown, 
 Left without glory on the field, or driven, 
 Brave hearts, to shameful flight. It was a grief- 
 Grief call it not, 'twas anything but that — 
 A conflict of sensations without name, 
 Of which he only, who may love the sight 
 Of a village steeple as I do, can judge, 
 When in the congregation bending all 
 To their great Father, prayers were offered up, 
 Or praises for our country's victories ; 
 And 'mid the simple worshippers, perchance 
 
24 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 I only, like an uninvited guest, 
 
 Whom no one owned, sat silent — shall I add ? 
 
 Fed on the day of vengeance yet to come. 
 
 But his somewhat scholarly distrust and dislike of 
 the current ways of the world were perhaps the very 
 influences that turned his hopes to the abnormal 
 force of the Revolution, and the spectacle of its 
 miserable results must in time have tended to con- 
 firm this distrust and dislike beyond the possibility 
 of eradication. By-and-by he emerged the constant 
 advocate of a strong government, which should 
 rigidly administer the institutions matured in a long 
 course of ages, and only suffer them to be altered 
 slowly and gradually according to the dictates of 
 experience. 
 
 It may be anticipating matters a little to say 
 how Wordsworth was delivered from that 'eternal 
 want of pence ' which vexes public men as well 
 as poets. In 1795 he received a legacy of £900 
 from Raisley Calvert, a young friend whom he had 
 attended in his last illness. 'Upon the interest 
 of the £900/ he says, '£400 being laid out in an 
 annuity, with £200 deducted from the principal, 
 and £100, a legacy to my sister, and £100 more 
 which the Lyrical Ballads brought me, my sister 
 and I contrived to live seven years, nearly eight.' 
 
 In 1794 the step was taken by which those 
 remarkable men, afterwards known in popular par- 
 lance as the Lake Poets, were brought into con- 
 tiguity. In that year Coleridge, Southey, Robert 
 Lovell, and George Burnet came down to Bristol, as 
 the most convenient port from which they could 
 embark for the wild banks of the Susquehanna. On 
 
William Wordsworth. 
 
 25 
 
 that remote river they were to found a Platonic 
 Republic, where everything was to be in common, 
 and from which vice and selfishness were to be for 
 ever excluded. These ardent and intellectual adven- 
 turers had made elaborate calculations how long it 
 
 .Robert Southby. 
 
 would take them to procure the necessaries of life 
 and to build their barns, and how they should spend 
 their leisure in what Coleridge sang as 
 
 Freedom's undivided dell, 
 Where toil and health with mellowed love shall dwell; 
 Far from folly, far from men, 
 In the rude romantic glen. 
 
 Yet, it is supposed, they knew nothing of the 
 Susquehanna more than of any other American 
 river, except that its name was musical and sonorous; 
 and far from having anything wherewith to convey 
 themselves and their movables across the Atlantic, 
 
26 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 they had to borrow five pounds to make up their 
 lodging bill. This sum was advanced them with 
 unalloyed pleasure by Mr Cottle, a bookseller in the 
 town, a benevolent and worthy man, who seems 
 almost to have been located there for no other 
 purpose than to introduce the three chief Lake Poets 
 to the world. 
 
 The bubble of the Susquehanna, or, as it was 
 called, Pantisocracy, was exploded by Southey, 
 Coleridge, and Lovell all getting into the bonds of 
 matrimony, which have a miraculous virtue in test- 
 ing the solidity of schemes of life. They married 
 three sisters of the name of Fricker. It was the 
 perpetual restlessness of Coleridge which first brought 
 him and his companions into contact with Words- 
 worth. The former wonderful man, in capabilities 
 perhaps the mightiest of that illustrious group, and 
 in his mental constitution one of the most puzzling- 
 psychological phenomena which human nature has 
 ever presented, was the originator of the Pantiso- 
 cratic proposal. He was of luxurious imagination, 
 strong emotions, various learning, and an exquisite 
 nervous susceptibility. 
 
 In the year 1795 he was making excursions through 
 the lovely and tranquil scenery of Somersetshire, 
 when he became acquainted with a most excellent 
 man, Mr Poole, resident in the quiet village of Nether 
 Stowey. On his return to Bristol, where he got 
 married, he still exhibited his usual uneasiness. 
 First he removed to his immortal rose-bound cottage 
 at Clevedon, then back to the pent-up houses of 
 RedclifF Hill, and from these again to the more 
 open situation of Kingsdown. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 27 
 
 Nothing would then satisfy him but he must set 
 up a political serial, to be called The Watchman ; and 
 his own sketches of his travelling canvass for that 
 periodical might take rank with some chapters of 
 Quixote. Take, for instance, this picture of a great 
 patriot at Birmingham, to whom he applied for his 
 magnificent patronage : He was ' a rigid Calvinist, a 
 tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall, dingy man, 
 in whom length was so predominant over breadth, 
 that he might almost have been borrowed as a 
 foundry poker ! Oh that face ! — a face «t' s><p«<r/v i 
 I have it before me at this moment. The lank, 
 black, twine-like hair, pinguinitescent, cut in a 
 straight line along the black stubble of his thin, 
 gunpowder eyebrows, that looked like a scorched 
 aftermath from a last week's shaving. His coat- 
 collar behind, in perfect unison, both of colour and 
 lustre, with the coarse yet glib cordage which I 
 suppose he called his hair, and which, with a bend 
 inward at the nape of the neck — the only approach 
 to flexure in his whole figure — slunk in behind his 
 waistcoat; while the countenance — lank, dark, very 
 hard, and with strong perpendicular furrows — gave 
 me a dim notion of some one looking at me through 
 a used gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron.' This 
 thoroughbred lover of liberty, who had proved that 
 Mr Pitt was one of the horns of the second beast in 
 the Revelation that spake as a dragon, neverthe- 
 less declined to take The Watchman ; and in short, 
 after a disastrous career, that serial died a natural 
 death. 
 
 The disappointed editor took refuge for a brief 
 season with Mr Poole at Nether Stowey, and there, 
 
28 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 for the first time, he met Wordsworth, who then 
 resided about twenty miles off, at Racedown in 
 Dorsetshire. He afterwards went on a visit, for a 
 few days, to Wordsworth's mansion. Coleridge was 
 at that time busy with a tragedy, and his host was 
 in the very heat of a similar effort. Wordsworth 
 submitted his to his guest, who in a letter to Cottle 
 pronounced it ' absolutely wonderful.' ' I speak,' said 
 Coleridge, 'with absolute sincerity, and I think 
 unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel 
 myself a little man by his side, and yet I do not 
 think myself a less man than I formerly thought 
 myself.' 
 
 Coleridge procured an introduction for his friend's 
 tragedy to Harris, the manager of Covent Garden, 
 who pledged himself without delay to decide on its 
 fate ; but as it does not appear what followed, it is 
 probable that this potentate, as usual, gave himself 
 little further trouble on the subject. Indeed it is 
 not likely that a drama by a man so stately and 
 unimpassioned as Wordsworth would be found 
 adapted to the meridian of the stage. But it is 
 curious that many great geniuses have in early 
 youth aimed at this distinction. The list includes 
 writers as far removed from each other, in the 
 character of their minds, as Plato and Beranger. 
 
 Coleridge returned for a short time to Bristol, but 
 in January 1797 he removed to Nether Stowey, 
 where he rented a small cottage. This must have 
 been a pleasant episode in the lives of the gifted 
 individuals whom it brought together in that sweet 
 village. Wordsworth, who was now twenty-seven, 
 had come with his sister to Alfoxden, which was 
 
WILLIAM WOEDS WORTH. 29 
 
 within two miles of Nether Stowey. Charles Lloyd, 
 a young man of most sensitive and graceful mind, 
 and of great poetical susceptibility, resided in family 
 with Coleridge. Charles Lamb, then in the spring- 
 time of his life, was also a frequent inmate ; and 
 often afterwards, under the cloud which lowered 
 over his noble devotedness in London, his fancy 
 wandered back to that happy valley. Why, says 
 he to Charles Lloyd, who unexpectedly looked in 
 upon him in the great Babylon — 
 
 Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out ? 
 
 What offering can the stranger bring 
 Of social scenes, homebred delights, 
 
 That him in aught compensate may 
 For Stowey's pleasant winter-nights, 
 
 For loves and friendships far away ? 
 
 The Pantisocratist, George Burnet, was also a visitor. 
 Mrs Coleridge herself had a poetical taste, and there 
 is one very graceful piece of hers written on the 
 receipt of a thimble from her kind friend Mr Cottle. 
 Just such a thimble, sings Sarah Coleridge — 
 
 Just such a one, mon cher ami 
 
 (The finger-shield of industry), 
 
 The inventive gods, I deem, to Pallas gave, 
 
 What time the vain Arachne, madly brave, 
 
 Challenged the blue-eyed virgin of the sky 
 
 A duel in embroidered work to try. 
 
 And hence the thimbled finger of grave Pallas 
 
 To the erring needle's point was more than callous. 
 
 But, ah ! the poor Arachne ! she, unarmed, 
 
 Blundering through hasty eagerness, alarmed 
 
 With all a rival's hopes, a mortal's fears, 
 
 Still missed the stitch, and stained the web with tears. 
 
 Hartley Coleridge, the aerial child who awakened 
 
30 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 the fears and sympathies of Wordsworth, was a fine 
 boy, rejoicing his parents' hearts; and the happy 
 pair had cut a road into their neighbours' orchards, 
 that they might pass to their firesides under arches 
 of blossoms, and with a speed suiting their affections. 
 Alas ! that sweet Nether Stowey. Cottle, in his old 
 age, has painted one or two pictures of it and of its 
 gifted habitants, now in their graves, that go to the 
 heart. 
 
 Take the scene with Coleridge in the jasmine 
 arbour, where the tripod table was laden with 
 delicious bread and cheese, and a mug of the true 
 brown Taunton ale. ' While the dappled sunbeams,' 
 says the old man calling up kindly memories, ' played 
 on our table through the umbrageous canopy, the 
 very birds seemed to participate in our felicities, 
 and poured forth their selectest anthems. As we 
 sat in our sylvan hall of splendour, a company of 
 the happiest mortals, the bright blue heavens, the 
 sporting insects, the balmy zephyrs, the feathered 
 choristers, the sympathy of friends, all augmented 
 the pleasurable to the highest point this side the 
 celestial. . . . While thus elevated in the universal 
 current of our feelings, Mrs Coleridge approached 
 with her fine Hartley ; we all smiled, but the father's 
 eye beamed transcendental joy. But all things have 
 an end ! Yet pleasant it is for memory to treasure 
 up in her choicest depository a few such scenes 
 (those sunny spots in existence), on which the spirit 
 may repose when the rough adverse winds shake 
 and disfigure all besides.' 
 
 Or take the more lively visit to Alfoxden on 
 Wordsworth's invitation. Away they all went from 
 
 
WILLIAM WOBDSWORTH. 31 
 
 Nether Stowey ; the poet and Dorothy, Coleridge 
 and Cottle. They were to dine on philosopher's 
 fare — a bottle of brandy, a loaf, a piece of cheese, 
 and fresh lettuces from Wordsworth's garden. The 
 first mishap was the theftuous abstraction of the 
 cheese ; and, on the back of it, Coleridge, in the very 
 act of praising the brandy as a substitute, upset the 
 bottle, and knocked it to pieces. Then all tried to 
 take off the harness from the horse. Cottle tried it, 
 then the bard of Rydal ; but in vain. Coleridge, 
 who had served his apprenticeship as Silas Comber- 
 bach in the cavalry, then twisted the poor animal's 
 neck almost to strangulation ; but was at last 
 compelled to pronounce that the horse's head must 
 have grown since the collar was put on ! It was 
 useless, said he, to try to force so huge an os 
 frontis through so narrow a collar. All had given 
 up, when lo ! the servant-girl turned the collar 
 upside down, and slipped it off in an instant, 
 to the inconceivable wonder and humiliation of the 
 poets, who proceeded to solace themselves with the 
 brown bread, the lettuces, and a jug of sparkling 
 water. Who, knowing the subsequent fates of 
 the tenants of Nether Stowey, would not love to 
 dwell on these delightful pictures of their better 
 days ? 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that the 
 tempter never entered into this Eden; but when 
 he did so, it was generally through the mischief- 
 making pranks of Coleridge, who constantly kept 
 his friends in hot water. He and Lamb had just 
 published a joint volume of poems, and Coleridge 
 could not refrain from satirising and parodying 
 
32 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 
 their offspring in the newspapers. Take this 
 epigram as a specimen : 
 
 TO THE AUTHOR OF 'THE ANCIENT MARINER.' 
 
 Your poem must eternal be — 
 
 Dear Sir, it cannot fail ; 
 For 'tis incomprehensible, 
 
 And without head or tail. 
 
 Of course nobody could suspect Coleridge of this; 
 and indeed, to his infinite amusement, a vain fellow 
 affected to hesitate about being introduced to him, 
 on the ground that he had mortally injured him 
 by the writing of this very epigram ! But Lamb 
 could not fail to observe the doings of the poet- 
 metaphysician more closely, and the result was a 
 quarrel, which induced that ' gentle creature ' to send 
 him an unnaturally bitter series of theological ques- 
 tions, such as — 'Whether the vision beatific be 
 anything more or less than a perpetual represent- 
 ment, to each individual angel, of his own present 
 attainments and future capabilities, somehow in the 
 manner of mortal looking-glasses, reflecting a per- 
 petual complacency and self-satisfaction ? ' 
 
 Troubles from without added to this confusion 
 within. The village wiseacres, to whom the habits 
 of Wordsworth and his eccentric friend were totally 
 incomprehensible, had decided that they were terrible 
 scoundrels, who required to be looked after. One 
 sage had seen Wordsworth look strangely at the 
 moon; another had overheard him mutter in some 
 unintelligible and outlandish brogue. Some thought 
 him a conjurer ; some a smuggler, from his per- 
 petually haunting the sea-beach ; some asserted that 
 he kept a snug private still in his cellar, as they 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 33 
 
 knew by their noses at a hundred yards' distance; 
 while others were convinced that he was 'surely a 
 desperate French Jacobin, for he was so silent and 
 dark that nobody ever heard him say one word 
 about politics.' 
 
 While the saturnine and stately Wordsworth was 
 thus slanderously assailed, his fluent and witty 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
 
 associate could not expect to escape. One clay, 
 accordingly, while on a pedestrian excursion, Cole- 
 ridge met a woman who, not knowing who he 
 was, abused him to himself in unmeasured Billings- 
 gate for a whole hour, as a vile Jacobin villain, 
 who had misled George Burnet of her parish. 'I 
 listened,' wrote the poet to a friend, 'very par- 
 ticularly, appearing to approve all she said, exclaim- 
 ing, "Dear me!" two or three times; and, in fine, 
 
 c 
 
34 LITERAKY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 so completely won her heart by my civilities, that I 
 had not courage enough to undeceive her.' This is 
 all very ludicrous and amusing now ; but at the 
 time its effect was such, that the person who had 
 the letting of Alfoxden House refused point-blank 
 to relet it to Wordsworth. This was of course a 
 great vexation to Poole and Coleridge, who set 
 about trying to procure another house in the 
 vicinity. 
 
 But the two bards were not a subject of jealousy 
 and suspicion to the ignorant peasantry alone. A 
 country gentleman of the locality became so alarmed, 
 that he called in the aid of that tremendous 
 abstraction — the state ; and a spy was sent down 
 from headquarters, and lodged in mysterious privacy 
 in Nether Stowey inn. The poets could never stir 
 out but this gentleman was at their heels, and they 
 scarcely ever had an out-of-door conversation which 
 he did not overhear. He used to hide behind a 
 bank at the seaside, which was a favourite seat of 
 theirs. At that time they used to talk a great 
 deal of Spinoza ; and as their confidential attendant 
 had a notable Bardolph nose, he at first took it 
 into his head that they were making light of his 
 importance by nicknaming him 'Spy Nosy;' but 
 was soon convinced that that was the name of a 
 man 'who had made a book, and lived long ago.' 
 On one occasion Bardolph assumed the character of 
 a Jacobin, to draw Coleridge out; but such was 
 the bard's indignant exposure of the Revolutionists, 
 that even the spy felt ashamed that he had put 
 Jacobinism on. Poor Coleridge was so unsuspicious, 
 that he felt happy he had been the means of 
 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 35 
 
 shaking the convictions of this awful partisan, and 
 doing the unhappy man some good. 
 
 At last the spy reported favourably, to the great 
 disgust of the rural magnate who had engaged his 
 services, and who now tried to elicit fresh grounds 
 of suspicion from the village innkeeper. But that 
 worthy was obstinate in his belief that it was 
 totally impossible for Coleridge to harangue the 
 inhabitants, as he talked 'real Hebrew-Greek,' 
 which their limited intellects could not understand. 
 This, however, only exasperated his inquisitor, who 
 demanded whether Coleridge had not been seen roving 
 about, taking charts and maps of the district. The 
 poor innkeeper replied, that though he did not 
 wish to say any ill of anybody, yet he must 
 confess he had heard that Coleridge was a poet, 
 and intended to put Quantock into print. Thus 
 the friends escaped this peril, which was then a 
 formidable one. Coleridge was at the time wander- 
 ing about among the romantic coombes of the 
 Quantock Hills, making studies for a poem on the 
 plan afterwards followed out by Wordsworth in 
 his Sonnets to the Duddon; and in the heat of 
 the moment he resolved to dedicate it to Govern- 
 ment, as containing the traitorous plans which he 
 was to submit to the French, in order to facilitate 
 their schemes of invasion. 'And these, too,' says 
 he, ' for a tract of coast that from Clevedon to 
 Minehead scarcely permits the approach of a fishing- 
 boat.' 
 
 These troubles and vexations did not, however, 
 prevent Wordsworth from prosecuting his poetical 
 undertakings. His industry must have been incess- 
 
36 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 
 ant. At this time Peter Bell was composed, with 
 many smaller pieces. But it is curious that he 
 appears to have been principally concerned about his 
 tragedy. Coleridge and he had now formed a plan 
 for making a tour to Germany in company, and 
 it was necessary to raise funds. For this purpose 
 they resolved on making a sacrifice of their darling 
 tragedies, and the ever-serviceable Cottle was applied 
 to. Accordingly, in 1798, Coleridge made a formal 
 offer to that benevolent bookseller of these works, 
 and also of a volume of his friend's pieces, to con- 
 tain Salisbury Plain, Tale of a Woman, a few 
 minor poems and notes. The tragedies extended, 
 along with the stage directions, to six thousand 
 lines, and the price was to be paid down within 
 four months. Cottle offered thirty guineas for 
 each of them, which, however, was not accepted 
 at the time, owing to the hope entertained by the 
 authors that they might yet succeed in getting 
 them brought upon the stage. Wordsworth asked 
 thirty guineas for the volume of poems ; but no 
 arrangement was concluded in respect to it. 
 
 In the meantime the Lyrical Ballads were fast 
 maturing. The plan had been concocted jointly 
 by the two poets, and a distinct part in its execu- 
 tion had been assigned to each. It had originated 
 in the idea that a series of poems might be com- 
 posed of two sorts — the one, in which the incidents 
 and agents were to be in part supernatural ; the 
 other, in which the subjects were to be chosen from 
 ordinary life. Accordingly, the supernatural and 
 romantic department was assigned to Coleridge, 
 while Wordsworth was 'to give the charm of 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWOETH. 37 
 
 novelty to things of every day,' and to 'awaken 
 the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, 
 and direct it to the loveliness and the wonders 
 of the world before us.' This noble task was not 
 so easy then as it is now. A continuous series of 
 poets had concentrated the world's admiration on 
 extravagant and melodramatic characters and plots, 
 and had substituted for the truthfulness of nature 
 and the simplicity of diction requisite for its ex- 
 pression, images drawn from the commonplaces of 
 the poetical treasury, and words and phrases which 
 made up for their inapplicability by a fine sonorous- 
 ness and by pleasant associations. Cowper and 
 Burns had done much to shake this artificial and 
 ruinous system, but in 1798 it was still rampant 
 in literature. 
 
 Wordsworth, however, from his haughty and 
 uncordial nature, did not proceed on his delicate 
 duty with tact, but sometimes, instead of pruning 
 the poetic tree, stripped it at once of fruit, flowers, 
 and leaves. For in his anxiety to recommend a 
 dignified simplicity of style and the virtues of 
 lowly life, he occasionally fell into poverty of 
 diction and phrases polluted by mean associations, 
 and delivered philosophic lectures and refined senti- 
 ments through characters most unlikely to entertain 
 them. These faults were, however, merely excep- 
 tional, and would have escaped general censure but 
 for an imprudence to be afterwards noticed. Not- 
 withstanding the rich luxuriance of Coleridge's own 
 style, it is not unlikely that he had a considerable 
 share in carrying his friend to these extremes. 
 While at Christ's Hospital he had been rigidly 
 
38 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 tutored by old Bowyer to cut away all superfluous 
 words, and to reject pompous phrases and metaphors. 
 He recalls that veteran's commands with delightful 
 raciness. 'Lute, harp, and lyre,' says he, 'Muse, 
 Muses, and inspirations, Pegasus, Parnassus, and 
 Hippocrene, were all an abomination to him. In 
 fancy I can almost hear him now exclaiming : 
 " Harp ? harp ? lyre ? Pen and ink, boy, you mean ! 
 Muse, boy; Muse? Your nurse's daughter, you 
 mean ! Pierian spring ? Oh ay ; the cloister pump, 
 I suppose ! " ' 
 
 At his first interview with Wordsworth, Cottle 
 had heard some of the lyrical poems read, and had 
 earnestly advised their publication, offering for them 
 the same sum he had given to Coleridge and 
 Southey for their works, and stating flatteringly that 
 no provincial bookseller might ever again have the 
 honour of ushering such a trio to renown. Words- 
 worth, however, strongly objected to publication; 
 but in April 1798 the poet sent for Cottle to hear 
 them recited 'under the old trees in the park.' 
 Coleridge despatched a confirmatory invitation. ' We 
 will procure a horse,' wrote persuasive Samuel 
 Taylor, ' easy as thy own soul, and we will go on 
 a roam to Lynton and Lynmouth, which, if thou 
 comest in May, will be in all their pride of woods 
 and waterfalls, not to speak of its august cliffs, 
 and the green ocean, and the vast Valley of Stones, 
 all which live disdainful of the seasons, or accept 
 new honours only from the winter's snow.' The 
 three friends did go on their romantic excursion, 
 saw sweet Lynton and Lynmouth, and arranged the 
 publication of the first volume of the Lyrical 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 39 
 
 Ballads. Accordingly it appeared in the summer 
 of that year, and was chiefly composed of Words- 
 worth's pieces, but contained the Ancient Mariner, 
 and other poems, by Coleridge. 
 
 In September, Wordsworth and his sister, along 
 with Coleridge, set off for the Continent. Their 
 different temperaments displayed themselves very 
 remarkably on the voyage. The bard of Rydal 
 seems to have kept very quiet; but his mercurial 
 companion, after indulging in most questionable 
 potations with a motley group of eccentric foreigners, 
 got up and danced with them a succession of 
 dances, which, he says, might very appropriately 
 have been termed reels. Where Wordsworth was 
 may be conjectured from Coleridge's remark, that 
 those ' who lay below in all the agonies of sea- 
 sickness must have found our Bacchanalian merri- 
 ment 
 
 A tune 
 Harsh and of dissonant mood from their complaint.' 
 
 One of the party was a Dane, a vain and disgust- 
 ing coxcomb, whose conversation with Coleridge, 
 whom he first took for a 'Doctor Teology,' and 
 then for ' un philosophe,' actually outburlesqued 
 burlesque. The astounded bard for the first time 
 in his life took notes of a dialogue, of which a 
 single sample is enough: 
 
 The Dane. Yat imagination ! vat language ! vat 
 vast science ! vat eyes ! vat a milkwhite forehead ! 
 Vy, you 're a got ! 
 
 Answer. You do me too much honour, sir. 
 
 The Dane. Oh me, if you should tink I is flatter- 
 ing you ! No, no, no. I haf ten tousand a year — 
 
40 LITEEAKY CELEBEITIES. 
 
 yes, ten tousand a year — yes, ten tousand pound 
 a year ! Veil, and vat is dhat ? Vy, a mere trifle ! 
 I 'ouldn't gif my sincere heart for ten times dhe 
 money ! Yes, you 're a got ! — I a mere man ! 
 But, my dear friend, dhink of me as a man ! Is — 
 is — I mean to ask you now, my dear friend — is 
 I not very eloquent ? Is I not speak English very 
 fine? 
 
 And so his Daneship, in this extraordinary style, 
 went on fishing for compliments, and asking whether 
 he did not speak just like Plato, and Cato, and 
 Socrates, till he lost all opinion of Coleridge on 
 finding that he was a Christian. The discarded 
 poet then wrapped himself in his greatcoat, and 
 looked at the water, covered with foam and stars 
 of flame, while every now and then detachments 
 of it 'darted off from the vessel's side, each with 
 its own small constellation, over the sea, and scoured 
 out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness.' 
 By-and-by he lay down, and 'looking up at two 
 or three stars, which oscillated with the motion of 
 the sails, fell asleep.' 
 
 They landed at Hamburg, on the Elbe Stairs, 
 at the Boom-House. Wordsworth, with a French 
 emigrant, whose acquaintance he had cultivated 
 at sea, went in search of an hotel, and put up at 
 Die Wilde MaYi, while the other wild man, Samuel 
 Taylor Coleridge, strolled about, amusing himself 
 with looking at the 'Dutch women, with large 
 umbrella hats shooting out half a yard before them, 
 and a prodigal plumpness of petticoat behind,' and 
 many similar striking and unusual spectacles. 
 
 In Hamburg they were introduced to the brother 
 
 
William wordswohth. 41 
 
 of the poet Klopstoek, and to Professor Ebeling, 
 a lively and intelligent man, but so deaf that they 
 had to 'drop all their pearls into a huge ear- 
 trumpet.' At Mr Klopstock's they saw a bust of 
 the poet, whom they afterwards visited. It had 
 a solemn and heavy greatness in the countenance 
 which corresponded with the notions entertained 
 by Coleridge of his style and genius, and which 
 were afterwards discovered not to exist in the 
 prototype himself. Coleridge, whose chief object in 
 coming to Germany was to become acquainted with 
 the German language and literature, left Words- 
 worth in Hamburg, and went to Hatzeburg, where 
 he boarded in the pastor's house. 
 
 He returned, however, for a few days, to take 
 final leave of his friends, and they paid a visit 
 to Klopstoek together. His house was one of a 
 row of what appeared small summer-houses, with 
 four or five rows of young meagre elms in front, 
 and beyond these a green, bounded by a dead flat. 
 The bard's physiognomy disappointed them as much 
 as his domicile. Coleridge recognised in it no like- 
 ness to the bust, and no traces either of sublimity 
 or enthusiasm. Klopstoek could only speak French 
 and German, and Coleridge only English and Latin, 
 so that Wordsworth, who was accomplished in 
 French, acted as interpreter. 
 
 The conversation with Klopstoek turned entirely 
 upon English and German literature, and in the 
 course of it Wordsworth gave ample proofs of his 
 great taste, industry, and information, and even 
 showed that he was better acquainted with the 
 highest German writers than the author of the 
 
42 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Messiah himself. On his informing the latter that 
 Coleridge intended to translate some of his odes, 
 the old man said to Coleridge : ' I wish you would 
 render into English some select passages of the 
 Messiah, and revenge me of your countrymen, 
 ' This ' says Coleridge, ' was the liveliest thing he 
 produced in the whole conversation/ That genius 
 was, however, deeply moved, but could not help 
 being disgusted with the venerable bard's snow- 
 white periwig, which felt to his eye what Mr Virgil 
 would have been to his ear. After this Coleridge 
 left Hamburg, and resided four months in Katzeburg 
 and five in Gottingen. The Wordsworths went 
 to Goslar, where they stayed for six months. 
 
 Wordsworth had two subsequent interviews with 
 Klopstock, and dined with him. He kept notes 
 of these conversations, some of which are given 
 in Satyrane's Letters, in the second volume of the 
 Biographia Literaria. One or two incidents strongly 
 illustrate Wordsworth's peculiar character and 
 poetical taste. He complained, for example, of 
 Lessing making the interest of the Oberon turn 
 upon mere appetite. 'Well, but,' said Klopstock, 
 'you see that such poems please everybody/ He 
 immediately replied, that 'it was the province of 
 a great poet to raise people up to his own level — 
 not to descend to theirs.' Klopstock afterwards 
 found fault with the Fool in Lear, when Wordsworth 
 observed that 'he gave a terrible wildness to the 
 distress ' — a remark which evinced a deep apprecia- 
 tion of that awful drama Wordsworth subsequently 
 made a short tour, and visited Coleridge at Gottingen 
 on his return. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 43 
 
 During their absence their joint venture had fared 
 ill. Some congenial spirits had indeed marked it 
 with prophetic eye. John Wilson, then in the hey- 
 day of his life, noted the advent of a great poet, and 
 it seemed to him as 'if a new sun had risen on 
 mid-day.' Hannah More also used to express herself 
 strongly on the subject, and made Cottle read over 
 the Lyrical Ballads to her at her mansion of 
 Barleywood. She was much delighted with the 
 universally decried Harry Gill; and when Cottle 
 came to the words, ' Oh may he never more be 
 warm ! ' she held up her hands in smiling horror. 
 But the reviews were very severe ; and though 
 the mighty organs of criticism had not yet arisen, 
 and their formidable artillery still slept in the 
 arsenal of the future, the volume was almost dead- 
 born. Mr Arch, a London bookseller, to whom 
 the first edition had been sold, made nothing of 
 it. 
 
 On Coleridge's return to Bristol, he and Cottle 
 went on a visit to Wordsworth, then in the north. 
 At this interview the Ballads, being a sore subject, 
 were only once alluded to by the chief party 
 interested, and that merely to account for their 
 failure, which he attributed partly to the reviews, 
 and partly to the unintelligibility of the Ancient 
 Mariner ! On his return Cottle went to London, 
 and sold the copyright of the Ballads to Longman 
 and Rees, who on a subsequent occasion told 
 him that the valuator had estimated it at nothing, 
 and at his request gave it back to him. Cottle 
 then presented it to Wordsworth, who thus reaped 
 all the profits of this part of his works. 
 
44 LITERACY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Probably this is the fittest place to notice the 
 few love poems of Wordsworth, as most of them 
 bear date in 1799. These refer to a girl whom 
 he denominates Lucy, and speaks of as dead; but 
 whether she was a real or an imaginary character 
 does not appear, for he has given us no key what- 
 ever to the secret. There are few writers who have 
 depicted female character in all its lovable features 
 more graphically and delicately than Wordsworth, 
 or have more charmingly given utterance to the 
 domestic and family affections. He himself took 
 the stockdove as his emblem. Nay, in one or two 
 pieces he even describes with highly polished taste, 
 and in rich strains of poetry, the sufferings and 
 the woes of lovers. But even in the most ex- 
 quisite passages of Vaudracour and Julia, he 
 always appears to describe the passion of love from 
 without, and never to penetrate it from within 
 itself. 
 
 Indeed he was without strong passions, except 
 his single passion for external nature. Accordingly, 
 not his power only, but even his taste, abandons 
 him in his attempts to body forth the feeling of 
 love. Thus in one fine lyric, expressly written to 
 commemorate a 'strange fit of passion,' he gives 
 some exquisite pictures of the effects of the moon's 
 apparent motions on a dreamy mind equal to 
 anything in Christabel. He is riding towards 
 Lucy's cot : 
 
 My horse moved on ; hoof after hoof 
 
 He raised, and never stopped, 
 When down behind the cottage roof 
 
 At once the bright moon dropped. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 45 
 
 But just as he has wrought up the reader to expect 
 a fine development of the superstitious feeling 
 pointed at, he suddenly strikes upon the rock 
 ahead of love, and goes sheer down a thousand 
 fathoms : 
 
 What fond and wayward thoughts will slide 
 
 Into a lover's head ! 
 ' Oh mercy ! ' to myself I cried — 
 
 ' If Lucy should be dead ! ' 
 
 Another lyric to Lucy he closes in this way : 
 
 Few could know 
 When Lucy ceased to be ; 
 But she is in her grave ; and oh, 
 The difference to me ! 
 
 And in another .he sings of his dead Lucy as 
 if she had been a fossil in some sepulchral mine : 
 
 No motion has she now, no force ; 
 
 She neither hears nor sees ; 
 Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, 
 
 With rocks, and stones, and trees. 
 
 Indeed where his love verses are most graceful, 
 and even faultlessly beautiful, the rhythm, the 
 cadence, the dying fall, the tremulous tenderness— 
 in short, the spirit and divinity of the passion- 
 are totally wanting. Thus the fine poem, "Tis 
 said that some have died for love,' which in its 
 music and style is perfect, yet seems a succession 
 of conceits, like those of the Italian sonneteers, 
 rather than the utterance of passion; and this 
 becomes the more manifest on comparing it with 
 
46 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 the effusions of great and emotive minds. Thus 
 the verse : 
 
 Thou thrush ! that singest loud— and loud, and free, 
 
 Into yon row of willows flit, 
 
 Upon that alder sit, 
 
 Or sing another song, or choose another tree ! 
 
 is in itself undoubtedly a fine one, but contains not 
 a trace of that inexpressible plaintiveness which 
 seems to breathe even more from the rhythm than 
 the words of the similar piece in Burns : 
 
 Oh stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay ! 
 
 which ends : 
 
 For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair, 
 Or my poor heart is broken. 
 
 And of all modern poets, Wordsworth is the least 
 successful in this style. Thus his ode to the lark : 
 
 Up with me — up with me into the clouds — 
 
 is by no means equal to Shelley's fine lyric to the 
 same bird : 
 
 Like a cloud of fire 
 
 The blue deep thou wingest — 
 
 And singing ever soarest, 
 And soaring ever singest. 
 
 Nor can it stand comparison with Keats's verses 
 to the nightingale, in which he longs with that 
 melodist 
 
 To fade away into the forest dim. 
 
 In 1800 we find that Wordsworth had attracted 
 Coleridge down to the Lake Country. The latter 
 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 47 
 
 arrived in Keswick, where he resided for so many 
 years, in July, and so fascinated his landlord, that 
 he at first refused to take any rent, and at last 
 consented to accept about half what he would 
 have got from others. Wordsworth lived twelve 
 miles off; and close at hand was the eccentric 
 Guilfred Lawson — a country knight, who kept 
 wild beasts as playthings, to whom Coleridge in 
 a letter laughingly alludes, mentioning particularly 
 an epistle which that magnate received, ending in 
 a postscript of two lines, coolly asking whether 
 the writer might forward him a buffalo and a 
 rhinoceros. Here Coleridge agreed to supply Words- 
 worth with a poem for the second volume of the 
 Lyrical Ballads, to be called Ghristabel ; but not- 
 withstanding solitary walks on the misty mountain- 
 tops, his brain appeared exhausted by Wallenstein. 
 
 The Lyrical Ballads were therefore published 
 without the Ghristabel; and this time they excited 
 even more intense hostility than at first. This was 
 not owing entirely to the causes formerly mentioned, 
 and inherent in the original plan of the work, but 
 more to a preface containing certain canons of poetry 
 which he laid down as the main articles of his 
 poetical creed. The substance of these may be 
 expressed in two or three propositions : — First, he 
 purposely chose his incidents and situations from 
 low and rustic life, because in it our elementary 
 feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, 
 and consequently may be more accurately con- 
 templated and more forcibly communicated; and 
 in it also the passions of men are incorporated with 
 the beautiful and lasting forms of nature. Second, 
 
48 LITERAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 he preferred the language of low and rustic life 
 (purified from what appear to be its real defects, 
 from all lasting and rational causes of disgust), 
 because in that condition men communicate hourly 
 with the best objects from which the best part 
 of language is derived, and convey their notions 
 in simple and unelaborated expressions. And third, 
 he asserted that the language of poetry is in 
 noway different, except in respect to metre, from 
 that of good prose. 
 
 It is probable that Wordsworth did not propound 
 them in the unlimited sense in which they were 
 interpreted by his critics ; and in a subsequent 
 edition the preface in which they were contained 
 was removed to a subordinate position. But there 
 can be no doubt that this theory induced him to 
 be needlessly prolix and tedious on feelings and 
 incidents without poetical interest, and occasionally 
 to use mean phrases, and language polluted by un- 
 dignified, or even disagreeable associations. These 
 were indeed rare and exceptional cases, for his own 
 naturally stately and dignified genius protected him 
 from frequent transgressions. But though a hun- 
 dred lines deleted might have made all right, the 
 public, who felt outraged by his critical defiance, 
 took these hundred lines as illustrating the pre- 
 dominant character of two volumes of very beauti- 
 ful and various poetry. The critics rose en masse 
 against him. Jeffrey's first assault was in 1802, 
 in a critique on Southey's Thaldba, and was directed 
 against the Lakers as a school. It is amusing to 
 observe his then idea of their characteristics. He 
 charges them in a body with the antisocial prin- 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 49 
 
 ciples of Rousseau, and endows them with the 
 simplicity and energy of Schiller and Kotzebue, 
 the homeliness and harshness of Cowper, the 
 innocence of Ambrose Phillips, and the quaintness 
 of Quarles and Dr Donne. 
 
 The storm continued year by year to increase; 
 and the charges multiplied so ludicrously fast, that 
 Southey in his Doctor thus satirised them : ' The 
 poet Southey is said to carry shaving to its ne plus 
 ultra of independency, for he shaves sans looking- 
 glass, sans shaving-brush, sans soap or substitute 
 for soap, sans hot water, sans cold water, sans 
 everything except a razor. . . . But on reflection 
 I am not certain whether it is of the poet Southey 
 that this is said, or of the poet Wordsworth. I 
 may easily have confused one with the other in 
 my recollections, just as what was said of Romulus 
 might have been repeated of Remus while they 
 were both living and flourishing together. . . . 
 Indeed we should never repeat what is said of 
 public characters without qualifying it as a common 
 report or magazine authority. It is very possible 
 that the Lake poets may both of them shave after 
 the manner of other men.' 
 
 With all the defects before mentioned, it cannot 
 now be disputed that the prevailing features of the 
 Lyrical Ballads were aptness and simplicity, and 
 occasionally dignity and richness of diction — a power 
 of picturing objects and landscapes with much pre- 
 cision of outline — tenderness and delicacy of feeling 
 — and a tendency to direct the eye to all that is 
 really beautiful and elevating in the ordinary inci- 
 dents of common life : a tendency at times leading 
 
 D 
 
50 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 to portraitures purely ideal. The Pet Lamb, and 
 We are Seven, are well-known examples. The 
 following is a fine picture of the dawning from 
 the loudly decried Idiot Boy : 
 
 By this the stars were almost gone — 
 The moon was setting on the hill, 
 So pale you scarcely looked at her ; 
 The little birds began to stir, 
 Though yet their tongues were still. 
 
 And how gorgeous are some of the verses of Ruth : 
 
 He told of the magnolia, spread 
 High as a cloud, high overhead ! 
 
 The cypress and her spire ; 
 Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam 
 Cover a hundred leagues, and seem 
 
 To set the hills on fire. 
 
 The youth of green savannahs spake, 
 And many an endless, endless lake, 
 
 With all its fairy crowds 
 Of islands, that together lie 
 As quietly as spots of sky 
 
 Among the evening clouds. 
 
 Of his feminine tenderness of feeling, the fine pas- 
 toral of Michael is an example. Space forbids all 
 but one brief quotation, but few will be able to 
 read the poem itself without the relief of tears : 
 
 Thus living on through such a length of years 
 The shepherd, if he loved himself, must needs 
 Have loved his helpmate ; but to Michael's heart 
 This son of his old age was yet more dear — 
 Less from instinctive tenderness, the same 
 Fond spirit that blindly works in the blood of all, 
 Than that a child, more than all other gifts 
 That earth can offer to declining man, 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 51 
 
 Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts 
 And stirrings of inquietude, when they, 
 By tendency of nature, needs must fail. 
 
 But indeed, while blamed for his mean diction, he 
 had already commenced the composition of those 
 Sonnets, not frequently rivalled in the English 
 language in purity, precision, and dignity — qualities 
 which find fit representation in this dedication : 
 
 Happy the feeling from the bosom thrown 
 
 In perfect shape (whose beauty Time shall spare 
 
 Though a breath made it) like a bubble blown 
 
 For summer pastime into wanton air : 
 
 Happy the thought best likened to a stone 
 
 Of the sea-beach, when polished with nice care 
 
 Veins it discovers exquisite and rare, 
 
 Which for the loss of that moist gleam atone 
 
 That tempted first to gather it. That here, 
 
 Oh chief of friends ! such feelings I present 
 
 To thy regard, with thoughts so fortunate, 
 
 Were a vain notion ; but the hope is dear, 
 
 That thou, if not with partial joy elate, 
 
 Wilt smile upon this gift with more than mild content. 
 
 Wordsworth was not latterly inaccessible to con- 
 viction in regard to the phraseology of some parts 
 of his Ballads, and altered it, sometimes for the 
 worse. Thus, in the Leech-Gatherer, the lines : 
 
 He answered me with pleasure and surprise, 
 
 And there was while he spoke a fire about his eyes, 
 
 has been altered into 
 
 Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise 
 
 Broke from the sable orbs of his yet vivid eyes. 
 
 Indeed his defects were all the more remarkable, 
 that he was all along fastidiously studious of his 
 
52 LITERAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 words, and his criticisms upon some of his own 
 lines and phrases are very striking. Thus in his 
 lines in the Ode to the Cuckoo : 
 
 Shall I call thee bird — 
 Or but a wandering Voice ? 
 
 he remarks : ' This concise interrogation charac- 
 terises the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the 
 cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a 
 corporeal existence ; the imagination being tempted 
 to this exertion of her power by a consciousness in 
 the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually 
 heard throughout the season of spring, but seldom 
 becomes an object of sight.' It was by this fine 
 combination of critical acumen, great industry, and 
 perpetual self-examination, united to a cool and 
 stately flow of temper, that Wordsworth produced 
 those splendid series of sonnets which — whatever 
 contemporary criticism may have said — now take 
 rank next to those of Milton and Shakspeare. 
 
 In 1802 Wordsworth received the sum of £8500 
 from Lord Lonsdale, being the principal and interest 
 of a sum of £5000, lent by his father to his 
 predecessor, and which he had always refused to 
 pay. He bade a brief adieu to his beautiful cottage 
 at Grasmere in some delightful verses, which did 
 not forget even the primroses on the rocks, and set 
 off to bring home one who was to share henceforth 
 in all his pleasures and attachments. This was his 
 cousin, Miss Mary Hutchinson of Penrith, to whom 
 he now united himself in marriage. In August he 
 made a very short trip to France, returning in 
 September. By this time he had imbibed a rooted 
 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 53 
 
 hatred of the turn which events had taken in that 
 country, and particularly of its tyrannical inter- 
 ference with the liberties of other nations. The 
 day he spent in Calais saw Bonaparte Consul for 
 life, and wrung from the poet one or two bitter but 
 beautiful sonnets, contrasting the pretentious pomp 
 of that occasion with the wild delirium of exulta- 
 tion which met him at every step as he plodded 
 along, a younger man, in the joyous July of 1790. 
 It was with undisguised emotion he once more 
 recognised Old England in 
 
 The cock that crows, the smoke that curls, that sound 
 Of bells : those boys who in yon meadow-ground 
 In white-sleeved shirts are playing ; and the roar 
 Of the waves breaking on the chalky shore. 
 
 From that day his anti-Gallican fervour increased 
 continually. Burying himself in the peaceful soli- 
 tudes of Grasmere, he watched with increasing 
 indignation the march of the Corsican towards 
 empire, and launched sonnet after sonnet at each 
 successive step of his triumph, till he rose to a 
 climax of poetic wrath ; which passed into a mood 
 of thanksgiving on the flight from Russia and the 
 rout at Waterloo. His ode on the last occasion 
 has a dithyrambic audacity akin to the wildest 
 rhapsodies of Pindar : 
 
 We laud 
 
 And magnify thy name, Almighty God ! 
 
 But man is thy most awful instrument 
 In working out a pure intent ; 
 
 Thou cloth'st the wicked in their dazzling mail, 
 
 And for thy righteous purpose they prevail. 
 
 In 1803, after the birth of his first child, the 
 
54 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 poet paid a visit to Scotland, and on this occasion 
 visited the grave of Burns, the Braes of Kirtle, 
 Loch Lomond, Loch Awe, Loch Katrine, and many 
 other spots hallowed either by their own beauty or 
 by traditional associations, wherever he wandered 
 marking his track with song. His sister Dorothy, 
 who accompanied him, kept a very interesting 
 diary, which, as already mentioned, saw the light in 
 1874, under the editorship of Professor J. C. Shairp. 
 
 On their return they called on Sir Walter Scott, 
 to whom Wordsworth had been already spoken of 
 by mutual friends; and the party went together 
 to Roslin, and all the interesting localities of 
 that district. Wordsworth was delighted with Sir 
 Walter's manly nature, and with his recitations of 
 his Last Minstrel, and everywhere found his name 
 an 'open sesame.' At Melrose the landlady would 
 on no account listen to Wordsworth's putting up in 
 Scott's bedroom till she heard what the 'sherra' 
 himself had to say. At this time the circuit court 
 was holding at Jedburgh, and the minstrel was 
 anxious that his friends should not enter the 
 presence of justice, and catch him in his horrible 
 official costume. But they, nevertheless, managed 
 to get a glimpse of him in the procession, marching 
 along in a cocked-hat and sword to the music of 
 a solitary cracked trumpet. This visit to the 
 Great Magician was long remembered with un- 
 mingled pleasure. 
 
 On Wordsworth's return to Grasmere, which he 
 heralded, as usual, by a very beautiful sonnet, he 
 went to Keswick, to visit Coleridge, and there 
 became acquainted with Southey, who had just 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 55 
 
 arrived in the Lake Country from Bristol. In 
 October, Hazlitt came down on a visit, and painted 
 a portrait of Wordsworth, who was his beau ideal 
 of physiognomical perfection, in so hideous a style, 
 that a wag wrote underneath : ' At the gallows, 
 deeply affected by his deserved fate, but determined 
 to die like a man!' There was a dignified and 
 stately flow of enjoyment in the life which these 
 great poets now led in their romantic retreat, but 
 broken, alas ! by the sad incidents of humanity. 
 Charles Lamb, who came among them, was greatly 
 changed from the frolicsome youth of Nether 
 Stowey; and Coleridge was already visited with 
 those terrible nervous disorders which formed an 
 apology for his ruinous vice of opium-eating. On 
 one occasion, when he stayed a month at Grasmere, 
 Mrs and Miss Wordsworth used to sit up with him 
 all night, and waken him at the slightest symptom 
 of the approach of his paroxysmal dreams. His 
 screams were so heart-rending, that these ladies often 
 shed tears for him even in their sleep. 
 
 Wordsworth seems now to have retreated wholly 
 into the sanctuary of family duties and affections, 
 and to have retired from the every-day bustle of 
 the social and political world, in the pride of a 
 philosophy which was certainly not the loftiest nor 
 the widest, though perhaps the best fitted to his 
 contemplative nature. Indeed even Southey saw 
 him but rarely; and Scott could not manage to 
 draw an epistle out of him. In 1805, however, 
 Scott visited Grasmere in person, and ascended 
 with the solitary to the top of Helvellyn. In 
 the same year the latter met with a sore affliction, 
 
56 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 in the loss of his brother in the Abergavenny East 
 Indiaman. 
 
 In 1806 Wordsworth read The Wagoner in manu- 
 script to Charles Lamb. This airy and truly- 
 humorous poem commemorates a misadventure 
 which induced Coleridge's landlord to turn one of 
 his wagoners out of his service. This fellow was 
 a genuine original, and years after his mishap, on 
 meeting his immortaliser, he referred to his successor 
 very contemptuously as 'a man of no ideas' who 
 would never do. 
 
 In 1807 Jeffrey launched his first special review 
 at Wordsworth. In the same year, in the Monthly 
 Literary Recreations, Byron inserted a very favour- 
 able critique, particularly noting the poet's sim- 
 plicity and contempt for inane and tinsel phrase- 
 ology. No doubt in his letter to Bowles he spoke 
 more bitterly, when he hinted that the Roman toga 
 was more poetical than the tattooed skin of a New 
 Zealander, even though sung by William Words- 
 worth ; but he seems never to have greatly dis- 
 liked him, though Hogg's imprudence in showing 
 the Lake poets a letter from his lordship, speaking 
 lightly of their fishing and angling, made him fancy 
 that they detested him. Moore and Shelley, how- 
 ever, were always urging Wordsworth's merits on 
 him ; and he certainly repented of his attack in the 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, and drew his 
 pen through it in his own copy. Byron often 
 visited Sir George Beaumont, to whom Words- 
 worth was much attached. Sir George supplied 
 illustrations for the edition of the latter's poems 
 in 1815. Wordsworth was a great admirer of 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 57 
 
 the art of the painter, and his pieces on it are 
 worthy of a place side by side with Keats's Lines 
 on a Grecian Urn. He addressed warm poetical 
 tributes of praise to the illustrious and unhappy 
 Haydon, to Sir George himself, and to Gillies, whose 
 relative, in gratitude, painted one of the best por- 
 traits of the bard. At this time Wordsworth was 
 composing his ode, Intimations of Immortality. 
 He also visited Bolton Priory in Yorkshire, and 
 began, in connection with its traditions, his grace- 
 ful poem of The White Doe. He had met with 
 a severe family affliction, in which he and his 
 bereaved wife found some consolation in the beau- 
 tiful Spenserian allegory of Heavenly Una with her 
 Milk-white Lamb; and the mysterious 'white doe' 
 was designed as a companion to that beautiful 
 wanderer in fairy-land. 
 
 In 1810 Jeffrey paid his famous visit to Keswick, 
 where he met with a courteous reception from 
 Southey ; but was much more fascinated by the 
 still brilliant Coleridge, who walked him and 
 lectured him through the fields all the forenoon, 
 dined with him in the inn in the afternoon, and 
 disarmed the terrible king of criticism so completely 
 by his witcheries, that he promised to remove his 
 name from the proscribed catalogue of the Lake 
 poets. It was afterwards made a bitter charge 
 against Jeffrey, that in spite of the hospitable treat- 
 ment he received, he waxed fiercer than ever against 
 his entertainers and their school. In 1812 the re- 
 viewer put Wilson's name in the black list; and if 
 glorious rackets on the green margins of the lakes, 
 and triumphal galas on Wastwater in their company, 
 
58 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 constituted Christopher a Laker, the charge was 
 assuredly well deserved. Horace Smith now pub- 
 lished his well-known Rejected Addresses, purporting 
 to be written by most of the living poets on the 
 opening of Drury Lane; and, as might have been 
 anticipated, Wordsworth was not omitted from the 
 Immortals who were stretched on the rack of 
 parody. His Address was put into the mouth of a 
 little girl drawn on the stage in a go-cart, and 
 maundering in this style of supposed Wordsworthian 
 simplicity : 
 
 What a large floor ! "lis like a town. 
 The carpet, when they lay it down, 
 
 Won't hide it, I '11 be bound ; 
 And there 'a a row of lamps— my eye ! 
 How they do blaze ? I wonder why 
 
 They keep them on the ground 1 
 
 The- ever-watchful Jeffrey of course did not fail to 
 follow up the blow by declaring that the parody 
 was a nattering imitation of the poet's style! In 
 1813, through the influence of Lord Lonsdale, he 
 was appointed distributer of stamps for the county 
 of Westmoreland, at a salary of £500 a year. The 
 duties of this office were light, and were mainly 
 performed by a clerk, and this increase of income 
 released him from any anxiety as to the future. In 
 1814 Wordsworth made a second trip to Scotland, 
 and this time visited Yarrow, which he commemo- 
 rated in a beautiful piece called Yarrow Visited. In 
 this year, the great poem of The Excursion was pub- 
 lished, and provoked a furious onslaught from Jeffrey. 
 This poem consists of sketches of life and manners 
 among the mountains, intermingled with moral and 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 59 
 
 devotional reflections. It is merely a part of a larger 
 poem, which was to be entitled The Recluse, and to 
 be prefaced by a minor one delineating the growth 
 of the author's mind, published since his death under 
 the name of The Prelude. The Recluse was to be 
 divided into three parts. The Excursion forms the 
 second of these, but the rest of the work was 
 never completed. With respect to what has been 
 given to the world, there is neither poverty in the 
 style nor meagreness in the diction, but both, on the 
 contrary, are clear, musical, and dignified. The 
 sketches of character being derived from his own 
 actual observation, are striking and truthful, though 
 often highly idealised, and have an inherent pathos 
 that touches the unsophisticated heart. They are 
 all, however, the production of one who feels for 
 his personages from an unapproachable eminence, 
 and not of one who mingles and sympathises with 
 them ; and the tone on that account, not seldom, has 
 a certain coldness and uncordiality attaching to it. 
 His pictures of landscape are remarkably definite in 
 the outline and minute in the tracings, and his 
 figures seem as deeply cut as sculptures, and impress 
 the mind like objects of sense. The moral is a stern 
 inculcation of duty, and the religion a half-silvan 
 Christianity, evasive of some of the doctrines, and 
 without that precision which it seems afterwards to 
 have assumed in his mind. For the philosophy, it 
 is a complete delusion to search for any system in 
 The Excursion. The poet's feelings, however, had 
 one or two highly developed tendencies — such as 
 his devotion to nature, and reverence for the 
 humble and the ordinary. 
 
60 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 The faith in immortality is in Wordsworth's poems 
 generally attributed to an innate consciousness, which 
 only becomes eclipsed as the child grows into the 
 man. These constitute almost the entire cycle of 
 the philosophy of the poet, in whom, though it is 
 not safe to judge of his doctrines from casual pieces, 
 some prominent points of Christianity afterwards 
 assumed more force and occupied more space, and 
 whom all his tendencies, political and moral, gradu- 
 ally led more and more into complete harmony with 
 the Established Church, though he was uniformly 
 catholic and tolerant — so far as he ever ventured 
 to express himself — in his doctrinal views. The 
 Excursion is, however, faulty in occupying too much 
 space with ideas which are uninteresting to average 
 men. It is often tedious and prolix, and on the 
 whole, as a work of art, it is clumsily and inartistic- 
 ally constructed. The following extract, part of the 
 reflections of the pedlar, who is the hero of the 
 poem, in Margaret's deserted garden, will exemplify 
 the style and manner : 
 
 I see around me here 
 Things which you cannot see. We die, my friend, 
 Nor we alone, but that which each man loved 
 And prized in his peculiar nook of earth 
 Dies with him, or is changed ; and very soon 
 Even of the good is no memorial left. 
 The poets, in their elegies and songs, 
 Lamenting the departed, call the groves, 
 They call upon the hills and streams to mourn, 
 And senseless rocks ; nor idly, for they speak 
 In these their invocations with a voice 
 Obedient to the strong creative power 
 Of human passion. Sympathies there are 
 More tranquil, yet perhaps of kindred birth, 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 61 
 
 That steal upon the meditative niind, 
 
 And grow with thought. Beside yon spring I stood 
 
 And eyed its waters, till we seemed to feel 
 
 One sadness, they and I. For them a bond 
 
 Of brotherhood is broken : time has been 
 
 When every day the touch of human hand 
 
 Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up 
 
 In mortal stillness ; and they ministered 
 
 To human comfort. Stooping down to drink, 
 
 Upon the slimy footstone I espied 
 
 The useless fragment of a wooden bowl, 
 
 Green with the moss of years, and subject only 
 
 To the soft handling of the elements. 
 
 There let it lie ! How foolish are such thoughts ! 
 
 Forgive them. Never — never did my steps . 
 
 Approach this door but she who dwelt within 
 
 A daughter's welcome gave me, and I loved her 
 
 As my own child. Oh, sir, the good die first, 
 
 And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
 
 Burn to the socket. Many a passenger 
 
 Hath blessed poor Margaret for her gentle looks 
 
 When she upheld the cool refreshment drawn 
 
 From that forsaken spring ; and no one came 
 
 But he was welcome ; no one went away 
 
 But that it seemed she loved him. She is dead, 
 
 The light extinguished of her lonely hut, 
 
 The hut itself abandoned to decay, 
 
 And she forgotten in the quiet grave. 
 
 The unpardonable audacity which put these senti- 
 ments into the mouth of a man ' of tapes and stay- 
 laces,' as well as other faults, exasperated Jeffrey, 
 and he greatly increased the storm against the 
 writer by a furious critique, beginning, 'This will 
 never do,' in which he showed greater ability in 
 detecting the faults of the poem than in discovering 
 its beauties. The assault was renewed with equal 
 bitterness on the appearance, in 1815, of The White 
 
62 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Doe, an extremely graceful and airy legendary 
 poem. The Quarterly rather aided than otherwise 
 in these attacks, and Blackwood, with a semblance 
 of neutrality, was also unfavourable. The periodicals 
 accurately mirrored the general mind, which is 
 curiously illustrated by some letters in Maga about 
 this period. A letter by Wordsworth to Dr Gray, 
 censuring the spirit in which Currie's Life of Bums 
 was written, gave rise to a war of words in its 
 pages ; and one of the combatants taunts the bard of 
 Rydal with the fact, that on his name being on one 
 occasion mentioned in a large and polished circle, it 
 was immediately inquired, in terms too emphatic for 
 repetition, who this fellow Wordsworth was; and 
 that, having afterwards written to Glasgow College 
 Library for a copy of his works, he received it 
 uncut, and with carte blanche to keep it as long as 
 he pleased, as nobody had ever asked after it. 
 
 These bitter assaults gave rise to a school of 
 devoted Wordsworthians, whose maxim was, that 
 Wordsworth could do no wrong. These ardent dis- 
 ciples tended more and more to bring their master 
 into ridicule. A writer in Blackwood for November 
 1829, gives an amusing sketch of a party where 
 the Intimations of Immortality, revered by the 
 initiated as the 'revelation,' were read aloud by a 
 true disciple, in a kind of unimaginable chant then 
 peculiar to the sect. There were many true believers 
 present, with a few neophytes, and one or two 
 absolute and wicked sceptics ! No sooner had the 
 recitation fairly commenced, than ' one of the sceptics, 
 of laughing propensities, crammed his handkerchief 
 half-way down his throat ; the others looked keen 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 63 
 
 and composed; the disciples groaned, and the 
 neophytes shook their heads in deep conviction.' 
 The reciter proceeded with deeper and deeper 
 unction, till, on being asked by a neophyte to give 
 an explanation, which he was unable to give, he got 
 angry, and ' roundly declared that things so out of 
 the common way, so sublime, and so abstruse, could 
 be conveyed in no language but their own.' When 
 the reciter came to the words, ' Callings from us,' the 
 neophyte again timidly requested an explanation, 
 and was informed by one of the sceptics that they 
 meant the child's transitory gleams of a glorious 
 pre-existence that fall away and vanish almost as 
 soon as they appear. The obstinate neophyte only 
 replied, in a tone of melancholy : ' When I think of 
 my childhood, I have only visions of traps and balls, 
 and whippings. I never remember being "haunted 
 by the external mind." To be sure I did ask a great 
 many questions, and was tolerably obstinate, but I 
 fear these are not the "obstinate questionings" of 
 which Mr Wordsworth speaks.' 
 
 This is but a small sample of the Wordsworthian 
 scenes and disputations then of every-day occurrence. 
 In 1816 a kind of shadow of Horace Smith again 
 took the field. It seems that Hogg intended to pub- 
 lish an anthology of the living British bards, and 
 had written to some of them for specimens. A wag, 
 who had heard of the project, immediately issued an 
 anthology, purporting to be this, but containing 
 merely the coinage of his own brain. As may be 
 imagined, Wordsworth occupied a prominent corner ; 
 and indeed some of the imitations — for most were 
 rather imitations than parodies — did him no discredit. 
 
64 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 The Flying Tailor, however, was not an infelicitous 
 burlesque of the poet's blank verse : 
 
 Ere lie was put 
 By his mother into breeches, Nature strung 
 The muscular part of his anatomy 
 To an unusual strength : and he could leap, 
 All unimpeded by his petticoats, 
 Over the stool on which his mother sat, 
 More than six inches — o'er the astonished stool ! 
 
 All undismayed by this tempest of criticism and 
 parody, Wordsworth went on issuing work after 
 work. In 1818 he contributed to the Liverpool 
 Winter's Wreath, the first provincial souvenir. At 
 this time Southey, Coleridge, Lamb, Macaulay, and 
 other great writers, contributed some very beautiful 
 pieces to these annuals. In 1819 The Wagoner, a 
 short poem, of highly polished humour and lively 
 fancy, was published, and also the renowned Peter 
 Bell, which was intended to show the effect of 
 Nature's workings in bringing a hardened potter 
 to repentance, and which, though abounding in 
 the richest poesy, and flowing on in a current 
 of melody, yet, from its being still tainted by 
 some of its author's defects, inartistic construction, 
 prolixity, grotesque associations, and a partially 
 inaccurate conception of human character in the 
 concrete, still further irritated the critics and alien- 
 ated the public. Yet it may truly be said that the 
 most delicious strains of Coleridge did not surpass 
 some of the verses in Peter Bell. The character 
 of the potter is very graphic, but we can only give a 
 verse or two : 
 
WILLIAM WOKDSWORTH. 65 
 
 A savage wildness round him hung, 
 
 As of a dweller out of doors. 
 
 In his whole figure and his mien 
 
 A savage character was seen 
 
 Of mountains and of dreary moors. 
 
 To all th' unshaped, half-human thoughts, 
 
 Which solitary nature feeds 
 
 'Mid summer storms or winter's ice, 
 
 Had Peter joined whatever vice 
 
 The cruel city breeds. 
 
 His face was keen as is the wind 
 That cuts along the hawthorn fence : 
 Of courage you saw little there, 
 But in its stead a medley air 
 Of cunning and of impudence. 
 
 He had a dark and sidelong walk, 
 And long and slouching was his gait ; 
 Beneath his looks, so bare and bold, 
 You might perceive his spirit cold 
 Was playing with some inward bait. 
 
 In 1820 Wordsworth took a short tour on 
 the Continent, of which he afterwards published 
 Memorials. On his return he published his 
 beautiful Sonnets to the River Duddon. His mind 
 was now becoming more and more conservative, 
 and a walk with a friend to survey the site of 
 a new church suggested his Ecclesiastical Sonnets ; 
 a noble and varied series which were given to the 
 world in 1822. Southey was at the same time 
 writing his Book of the Church, and fondly regarded 
 his friend's work as a poetical companion to his 
 own. A year or two after this, Sir Walter Scott, 
 on his return from Ireland, was escorted by Wilson 
 to Mr Bolton's villa on Windermere, on Canning's 
 
 E 
 
66 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 invitation. Wordsworth and a large party were 
 there. These were the days ! What cavalcades 
 through the woods in the mornings, and boatings on 
 the lakes in the evenings ! Then there was a magni- 
 ficent regatta in honour of the Minstrel ; and on the 
 arrival of the long procession of fifty barges, the 
 bards of the Lakes led the cheer which hailed his 
 triumph. Afterwards Scott visited Wordsworth at 
 Rydal, and accompanied him to Southey's, and then 
 to Lord Lonsdale's, where they spent two days in 
 the midst of a splendid circle. 
 
 In truth Wordsworth was now fast rising, and 
 becoming courtly ; and after this date we find greater 
 polish and subdued smoothness, with less vigour in 
 his style, and a gradual multiplication of such gentle 
 pieces as Verses to Needlecases and Gold-Fishes. A 
 portrait of him was painted by Pickersgill for the 
 university of Cambridge, so like as to draw tears 
 from him. Jeffrey now began visibly to relent, and 
 even cited from the Spirit of the Age an extract 
 speaking of Wordsworth in very high terms. In 
 1827 we find Wordsworth with the laureate at the 
 fashionable watering-place of Harrogate. 
 
 A year or two before this Wordsworth took a 
 tour in Wales, and in 1828 he and Coleridge re- 
 visited their old haunts on the Continent. In 1830 
 he was chiefly occupied in writing romaunts — as 
 the Egyptian Maid, the Russian Fugitive, and the 
 Armenian Lady's Love. Next year he revisited 
 Yarrow, Loch Katrine, and his old favourite spots 
 in Scotland. On his way he had an affecting 
 interview — the last he ever had — with Sir Walter 
 Scott. The Great Magician was rapidly failing, 
 
WILLIAM WOKDSWOKTH. 67 
 
 and was about to set off for an Italian clime. The 
 evening of the 22d September was a very sad one 
 in his antique library. Lockhart was there, and 
 Allan the historical painter. Wordsworth was also 
 feeble in health, and sat with a green shade over 
 his eyes, and bent shoulders, between his daughter 
 and Sir Walter. The conversation was melancholy, 
 and Sir Walter remarked that Smollett and Fielding 
 had both been driven abroad by declining health, 
 and had never returned. Next morning he left 
 Abbotsford, and his guests retired with sorrowful 
 hearts. Wordsworth has preserved a memento of 
 his own feelings in a beautiful sonnet. In 1833 
 he visited Staffa and Iona : 1834 was a sort of 
 era in his life, by the publication of his complete 
 works in four volumes. 
 
 His friends, however, now began to fall around 
 him. That year poor Coleridge bade adieu to his 
 weary life. This must have touched many a chord 
 of association in Wordsworth's heart. His wife's 
 sister, Sarah Hutchinson, who had long lived as an 
 inmate of the household, died in 1836. Many a 
 melancholy phantom must in his late years have 
 haunted the poet's memory by the margin of silent 
 Rydal. He was not an impromptu writer, but in his 
 works there is one wild wailing impromptu wrung 
 from him by these afflictions : 
 
 How fast has brother followed brother, 
 From sunshine to the sunless land ! 
 
 Yet I, whose lids from infant slumbers 
 Were earlier raised, remain to hear 
 
 A timid voice that asks in whispers, 
 Who next will drop and disappear 1 
 
68 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Our haughty life is crowned with darkness, 
 Like London with its own black wreath. 
 
 A note is appended to this piece like a bare tomb- 
 stone. It is this : 
 
 "Walter Scott died 21st September 1832. 
 
 S. T. Coleridge ... 25th July 1834. 
 
 Charles Lamb ... 27th December 1834. 
 
 George Crabbe ... 3d February 1832. 
 
 Felicia Hemans ... 16th May 1835. 
 
 Many a noble name in literature was added to this 
 funereal list before Wordsworth was laid in his 
 last resting-place among his native lakes. 
 
 Honours now flowed fast upon him. In 1835 
 Blackwood, under the inspiration of Wilson, raised 
 an irresistible arm in his defence. In 1839, amid 
 the acclamations of the students, he received the 
 honorary degree of D.C.L. from Oxford University. 
 In 1842, an annuity of £300 from the Civil List, 
 for distinguished literary merit, was bestowed upon 
 him by government ; in the same year he published 
 a tragedy, and some very early and very late poems, 
 and resigned his office of Distributer of Stamps in 
 favour of his son. Next year he was appointed 
 to the laureateship, left vacant by the melancholy 
 fate of Southey. In 1844 Lord Jeffrey, in re- 
 publishing his contributions to the Edinburgh, took 
 occasion to pay a warm tribute of praise to Words- 
 worth. In 1845 the poet contributed to Homes 
 Modernisations of Chaucer; but though pre-emi- 
 nently fitted for the task, he was pronounced by 
 Wilson, a most able judge, to have failed. Take 
 a single verse. Chaucer has it : 
 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 69 
 
 The God of Love ! a benedicite! 
 How mighty and how gret a Lord is he ! 
 For he can make of lowe hertes highe, 
 Of highe lowe, and like for to die, 
 And harde hertes he can maken fre. 
 
 Wordsworth's modernisation is : 
 
 The God of Love ! ah benedicite ! 
 
 How mighty and how great a Lord is he ! 
 
 For he of low hearts can make high, of high 
 
 He can make low, and unto death bring nigh, 
 
 And hard hearts he can make them kind and free. 
 
 'The simplicity of the words is kept/ observes 
 Wilson, ' for they are the very words ; and yet 
 something is gone, and in that something every- 
 thing/ 'The love itself,' adds Christopher, 'here 
 is not;' and concludes that 'there is nothing else 
 to be done with a great poet than to leave him 
 in his glory.' 
 
 Wordsworth died on the 23d of April 1850, and 
 was buried beside his daughter in the churchyard 
 of Grasmere. His sister Dorothy, who had been his 
 companion in his travels on the Continent and in 
 Scotland, and to whose talents and devoted affection 
 her brother had been so greatly indebted, died in 
 1855 at Bydal Mount, at the age of eighty-three. 
 In 1829 she had been seized by a severe illness, 
 which in the evening of life left her weakened in 
 mind and body. 
 
 Wordsworth had lived a quiet and dignified life 
 at Rydal, evincing little apparent sympathy with 
 the arduous duties and activities of the every-day 
 world. At times he exhibited an impatience at 
 
70 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 the changes which were passing over society, 
 deteriorating his mountains, and invading the soli- 
 tude of his lakes with the noise of railway trains ; 
 but in many parts of his works he shows that he 
 had a perfect appreciation of the great destinies 
 of machinery, and was only afraid that in the 
 hurry to get rich by its means, important social 
 interests would be neglected and ruined. The 
 public feeling at his death was the best proof of 
 the universal consciousness that a great English 
 poet had taken his departure. 
 
 After his death, The Prelude, already alluded 
 to, was given to the world. This poem may be 
 said to be the exercise by which he set himself 
 to scrutinise his own soul, and measure its capa- 
 bilities for the production of the great poem of 
 The Recluse. It was begun in 1799, and finished 
 in 1805. It is thus the product of the most vigor- 
 ous period of his poetical life, and as it lay by him 
 unpublished to the end of his career, it had the 
 benefit of all the improvements that a ripe and 
 highly polished taste could devise. It is in every 
 way worthy of the poet, and as pure, clear, and spark- 
 ling as a diamond. The style is remarkably chaste, 
 vigorous, and musical, and the sentiments are uni- 
 formly pleasing and dignified. The poem is, besides, 
 interesting from its singular character and subject. 
 It is something to be thus admitted to the arcana 
 of a poet's development, and it may be observed 
 that Wordsworth appears in this production to lay 
 bare his innermost thoughts and feelings with 
 accuracy and honesty. He commences with his 
 childhood, and traces his spiritual conditions through 
 
WILLIAM WOKDSWORTH. ' 71 
 
 his schoolboy and college career, to his return from 
 France. 
 
 Wordsworth's prose writings were confined to 
 one or two critical essays on his own theories, a 
 political pamphlet, a letter on Curries Life of 
 Burns, an Essay on Epitaphs, and a Description 
 of the Country of the Lakes. They evince, however, 
 great skill in prose composition, and are uniformly 
 couched in a clear, manly, and highly polished 
 English style. 
 
 To sum up what has been already said of his 
 poetic character and position : His devotion to ex- 
 ternal nature had the power and pervasiveness of 
 a passion ; his perception of its most minute 
 beauties was exquisitely fine; and his portraitures, 
 both of landscapes and figures, were so distinctly 
 outlined as to impress them on the mind almost 
 as vividly and deeply as the sight of them could 
 have done. Yet his pictures, so to speak, are 
 inodorous, and there is a certain want of richness, 
 which may arise from his deficiency in the sense 
 of smell. He was defective in the stronger passions, 
 and hence, in spite of the minuteness of his por- 
 traitures of character, he failed to produce real 
 human beings capable of stirring the blood; and 
 what was even more serious, he himself was 
 incapacitated from feeling a genial and warm 
 sympathy in the struggles of modern man, on whom 
 he rather looked as from a distant height with the 
 commiseration of some loftier nature. 
 
 From the characteristics enumerated arose the 
 great faults of his works. His landscape paintings 
 
72 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 are often much, too minute. He dwells too tediously 
 on every small object and detail, and from his over- 
 intense appreciation of them, which magnifies their 
 importance, rejects all extrinsic ornaments, and 
 occasionally, though exceptionally, adopts a style 
 bare and meagre, and even phrases tainted with 
 mean associations. Hence all his personages — being 
 without reality — fail to attract, and even his strong 
 domestic affections, and his love for everything pure 
 and simple, do not give a sufficient human interest 
 to his poems. His prolixity and tediousness are 
 aggravated by a want of artistic skill in construc- 
 tion; and it is owing to this that he is most 
 perfect in the sonnet, which renders the develop- 
 ment of these faults an impossibility, while it gives 
 free play to his naturally pure, tasteful, and lofty 
 diction. His imagination was majestic ; his fancy 
 lively and sparkling ; and he had a refined and 
 Attic humour, which, however, he seldom called 
 into exercise. He was naturally conservative ; and 
 after the heat of youth cooled down, he became more 
 and more in harmony with the system of the 
 conservative party in church and state, modified 
 so much in appearance by his peculiar tendencies, 
 as to simulate the features of a peculiar religious 
 and philosophical creed. 
 
 As might have been anticipated, he spent most 
 of his life in retirement, and left the solitudes of 
 the lakes principally to wander through other 
 solitudes elsewhere. Indeed as a whole range of 
 signs in algebra is often expressed by a single 
 sign, so the activities of Wordsworth's life may be 
 aptly enough expressed as the continuous develop- 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 73 
 
 ment of a passion for nature, while the entire cycle 
 of his poetry is the efflux of this in song. This 
 occupied him wholly even in those fervent years 
 when youth is generally stirred by more social 
 passions. It was through the agency of this that 
 the old institutions of his country, and the old 
 legends and manners of his district, took so firm 
 a hold of his heart, and made him peculiarly the 
 poet of the old English spirit, in contradistinction 
 to the new influences invading it from abroad or 
 developing from itself. With volcanic power in 
 the heat of his earlier days it drove him into the 
 wild mountains of Wales, and into the recesses of 
 the Alps ; and gradually abating its impetus, and 
 contracting its successive sweeps as the chill of 
 age came on, at last left him to die in peace by 
 those beloved lakes among which he was born. 
 With much that might with advantage be curtailed 
 or altogether forgotten, the poems of William Words- 
 worth will ever occupy a place in literature next 
 to the highest. 
 
 Memoirs of Wordsworth, by the poet's nephew, 
 Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., appeared in 1851. 
 His prose works have been edited by the Rev. A. 
 Grosart (1876); Matthew Arnold edited a selection 
 of his poems, with critical preface (1879); there is 
 a monograph Wordsworth by F. W. Myers (1880) ; 
 and since 1882 Professor Knight has edited an 
 elaborate and complete edition of his Poems. There 
 is also a Wordsworth Society devoted to the study 
 of his works. 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 
 
 flHE biography of a literary man is to be 
 found in the history of his works : start- 
 ling incident and romantic adventure are 
 not to be expected. The development of the pro- 
 gress of genius can alone supply the record of its 
 existence. That of a poet ranking so high as 
 Thomas Campbell discovers no exception to this 
 general law. 
 
 He was born on the 27th of July 1777, in his 
 father's house, situated in the High Street, Glasgow, 
 subsequently demolished. The poet's father was 
 Alexander, the youngest of three brothers, the sons 
 of Archibald Campbell of Kirnan, belonging to a 
 family which had been long settled at a place of 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 75 
 
 that name, on the borders of Inveraray. The estate 
 produced a small independent rental, and came by- 
 inheritance to Kobert Campbell, the eldest son of 
 Archibald, and the poet's uncle, who ultimately sold 
 it, and died in London. The name of the second 
 son was Archibald : he went out to Jamaica as a 
 Presbyterian clergyman, and removing from that 
 island to Virginia, in the United States, died there 
 very much esteemed by all who knew him. 
 Through his descendants a legacy of four thousand 
 five hundred pounds came eventually to the subject 
 of this memoir. 
 
 Alexander Campbell went in early life to America. 
 By trade a merchant, he was still connected with 
 that country after his return to Glasgow. Here 
 he carried on his business in partnership with 
 Daniel Campbell, who, though of the same name, 
 was not a relative of the family. This Daniel's 
 sister became afterwards the wife of Alexander, and 
 the poet's mother. Her name was Margaret, and 
 he was married to her at Glasgow in 1756, when 
 he was forty -nine and she had just numbered her 
 twentieth year. The business of the partnership 
 flourished until the American war broke out. In 
 1775, Alexander, then in his sixty-fifth year, found 
 his house ruined, as was the case with numerous 
 other firms similarly connected with the colonies 
 at the commencement of that unnatural contest. 
 Alexander Campbell was an acute and well-informed 
 man, religiously disposed, and of mild manners. He 
 was sixty-seven when the poet, his youngest child, 
 was born, and he died in Edinburgh, in March 
 1801, aged ninety-one. 
 
76 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Margaret Campbell, the poet's mother, was born 
 in 1736, and died in February 1812, aged seventy- 
 six. She was a woman of a decided character, in 
 person thin, with dark eyes and hair, comely, 
 shrewd ; of a friendly character among her neigh- 
 bours, but at home and in her family a firm dis- 
 ciplinarian. She was an excellent domestic manager, 
 and conducted herself with exemplary judgment 
 and good conduct under the severe trial of her 
 husband's failure, two years before the poet's birth, 
 at a time when she naturally looked forward, as 
 well as her husband, to that ease and tranquillity 
 which are so desirable in the downfall of life. 
 
 The family of Alexander and Margaret Campbell 
 consisted, according to some accounts, of only ten 
 children, but, more correctly, of eleven, one having 
 died in infancy. The eldest, and last surviving 
 except the poet, named Mary, died in Edinburgh 
 in 1843, aged eighty-six. There were two other 
 daughters, Isabella and Elizabeth, who both died in 
 Edinburgh — the former in 1837, aged seventy-nine; 
 the last in 1829, aged sixty-four. The sons were 
 seven — Archibald, who died in Virginia in 1830, had 
 been a planter in Berbice ; Alexander, who returned 
 from Berbice to Glasgow, died there in 1826 ; John, 
 who having settled at Demerara, died there in 1806 ; 
 Daniel, who died an infant; Kobert, who went to 
 the United States, a merchant, and married a 
 daughter of the well-known Patrick Henry in 
 Virginia, and died in 1807 ; James, drowned while 
 bathing in the Clyde in 1783 ; Daniel, born in 1773, 
 who was a cotton-manufacturer in Glasgow, but 
 making little progress in business, went to France, 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 77 
 
 and managed a considerable manufactory at Rouen, 
 whence no account of his death ever reached his 
 family; and lastly, Thomas, the poet, the survivor 
 of them all, and the favourite of his parents. 
 
 The poet was named Thomas after Dr Reid, the 
 professor of moral philosophy in the university of 
 Glasgow, who officiated at the font. Thomas was 
 the Benjamin of his parents ; the more beloved, 
 perhaps, for coming apart from the rest of the 
 family under their fallen fortunes. He was the 
 favourite son of both his parents, whose regrets at 
 their misfortunes his playfulness and active dis- 
 position helped them at times to beguile. He was 
 taught to read by his favourite sister, who was 
 nineteen years his senior. In the eighth year of his 
 age, in 1785, he was sent to the grammar school in 
 Glasgow, then under the care of Mr Alison, who 
 was noted for his ability in teaching the classics. 
 A generous system of encouragement was all that 
 was required to give young Campbell an ardent 
 thirst after excellence : he was ambitious in the 
 right way, but highly sensitive. His father assisted 
 him in his tasks : and his progress was commen- 
 surate with the sanguine hopes of his instructors; 
 but by the excitement produced through emulation 
 it was found that his health suffered. 
 
 He was removed, therefore, from school into 
 country air for a short time, which had the desired 
 effect, and he returned to his studies with renewed 
 vigour. His course was highly satisfactory. At 
 eleven years of age he began to compose verses, 
 crude enough, it is true ; but among others were 
 stanzas on a parrot, equal at all events to those 
 
78 LITEEARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 which Samuel Johnson made upon his duck. Some- 
 what lame in metre, they indicated the tendency 
 of the youthful mind, but by no means rivalled 
 what others have produced at the same age, giving 
 little promise of the appearance in another decade 
 of the Pleasures of Hope, in which the lines are so 
 exquisitely modulated. His translations from the 
 Greek in his twelfth year are remarkable only for 
 being made at that early age. His attachment to 
 Greek poetry beginning thus early, he soon obtained 
 prizes for his proficiency in translation — his first 
 being gained in 1789, when he was in his twelfth 
 year. 
 
 The father of the poet, as before observed, was 
 strictly religious, and early imbued his son with 
 the same feeling. Young Campbell soon became 
 a reader of some of the more noted divines, and 
 their lessons frequently raised a conflict in his mind 
 between his boyish follies and his sense of religious 
 obligation. He was of a joyous temperament, the 
 sallies of which were often daunted by the whispers 
 of conscience through the impressions thus effected. 
 Even thus young, and under such impressions, he 
 and his schoolfellows would commit lapses occa- 
 sionally that excited the reprobation of their friends ; 
 and getting tired of the long sermons of one of the 
 clergymen under whom they sat, young Campbell 
 and his companions turned some of the good man's 
 repetitions into a lampoon. His schoolfellows were 
 not exempted from his turn for playful satire ; some 
 specimens of which, as well as his school exercises 
 and translations, have been preserved through the 
 partiality of friends. They exhibit a great superi- 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 79 
 
 ority over the productions of the generality of 
 schoolboys at so early an age ; marking a certain 
 precocity of intellect, and a power of close applica- 
 tion, however desultory, rare in youth of so viva- 
 cious a temperament. 
 
 In his thirteenth year the poet quitted the 
 grammar school for the university. There he gained 
 three prizes the first year : one for Latin, another for 
 English verse, and a third a bursary on Leighton's 
 foundation. The last was not won without a 
 severe struggle in competition with one considered 
 a good scholar, and very much his senior in years. 
 This struggle involved a competition in construing 
 and writing Latin before the entire Faculty. At 
 the university he read some of the more celebrated 
 of the English authors, both in poetry and prose; 
 and bore off prizes for exercises and translations in 
 Greek as well as Latin. These successes were the 
 more extraordinary, as, from his necessities, owing 
 to the scanty income of his parents, he had not 
 only the labour of his own studies upon his hands, 
 but he had to instruct others. His own studies 
 were quite sufficient to try the constitution, and to 
 exhaust the mental efforts of one so delicate in 
 bodily frame ; but he was obliged, to the neglecting 
 of several heads of study, to give elementary instruc- 
 tion to the younger lads — to exhaust himself in 
 teaching while he should have been learning. This 
 drudgery reacted upon the poet in after-life, and 
 when he had attained middle age, stamped upon 
 him a reluctance to mental exertion which it was 
 at times impossible for him to overcome. 
 
80 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 In the midst of this toil the poet went on with 
 his metrical compositions, both original and trans- 
 lated. It was in 1791, and in his thirteenth year, 
 that he himself confessed to his first published 
 lines, entitled Morven and Fillan: he styled them 
 'Ossianic Verses.' His next printed production 
 consisted of Verses on the Queen of France, pub- 
 lished, he said, in a Glasgow newspaper when he 
 was fifteen ; and in his eighteenth year he brought 
 out Love and Madness. The Pleasures of Hope 
 appeared before he had completed his twenty-second 
 year. 
 
 Not only was young Campbell successful in gain- 
 ing classical honours : he obtained a prize in the 
 logic class under Professor Jardine, and was made 
 one of the earliest examiners of the exercises sent 
 in by the other students in that class. His prose 
 exercises in English were remarkable for their 
 accurate style and manly argument; and he also 
 received a third Greek prize for good conduct. He 
 wrote some verses about this time to the Glasgow 
 volunteers, but they possessed no merit beyond the 
 high patriotic spirit they exhibited. Once asking 
 leave of absence, which was conceded for his good 
 conduct, he walked to Edinburgh, where he was 
 present at the trial of Gerald, who, with Muir, 
 Palmer, and others, was arrested on the charge of 
 sedition. It filled the poet with the same horror 
 it did every other reflecting person, as the parties 
 accused had never uttered a word stronger than 
 had been used by William Pitt himself in parlia- 
 ment. The trial of Gerald made a deep impression 
 upon his mind, and he inveighed against the un- 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 81 
 
 fairness with which those processes were conducted, 
 and the indecent conduct of the judges towards 
 the prisoner Gerald. It was some time before he 
 recovered the shock thus received. 
 
 Soon afterwards he gained fresh honours in the 
 university by a poetical Essay on the Origin of 
 Evil in English, and a Greek translation of pas- 
 sages from the Clouds of Aristophanes. The latter 
 was pronounced to be the best version ever sent 
 in by any student of the university. The poet 
 now began to think of some employment by which 
 he might attain independence. His inclination led 
 him to a civil rather than an ecclesiastical pro- 
 fession, but here he had to combat the want of the 
 requisite finances. He was of too sensitive a tem- 
 perament to withstand the sight of a surgical opera- 
 tion, much less take a part in it; and physic was 
 allied too nearly to surgery. A mercantile pursuit 
 suggested itself; and thus perplexed he remained 
 in a distressing state of incertitude. Nor could he 
 find a fixed object whereupon to rest. He was 
 then in his sixteenth year ; and while in this pain- 
 ful state of indecision, and thinking about the 
 church, he wrote some lines beginning — 'When 
 Jordan hushed his waters still;' printed in early 
 editions of his works, but excluded from the later, 
 because he said they were no better than a 
 Christmas carol. 
 
 In his seventeenth year the failure of a lawsuit 
 straitened more than ever the circumstances of his 
 father, who was left only a small income derived 
 from certain mercantile annuities : young Campbell 
 felt his dependent position more keenly. His father 
 
82 LITEEARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 was now eighty-five years of age, and his family 
 still numerous. Under such circumstances the poet, 
 recommended by several of the professors of Glasgow 
 University, accepted a temporary situation as an 
 instructor of pupils in the western islands, where 
 Mull was his destination for six months. He tra- 
 velled with a friend as far as Oban, on the way sav- 
 ing a boy from being drowned. Thence he crossed 
 over to Mull, and traversed on foot the length of 
 the island, thirty miles, in one day, and without 
 a guide, to the place of his destination. This was 
 the house of Mrs Campbell of Sunipol near the 
 Point of Caliach. Here, besides attending to his 
 pupils, he continued his translation of the Clouds 
 of Aristophanes, and portions of iEschylus, and 
 composed some of the best lines he had written 
 previous to that period, entitled An Elegy written 
 in Mull. 
 
 ELEGY WKITTEN IN MULL. 
 
 The tempest blackens on the dusky moor, 
 
 And billows lash the long-resounding shore ; 
 
 In pensive mood I roam the desert ground, 
 
 And vainly sigh for scenes no longer found. 
 
 Oh whither fled the pleasurable hours 
 
 That chased each care, and fired the muse's powers — 
 
 The classic haunts of youth for ever gay, 
 
 Where mirth and friendship cheered the close of day ; 
 
 The well-known valleys where I wont to roam, 
 
 The native sports, the nameless joys of home ? 
 
 Far different scenes allure my wondering eye : 
 
 The white wave foaming to the distant sky ; 
 
 The cloudy heavens, unblest by summer's smile ; 
 
 The sounding storm that sweeps the rugged isle, 
 
 The chill, bleak summit of eternal snow, 
 
 The wide, wild glen — the pathless plains below, 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 83 
 
 The dark, blue rocks, in barren grandeur piled, 
 The cuckoo sighing to the pensive wild ! 
 Far different these from all that charmed before, 
 The grassy banks of Clutha's winding shore, 
 Her sloping vales, with waving forests lined, 
 Her smooth blue lakes, unruffled by the wind. 
 Hail, happy Clutha ! glad shall I survey 
 Thy gilded turrets from the distant way ! 
 Thy sight shall cheer the weary traveller's toil, 
 And joy shall hail me to my native soil. 
 
 He was attacked for a short time with indisposi- 
 tion and lowness of spirits at Sunipol; yet while 
 there he visited Staffa and Iona. In his corre- 
 spondence with his friends, he expressed his high 
 admiration of the scenery which he had explored 
 among the Hebrides. It left an impression on his 
 mind to which he often alluded. 
 
 At Sunipol, although kindly treated, he appeared 
 to tire, and longed to return to Glasgow. It was 
 during his residence at Sunipol that he wrote his 
 verses to Caroline, a young lady of Inveraray, who 
 was there upon a visit. He also wrote some lines 
 to A Rural Beauty in Mull ; but neither exhibits 
 aught of passion, though written in love's full age. 
 Both, however, are redolent of gentle admiration 
 and dispassionate tenderness. Here he resided five 
 months, and then returned home. During the 
 winter of 1795-6 he supported himself by private 
 tuition; numbering among his pupils the future 
 Lord Cunninghame of the Justiciary Court of Edin- 
 burgh. At this period, and indeed throughout life, 
 the poet was a warm advocate of free principles, 
 which were strengthened by his admiration of John 
 Millar, the professor of law in the university of 
 
84 LITEEARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Glasgow, a zealous Whig. Campbell has left the 
 professor's character on record : ' Whether John 
 Millar's doctrines were always right is one ques- 
 tion; but that they were generally so, and that 
 right doctrines could not be expounded by a better 
 teacher, I believe is questioned by none who ever 
 listened to him. His writings always seem to me 
 to be imperfect casts of his mind, like those casts 
 of sculpture which want the diaphonous polish of 
 the original marble. I heard him, when I was six- 
 teen, lecture on the Roman law. A dry subject 
 enough it would have been in common hands, but 
 in his, Heineccius was made a feast to the attention' 
 
 The poet quitted the university in 1796, and 
 became domesticated at the farm-house of Downie, 
 a little way to the southward of the mouth of the 
 Crinan Canal, at the southern end of Loch Fyne. 
 He had previously been a member of a debating 
 society, where the customary class of topics was dis- 
 cussed, and took a part in the proceedings. He 
 gained two prizes for poems this year — one for a 
 chorus in the Medea of Euripides, the other for 
 the Chcephora of Aristophanes. 
 
 At Downie he became the tutor of Sir William 
 Napier of Miliken ; and here he had some leisure 
 time, which he devoted to reading and writing. 
 Here, too, he composed his lines entitled Love and 
 Madness, on the murder of her lover by a Miss 
 Broderick. At Downie he was near a particular 
 friend, the Rev. H. Paul of Inveraray, and became 
 intimate in the family of the 'Caroline' on whom 
 he had written the verses at Sunipol. He and his 
 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 85 
 
 friends used sometimes to dine together at the 
 Inveraray Arms ; and on those occasions, as in after- 
 years, he exhibited all the joyousness of boyhood. 
 He would talk of turning pilgrim in search of 
 adventures — at that time a favourite notion with 
 him. His friend Paul always prophesied he would 
 be a great poet, saying: 'Thomas, from the way in 
 which poetry is coming upon you, I see that what- 
 ever other profession you may try, that will be the 
 one through which you will be distinguished.' 
 
 At Downie also, Campbell seems to have 
 dwelt upon his favourite pursuit, his first great 
 work in poetry being designed there. From 
 this place he returned to Glasgow in consider- 
 able depression of mind, owing to the gloom that 
 rested upon his future prospects, and for a time he 
 became indisposed. After a renewal of his preceding 
 anxieties and conflicts between different professions, 
 and finding reasons but too valid for again rejecting 
 all, he determined to go to Edinburgh, with little 
 money in his pocket, but full of sanguine hopes. 
 Wild notions of establishing a periodical, of writing 
 for the booksellers, of getting into a lawyer's office, 
 all passed through his inexperienced mind. He 
 fancied, with that erroneous judgment which is the 
 fruit of inexperience, that booksellers might be 
 found to publish two of his translations from Euri- 
 pides and iEschylus. 
 
 Such were the thoughts with which the poet set 
 out. He reached Edinburgh, and tried his hand 
 at the drudgery of a copying law-clerk. He next 
 obtained a place in another office, somewhat 
 better, and got an introduction soon afterwards 
 
86 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 
 through accident to Dr Anderson, who was struck 
 with the verses he had written in Mull, and desired 
 to see their author. Upon this incident turned the 
 after-fortunes of the poet. He was brought to Dr 
 Anderson's house — his appearance, his handsome 
 face and pleasing address, at once won the favour 
 of the doctor, who was a highly gifted, kind, and 
 good man. Employment was found of a literary 
 nature for the young poet by an introduction to 
 Mundell, the Edinburgh publisher. He also received 
 an offer of twenty guineas to abridge Edwards's 
 West Indies. To complete his task he quitted his 
 drudgery in the law office, anathematising the law, 
 its peculations, toils, and meannesses. After giving 
 his hearty thanks to Dr Anderson for his kindness 
 towards him, he returned to Glasgow on foot ; princi- 
 pally in the hope, which proved to be vain, of meet- 
 ing his second brother from South America, who 
 was daily expected, and whom he had never beheld. 
 He continued to employ himself with plans, always 
 abortive, for literary undertakings, but proceeded 
 with his abridgment of Edwards. In the same 
 winter of 1797 he wrote the Wounded Hussar, 
 which was sung as a ballad about the streets of 
 Glasgow, and which was originally composed for 
 adaptation to the music of some Scottish melodies, 
 for a lady at the house of whose father the poet 
 was on a visit. He went to Cathcart this year, and 
 paid a visit to a family where there were two young 
 ladies named Hill, and Miss Grahame, a sister of 
 the author of The Sabbath. Here he wrote a poetical 
 epistle to three ladies on the banks of the Cart; 
 and about the same time he composed the Dirge of 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 87 
 
 Wallace, in a different manner from that in which 
 it subsequently appeared. He altered, retouched, 
 and made it in all respects a worthy poem in every 
 estimation but his own. 
 
 Campbell returned from Glasgow to Edinburgh 
 in his twentieth year, taking leave of his favourite 
 professors at the university before he started, and 
 getting his parents to promise, if possible, to take 
 up their residence in Edinburgh near him. Still 
 uncertain about his future pursuits, he set out on 
 foot upon his journey. He had thoughts at times 
 of going to the United States, of studying the law 
 once more, and even physic again. There are few 
 situations in life more painful than this kind of 
 heart-sickness from uncertainty — those conflicts of 
 the spirit : to one of Campbell's sensitiveness this 
 state was doubly grievous. He had now the book- 
 sellers' scanty patronage, and one or two pupils 
 obtained in Edinburgh, for his sole dependence. 
 These had been the sum of his prospects, when 
 his attention was again drawn towards emigration 
 by one of his brothers ; and he began to prepare 
 himself for taking his departure. The interference 
 of another of his near relatives, however, frustrated 
 his intention, and he turned towards Edinburgh 
 once more, to resume his labour for the booksellers, 
 and to take pupils. 
 
 It was now that he proceeded with the Pleasures 
 of Hope again, partly supporting himself by giving 
 instructions in the Greek and Latin languages. He 
 did not remain long without additions to the number 
 of his friends. He became acquainted with Francis, 
 afterwards Lord Jeffrey. Then began an acquaint- 
 
88 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 ance with John Richardson, which ripened into a 
 close and lasting friendship until death terminated it 
 — the closest perhaps of all his friendships excepting 
 that with Mr Thompson of Clithero, who had been 
 his fellow-student, and with whom also he corre- 
 sponded to the end of life. He renewed his intimacy 
 with Grahame, author of The Sabbath, who died in 
 1811. His father and mother removed to Edinburgh 
 in 1798. 
 
 In the meantime the Pleasures of Hope proceeded 
 steadily. It was first proposed to publish it by 
 subscription ; but this design was abandoned, and Dr 
 Anderson negotiated the publication with Mundell, 
 the bookseller. The price was two hundred 
 copies of the work in quires, which would bring 
 the author, if he could dispose of them at the full 
 price, about fifty-six pounds, or, if otherwise, 
 between forty and fifty. The author always said 
 he received only 'fifty pounds,' and made no 
 mention of the mode of payment ; but documents 
 signed by himself, and dated July 13, 1799, are 
 in existence, establishing the real arrangement. He 
 had much vanity, which was wounded by a con- 
 fession that he had received only paper for paper. 
 
 Dr Anderson, whose love of poetry and attach- 
 ment to letters is well known from his publications, 
 introduced the poet to several of his more intimate 
 friends, at the houses of all of whom he became a 
 welcome visitor. Dr Moore, whom he already knew, 
 introduced him to Dugald Stewart ; and he became 
 acquainted with Mr Fletcher, an advocate of good 
 standing; and likewise with Leyden. Campbell 
 and Leyden were at first in close intimacy, but 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 89 
 
 afterwards a quarrel arose between them, which 
 terminated in little less than mutual hatred. The 
 cause did not originate with the poet. Some one 
 had said, speaking figuratively, in describing 
 Campbell's first visit to Edinburgh in 1797, that 
 his situation was so desperate that he thought he 
 might as well drown himself. From this arose a 
 report that he had been actually about to commit 
 suicide. An Edinburgh paper reiterated this report 
 after the poet's decease — namely, that Campbell had 
 once been seen going to destroy himself, after 
 having concealed himself, and been reduced to the 
 verge of despair, and had been turned from his 
 purpose by Dr Anderson. 
 
 This was the revival of an untruth which the 
 poet had contradicted at the time, and traced to its 
 author Leyden, who denied it ; but Campbell 
 declared there was the clearest evidence against 
 him. Hence it was that when Scott, who had 
 been introduced to Campbell by Leyden, afterwards 
 repeated Hohenlinden to him, Leyden said : ' Dash 
 it, man, tell the fellow that I hate him ! But, dash 
 him, he has written the finest verses that have 
 been published these fifty years!' Scott conveyed 
 the message faithfully, and got this reply from 
 the poet: 'Tell Leyden that I detest him, but I 
 know the value of his critical approbation!' This 
 rests upon the testimony of Sir Walter Scott him- 
 self. Leyden and Erskine, the latter likewise an 
 acquaintance of the poet's, went afterwards to 
 India, and in literary pursuits were in some way 
 connected there. 'When Leyden returns from the 
 East,' said Campbell, 'what cannibals he will have 
 
90 literary celebrities. 
 
 eaten, and what tigers have torn to pieces ! ' There 
 is no doubt he felt deeply wounded at the report 
 alluded to. No one was more sensitive, had more 
 latent vanity, or was more tremblingly alive to 
 the opinions of the world about himself and his 
 writings, than Campbell. 
 
 It would appear that while composing the 
 Pleasures of Hope he was nervous and restless in 
 no inconsiderable degree; but much more so after- 
 wards, when his success was expected to be com- 
 plete, according to the evidence of his friends, who 
 were undoubted judges of literary merit. While 
 the work was going through the press, the alterna- 
 tions of hope and fear in his mind made him leap 
 from deep gloom into sudden merriment, from 
 despondency to joy, almost upon a breath. At one 
 time he would think all he had written was worth- 
 less — he would be solitary, silent, and downcast. 
 Anon he would be merry, and even uproarious, 
 without any change of circumstances to account 
 for it. Governed by the pressure of the thought 
 that was uppermost at the moment, he yielded 
 until it glided away, and another, perhaps of a 
 character diametrically opposite, took its place. 
 This fitful moodiness accompanied him more or 
 less through life. The work of correcting and pass- 
 ing his poems through the press must have been 
 a grievous task, from a natural impatience and 
 habitual want of attention to such details. But 
 when, brooding over his uncertain prospects, and 
 the frustration of his former plans, he imagined 
 that his poem might not be judged of by the 
 world as his friends had judged of it, the result 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 91 
 
 was a degree of excitement which could hardly 
 be comprehended by one of a different tempera- 
 ment. 
 
 There were various passages in the Pleasures of 
 Hope written two and three times over. The hints 
 of Dr Anderson made the poet exert himself. How 
 much the labour of the author was taxed by the 
 fastidiousness of the critic; how his feelings were 
 elevated and depressed by that imagined lack of 
 merit which is the best proof of its existence: all 
 this must be left to the imagination of the sensitive 
 and refined. At times he was observed sauntering 
 alone, as was sometimes his custom in later years, 
 unobservant of all around him, but evidently in 
 deep thought, and employed in working out his 
 verses mentally, or weaving nattering visions of 
 success — for although possessing little energy, he 
 was far from being unambitious. 
 
 The poet asserted, that although he was indebted 
 to friends for their critical opinions, still the ideas 
 and arrangement of the poem were his own — that 
 here he relied wholly upon himself. He composed 
 the different sections of the work separately, as 
 there was no continuous story, and then arranged 
 them in proper order. The Pleasures of Hope began, 
 in the original draught, in a very different manner 
 from that in which it at present appears. In place 
 of 
 
 At summer eve, when heaven's ethereal bow 
 
 Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below, &c. 
 
 it ran : 
 
 Seven lingering moons have crossed the starry line 
 Since Beauty's form, or Nature's face divine, 
 
92 LITERARY CELEBEITIES. 
 
 Had power the sombre of my soul to turn — 
 
 Had power to wake my strings and bid them burn. 
 
 The whole of the original draught consists of only- 
 four hundred lines. Though full of beauty, it is but 
 a mere foil to the printed poem, which exhibits in 
 a remarkable manner the advantage of care and 
 scholarship. 
 
 Campbell wanted just three months of completing 
 his twenty-second year when the Pleasures of Hope 
 was published. It was enthusiastically received in 
 the Scottish capital, and was as ardently welcomed 
 in England. The young author found himself at 
 once surrounded with new acquaintances, among the 
 more celebrated characters of the day — Dr Gregory, 
 Telford, Mackenzie (author of the Man of Feeling), 
 the Rev. A. Alison, Gillies, Laing, and others. Scott, 
 whose name is delightful to every lover of literature, 
 and than whom none had a more friendly heart, 
 introduced him to his own circle of friends, all 
 new to him. He was feted and complimented on 
 all sides. Dr Anderson, too, felt how grateful to 
 the spirit is the reward of disinterested virtue ; the 
 poet's plaudits he shared, less conspicuously, but 
 with a noble gratification to his own upright 
 heart. 
 
 This astonishing success made the low terms on 
 which the copyright had been parted with somewhat 
 mortifying to the author. The conduct of Mundell 
 and Company, the publishers, however, was highly 
 praiseworthy. They presented him with £25 upon 
 the appearance of every edition of a thousand copies, 
 and in this manner he received £150 ; nor were 
 these presents discontinued until a misunderstand- 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 93 
 
 ing arose between them. Messrs Mundell some 
 time afterwards permitted Campbell to print an 
 elegant edition in quarto for his own benefit, by 
 subscription. This, the seventh edition, produced 
 him of itself £600; so that, in the whole, he 
 received little less than £900 for a poem of eleven 
 hundred lines. In no previous instance did any 
 poet ever derive so much money from his first 
 production; nor would Campbell have done so in 
 the ordinary routine of business. 
 
 In the same year Campbell planned a poem to be 
 called the Queen of the North, intended to be highly 
 illustrated ; but this came to nothing, like the other 
 innumerable projects of his life. In that year also 
 he composed the verses entitled Gilderoy in his 
 published works. The publication of the Pleasures 
 of Hope, and the incense of public praise which 
 followed, cured the poet of all desire to emigrate 
 to America. He complained of his own indolence 
 in the midst of applauses that would have stirred 
 others into activity. But the truth was, that none 
 had ever laboured harder than he had done through 
 youth to manhood, none had been so tried by 
 painful uncertainties, and after such a great success 
 it was but natural that the bow should for a little 
 time at least be unstrung. Such an excuse, how- 
 ever, could be valid only for a season. 
 
 Edition after edition of the Pleasures of Hope 
 had sold. He now felt a desire to visit Germany, 
 out of curiosity to see the literati of that country, 
 and because he thought he was not yet able to 
 appear in London to the best advantage. He pro- 
 
94 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 jected 'writing a few more books' before visiting 
 the British metropolis; and looked forward to 
 delivering on his return from Germany a course of 
 lectures on the belles lettres in London or Dublin, 
 for he expressed his dislike at remaining long in 
 one place. In his disposition he was restless and 
 unsettled. In the pursuance of his design he 
 embarked in June 1800 at Leith for Hamburg. It 
 was only about a year previously that Scott had 
 translated and published Goethe's Gotz von Berlich- 
 ingen; and the same author's Sorrows of Werther 
 were still in vogue, full of sentimentality, and not 
 very pure morality. These had no doubt tended to 
 heighten the poet's desire to visit the land from 
 whence they had emanated, and to see their writers 
 face to face. It was the taste of the day : every- 
 body talked of Germany. His friend Kichardson 
 was to follow him, and they were to travel in com- 
 pany, visit remarkable places and individuals, and 
 lay the result of all before the public. The Queen 
 of the North, the new poem, was to be finished 
 during this foreign tour, however uncongenial con- 
 tinual movement might appear to poetical composi- 
 tion upon a local subject. 
 
 Having several letters of introduction to persons 
 residing at Hamburg, he landed there after a few 
 days' sail. His plan was to proceed to Eatisbon, 
 in which city there was a Scottish College, and he 
 could travel easily from thence to Vienna. He was 
 introduced to the poet Klopstock, just two years 
 before the decease of that veteran in his country's 
 literature. This fine old German, who resided near 
 Hamburg, was then seventy-seven years of age, a 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 95 
 
 plain, unpretending man, of gentle manners, and 
 kind disposition. Their conversation was carried on 
 in Latin. A copy of the Pleasures of Hope was 
 presented to the venerable German by its author. 
 From Hamburg Campbell proceeded to Ratisbon, 
 where he arrived in the beginning of August. He 
 fell in with a division of Austrian troops on his way, 
 marching into Bohemia, and arrived in Ratisbon 
 only three days before it was entered by the 
 victorious French, who had driven the Austrian 
 general Klenau across the Danube. 
 
 At Ratisbon the poet was disappointed of a boat 
 to take him down the Danube to Yienna. He 
 visited the Benedictine monks of St James, who 
 received him kindly, and he witnessed the retreat 
 of the Hungarians covering the retiring Austrian 
 army, heard the distant artillery, and saw some 
 skirmishing between the advanced forces and the 
 Austrian rear. He stood among the monks, and 
 observed a charge of Austrian cavalry made upon 
 the French just without the city walls. Under 
 these a battery of guns drew up, which fired during 
 the action, and several men were killed in the poet's 
 sight. This view of the dead and dying filled his 
 mind afterwards at times with fearful images. 
 
 The poet was much pleased with the French 
 officers, whom he described as 'famous fellows,' 
 highly popular among the citizens. They were 
 thus friendly at a time when the English news- 
 papers were describing them as monsters, dishonest, 
 tyrannical, and everywhere detested for their 
 cruelties. The poet made excursions from the city 
 over the ground where the engagement had taken 
 
96 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 place, and ventured to scale the heights whence, 
 after the last battle, the Austrians were driven 
 over the Danube. He was now in a great measure 
 dependent upon his gratuitous receipts from Mundell 
 and Company, and upon a newspaper correspond- 
 ence with Perry for the Morning Chronicle. A 
 French field-officer gave him a protection to pass 
 through the army of General Moreau ; and he was 
 presented to Madame Moreau when visiting Munich, 
 from whence he returned to Ratisbon by the valley 
 of the Isar, without proceeding, as he had intended, 
 to Vienna. Seeing no chance but of the renewal of 
 hostilities, and not knowing how far his personal 
 safety might be compromised if he proceeded 
 according to his original intention, or even if he 
 remained at Ratisbon, he returned by Leipzig to 
 Hamburg, and took up his residence at Altona in 
 November. 
 
 Once more at Hamburg among the friends whom 
 he had made there when he first arrived, he planned 
 excursions into Hungary and elsewhere which he 
 never made, and literary works which went no 
 further than the ideal outline. During his first 
 visit he had become acquainted with Anthony 
 M'Cann, one of those whom the Irish government 
 of 1798 had driven into exile on the charge of 
 being concerned in rebellion. There were several 
 other refugees there at that time, who often used 
 to meet together and spend a convivial hour. 
 Campbell was particularly struck with M'Cann, 
 who was an honest, upright, uncompromising lover 
 of his country. Seeing him walking low-spirited 
 and pensive near the river, the poet gave the 
 
YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 99 
 
 impressions he felt at the sight in those beautiful 
 stanzas, unsurpassed in pathos and touching senti- 
 ment, The Exile of Erin. At Hamburg he wrote 
 thirteen or fourteen different pieces of poetry, of 
 which he admitted only four into his published 
 works — namely, The Exile of Erin, Lines on Visit- 
 ing a Scene in Argyllshire, The Beech-Tree's Petition, 
 and an Ode to Winter, which originally appeared 
 in the Morning Chronicle. In that paper, too, 
 appeared Ye Mariners of England, one of the finest 
 war-songs in the English language. It was written 
 at Altona, when the poet was twenty -three years of 
 age. Few pieces have been more frequently quoted 
 than this poem, beginning : 
 
 Ye mariners of England 
 
 That guard our native seas ; 
 
 Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, 
 
 The battle and the breeze ! 
 
 Your glorious standard launch again 
 
 To match another foe ! 
 
 And sweep through the deep, 
 
 While the stormy winds do blow ; 
 
 While the battle rages loud and long, 
 
 And the stormy winds do blow. 
 
 Of various statements made by the poet relative 
 to the scenes he witnessed during the short space 
 that hostilities continued while he was on the 
 Danube, no connected account can be made out. 
 It was generally said that he had been on the field 
 at Hohenlinden the day after the battle. This 
 could not have been the case, because the poet was 
 in Altona at the time. He had witnessed a battle, 
 however, from Ratisbon, which took place without 
 the walls, as already stated. Hohenlinden might 
 
100 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 have been mistaken for Ratisbon or some other 
 place; but at anyrate it is indisputable, on the 
 evidence of friends who have survived him, that 
 he spoke of crossing a field of battle on or during 
 snow, and that the vehicle in which he was seated 
 was left by the driver for the purpose of collecting 
 the tails of the horses lying on the field. Having 
 accumulated a considerable quantity of this singular 
 booty, he now piled them on the carriage, and they 
 proceeded. It is certain, too, that he spoke of the 
 different appearances of the bodies on the field, 
 both the Germans and French ; and to one friend 
 he mentioned having seen some of the French 
 cavalry wipe their gory swords on their horses' 
 tails. He made several short excursions from the 
 city, besides visiting Munich and Salzburg, and 
 was on the battlefield of Ingolstadt, which place 
 he saw in ruins. 
 
 The poet was still at Altona in the beginning of 
 1801, when Lord Nelson visited Hamburg. He 
 composed his lines on Judith of Altona there, his 
 Ode to Content, and some other pieces. He reckoned 
 upon being soon joined by his friend Richardson, 
 and on setting out upon his travels anew, when he 
 found that hostilities were about to commence 
 between England and Denmark. Nelson with his 
 fleet was already in the Sound. Altona was no 
 longer safe as a residence for Englishmen, and the 
 poet embarked in all haste for England. The 
 vessel in which he took his passage was chased 
 into Yarmouth by a privateer, and landing there, 
 he proceeded to London, having but a few shillings 
 in his pocket. There he called on Perry of the 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 101 
 
 Morning Chronicle, who introduced him to Lord 
 Holland, Sir James Mackintosh, Rogers, and others, 
 at a club to which they all belonged, and he was 
 beginning to congratulate himself upon his good 
 fortune, when he received the news from Edinburgh 
 of his father's decease. Dr Anderson had paid 
 great attention to his father during his later days, 
 and Campbell gratefully acknowledged his kind- 
 ness. ' You have known and forgiven many errors 
 of my life, my dearly valued friend. You know 
 withal that my feelings, though turbulent, are 
 sincere. I ever esteemed — I now most deeply feel 
 — the value of your friendship. What I would 
 say overcomes my power of expression. To have 
 been the guardian of my dying father, and the 
 comforter of my mother, was more than I deserved, 
 and all that I could have wished from a friend. 
 When my heart has done penance for being so far 
 away from the last duties I owed to the best of 
 men, I shall recover tranquillity.' 
 
 The poet next visited Edinburgh, and went by 
 sea. One of the passengers told him that he had 
 been arrested on a charge of high treason, and sent 
 to the Tower ; and the disgraceful system of espion- 
 age then commonly used by the government had 
 been extended to Campbell. His letters from the 
 Continent had no doubt been opened, and sealed up 
 again; for a suspicious sentence in those days was 
 enough to put a man on trial for his life. He 
 found his mother in great fears for his safety ; but 
 he went at once to the sheriff, who told him there 
 was a warrant out against him for high treason — 
 that he had been conspiring with General Moreau 
 
102 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 and the Irish exiles to land troops in Ireland ! 
 Campbell laughed outright, and asked the sheriff 
 if he could credit such an absurdity as that a 
 youth like himself should conspire against the 
 British empire. The reply was, that he had 
 attended Jacobin clubs in Hamburg, and was a 
 passenger in the same vessel with one Donovan, 
 who had commanded a regiment three years before 
 at Vinegar Hill. The poet declared he had never 
 heard of Jacobin clubs at Hamburg, and knew 
 nothing of Donovan until he saw him upon the 
 deck of the vessel. He demanded that the matter 
 should be minutely investigated; and the sheriff 
 fixed the time. The harpies of the spy system at 
 Yarmouth had seized a box which the poet had 
 sent from that place to Edinburgh, and its contents 
 were examined, when among them was found the 
 draught of Ye Mariners of England ! The sheriff 
 said something indignantly about Hamburg spies, 
 and a bottle of wine wound up the affair. 
 
 Campbell found his mother's circumstances bad, 
 and although with little means of his own, he deter- 
 mined to do all he could to relieve them. Mundell 
 and Company occasionally paid her small sums due 
 to him by his directions. Perry of the Morning 
 Chronicle had paid him with a liberal hand. But 
 however he might straiten himself, he resolved that 
 his mother, and his sisters residing with her, should 
 never cause his conscience a reproach on the score 
 of want of attention. Scanty as his resources were, 
 he shared them with his family. He solicited sub- 
 scriptions for the new edition of the Pleasures of 
 Hope, which Mundell and Company had conceded 
 
Thomas campbell. 103 
 
 to him. He composed some verses under the title 
 of the Mobiade, in consequence of the riots of the 
 fishwomen in Scotland about the high price of 
 bread ; but they possessed none of the humour 
 which their author intended. He had no skill in 
 humorous composition, although he would not 
 admit his deficiency. But no one could relate a 
 humorous incident with more effect. 
 
 He was introduced to Lord Minto by Dugald 
 Stewart, and a friendly intercourse commenced 
 between them, which continued until the peer's 
 decease in 1814. His lordship invited him to his 
 house in London, and Campbell determined to 
 avail himself of so favourable an opportunity to 
 visit again the metropolis of the empire. He set 
 out by way of Liverpool, and there made acquaint- 
 ance with Dr Currie, and with the justly celebrated 
 Roscoe. He afterwards reached Lord Minto's house 
 in Hanover Street, and while there occasionally 
 acted as his amanuensis. He had a room appro- 
 priated to his use, superintended the printing of 
 his splendid quarto of the Pleasures of Hope by 
 Bensley, and was introduced into the best literary 
 society of the metropolis. He occasionally visited 
 Mrs Siddons and her brother John, the latter of 
 whom he had previously known. His admiration 
 for Mrs Siddons was constant and extraordinary. 
 Another intimate friend was Mr Telford the engineer. 
 Lochiel and Sohenlinden were written at this time, 
 intended for his quarto then in hand ; but he printed 
 them anonymously, and inscribed them to Mr Alison. 
 It was a remarkable proof of the poet's instability 
 of mind, that when he published his poems after- 
 
104 LITERARY CELEBEITIES. 
 
 wards in a collected form he discarded his previous 
 dedications as preposterous things. Yet in his later 
 years he adopted them again. 
 
 In August 1802 he left London on a visit to Lord 
 Minto at Minto in Scotland. While there he wrote 
 to Scott to express his delight at the verses upon 
 Cadzow Castle. His superb edition of the Pleasures 
 of Hope, in quarto, was still unfinished. His literary- 
 labour at this time, besides the task of correction, 
 was the compilation of a prose work called the 
 Annals of Great Britain, in three volumes, for 
 which he was to receive £300. The work was 
 to appear without his name, as he said it was 
 'written for employment.' This was well, because 
 it was not at all calculated to increase the literary 
 reputation of its author, and fell stillborn from the 
 press. Campbell quitted Edinburgh for London 
 again in March 1803, proceeding first to Liverpool, 
 where he spent ten days visiting his friends Roscoe 
 and Currie. He remained a few days with another 
 friend, Mr Stevenson, at the Potteries in Stafford- 
 shire, and made there the acquaintance of the cele- 
 brated Wedgwood, to whose taste so much is due 
 for the improvement of British pottery. On reach- 
 ing London, he first lodged with his friend Mr 
 Telford the engineer, whose quarters were at the 
 Salopian at Charing Cross. From some reason not 
 given, Mr Telford thought that his experience and 
 friendly care might be useful to his young and 
 ardent friend, flung upon a great city without a 
 home. 
 
 The poet was not at first reconciled to the noise 
 and never-ending confusion of the metropolis. He 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 105 
 
 complained of headaches and want of rest, in 
 announcing which to his friends in the north, he 
 added that Leyden, with whom he had quarrelled, 
 had been ' dubbed doctor, and had gone to diminish 
 the population of India/ He next took lodgings 
 at 61 South Molton Street, where he completed the 
 correction of his splendid quarto. 
 
 Everything now looked bright in the poet's 
 imagination, and marriage alone seemed wanting 
 to complete his happiness. This golden consum- 
 mation was at hand. He had become enamoured 
 of his cousin Matilda Sinclair, the daughter of 
 Mr Sinclair, once a merchant of Greenock, but 
 then in business in Trinity Square, in the city 
 of London, and he led her to the altar on the 10th 
 September 1803. She was handsome, lively, under 
 the middle size in person, had fine dark eyes, 
 and something of the Scotch patois in speaking. 
 The newly married pair lived first at 35 Upper 
 Eaton Street, Pimlico ; where the commence- 
 ment of the marriage state, domestic comfort, and 
 the novelty of his position, seem to have had a 
 happy effect upon the poet's mind. Horner, his 
 old friend, remarked to Lady Mackintosh, that 
 matrimony had made a great improvement in his 
 manners and temper. Of all men Campbell stood 
 most in need of a home. He had till then been 
 a wanderer, and regular in nothing. He was now 
 fixed, and during the period of his married life 
 he was unquestionably very different in his habits 
 and in the society he kept from what he afterwards 
 became. Horner seems to hint at his bachelorhood 
 
106 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 being open to the same remarks as his widowhood ; 
 and himself spoke of his early Edinburgh indulgences 
 as having been rather too lively, and of his having 
 escaped them in London. 
 
 A son who survived him, Thomas Telford 
 Campbell, was born June 2, 1804, in Eaton Street. 
 The description of his child to his friends at this 
 time was full of kindness mingled with appre- 
 hension. ' Oh,' said he, ' that I were sure he would 
 live to the days when I could take him on my 
 knee and feel the strong plumpness of childishness 
 waxing into vigorous youth ! My poor boy ! shall 
 I have the ecstasy of teaching him thoughts, and 
 knowledge, and reciprocity of love to me ? It is 
 bold to enter into futurity so far ! ' Alas ! how 
 differently the poet was destined to look upon that 
 son nearly twenty years afterwards ! 
 
 He took a plain brick house at Sydenham in 
 Kent in 1804 : it was the last of a row on the side 
 of a hill, and had nothing but its retired situation 
 to recommend it. He was then in his twenty- 
 seventh year. He became indisposed just after his 
 removal, and was advised by Sir James Mackintosh 
 to drink water, and abstain from all fermented 
 liquors, in order to strengthen his nerves. This 
 he did for some time, but found no benefit from 
 the change ; for his mental labour, before his frame 
 had been knit into manhood, had been too severe ; 
 and this had communicated a certain debility to 
 his nervous system which was never removed, and 
 which his careless regimen did not tend to counteract 
 or diminish. Over-excitement of the mind in youth 
 is continually traced in some form or another 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 107 
 
 throughout life. To this perhaps is to be attributed 
 the early exhaustion of the poet's genius, and his 
 subsequent indolence as to literary labour. He 
 translated the foreign papers for the Star this year 
 at £200 per annum, and wrote in the Philosophical 
 Magazine. 
 
 Campbell's second son, Alison, was born upon the 
 2d of June 1805, just a year after his brother 
 Thomas Telford. He described his two sons — the 
 one about a twelvemonth, and the other a few 
 weeks old — in a letter to Mr Alison in a style 
 of some humour. ' Your beloved namesake is grow- 
 ing a sweet and beautiful child. The elder Telford 
 I am sorry to send you less favourable accounts of. 
 Don't alarm yourself, however, for his health : it is 
 his moral disposition which is become rude and 
 savage. He talks a language like man in his 
 pristine state of barbarity, consisting of unmodu- 
 lated and indefinite sounds. He is rapacious, and 
 would eat bread and milk until the day of judgment; 
 but he is obliged to stint his stomach to five loaves, 
 and as many pints of milk per diem, besides occa- 
 sional repasts. He is mischievous, and watches 
 every opportunity to poke out little Alison's eyes, 
 and tear the unformed nose from his face. He 
 had not been christened, but only named, till Alison 
 and he were converted to Christianity together. 
 The watering of the young plants was a very 
 uncommon scene. Telford scolded the clergyman, 
 and dashed down the bowl with one smash of 
 his herculean arms. He continued boasting and 
 scolding the priest till a wild cry of "Y-a-men" 
 from the clerk astonished him into silence. The 
 
108 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 first meeting of Telford and his young friend was 
 diverting. Telford had seen no live animal of the 
 same size, except the lambs on the common, which 
 he had been taught to salute by the appellation 
 of B-a-a ! This was for some time his nickname 
 for your namesake.' 
 
 Campbell was offered the Regent's Chair in the 
 university of Vilna, in West Russia, and was 
 very near accepting it, as 'the wood and Botany 
 Bay were preferable to uncertainty at home : ' he 
 was deterred solely by the fear of Russian despotism. 
 It was a singular event that he should, many years 
 subsequently, have had a professorship in the same 
 country at his disposal, which he tendered to his 
 literary coadjutor. He remarked of his literary 
 labour at this time, very close to the state of facts 
 with most literary men : ' I get through a tenth 
 of my labour in one day, but innumerable inter- 
 ruptions occur. What was written to-day, may 
 have to be re-written to-morrow. The grocer who 
 sells a pound of figs and puts a shilling, including 
 threepence profit, into his till, is a more gainful 
 vocation.' The Turkish Lady and The Soldier's 
 Bream were written this year; and the Battle of 
 the Baltic reduced to a mere moiety of the original 
 sketch. Lord Ullin's Baughter was published at 
 this time (1804). This ballad was composed during 
 Campbell's residence on the shores of Mull, but 
 was not finished till some years afterwards, at 
 Sydenham. 
 
 He now projected an edition of the British poets ; 
 and as Scott had adopted the same idea, they 
 thought of bringing it out jointly. Both insisted 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. Ill 
 
 upon inserting lives which the booksellers opposed ; 
 and this interference put a stop to a most valuable 
 collection of the poets by two distinguished poets — 
 a loss never to be repaired. The men of trade in 
 consequence applied to a hack to bring out an 
 edition for £300, which gave rise to the publication 
 of the Specimens of the British Poets thirteen years 
 afterwards by Campbell alone. In 1805 a collec- 
 tion of Irish melodies was projected by him, which 
 went no further in his hands, but was afterwards 
 nobly carried out by Moore. In the meantime 
 his Annals were still unfinished, when, in October 
 1805, it was announced that a pension of £200 per 
 annum had been granted to him, as was generally 
 supposed through the interest of Lord Minto. He 
 imagined it was through Fox and Lord Holland ; 
 but Pitt was then in office, and Campbell was an 
 avowed disciple of the Whigs. The minister, on 
 the other hand, only three weeks before his decease, 
 put his name down as a subscriber for the poet's 
 works. Fees and income-tax reduced the pension 
 to £168 per annum. The poet met Fox for the 
 first time the year following at Lord Holland's. 
 The statesman was then in office, and invited 
 Campbell to St Ann's Hill, but died before the 
 latter had an opportunity of accepting the invita- 
 tion The poet revised an edition of Johnson's 
 Lives of the Poets this year ; and Mr Murray, wiser 
 than his brother booksellers had been before, offered 
 Campbell and Scott £1000 for the lives of the poets 
 on their old plan ; but the latter was now too much 
 engaged to undertake any portion of the labour. 
 Campbell, for the most part, lived retired at 
 
112 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Sydenham during 1806. He had complained that 
 too much conviviality made him feel worse, and 
 yet company continually led him into it. He 
 remarked that he had had warning he would not 
 be a Methuselah. 
 
 The next publication of Campbell's was a step 
 gained in poetical beauty even upon the Pleasures 
 of Hope. It was not so exquisitely worked up and 
 polished ; but in sentiment and subject it was 
 superior. The Pleasures of Hope was didactic. It 
 contained touching passages, but had no continuity 
 of story, which, though feeble in Gertrude of 
 Wyoming, enhances the interest of the poem. It 
 may therefore be considered a superior development 
 of the poet's skill : in fact, the highest flight his 
 muse ever essayed. This was his own opinion, 
 although the infallibility of the judgment of writers 
 in regard to the merit of their own productions 
 can never be admitted. In the same volume in 
 which Gertrude of Wyoming was printed, there 
 were included the two noble odes of the Battle of 
 the Baltic and the Mariners of England, together 
 with Hohenlinden, Glenara, Lord Ullin's Daughter, 
 and O'Connor's Child; composing a collection of 
 poetry by one individual so fresh, so varied, and 
 of a merit so rare, that it may be questioned if 
 works of such enduring excellence ever before 
 appeared at one time in a single publication of 
 any of our poets. The lapse of years since has but 
 confirmed the opinion of the excellence of these 
 poems, which have never diminished in public 
 estimation from the day on which they first saw 
 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 113 
 
 the light. It may be questioned whether, after such 
 works, destined to exist as long as the language in 
 which they are written — a language becoming almost 
 universally vernacular — enough had not been achieved 
 for the fame of one individual. At anyrate the 
 efforts thus made seem to have exhausted the poet's 
 powers ; and some half-a-dozen short pieces more, 
 written during the next thirty years of his life, 
 although beautiful in language, made no approach 
 in power to their predecessors. The diversities of 
 genius upon record show some of its sons destined 
 to continue to delight mankind from youth to age, 
 while others flame out at once, and darken to the 
 end. Waller wrote as well at eighty as at twenty ; 
 Dryden wrote nothing worthy of his name until he 
 was between thirty and forty: in Campbell the 
 poetical intensity was ardent for a limited period : 
 all his better works were published before he was 
 thirty-two. 
 
 Gertrude of Wyoming was completed in 1808, and 
 published in 1809 ; and a second edition followed 
 the next year. The story is deficient in invention, 
 in which the other works of the poet show that he 
 did not shine. There is enough to carry the simple 
 details required, but no more ; and the excellences 
 consist in an all-pervading sweetness and tenderness 
 of handling, in the purity of the sentiment, the rich- 
 ness and splendour, and the pointed vigour displayed 
 in many of the passages. If it does not sparkle like 
 the Pleasures of Hope, or attract so much by its 
 polish and the artifice of its verse, it possesses a 
 wider range of vision, and touches more deeply the 
 sympathies of the reader. 
 
 H 
 
114 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 When Jeffrey read Gertrude, he wrote to the 
 author, and with that perspicacity which so well 
 adapted him for the post of a reviewer, said that the 
 poem ended abruptly. ' Not but that there is great 
 spirit in the description,' he added, ' but a spirit not 
 quite suitable to the soft and soothing tenor of the 
 poem. The most dangerous faults, however, are 
 your faults of diction. There is still a good deal of 
 obscurity in many passages, and in others a strained 
 and unnatural expression — an appearance of labour 
 and hardness. You have hammered the metal in 
 some places till it has lost all its ductility. These 
 are not great faults, but they are blemishes ; and as 
 dunces will find them out, noodles will see them 
 when they are pointed to. I wish you had had 
 courage to correct or rather avoid them ; for with 
 you they are faults of over-finishing, not of negli- 
 gence. I have another fault to charge you with 
 in private, for which I am more angry than all 
 the rest. Your timidity, or fastidiousness, or some 
 other knavish quality, will not let you give your 
 conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as 
 they present themselves ; but you must chasten, 
 and refine, and soften them forsooth, till half 
 their nature and grandeur is chiselled away from 
 them.' 
 
 This was a sound advice, friendly, and worthy 
 of the critic. This criticism came home to the poet's 
 faults, which in his better days were too close 
 an adherence to that nicety of verbal polish and 
 disregard of the more manly sense, which are dis- 
 tinguishing traits of university practice in exercise 
 and translation. There were other errors. In the 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 115 
 
 Pleasures of Hope he had introduced tigers on the 
 shores of Lake Erie : there being no such animal 
 in the United States. Then the flamingo, the aloe, 
 and palm-tree of the tropics are placed in the 
 severe climate of Pennsylvania, in which plants 
 that flourish well in England perish during the 
 intensity of its winter. 
 
 These, however, were blemishes which only served 
 to set off the merits of the poem in other respects. 
 The Edinburgh Review passed high encomiums upon 
 it ; Dugald Stewart was delighted with it ; Mr 
 Alison conveyed to the author the admiration of 
 his Edinburgh friends in glowing colours. The poet 
 wrote in consequence to a friend : ' Alison's letter 
 is a thing belonging to the heart. Poor Stewart's 
 tears are at present no certain test; his great, 
 but always susceptible mind, is reduced, I daresay, 
 to almost puerile weakness, if I may say it with 
 due reverence to his name ' (he was suffering under 
 a domestic affliction). 'Now, let me ask, is it very 
 great ostentation to betray the first symptoms of 
 doubtful success to you ? To you who are so dear 
 to my heart that you will excuse even its foibles ? 
 I must not exclude your family from hearing some- 
 thing of Gertrude. Ay, ay, I am like the whale 
 in the gulf of Malstrom, I feel myself getting into 
 the whirlpool of vanity in communicating the puff 
 from Alison. I may roar and repent, but into 
 the gulf I must go ! But I love you very much, 
 and that is the reason I do not fear you. Say your 
 worst, bating that I am a silly, vain creature — bite 
 my nails, &c. — bray much about Montague Street, 
 when I have dined — and envy Sydney Smith ! 
 
116 LITEEAKY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 
 Except these faults, I defy you to say black is the 
 white of my eye ! ' 
 
 In 1811 Campbell was invited to give five lectures 
 at the Royal Institution, and having consented, set 
 about preparing them. Two were to be delivered 
 before Easter 1812, and three after, for which he 
 was to receive a hundred guineas. He seems at 
 this time to have had as much work upon his hands 
 as he could well get through. His mother's death 
 took place in February. He said that he felt more 
 at the news of her first shock of the palsy than at 
 her decease. ' It is only,' said he, ' when I imagine 
 her alive in my dreams that I feel strongly on the 
 subject.' In the meanwhile the time approached for 
 the delivery of his lectures. The first was on the 
 principles of poetry ; then upon Hebrew and Greek 
 poetry, two lectures ; the fourth on the troubadour 
 and Italian poetry ; the fifth on the French theatre, 
 and on English poets and poetry. 
 
 Sir Humphry Davy had borne off the palm from 
 all preceding lecturers at the institution, particularly 
 with the fair sex, principally owing to the illustra- 
 tion of his subject by numerous pleasing experi- 
 ments ; but Campbell came off well, though he felt 
 no little timid anxiety about the result. Describing 
 his first lecture, he observed : ' Archdeacon Nares 
 fidgeted about and said, " That 's new, at least quite 
 new to me." I could not look in my friend's face ; 
 and I threatened to divorce my wife if she came. 
 All friends struck me blind, except my chieftain's 
 lovely daughter, and now next-door neighbour on 
 the common, Lady Charlotte Campbell. I thouo-ht 
 she had a feudal right to have the lecturer's looks 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 117 
 
 to herself. But chiefly did I repose my awkward 
 eyes on the face of a little yellow unknown man, 
 with a face and a smile of approbation indescribably 
 ludicrous.' 
 
 The poet now became a visitor at the residence 
 of the unfortunate Queen Caroline, at Blackheath, 
 danced reels with royalty, attended operas, and for 
 a season was as gay as his nature permitted. He 
 denied that there was anything coarse or indelicate 
 about the queen's conduct. He seems to have 
 thought of her precisely as Canning did. He 
 described her as good-humoured, kind-hearted, acute, 
 naive, and entertaining, but as blundering so comi- 
 cally in speaking English as to be almost equivocal 
 at times. In 1812 he seems to have made the 
 acquaintance of Thomas Hill, at Sydenham. There, 
 too, congregated the two Smiths, James and Horace, 
 Theodore Hook, Mathews, Du Bois, and other choice 
 spirits of the time, the poet being as lively as the 
 gayest of them. 
 
 The next year Madame de Stael visited England 
 from Sweden, and took up her residence in Argyll 
 Street. She wrote to the poet from Stockholm, 
 speaking of the pleasure she had derived from 
 reading the Episode of Ellenore in the Pleasures 
 of Hope. He had previously offered to superintend 
 the translation of a work she was bringing out. 
 He greatly feared, about the same time, that a 
 pleurisy with which he was attacked would disable 
 him from proceeding with his lectures ; but he 
 recovered, and delivered a second course with great 
 eclat. It was observed that he was uneven in his 
 enunciation. ' Campbell,' says Byron of him at this 
 
118 LITERAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 
 time, ' looks well, seems pleased, and dresses sprucely. 
 A blue coat becomes him; so does his new wig.' 
 (He was bald at twenty-four years old.) 'He 
 really looked as if Apollo had sent him a birthday 
 suit, or a wedding-garment.' Mrs Grant said of 
 him : ' He is one who has suffered much from 
 neither understanding the world nor being under- 
 stood by it. He encountered every evil of poverty 
 but that of being ashamed of his circumstances ; 
 in that respect he was nobly indifferent to opinion, 
 and his good, gentle, patient, little wife was so 
 frugal, so simple, and so sweet-tempered, that she 
 disarmed poverty itself of half its evils.' Campbell's 
 introduction to Byron took place at the table . of 
 Rogers, on whom he had accidentally called, where 
 Moore and Byron had previously been invited to 
 meet, to clear up some misunderstanding. It was 
 rarely that four such men, poets of so high a repu- 
 tation, had met together and alone. 
 
 In 1818 he visited Brighton for the benefit of 
 his health. He kept a light sort of diary upon 
 this occasion, but it had no real humour. Here 
 he met Dr Herschel, and was much struck with 
 some of his hypotheses respecting the heavenly 
 bodies ; subjects with which Campbell himself does 
 not appear to have been very familiar, since he£ 
 mistook the obvious meaning of the astronomer. 
 
 When peace returned in 1814 Campbell visited 
 Paris, and found there Madame de Stael, with 
 Mrs Siddons, ' and her brother John, for whom he 
 had such a strong, unabated friendship. He visited 
 the Galleries of Art ; he dined with Humboldt 
 and Schlegel; and was introduced to the Duke of 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 119 
 
 Wellington as 'Mr Campbell.' The duke passed over 
 the introduction as a matter of course, supposing 
 the poet, as he himself observed, to be one of the 
 thousand of that name; but when he found his 
 mistake he took down the poet's address, stating 
 that he was sorry he was not sooner undeceived. 
 Campbell had numerous conversations with Schlegel, 
 in which they differed considerably upon the mode 
 of studying philosophy ; and these friendly contests 
 were afterwards carried on in England, during 
 Schlegel's visits, with the same warmth and the 
 same futility. He was struck with the Apollo 
 Belvedere in the Louvre, and confessed that its 
 busts he had before seen with indifference. This 
 he attributed to his inexperience in art ; for 
 although versed in the principles, he was by no 
 means a judge of the details of artistic objects, 
 his ideas having been formed by reading, not by 
 the study of the objects themselves. 
 
 Campbell remained in Paris two months, and 
 then returned to London. There is an epitaph to 
 the memory of Mrs Shute of Sydenham, and her 
 two daughters, who were drowned at Chepstow, 
 written by him this year, and engraved on their 
 monument in Monkton Combe, Somerset: 
 
 In deep submission to the Will above, 
 
 Yet with no common cause for human tears, 
 This stone to the lost partner of his love, 
 
 And for his children lost, a mourner rears. 
 One fatal moment, one o'erwhelming doom, 
 
 Tore, threefold, from his heart the ties of earth : 
 His Mary, Margaret, in their early bloom, 
 
 And her who gave them life and taught them worth. 
 
120 Literary celebrities. 
 
 Farewell, ye broken pillars of my fate ! 
 
 My life's companion, and my two first-born ; 
 Yet wbile this silent stone I consecrate 
 
 To conjugal, paternal, love forlorn — 
 Oh may each passer-by the lesson learn, 
 
 Which can alone the bleeding heart sustain, 
 Where friendship weeps at virtue's funeral urn, 
 
 That to the pure in heart to die is gain ! 
 
 In 1815 Campbell visited Scotland. On his 
 return he used all his interest to patronise Mrs 
 Allsop, the daughter of Mrs Jordan, who had come 
 out upon the London stage. It appeared that she 
 wanted expression on the boards. But through 
 Lord Byron our poet procured for her a stage 
 engagement of considerable advantage. 
 
 In 1816 Sir Walter Scott, with that kindness 
 towards his brother labourers in literature which 
 ever distinguished him, suggested a plan to obtain 
 two classes for Campbell in the university of 
 Edinburgh, which might be made lucrative. His 
 plan, however, came to nothing. 
 
 Campbell now proceeded towards the completion 
 of his Specimens of the Poets for Mr Murray, which 
 had proceeded very slowly. There was a proposal 
 by Mr Murray regarding the publication of his 
 lectures prior to the Specimens. What became of 
 the lectures alluded to is not clear; but the poet 
 afterwards recomposed them for the Neio Monthly 
 Magazine, in which it was stipulated they should 
 appear. A very small portion of the seven volumes 
 of the Specimens, which were not published until 
 1819, is original matter, and the errors in the first 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 121 
 
 edition were very considerable. Mr Murray had 
 engaged to give the poet £500 only for his labours ; 
 but he generously doubled the amount, besides 
 presents of books worth £200 more. Campbell had 
 expected a second edition of this work three 
 or four years after it was published; for it seems 
 he applied to his coadjutor in the New Monthly, 
 when he became editor of that periodical, for a 
 life of Dr Wolcot (Peter Pindar), whom he con- 
 sidered to be one of the most original of English 
 poets, although he had neglected him for want of 
 materials, of which his friend, he knew, had 
 possession. The Specimens did not come to a 
 second edition till 1841, when, on being applied to 
 for the correction of the numerous errors in bio- 
 graphical and bibliographical information which 
 existed in the former edition, the poet refused to 
 make them. The generous conduct of Mr Murray 
 merited a better return. These errors were gene- 
 rally in dates, and about localities, arising from want 
 of care or from oversight. This duty was obliged 
 to be performed by another. But at the time 
 alluded to (1841), the poet's mental powers were in 
 rapid decadence, and his horror of such labour was 
 proverbial. The essay prefixed to the work is one 
 of Campbell's best prose productions. 
 
 In a conversation between Scott and Washington 
 Irving, Scott said of Campbell : ' What a pity it is 
 that Campbell does not write more and oftener, and 
 give full sweep to his genius ! He has wings that 
 would bear him to the skies ; and he does, now and 
 then, spread them grandly, but folds them up again, 
 and resumes his perch, as if he was afraid to launch 
 
122 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 away. What a grand idea is that about prophetic 
 boding, or, in common parlance, second-sight : 
 
 Coming events cast their shadows before ! 
 
 It is a noble thought, and nobly expressed. And 
 there's that glorious little poem, too, of Hohen- 
 linden. After he had written it he did not seem 
 to think much of it. I got him to recite it to me ; 
 and I believe the delight I felt and expressed had 
 an effect in inducing him to print it. The fact is, 
 Campbell is in a manner a bugbear to himself. The 
 brightness of his early success is a detriment to all 
 his further efforts. He is afraid of the shadow that 
 his own fame casts before him.' 
 
 In 1817 he lost his friend Francis Horner, and 
 this year made an acquaintance with Crabbe at 
 Holland House. Crabbe, Rogers, and Moore, after- 
 wards dined with him at Sydenham, making a 
 second repast of a similar character at which four 
 distinguished poets had figured together. The 
 former had taken place at Rogers's, where Byron 
 took the place of Crabbe. 
 
 The poet was much attached to clubs, and had 
 belonged to several both in England and Scotland. 
 He proposed one, to be called the Bees' or Poets' 
 Club; but Perry of the Chronicle put an end to 
 the scheme by saying people would call it the 
 ' Wasps.' Campbell, daunted at once by the chance 
 of being made ridiculous, gave up the project. 
 
 He wrote some lines in 1817 upon the death of 
 the Princess Charlotte, with which Prince Leopold 
 was much pleased. He continued to work on his 
 Specimens in 1818 ; Roscoe of Liverpool solicited 
 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 123 
 
 him to lecture there in 1819. He accepted the 
 terms, went down, and was enthusiastically received. 
 He profited by these lectures to the amount of 
 £350. He also received £100 for delivering them 
 at Birmingham on his way back to town. At 
 Birmingham, too, he visited the two Watts, father 
 and son; the elder being then in the last year of 
 his useful and protracted life. A younger son, 
 named Gregory, who died early, was the class-fellow 
 and friend of the poet at Glasgow College. 
 
 A passage in the ' Essay on English Poetry ' in 
 the Specimens, produced a remarkable discussion. 
 Campbell had censured the Rev. Mr Bowles for 
 undervaluing the merit of Pope; and Bowles rejoined 
 in a letter to Campbell, in defence of what were 
 called his ' invariable principles of poetry.' Camp- 
 bell's usual indolence prevented his replying other- 
 wise than by a note affixed to one of his poetical 
 lectures ; but Byron, Roscoe, Gilchrist, and others 
 not so fond of pleading a want of leisure which 
 did not exist, took up the affair; and the original 
 disputant remained an unconcerned spectator of the 
 contest he had provoked and cooled upon, which 
 was always his manner to avoid trouble. The 
 admission of Bowles's theory was to degrade Pope 
 from his high poetical station, and was unquestion- 
 ably pushed too far. Bowles's argument was, that 
 images drawn from the sublime and beautiful in 
 nature are more poetical than any drawn from art, 
 and that those passions of the heart which belong to 
 nature in general are more adapted to the higher 
 order of poetry than those derived from transient 
 manners. So far might be admitted ; but Bowles 
 
124 LITEEAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 travelled further, and intimated that the mere 
 presence of such images was to determine the 
 merits of the poet, with little regard to the skill 
 in working up the materials. In this dispute 
 which Campbell had raised, and then looked upon 
 so quietly as it proceeded, even the old jurisconsult, 
 Jeremy Bentham, mingled himself. It was clear 
 that no system of exclusion could be true. Was 
 the enchanter who called up at his own will the 
 most beautiful visions, and peopled with their own 
 creations the mighty void, to be reduced to the 
 level of him whose only merit consisted in the 
 selection of a happier theme ? 
 
 Campbell proposed next to extend his lectures, 
 and print them in two quarto volumes, making- 
 extracts to aid him at Bonn, whither he intended 
 to go, and where he should find W. A. Schlegel. 
 He completed the delivery of a second course of 
 his lectures in May. He signed a document, binding 
 himself to undertake the editorship of the New 
 Monthly Magazine in December 1820, so as to 
 commence on the 1st of January following; the 
 lectures, or twelve of them, to be inserted without 
 charge, and his salary to be £600 per annum for 
 three years. He then embarked for Germany by 
 way of Rotterdam, and visited likewise Haarlem, 
 Amsterdam, and the Hague. At Bonn he found 
 Schlegel, who gave him a hearty welcome, and 
 introduced him to several other professors of note. 
 At Frankfort he left his wife and son, and pro- 
 ceeded from thence to Ratisbon, over the ground 
 where the battle he saw in 1800 had been fouo-ht, 
 and where Napoleon fought a much more important 
 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 125 
 
 one ten years afterwards. He visited the Scotch 
 College, and found only two of the brotherhood 
 surviving out of a dozen he had known there 
 twenty years before. He left Ratisbon in a boat 
 on the Danube for Vienna. There he hired apart- 
 ments, nobly furnished, for four pounds a month. 
 He climbed to the summit of St Stephen's spire, 
 and looked over the field of Aspern and the Isle of 
 Lobau, so renowned in warfare. He was welcomed 
 as a celebrity by the learned of Vienna, and his 
 Mariners of England, and most of his shorter 
 pieces, he found translated into German. He 
 returned to Bonn from Vienna by way of Frank- 
 furt — leaving his son under the care of Dr Meyer 
 at Bonn, to proceed with his education — and reached 
 home with Mrs Campbell towards the end of 
 November 1820. Between Dover and London the 
 coach was overturned, and he received so severe 
 an injury in the shoulder, that he was compelled 
 to remain at an inn on the road for several days. 
 
 He now began to think of the duties of his 
 editorship. They were of a character wholly novel 
 to him ; for although his high acquirements and 
 pure taste enabled him to select the best matter 
 in a literary sense, yet to combine a pleasing variety 
 of articles was to him a formidable undertaking. 
 He wanted tact ; and although setting about his 
 task with the ardour which marked his conduct 
 at the commencement of any new undertaking, he 
 became impatient under it. His labours began in 
 December 1820, but it was the middle of the month 
 before anything but his own lecture and poetry was 
 ready. He felt the task confuse him; and as the 
 
126 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 publisher had promised to provide a sub-editor, the 
 necessary personage was found in Edward du Bois, 
 the author of My Pocket-Booh, which had led to 
 a lawsuit many years before, in which Lord Ellen- 
 borough and a jury clearly vindicated the rights 
 of literary criticism. This gentleman was well 
 versed in periodical literature. The small print of 
 the magazine was committed to a separate hand — 
 that of. Cyrus Bedding. In this way the first 
 number appeared. Du Bois, who soon perceived 
 that the poet had had no practice in periodical 
 literature, gave him his opinions too freely upon 
 some points of moment; and although they had 
 been well acquainted — for Du Bois used to make 
 one of the Sydenham guests at Thomas Hill's — 
 Campbell declared he could not proceed with his 
 sub-editor. Mr Eedding therefore, in addition to 
 his own previous duties, assisted Campbell in his 
 portion of the labour; and the periodical proceeded 
 to the satisfaction of everybody concerned during 
 ten years, distancing all its competitors. 
 
 The poet, loath to leave it, kept his house at 
 Sydenham for nearly two years after his editorship 
 began, lodging first in Margaret Street, Cavendish 
 Square, and then in Foley Place. Here his son 
 returned to him with symptoms of incipient in- 
 sanity. He resigned, with feelings of considerable 
 regret, his country domicile, so much endeared to 
 him in recollection, and took a house in Upper 
 Seymour Street West, near Connaught Place. 
 
 It was a singular circumstance that the poet had 
 never inquired about the politics of the work he 
 had undertaken to manage. These had been ultra- 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 127 
 
 Tory; and many of his old friends, in consequence, 
 evaded giving him assistance when he requested it 
 of them. It was not to be supposed that Campbell 
 would support the old principles of the magazine, 
 but the truth was, that he had thought nothing 
 about them. Perry of the Morning Chronicle, who 
 was an old friend of the poet, never mentioned the 
 subject to him ; but told a friend that he must be 
 excused for doing anything in behalf of the maga- 
 zine, because it had stolen the title of another work 
 for party purposes. Attack sentiments and prin- 
 ciples, he said ; it was all right. There was a New 
 Times started against the Times. 'How should 1/ 
 said Perry, 'like a New Morning Chronicle to be 
 started, evading the law by adding a word for that 
 purpose ? I know Campbell had nothing to do 
 with that : it was before his time. He will not, 
 I know, support its old sentiments, but it is sanc- 
 tioning a bad principle.' Campbell confessed that 
 the matter had never crossed his mind ; and this 
 was perfectly in unison with his character. The 
 work flourished notwithstanding, but few of the 
 poet's old Whig friends became contributors. His 
 contributions were comparatively few besides his 
 lectures. These were of high excellence, perhaps too 
 learned for general readers. They were written in 
 that neat and pure style which their author ex- 
 hibited in prose as well as verse. He was some- 
 times so assiduous in the perfect completion of a 
 sentence, that there seemed a forgetfulness of con- 
 nection. He generally perfected in his mind the 
 sentence he thus wrote before committing it to 
 paper, but would sometimes even then repolish and 
 
128 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 alter, so that composition was exceedingly laborious 
 to him. Besides his lectures, he published about 
 thirty pieces of poetry during his ten years' editor- 
 ship. Of these The Rainbow, The Last Man, A 
 Bream, and his stanzas beginning Men of England, 
 are the best. Some of these pieces consisted of 
 only a few lines. The following is the last-named 
 poem : 
 
 MEN OP ENGLAND. 
 
 Men of England ! who inherit 
 
 Rights that cost your sires their blood ! 
 
 Men whose undegenerate spirit 
 
 Has been proved on field and flood : 
 
 By the foes you 've fought uncounted, 
 
 By the glorious deeds ye Ve done, 
 Trophies captured — breaches mounted, 
 
 Navies conquered — kingdoms won ! 
 
 Yet, remember, England gathers 
 Hence but fruitless wreaths of fame, 
 
 If the freedom of your fathers 
 Glow not in your hearts the same. 
 
 What are monuments of bravery, 
 
 Where no public virtues bloom 1 
 What avail, in lands of slavery, 
 
 Trophied temples, arch, and tomb ? 
 
 Pageants ! — Let the world revere us 
 
 For our people's rights and laws, 
 And the breasts of civic heroes 
 
 Bared in Freedom's holy cause. 
 
 Yours are Hampden's, Russell's glory, 
 Sidney's matchless shade is yours — 
 
 Martyrs in heroic story, 
 Worth a hundred Agincourts ! 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 129 
 
 We 're the sons of sires that baffled 
 
 Crowned and mitred tyranny ; 
 They defied the field and scaffold 
 
 For their birthrights — so will we ! 
 
 The prose contributions of Campbell to the maga- 
 zine, besides his twelve lectures, were inconsider- 
 able. They consisted chiefly of 'A Letter to Mr 
 Brant, the son of a Mohawk Chief ;' ' Letters to 
 the Students of the Glasgow University;' an article 
 on ' The University of London ;' two or three 
 reviews, one of which was on Milton's theological 
 tract, another on the first four volumes of Las 
 Casas's Napoleon ; ' Hugh's Travels,' ' Moore's Byron 
 and Sequel,' with articles on the ' Civilisation of 
 Africa,' on the ' Sonnets of Shakspeare,' and on 
 'Flaxman's Lectures.' He also wrote a few small- 
 print criticisms, some very hurriedly, and others more 
 carefully. He would also, when a friend died, give 
 two or three lines of memorial for the obituary. 
 Of these articles the paper on John Flaxman, the 
 greatest of the English school of sculptors, was the 
 most remarkable, from having been just published, 
 and read to Sir Thomas Lawrence when that artist 
 was dying. The painter and poet had long been 
 intimate friends, and the latter was much shocked 
 at the intelligence of Lawrence's decease, which came 
 upon him unexpectedly on a chance meeting with 
 Sir James Mackintosh, as he was starting with a 
 friend upon a walk to Dulwich. The article in 
 the Edinburgh Review on Flaxman, which gave rise 
 to Campbell's paper, was supposed to be written by 
 some friend of Chantrey the sculptor. The poet 
 defended Flaxman's opinion, that anatomy was a 
 
130 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 necessary study for a sculptor ; but Chantrey under- 
 valued what he had never learned. 
 
 In 1824, while connected with the magazine, 
 Campbell published The Last Man, one of his 
 happier efforts. He fanced that Byron, in the poem 
 of Darkness, had stolen his idea. It was singular 
 that he imagined the idea of a 'last man' to be 
 novel, for it is found in a poem printed in the 
 beginning of the century; and in Bishop Home's 
 sermon on the Death of the Old Year, the same idea 
 occurs of earth being sunk in a molten deluge, and 
 ' one man standing in the world the only survivor.' 
 Yet the poet wrote a letter to the Edinburgh 
 reviewers, in which, because they hinted that he 
 had taken his idea from Byron, he charged Byron 
 with taking it from himself fifteen years before. 
 The idea, however, was so obvious, that it must 
 have struck many persons. This year Campbell 
 also began to push his scheme for a university in 
 London; and at the commencement of the next 
 year (1825), after enlisting Brougham, Hume, and 
 others in its behalf, he paid a visit to some of 
 the continental universities, particularly to that of 
 Berlin, to improve his knowledge of such institu- 
 tions, with a view to the internal regulation of one 
 in London. His subsequent interference in the 
 scheme was little, Brougham taking the lead. On 
 the foregoing visit to the Continent, Campbell went 
 to Hamburg, where, after an absence of twenty- 
 five years, he saw some of his old friends of 1800, 
 particularly the Exile of Erin, Anthony M'Cann, 
 for whom he had in vain tried to obtain leave to 
 return to his native land. 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 131 
 
 Our author next began a life of Lawrence, the 
 materials being in great part collected by himself : 
 the labour was commenced, but quickly abandoned, 
 and the work handed over to a friend. During his 
 engagement with the magazine, he was one day 
 waited upon by a friend of Mr Brant, the son of 
 the Indian chief to whom he alluded in his 
 Gertrude as the Mohawk Brant, charging him with 
 cruelty. The son was an accomplished gentleman 
 in the British service, and a field-officer. The 
 Indian chief, Brant, as it appeared, was not present 
 at the sack of Wyoming ; and Campbell attached 
 an exculpatory note to the subsequent " edition of 
 his poems, stating that the name of Brant must 
 be esteemed fictitious. 
 
 Soon after the resignation of his editorship, 
 Campbell sought for a reconciliation with his brother 
 poet, Thomas Moore. There had been a coolness 
 between these two distinguished men from the time 
 the former undertook a defence of Lady Byron in 
 an article in the magazine. He had treated Moore 
 with a roughness by no means merited, and now 
 addressed a letter to him apologising for his vehe- 
 mence. At the same time he declared, with that 
 latent self-respect which formed a part of his char- 
 acter even to vanity, that his sentiments upon the 
 point of difference 'were unaltered.' He only 
 desired the forgiveness of Moore for his heat. The 
 cause of the difference was owing to that impulsive 
 action for right or wrong, continually preceding 
 reflection, which was a part of Campbell's nature. 
 Of his forgiving temper there were proofs in cases 
 
132 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 . 
 
 of less moment to others than himself. Hence his 
 character was often mistaken by those who were 
 not aware of his peculiar disposition. 
 
 During his editorship of the magazine, Campbell 
 had been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University, 
 having a considerable majority over the other two 
 candidates — Canning and Sir Thomas Brisbane. He 
 immediately repaired to Glasgow, where a political 
 dinner was proposed to be given to him, which he 
 declined. He delivered his inaugural address in the 
 beginning of 1827, having been elected in the pre- 
 vious November. Ardently attached to his native 
 city, and the place of his education, where he was 
 now so honoured, he carried his feeling of gratifica- 
 tion almost to weakness. He annexed to the office 
 an importance, even out of Glasgow, which no one 
 else would have thought of doing, and which it 
 could hardly bear. But his temperament, excited 
 by the recall of early sensations and feelings, ren- 
 dered this very excusable. He dined with the 
 Senatus Academicus in the room where he had 
 never been but once before in his life, and that was 
 when a youth on a charge of breaking the windows 
 of the college church ! All the documents relative 
 to the university were laid before him, and he was 
 treated with great politeness and cordiality by the 
 professors. He was very popular with the students, 
 distributed the college prizes to them, and after 
 nearly two months' absence, returned home full of 
 almost youthful joyousness. He left London for 
 Glasgow again at the close of the year, and was 
 re-elected in November. Three of his letters to 
 the Glasgow students appeared that year in print, 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 133 
 
 exhibiting proofs of his previous laborious acquire- 
 ments in their seminary. The diction of these 
 letters was remarkably neat and pure. He left 
 Scotland towards the end of November for London, 
 having that year been absent nearly four months. 
 He came back full of a plan for a classical encyclo- 
 paedia, to be continued through the assistance of 
 the Glasgow students who were most advanced. 
 This plan shared the fate of the poet's other 
 thousand-and-one projects. 
 
 While in Glasgow he was attacked with indis- 
 position, suspected to originate in the liver, but he 
 recovered under the influence of medicine. This 
 seems to have been the first time the seat of his 
 disorder was suspected, and which, by care, he 
 might have checked. He was for some time wholly 
 unfit for literary labour. Sir Thomas Lawrence now 
 made an offer to him on behalf of the Glasgow 
 students, to paint their Lord Rector's picture for 
 the Great Hall of the Museum at a reduced price ; 
 an instance of kindness on the part of Sir Thomas 
 which merits record ; but the matter was not pro- 
 ceeded with. In the meanwhile the copyright of 
 the Pleasures of Hope had returned to him by the 
 expiration of the Copyright Act. He now planned 
 a new and complete edition of his works, to be hand- 
 somely printed and illustrated ; and had scarcely 
 taken a preliminary step in the matter, when his 
 wife was attacked with an illness which proved 
 fatal on the 9th of May 1828. Two months before 
 her decease, the state of uncertainty in which she 
 lay completely unhinged the poet for any kind of 
 work. Anxious to see a complete edition of his 
 
134 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 poems, and declaring his utter inability to execute 
 a task at the moment of the utmost importance to 
 his interests, he became impatient and excited. He 
 was attacked with temporary blindness, and was 
 completely incapacitated for business of any kind. 
 His friend Cyrus Redding undertook to bring out 
 the collected edition of his poems in his behalf; 
 but Campbell was in such a state of mind, that he 
 could with difficulty be got to decide whether some 
 of the pieces attributed to him were his own or 
 not. This edition appeared in two volumes, with 
 a likeness of the author, from a portrait by 
 Lawrence. 
 
 He was invited to stand a third time for the 
 Lord Rectorship of Glasgow at the close of that 
 year. This honour was flattering ; but Scott was 
 now set up against him, and the voting was even. 
 The casting-vote was then given illegally by the 
 poet's own vice-rector against him ; and Scott, with 
 that noble feeling which always distinguished his 
 intercourse with literary men, at once declined the 
 honour. Campbell, therefore, was installed for the 
 third time. He had left London just before his 
 election, prior to which he had given a ' legal ' 
 authority to his friend Redding to act as he might 
 see fit about his son under any circumstances that 
 might arise. The condition of his son made him 
 at the moment exceedingly anxious. On arriving 
 in Edinburgh he found his eldest sister ill. ' Every- 
 thing,' he wrote, 'and every face in Glasgow is a 
 stab to my recollections of the past. I left my 
 son in a ticklish frame of mind, and I have the 
 prospect of not long possessing the nearest and the 
 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 135 
 
 dearest of my earthly relations.' This sister sur- 
 vived until the year before his own decease. 
 
 About this time a club called the Campbell Club 
 was founded among the students in the university 
 of Glasgow. His inaugural address this year on 
 his installation was sensible and well written. It 
 announced two silver and two gold medals : the 
 silver for 'gowned' students, the gold for 'un- 
 gowned.' The first was to be for the best English 
 essay ' On the Evils of Intolerance towards those 
 who differ from us in Religion;' the second, 'On 
 the Comparative Importance of Scientific and 
 Classical Instruction in the General Education of 
 Mankind.' He wound up by recommending to the 
 students, that 'if any feuds had sprung up among 
 them in consequence of the election, they should 
 bury them all in generous oblivion.' 
 
 He visited Scotland again in the beginning of 
 April, in a little more than three months after his 
 former journey, and remained about a month. Upon 
 his return from this journey, he changed his resi- 
 dence from Seymour Street West to Middle Scotland 
 Yard, Whitehall. There he began to give parties. 
 This did not endure long. His fondness for clubs 
 once more exhibited itself in the formation of the 
 Literary Union. This society, which promised well 
 at first, afterwards degenerated into an ordinary 
 club, and expired of inanition not long before the 
 poet's decease. The original idea was good, but 
 the poet was not one possessing a character of 
 steadiness to carry it out with the needful requi- 
 sites. His principal desire was to connect it with 
 literary views and objects. He was chairman of 
 
136 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 the committee, and produced scheme after scheme, 
 which passed away ; and though one or two literary- 
 papers were read, the institution degenerated into 
 a commonplace thing. The committee even found 
 it difficult to confine their chairman to the routine 
 of the common weekly business. Figures and 
 accounts he held in impatient distaste : he would 
 jest and talk politics, and scarcely attend to business 
 when told time was precious. 
 
 In 1831 Campbell and his former coadjutor be- 
 came connected with the Metropolitan. The poet 
 at first was only bound to lend his name, and to 
 furnish something for the work now and then. He 
 was to receive half the income he had enjoyed 
 from the old magazine, and to reside where he 
 pleased. He had by this time left Scotland Yard, 
 and gone for a time to Hastings, or rather St 
 Leonard's, in Sussex. Soon after the work began, 
 a naval officer, who had been a contributor, thinking 
 the speculation was good, took a large share from 
 the bookseller, and became in law his partner. 
 Unluckily for him, he was totally unacquainted with 
 trade, and with the hazard of being involved with 
 a person who might be destitute of capital. Thus 
 imprudent, he offered Campbell a share for a few 
 hundred pounds. The bad state of the bookseller's 
 affairs was unfortunately but too soon discovered, 
 and by an honourable conduct on the part of the 
 individual alluded to, who had involved himself 
 and the poet, the latter got back the money he had 
 advanced ; but the unfortunate officer, striving to 
 avoid being made a partner with a bankrupt trades- 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 137 
 
 man, lost his lawsuit, and had to pay some thou- 
 sands of pounds. The work, which had been pledged 
 to the printer, then fell into the hands of Captain 
 Marryat, the novelist, who bought it with the design 
 of being his own editor, but made no hand of that 
 duty. At Christmas 1832 the work rested wholly, 
 both property and editorship, with him. Prior to 
 that period it had had contributions from Campbell, 
 Moore, and Montgomery of Sheffield, both in prose 
 and verse ; and had it been sustained by proper 
 funds, would no doubt have nourished. Before the 
 establishment of the Metropolitan, the poet had 
 taken up with warmth the cause of the Polish exiles. 
 When he published the Pleasures of Hope, the poem 
 had been speedily translated into several European 
 languages. It had found its way into Poland, was 
 admired there, and the mention of the fall of Polish 
 liberty in the Pleasures of Hope rendered Campbell's 
 name a favourite in the extinguished kingdom. He 
 had kept up a correspondence with some of the 
 leading Poles afterwards, long before the last attempt 
 they made at emancipation. 
 
 Besides assisting the Poles, in whose behalf he 
 worked incessantly, he began the Life of Mrs 
 Siddons with far more scanty materials than he had 
 possessed for that of Sir Thomas Lawrence. He took 
 up his lodgings in Duke Street, St James's Square, 
 at what were called the Polish Chambers, where the 
 zeal displayed by Mr Bach, secretary to the Polish 
 Association, attached the poet to him strongly : nor 
 was the attachment less strong on the other side. 
 There was a remote attic in the house, where the 
 poet could be as retired and studious as he pleased, 
 
138 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 without the knowledge of any one but his friend 
 Bach. Here, after the poet's decease, under promise 
 of its preservation by the landlord of the house, 
 Mr Bach had a marble tablet placed, with the follow- 
 ing inscription so honourable to his friendship : 
 ' In this attic Thomas Campbell, Hope's Bard, and 
 mourning Freedom's Hope, lived and thought, A.D. 
 1832, while at the head of the Literary Association 
 of the Friends of Poland, his creation. Divinse 
 virtutis pietati amicitia, 1847.' 
 
 The Life of Mrs Siddons was a difficult task to 
 execute, owing to the paucity of materials. The 
 booksellers would not look at it in less than two 
 volumes. Matter was laboriously collected to eke 
 out the required quantity ; but the middle of the 
 year 1834 had arrived before the biography made 
 its appearance. It was printed in type larger than 
 the ordinary size, to make it extend to a second 
 volume. Campbell considered that in completing 
 this undertaking he was fulfilling a sacred promise 
 to one whom he had long known and esteemed. 
 The work did not go off well. The public expecta- 
 tion had been too long upon the stretch of expecta- 
 tion, and curiosity had subsided. Besides, the style 
 was indifferent ; and the author was not fitted for 
 the task by any acquaintance with the small-talk 
 of the theatre. 
 
 This biography being published, the poet visited 
 Paris after twenty years of absence. There the 
 Polish Literary Society gave him the honour of a 
 public dinner, at which Prince Czartoryski presided. 
 He began, too, while there, but soon dropped, a 
 work on the Geography of Classical Literature. He 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 139 
 
 then proposed to visit Italy; but the mention of 
 Algiers caused him to change his direction to Africa, 
 and his impatience made him embark at Marseille 
 in a crazy merchant- vessel, which fortunately arrived 
 safely. The result of his visit he published in his 
 Letters from the South. He was kindly treated by 
 the French military, and visited Oran and Bona in 
 turn; but was much affected in health by the 
 climate. While he sojourned in Africa, the death 
 of his old friend Telford took place. He left the 
 poet £1000. Campbell returned from Algiers in 
 1835, and arriving in Paris was presented to King 
 Louis-Philippe. 
 
 After his return home he proceeded with the 
 publication of an illustrated edition of his poems. 
 He also visited Scotland in 1836, where he was 
 entertained at the Campbell Club in his native 
 city, together with Professor Wilson, and other 
 distinguished friends. No difference in politics 
 ever interrupted the friendship between Campbell 
 and Wilson. In Scotland the poet launched his 
 anathemas against the despot of Russia, as was his 
 custom in London and Paris, both in public and 
 private society. At Edinburgh he was presented 
 with the freedom of the city. Campbell made a 
 speech here, in which he paid a pleasing tribute to 
 Professor Wilson as a genius of the highest order, 
 of whom Scotland might well be proud. He visited 
 Edinburgh again in the following year, and took 
 the chair at a Printers' Festival in that city on 
 the 7th of June. Towards the close of this year 
 he edited an annual, these ephemera being then 
 nearly gone out of vogue. This, in his better days, 
 
140 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 
 he would not have done, or lent his name to do. 
 He was getting senile, and when he wanted money- 
 less than before, he became more eager to acquire 
 it. He had left his chambers in St James's Square 
 before he went to Scotland. On his return he 
 took lodgings in Alfred Place, Tottenham-Court 
 Road; and then removed, towards the end of 
 1837, into chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He 
 squandered considerable sums in these changes. 
 He could not do without his books and furniture, 
 and every change required fresh fittings and cases. 
 While complaining of the narrowness of his income, 
 now never less than £600 or £700 per annum, he 
 did not put down these expenses, almost annually- 
 incurred, as of any moment, for he was a bad 
 financier. 
 
 The engravings for the illustrated edition of his 
 works still proceeded. Turner executed twenty-five 
 of the drawings. It sold very well, as did a cheap 
 edition published by Moxon the bookseller. In 
 1838 he placed his name to a life of Shakspeare 
 which he overlooked ; but his name was the only 
 advantage the edition derived from his connection 
 with it. He was past all literary labour requiring 
 research and thought. The Queen accepted from 
 him a present of his works; and the poet, in 
 grateful acknowledgment, went to court. Her 
 Majesty soon afterwards did him the honour to 
 send him her picture. This picture, and the silver 
 goblet presented him by the students of the Glasgow 
 university, became so much his favourites, that he 
 afterwards made allusions to them with a frequency 
 that too surely indicated the change which time 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 141 
 
 had wrought upon him, and how small a thing 
 called out a display of the vanity he would have 
 concealed in earlier days. Notwithstanding, he 
 began a Life of Petrarch, or rather a dressing up 
 of Archdeacon Cox's Life, while in Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields. Upon this subject his friend Foscolo had 
 years before told him that nothing new could be 
 said. It could not add to his reputation, much 
 less could a small volume of poems he afterwards 
 published in 1842, the principal of which was 
 called the Pilgrim of Qlencoe, and which was far 
 below mediocrity. A retrospective glance at the 
 poet's former glorious works made the world feel 
 more strongly the change that had occurred in 
 the valueless character of this volume. With the 
 advance of years, that pride of feeling, that lofty 
 self-respect which marked the poet's career for two- 
 thirds of his life in literature, had disappeared. 
 The incitement of money made him go even further, 
 and he subsequently placed his name to a Life of 
 Frederick the Great, a poor effort in biographical 
 composition, as being compiled under his revision. 
 
 Even in 1839 his appearance had greatly changed 
 in the eyes of those who saw him only at intervals. 
 In 1840 this change was more strongly marked ; 
 yet he talked of founding a club, to be called 
 The Alpha, and of new designs. He seems after 
 his short residence in Lincoln's Inn Fields to have 
 become tired of the spot. He had been a wanderer 
 after his wife's death. He had tried the same 
 kind of domestic establishment for a year or two, 
 and could not find his former comfort. His son 
 he had sent to an asylum at Epping. He then 
 
142 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 went from lodging to lodging, visited and journeyed 
 but was still far from discovering a rest for his 
 feet, as of old. He spent time in company, which 
 he would otherwise have passed at the domestic 
 hearth. After all his desultoriness, he came back 
 in 1840 to what he hoped would give him domestic 
 life again. He bought the lease of a house in 
 Victoria Square, Pimlico, and sent to Scotland for 
 Mary Campbell, a niece, the daughter of his second 
 brother. He corrected the last proofs of Petrarch 
 here, and promised himself once more that peace 
 from which he had been long estranged. But he 
 could not revive the past. His health, not mended, 
 made him still whimsical and restless. He had 
 seen a pretty child one day as he entered the Park, 
 and its face haunted him. He fancied a second 
 sight would be gratifying, and he actually advertised 
 for this indulgence, relying upon his description for 
 a success, which, it need not be added, he did not 
 find. 
 
 In an ailing state of body he paid a visit to 
 the baths of Wiesbaden, but returned with his 
 health no way amended. It was evident that he 
 was rapidly declining throughout 1841 and 1842; 
 yet amidst all he never lost sight of his usual 
 pursuits. In 1842 he talked of publishers and 
 their exactions, as if they were new to him, and 
 projected fresh undertakings. We are all reluctant 
 to wound our self-love by giving credit to any 
 diminution of our ability. This year he made his 
 will, and bequeathed all he might leave behind him 
 to his niece, Mary Campbell. His son was provided 
 for by the interest of the legacy from the Ascog 
 
 h 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 143 
 
 estates, being the interest on £4500, about £200 
 per annum. He became as unsettled, restless, appre- 
 hensive, and even irregular as usual. His counten- 
 ance exhibited anxiety and bodily decay. His 
 former neat appearance vanished, and he was negli- 
 gent in his dress. Sometimes he lit up in a mode 
 that recalled what he had once been, but this was 
 seldom. Yet his kindness to his friend suffered no 
 diminution, and he was still active in his habits. 
 He visited Cheltenham, but without any benefit. 
 
 In 1843 he lost his only surviving sister, and 
 by this the sum of £800 came into his hands. 
 He had an idea that even with his pension of £300 
 a year, the interest of the legacy from the Ascog 
 estates, and the profits of his works, between £600 
 and £700 a year at least, he might still find him- 
 self want. He therefore insured his life injudici- 
 ously, and lost £500. This made him think of 
 going to the Continent, to live frugally, disregard- 
 ing the heavy expenses of removal with his library, 
 and a certain loss on the lease of his house, which 
 would balance any saving. Undetermined for some 
 time whither to proceed, he fixed upon Boulogne. 
 At the commencement of October 1843 he removed 
 there. His house was in a bad situation. It was 
 cold, and the severity of the winter soon acted 
 perniciously upon his debilitated frame: he then 
 talked of removing more to the southward as soon 
 as he was able. Day by day he complained of 
 the chilliness he felt, at the same time not paying 
 any attention to his mode of life. In February 
 1844 he was too weak to write even a few lines 
 without pain. He complained that the climate 
 
144 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 
 made him torpid. In April he seemed to revive 
 for a time with the softening atmosphere. Through 
 May this improvement did not continue. 
 
 At the commencement of June it was seen that 
 his case was utterly hopeless. For a long while he 
 held no conversation with any one, and his appear- 
 ance was more altered. When questioned about his 
 health, he either complained of weakness and chilli- 
 ness, or replied in a general way, 'tolerably well.' 
 His countenance betrayed great anxiousness, and he 
 was usually in a state of half slumber to appearance, 
 but retaining the full use of his mind. A few days 
 before he departed, in order to try if he was 
 sensible, the question was asked near his bed, if 
 some one, giving a name, had not written Hohen- 
 linden. The poet calmly and distinctly replied: 
 'It was one Tom Campbell!' They talked of 
 taking him to the seaside if he grew better, but 
 he gave a look incredulous of that possibility. His 
 respiration now became impeded, but he talked a 
 little at intervals. This was at the end of the first 
 week in June. Swelling of the right ankle was at 
 this time perceived. He was calm, and said his 
 mind was quite easy; that he had entire control 
 over it. On the 8th of June he exhibited swelling 
 of the left leg and foot. Some one saying he was 
 better, he observed : ' I am glad you think so.' In 
 reply to a communication, he requested his niece to 
 intimate to Cyrus Redding, his old literary coadjutor, 
 the state of his health, with his kind remembrance. 
 
 On the 10th of June every favourable symptom 
 had disappeared. He complained of his strength 
 sinking, but had still a perfect command over his 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 145 
 
 mind, and was quite calm. It being observed that 
 he had great patience, he said: 'I do suffer.' The 
 next day he thought he felt stronger, and he had 
 a look of cheerfulness, but this was succeeded by 
 difficulty of breathing. He repeated that his mind 
 was quite easy. The next night was passed easily, 
 and the following day but one, the 13th, while his 
 breathing was more laborious, he was still quite 
 sensible, and listened attentively to all going on 
 around. A friend from London arriving, the poet 
 said he was glad to see him. On the 14th he spoke 
 with some effort inarticulately, saying ' tolerable ! ' 
 to all inquiries. His respiration now became more 
 hurried, but he was still conscious. His lips were 
 firm, as if he were disposed to meet the last struggle 
 with manliness. At one time appearing to sleep, 
 his lips were observed to move, and he said in a 
 slow distinct whisper : ' We shall see to- 
 morrow,' naming a departed friend. From that 
 time he appeared to be losing the consciousness 
 and self-possession which marked him before. On 
 giving him something he said : ' Thank you — much 
 obliged!' These were the last words he uttered 
 clearly and intelligibly. The next day was the 
 poet's last : he answered a question put by his niece 
 with much difficulty, but with great kindness, and 
 soon after slumbered. There was no more restless- 
 ness ; his appearance was serene, except when con- 
 vulsive breathings took place as he reposed upon 
 his side. Two hours after noon he opened his eyes, 
 and then closed them for ever. He expired with- 
 out a straggle at a quarter past four p.m. 
 
 The foregoing statement is mostly from that of 
 J 
 
146 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 
 his medical attendant and executor, Dr William 
 Beattie, who was at the poet's bedside when he 
 expired, and who, with every professional attention, 
 united the kindly concern of a friend. He after- 
 wards edited the Life and Letters of Thomas 
 Campbell, in 3 vols. (1849). The first volume con- 
 tains an engraving of Campbell from Lawrence's 
 portrait. 
 
 The task yet remains to assign to Campbell that 
 place in the ranks of the British poets to which his 
 works entitle him. One proof of his merit is that 
 he has been quoted more than any modern poet, in 
 the senate, by public orators, and by contemporary 
 literati. He had, too, the rare happiness of living 
 to see his fame fixed upon an unshaken basis. His 
 verses cannot be mistaken for those of any other 
 English poet; his odes do not resemble those of 
 Dryden, Collins, or Gray: they stand alone. His 
 manner was singular; Scott said he could imitate 
 all the modern poets but Tom Campbell; he could 
 not imitate him, because his peculiarity was more 
 in the matter than the manner. Whatever niche 
 in the temple of fame is hereafter assigned to him, 
 his works are such as fame will not easily let die. 
 
 The remains of the poet were brought to England, 
 and interred in Westminster Abbey by the side of 
 the ashes of Sheridan, on the 3d of July 1844. The 
 funeral was numerously attended by the titled and 
 untitled, by the literary and non-literary. The Rev. 
 Mr Milman read the burial service; and at the 
 hour of noon, the dust of him whose works had so 
 long been the delight of his native land was left to 
 its last long repose. 
 
f2/0L^?M^^-y /?*~trirt^-z- „ 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 
 
 HOMAS MOORE, a man of brilliant gifts 
 and large acquirements, if not an inspired 
 poet, was born on the 28th of May 1779, 
 in Aungier Street, Dublin, where his father carried 
 on a respectable business as a grocer and spirit- 
 dealer. Both his parents were strict Roman 
 Catholics, and he of course was educated in the 
 same faith ; at that time under the ban not only 
 of penal statutes, but of influential opinion both 
 in Great Britain and Ireland. Thus humble and 
 unpromising were the birth and early prospects 
 of an author who — thanks to the possession of great 
 popular talent, very industriously cultivated and 
 exercised, together with considerable tact and 
 prudence, and pleasing social accomplishments — 
 won for himself not only the general fame which 
 ordinarily attends the successful display of genius, 
 but the especial sympathy and admiration of his 
 countrymen and fellow-religionists, and the smiles 
 and patronage of a large and powerful section of 
 the English aristocracy, at whose tables and in whose 
 drawing-rooms his sparkling wit and melodious 
 patriotism rendered him an ever-welcome guest. 
 Few men, indeed, have passed more pleasantly 
 through the world than Thomas Moore. His ' day 
 
150 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 of life was one continual sunshine, just sufficiently- 
 tempered and shaded by passing clouds — 'mere 
 crumpling of the rose-leaves' — as to soften and 
 enhance its general gaiety and brightness. With 
 its evening thick shadows came — the crushing loss 
 of children — and the gray-haired poet, pressed by 
 his heavy grief, turned in his later years from 
 the gay vanities of brilliant society, and sought 
 peace and consolation in seclusion, and the zealous 
 observance of the precepts and discipline of the 
 church to which he was, not only from early train- 
 ing and association, but by temperament and turn 
 of mind, devotedly attached. 
 
 As a child, Moore was, we are told, remarkable 
 for personal beauty, and might have sat, says a 
 writer not over-friendly to him, ' as Cupid for a 
 picture.' This early promise was not fulfilled. Sir 
 Walter Scott, speaking of him in 1825, says: 'He 
 is a little, very T little man — less, I think, than Lewis, 
 whom he resembles : his countenance is plain, but 
 very animated when speaking or singing.' The 
 lowness of his stature was a sore subject with 
 Moore — almost as much, and as absurdly so, as 
 the malformation of his foot was with Lord Byron. 
 Leigh Hunt gives the following detailed portrait 
 of the Irish poet : ' His forehead is bony and full 
 of character, with bumps of wit large and radiant 
 enough to transport a phrenologist ; his eyes are 
 as dark and fine as you would wish to see under 
 a set of vine-leaves ; his mouth, generous and good- 
 humoured, with dimples; "his nose, sensual and 
 prominent, and at the same time the reverse of 
 aquiline : there is a very peculiar characteristic in 
 
THOMAS MOOEE. 151 
 
 it — as if it were looking forward to and scenting 
 a feast or an orchard." The face, upon the whole, 
 is Irish, not unruffled by care and passion, but 
 festivity is the predominant expression/ In Hunt's 
 autobiography this portrait is repeated, with the 
 exception of the words we have inclosed within 
 double inverted commas — struck out possibly from 
 a lately awakened sense of their injustice ; and it 
 is added that 'his (Moore's) manner was as bright 
 as his talk was full of the wish to please and be 
 pleased.' To these testimonials as to the personal 
 appearance and manners of Thomas Moore we can 
 only add that of Mr Joseph Atkinson, one of the 
 poet's most intimate and attached friends. This 
 gentleman, when speaking to an acquaintance of 
 the author of the Melodies, said that to him ' Moore 
 always seemed an infant sporting on the bosom 
 of Venus.' This somewhat perplexing idea of the 
 mature author of the songs under discussion was 
 no doubt suggested by the speaker's recollections of 
 his friend's childhood. 
 
 Whatever the personal graces or defects of 
 Moore, it is quite certain at all events that he early 
 exhibited considerable mental power and imitative 
 faculty. He was placed when very young with 
 Mr Samuel Whyte, who kept a respectable school 
 in Grafton Street, Dublin. This was the Mr Whyte 
 who attempted to educate Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 
 and pronounced him to be ' an incorrigible dunce ' — 
 a verdict in which at the time the mother of the 
 future author of the School for Scandal fully con- 
 curred. Mr Whyte, it seems, delighted in private 
 theatricals, and his labours in this mode of diffusing 
 
152 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 entertaining knowledge were, it appears, a good 
 deal patronised by the Dublin aristocracy. Master 
 Moore was his 'show-actor,' and played frequently 
 at Lady Borrows's private theatre. On one occasion 
 the printed bills announced ' An Epilogue — A Squeeze 
 at St Paul's, by Master Moore,' in which he is said 
 to have been very successful. These theatricals were 
 attended by several members of the ducal family 
 of Leinster, the Latouches of Dublin, with many 
 other Irish notabilities ; and it was probably here 
 that Moore contracted the taste for aristocratic 
 society which afterwards became a passion with 
 him. 
 
 The obstinate exclusion of the Catholics from 
 the common rights of citizenship naturally excited 
 violent and growing discontent amongst that body 
 of religionists ; and Thomas Moore's parents, albeit 
 prudent, wary folk, were, like thousands of other 
 naturally sensible and pacific people, carried away 
 for a moment by the tremendous outburst of the 
 French Revolution The meteor-blaze which sud- 
 denly leaped forth and dazzled the astonished world 
 seemed a light from Heaven to the oppressed nations 
 of Europe ; and in Ireland especially it was hailed 
 by millions as the dawn of a great deliverance. 
 Young Moore, when little more than twelve years 
 of age, sat upon his father's knee at a great banquet 
 in Dublin, where the toast, 'May the breezes of 
 France blow our Irish oak into verdure ! ' was 
 received with a frantic vehemence which, child as 
 he was, left an impression upon him that did not 
 pass away with many years. 
 
 The Day-star of Liberty, as it was termed, which 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 153 
 
 arose in France, set in blood and tempest; but the 
 government, alarmed at the ominous aspect of the 
 times, relaxed (1793) the penal laws, and Catholics 
 for the first time were eligible for admission to the 
 Dublin University. Young Moore was entered as 
 a student of Trinity College in the succeeding year. 
 At one of the quarterly examinations of the uni- 
 versity, he presented some English verses instead 
 of the usual Latin theme ; for which he received 
 a well-bound copy of the Travels of Anacharsis as 
 a reward. 
 
 For several previous years the thunder-cloud 
 which burst so fatally in 1798 had been slowly 
 gathering in Ireland. Moore sympathised with the 
 object, if not with the mode, of operation contem- 
 plated by the opponents of English rule in that 
 country ; and he appears to have been only saved 
 from serious if not fatal implication in the rebellion 
 by the wise admonitions of his excellent mother, 
 aided by his own instinctive aversion to the com- 
 mittal of any act which might compromise his 
 present and future position, by placing him amongst 
 extreme men in the front and forlorn-hope of the 
 battle, instead of amidst the wiser respectabilities 
 of liberalism, from whose ranks a man of wit and 
 genius may, he knew, shoot his diamond-tipt arrows 
 at the enemy not only without danger, but with 
 almo'st certain fame and profit to himself. Moore 
 was intimate with the two Emmets, and an active 
 member of a debating-club, in which the eldest, 
 the unfortunate Robert, endeavoured to mature his 
 oratorical powers against the time when his dream 
 of political regeneration should be realised. 
 
154 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Towards the close of the year 1797, the once 
 celebrated newspaper called The Press was started 
 by Arthur O'Connor, Thomas Emmet, and other 
 chiefs of the United Irish Conspiracy. It was 
 published three times a week, and although, as 
 Moore said, not distinguished at all for talent, had 
 a large circulation amongst the excited masses. 
 Moore first contributed a poetical effusion — anony- 
 mously of course — and soon growing bolder with 
 impunity, contributed a fiery letter, which had the 
 questionable honour of being afterwards quoted in 
 the House of Commons by the minister as one of 
 his proofs that severe repressive measures were 
 required to put down the dangerous spirit mani- 
 fested in Ireland. On the evening this letter 
 appeared, young Moore read it after supper to the 
 assembled family — his heart beating violently all 
 the while lest the sentiments it contained, and the 
 style in which they were expressed, should reveal 
 the eloquent author. His fears were groundless: 
 no one suspected him ; and the only remark elicited 
 by the violent letter was a quiet one from his 
 sister — ' that it was rather strong ! ' Next day his 
 mother, through the indiscretion of a person con- 
 nected with the newspaper, discovered his secret, 
 and commanded him, as he valued her blessing, 
 to disconnect himself at once from so dangerous 
 a pursuit and companionship. The young "man 
 obeyed, and the storm of 1798 passed over harm- 
 lessly for him. 
 
 Moore was once slightly questioned upon the 
 subject of the apprehended conspiracy by Lord 
 Chancellor Clare, who insisted upon compelling a 
 
THOMAS MOOEE. 155 
 
 disclosure, upon oath, of any knowledge the students 
 of the university might possess of the persons and 
 plans of the plotters. Moore at first declined being 
 sworn, alleging in excuse that he had never taken 
 an oath, and although perfectly unconscious him- 
 self of offence against the government, that he 
 might unwittingly compromise others. This odd 
 excuse Lord Clare, after consulting with Duigenan, 
 famous for his anti-papist polemics, declined to 
 receive, and Moore was sworn. Three or four 
 questions were asked as to his knowledge of any 
 conspiracy to overthrow the government by violence; 
 and these briefly answered, the matter ended. This 
 was Moore's own version of a scene which has 
 been rendered in various amusing and exaggerated 
 forms. 
 
 The precocity of Moore's rhyming genius had 
 been also exemplified by a sonnet, written when 
 he was only fourteen years of age, and inserted in 
 a Dublin magazine called the Anthologia Hibemica. 
 Two or three years later he composed a masque, 
 which was performed by himself, his elder sister, 
 and some young friends, in the little drawing-room 
 over the shop in Aungier Street, a friend, after- 
 wards a celebrated musician, enacting orchestra on 
 the pianoforte. One of the songs of the masque 
 was written to the air of Haydn's Spirit Song, and 
 obtained great applause. Master Moore belonged, 
 moreover, to a band of gay spirits who occasionally 
 amused themselves by a visit to Dalkey, a small 
 island in the Bay of Dublin, electing one Stephen 
 Armitage, a respectable pawnbroker, and 'very 
 agreeable singer,' King of that Ilk. Master Moore 
 
156 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 was laureate of this gay company, and in this 
 capacity he first tried his hand at political squib- 
 bing, by launching some not very brilliant sarcasms 
 against governments in general. 
 
 In 1799, Moore left the university, after taking 
 the degree of bachelor of arts, being then only in 
 his twentieth year. He went to London for the 
 purpose of entering himself of the Middle Temple, 
 and publishing his translation from Anacreon. He 
 had already obtained the friendship of Earl Moira, 
 and that nobleman procured him permission to 
 dedicate the work to the Prince of Wales. His 
 poetical career may now be said to have fairly 
 commenced. It was a long and brilliant one, most 
 of his works being extensively read, and rapidly 
 passing through numerous editions. There can be 
 no reasonable doubt that Moore owed much of this 
 popularity and success to the accident of his position, 
 and the favouring circumstances of the times in 
 which he wrote. The ' spoiled child ' of high and 
 influential circles, as well as the melodious expositor 
 and poet-champion of the wrongs of a nation to 
 whose glorious music he has, happily for him- 
 self, married much of his sweetest verse, he dwelt 
 in a peculiar and irradiating atmosphere, which 
 greatly enhanced his real magnitude and brightness. 
 
 Even now, when the deceptive medium has lost 
 its influence, it is somewhat difficult, and may 
 seem ungracious, to assign his true place in the 
 splendid galaxy of British poets to a writer who 
 has contributed so largely to the delight of the 
 reading and musical population of these kingdoms. 
 His verse is so pleasantly graceful and melodious, 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 157 
 
 that one hardly likes to show that it owes its chief 
 attraction to the elaborate polish and musical flow 
 of its brilliant fancies, rather than to its intrinsic 
 light and truth and beauty. Critics desirous of 
 assigning a high place to the poetry of Moore, 
 and therefore to avoid testing him by the standard 
 of our great imaginative poets, have invented a 
 new theory, or rather have revived an old fallacy, 
 with regard to the qualities and direction of a poet's 
 mind as exhibited in his works. They say Moore 
 is the poet of fancy, not of imagination — of artificial 
 life, not of nature ; and therefore not to be truly 
 estimated by comparing him with poets of imagina- 
 tion and of nature. Imagination and fancy they 
 assert to be two entirely distinct attributes, and 
 that a poet may be deficient in the first and eminent 
 in the second. This is a manifest though ingenious 
 error. The difference is one of degree, not of nature. 
 Fancy is imagination, but imagination of inferior 
 power and range ; and they bear precisely the 
 same relation to each other as the graceful and 
 the pretty do to the noble and the beautiful. An 
 example will illustrate our meaning better than 
 many words. Moore thus describes the coming on 
 of evening : 
 
 'Twas one of those ambrosial eves 
 A day of storm so often leaves, 
 At its calm setting, when the West 
 Opens her golden bowers of rest, 
 And a moist radiance from the skies 
 Shoots trembling down, as from the eyes 
 Of some meek penitent, whose last 
 Bright hours atone for dark ones past ; 
 
158 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 And whose sweet tears o'er wrong forgiven, 
 Shine as they fall with light from Heaven. 
 
 Milton has the following lines on a sufficiently 
 similar theme : 
 
 Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray, 
 Had in her sober livery all things clad. 
 Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird 
 Those to their grassy couch, these to their nests 
 Were slunk : All but the wakeful nightingale : 
 She all night long her amorous descant sung. 
 Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament 
 With living sapphires. Hesperus that led 
 The starry host rode brightest, till the moon, 
 Rising in clouded majesty, at length 
 Apparent Queen, unveiled her peerless light, 
 And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. 
 
 It cannot be seriously denied that imagination is 
 displayed in both these extracts : the difference is, 
 that in the first it is dwarfed and enfeebled to 
 fancy ; in the last, it is exalted and kindled into 
 inspiration. Those therefore who, abandoning the 
 high ground sometimes claimed for Moore, content 
 themselves with asserting that he is par excellence 
 the poet of fancy, in effect say that he is a poet 
 of confined and inferior imaginative power. The 
 other canon, that he is the poet of artificial life, 
 and therefore not to be measured or compared with 
 a poet of nature, is still more easily disposed of. 
 By artificial life is of course meant human social 
 life : it does not imply or contemplate the difference 
 between poetical descriptions of flowers and shrubs 
 ranged in a conservatory, or the scene-paintings 
 of a theatre, and poetical transcripts of the natural 
 world, with its streams and woods and flowers. 
 
THOMAS MOOEE. 159 
 
 Well, then, all human life is artificial, from the 
 highest to the lowest. Burns's simplest maiden is 
 artificial — highly so : there is not one of us but 
 is 'sophisticated.' Perhaps high, courtly, artificial 
 life is meant. But Rosalind, Beatrice, Juliet, 
 Ophelia, were court ladies ; Constance and Catherine 
 were queens ; and are they not exquisitely natural ? 
 — and was not he who drew them as much the 
 poet of nature as when he stamped Audrey, or a 
 Carrier, or the Sailor in the Tempest, or Shallow, 
 on his glorious canvas ? Choking grief, and burn- 
 ing indignation, and yearning tenderness, are felt 
 and expressed in marble palaces as keenly as in 
 the poor man's hut; and there, too, may be found 
 exuberant mirth, and pleasant wit, and gentlest 
 tears and smiles. 
 
 If indeed be meant by artificial life the masks 
 and wrappings, the adjuncts of highly artificial life 
 — that is, the court-dresses and plumes, the perfume 
 and silk-hangings, the conventional speech before 
 company — the phrase of ' the poet of artificial life ' 
 is intelligible ; but to apply it in that sense to 
 Moore is to lower and insult, not to defend and 
 honour him. Let us, before subscribing to so 
 depreciatory a judgment, stroll through the gay 
 parterre of the poet's works, and I think we shall 
 find, when we compare notes at the close, that 
 although his writings are not radiant with the 
 divine gems which high poetic genius scatters along 
 its starry path, they at all events sparkle with 
 beautiful fancies, and breathe a music which, if 
 not of the spheres, is of the sweetest of earth's 
 melodies. 
 
160 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 The Odes of Anacreon obtained much popularity. 
 Many of them are paraphrases rather than trans- 
 lations, containing, as Dr Laurence, Burke's friend, 
 remarked at the time, 'pretty turns not to be 
 found in Anacreon.' The Poetical Works of the late 
 Thomas Little, Esq., given to the world by Moore 
 in 1801, are a collection of puerile rhapsodies the 
 publication of which was afterwards regretted by 
 Moore. 
 
 In 1803, thanks to his verses and Lord Moira's 
 patronage, Moore obtained a place under the govern- 
 ment — that of Registrar to the Court of Admiralty 
 at Bermuda. The unrespective favouritism which 
 in those days governed nominations in the public 
 service is pleasantly illustrated by this appoint- 
 ment. An accountant and man of business was 
 wanted at Bermuda ; but as there was a young 
 poet to reward, all vulgar common-sense considera- 
 tions were thrust aside, and the youthful trans- 
 lator of Anacreon received the appointment. Moore 
 sailed in the Phoenix frigate, and took formal 
 possession of his post ; but he soon wearied of the 
 social monotony of the 'still vexed Bermoothes/ 
 hastily appointed a deputy to perform all the duties 
 of his office for a share of the income, and betook 
 himself to America. He was as much out of his 
 proper element there as in Bermuda. The rugged 
 republicanism of the States disgusted him, and after 
 a brief glance at Canada he returned to England, 
 having been absent about fifteen months. 
 
 Soon after his return he favoured the world with 
 his impressions of Bermuda, the United States, and 
 Canada. His sketches of Bermudan scenery have 
 
THOMAS MOOEB. 161 
 
 been pronounced by Captain Basil Hall and others 
 to be extremely accurate and vivid. On the truth- 
 fulness of his American social and political pictures 
 and prophecies, Time — a much higher authority — 
 has unmistakably delivered judgment. We extract 
 one or two of their minor beauties : 
 
 While yet upon Columbia's rising brow 
 The showy smile of young Presumption plays, 
 Her bloom is poisoned and her heart decays 
 Even now in dawn of life ; her sickly breath 
 Burns with the taint of empires near their death ; 
 And, like the nymphs of her own withering clime, 
 She 's old in youth, she 's blasted in her prime. 
 
 This, it must be confessed, like his gunpowder 
 letter in Arthur O'Connor's paper, is ' rather strong ' 
 than civil. It will also be admitted to be some- 
 what perplexing that the poet who, but for his 
 mother's interference and his own wise second- 
 thoughts, would have joined the confederacy of 
 United Irishmen, and who afterwards shed melodious 
 tears over the graves of Lord Edward Fitzgerald 
 and Robert Emmet, should denounce the errors and 
 deficiencies of America as : 
 
 The ills, the vices of the land where first 
 
 Those rebel fiends that rack the world were nurst. 
 
 But let us pass on to a pleasanter subject. While 
 in Canada, Moore composed the Canadian Boat-song, 
 the words and air of which were, he says, inspired 
 by the scenery and circumstances which the verses 
 portray, and by the measured chant of the Canadian 
 rowers. Captain Hall also testifies to the fidelity 
 of this descriptive song. 
 
 K 
 
162 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 CANADIAN BOAT-SONG. 
 
 Faintly as tolls the evening chime, 
 
 Our voices keep time, and our oars keep time. 
 
 Soon as the woods on shore look dim, 
 
 We '11 sing at St Ann's our parting hymn. 
 
 Eow, brothers, row ! the stream runs fast, 
 
 The rapids are near, and the daylight 's past ! 
 
 Why should we yet our sail unfurl 1 
 There is not a breath the blue wave to curl ! 
 But, when the wind blows off the shore, 
 Oh ! sweetly we '11 rest our weary oar. 
 Blow, breezes, blow ! the stream runs fast, 
 The rapids are near, and the daylight 's past ! 
 
 Ottawa's tide ! this trembling moon 
 Shall see us float o'er thy surges soon. 
 Saint of this green isle ! hear our prayers, 
 Oh ! grant us cool heavens and favouring airs. 
 Blow, breezes, blow ! the stream runs fast, 
 The rapids are near, and the daylight 's past ! 
 
 The publication in 1806 of his Odes and Epistles 
 elicited a fierce and contemptuous denunciation of 
 them by Jeffrey in an article in the Edinburgh 
 Review. This led to a hostile meeting between 
 Jeffrey and Moore. They met at Chalk Farm, near 
 Hampstead, August 12, 1806 ; but the progress of 
 the duel was interrupted by police-officers, who, on 
 examining the pistols of the baffled combatants, 
 found that Jeffrey's was charged with powder only. 
 It might have been, as is usually believed, that 
 the bullet dropped out of the pistol by the jolting 
 of the carriage in which the field of expected battle 
 was reached. Moore indignantly denied through 
 the newspapers that he was cognisant of the inno- 
 
THOMAS MOOEE. 
 
 163 
 
 cent state of Jeffrey's pistol, or that his own 
 was empty — an assertion there cannot be the 
 slightest reason for doubting. This incident led 
 to his subsequent acquaintance with Lord Byron, 
 who, unmindful or regardless of Moore's denial of 
 the 'calumny,' repeated it with variations in his 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, chiefly with 
 
 Loed Byron. 
 
 a view to annoy Jeffrey. Moore was again indig- 
 nant, and demanded an apology or satisfaction. 
 His letter did not, however, reach the noble lord 
 till many months afterwards, when explanations 
 ensued, and the affair terminated by a dinner at 
 the house of Rogers, where the four poets, Byron, 
 Campbell, Moore, and Rogers, met each other for 
 the first time. 
 The intimacy thus commenced, if we may judge 
 
164 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 from the biography of Byron, ripened into a lasting 
 friendship on the part of Moore. This feeling was 
 but faintly reciprocated by Byron. Indeed, if we 
 are to believe his own statement, made in one of 
 his latest letters, the noble poet was almost incap- 
 able of friendship, 'never having/ he says, 'except 
 towards Lord Clare, whom he had known from 
 infancy, and perhaps little Moore,' experienced any 
 such emotion. 'Little Tommy dearly loves a lord,' 
 was Byron's sneering expression more than once ; 
 and perhaps he believed Moore's loudly expressed 
 regard for himself to be chiefly based on that pre- 
 dilection. 
 
 In 1811 Moore married a Miss Dyke, who is 
 described as a lady of great beauty and amiability, 
 and moreover distinguished for considerable decision 
 of character and strong common-sense — qualities 
 which more than once proved of essential service to 
 her husband. They had several children, the loss 
 of whom, as we have before stated, darkened and 
 imbittered the close of the poet's days. 
 
 Moore now became a satirist, attempting first the 
 grave, serious style, in which he failed, but succeed- 
 ing beyond almost any other poet in light satire; 
 verses on the topics of the day, lively and pungent, 
 with abundance of humorous and witty illustration 
 The man of the world, the scholar, and the poetical 
 artist are happily blended in his satirical produc- 
 tions, with a rich and playful fancy. He published 
 two political satires, called Corruption and Intoler- 
 ance, which were followed by The Sceptic, described 
 as a philosophical essay. Neither of them reached 
 a second edition. The aim of The Sceptic was to 
 
THOMAS MOOEE. 165 
 
 set forth in sober seriousness the beauty true en- 
 lightenment, and amiability of Ignorance : 
 
 Hail, modest Ignorance ! — the goal and prize, 
 The last, best knowledge of the simply wise. 
 
 The Intercepted Letters; or the Twopenny Post- 
 bag, by Thomas Brown, the Younger (1812), was 
 Moore's next successful work. It is a collection 
 of sarcastic witticisms levelled at the Prince- 
 Regent and the ruling politicians of the day. They 
 had a great but necessarily transitory success. 
 Such pieces d'occasion inevitably lose their force 
 and piquancy by the passing into oblivion of the 
 ephemera against which they were directed. Wit, 
 which strikes at individuals, dies with the world's 
 remembrance of the crimes or follies of the persons 
 assailed ; and who cares now for the brilliant butter- 
 flies of Carlton House, or the gilded gadflies, social 
 or political, which infested the atmosphere of the 
 vain regent's court ? It has been frequently made 
 a reproach to Moore, that in aiming the light arrows 
 of his wit at the prince, he was ungratefully assail- 
 ing one who had heaped favours and benefits upon 
 him. 'These favours and benefits,' replies Moore, 
 ' are very easily summed up : I was allowed to 
 dedicate Anacreon to his Eoyal Highness ; I twice 
 dined at Carlton House ; and I made one of the 
 fifteen hundred envied guests at the prince's grand 
 fete in 1815 !' 
 
 In 1811 Moore made a first and last appearance 
 before the world as a dramatist, by the production 
 at the Lyceum theatre of an operatic piece called An 
 M.P. • or the Blue-stocking. It was emphatically 
 
166 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 condemned, notwithstanding two or three pleasing 
 songs, which somewhat redeemed its dull and vapid 
 impertinence. The very pretty song of ' Young 
 Love lived once in an humble shed ' occurs in this 
 piece. Moore's acquaintance with Leigh Hunt dates 
 from the acting of the Blue-stocking. Hunt was 
 at the time editor of the Examiner newspaper, in 
 which he had just before paid some compliments to 
 Moore's poetry ; and the nervous dramatist, natu- 
 rally anxious to propitiate a critic whose opinion 
 was esteemed oracular in certain circles, wrote him 
 a rather fulsome letter, in which he set forth, as 
 a plea for lenient judgment, that he had rashly 
 been induced to promise Arnold a piece for his 
 theatre, in consequence of the state of attenuation 
 to which the purses of poets are proverbially liable. 
 The M.P. ; or the Blue-stocking was, as we have 
 said, condemned, and Esop's disappointed fox re- 
 ceived another illustration. ' Writing bad jokes,' 
 quoth Moore, ' for the Lyceum to make the galleries 
 laugh is in itself sufficiently degrading; but to 
 try to make them laugh, and fail to do so, is indeed 
 deplorable.' In sooth, to make 'galleries' either 
 laugh or weep was never Moore's aim or vocation. 
 His eye was ever fixed upon the gay company of 
 the ' boxes,' occasionally only glancing apprehen- 
 sively aside from its flattering homage to scan the 
 faces of the sour critics of the pit. And yet to 
 make the galleries of the theatre and the world 
 laugh has tasked and evidenced wit and humour, in 
 comparison with which the gayest sallies, the most 
 sparkling of Moore's fancies, are vapidity itself. The 
 mortified dramatist gave up play-writino- for ever 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 167 
 
 or, as he contemptuously expressed it, 'made a 
 hearty abjuration of the stage and all its heresies 
 of pun, equivoque, and claptrap.' He was wise 
 in doing so. The discretion evinced by the hasty 
 retreat was only exceeded by the rashness of the 
 venture. 
 
 The intimacy of Thomas Moore and Leigh Hunt 
 continued for some years. Moore, in company with 
 Lord Byron, dined once or twice with Hunt in 
 prison during his confinement for a pretended libel 
 upon the regent. A pertinent anecdote, throwing 
 some light on Byron's sneer respecting Moore's love 
 of lords, is told of one of these visits. The three 
 friends, Byron, Moore, and Hunt, were walking 
 before dinner in the prison garden, when a shower 
 of rain came on, and Moore ran into the house, and 
 up-stairs, leaving his companions to follow as they 
 best might. Consciousness of the discourtesy of 
 such behaviour towards his noble companion quickly 
 flashed upon him, and he was overwhelmed with 
 confusion. Hunt tried to console him. 'I quite 
 forgot at the moment,' said Moore, 'whom I was 
 walking with ; but I was forced to remember it 
 by his not coming up. I could not in decency go 
 on, and to return was awkward.' This anxiety — 
 on account of Byron's lameness — Hunt remarks, 
 appeared to him very amiable. 
 
 This friendship came to an abrupt and unpleasant 
 close. Lord Byron agreed with Hunt and Shelley 
 to start a new periodical, to be called The Liberal, 
 the profits of which were to go to Leigh Hunt. 
 Byron's parody on Southey's Vision of Judgment 
 appeared in it, and ultimately William Hazlitt 
 
168 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 became a contributor. Moore immediately became 
 alarmed for his noble friend's character, which he 
 thought would be compromised by his connection 
 with Hunt and Hazlitt, and wrote to entreat him 
 to withdraw himself from a work which had 'a 
 taint in it,' and from association with men upon 
 whom society 'had set a mark.' His prayer was 
 complied with, and the two last-named gentlemen 
 were very angry, as well they might be. There 
 was a good deal of crimination and recrimina- 
 tion between the parties on the subject, not at all 
 worth reproducing. The truth is that both Hunt 
 and Hazlitt, but especially the latter, were at the 
 time under the ban of influential society and a then 
 powerful press ; and Moore, with his usual prudence, 
 deliberately cut two such extreme Radicals, and 
 induced his noble friend to do likewise. 
 
 Moore had long cherished a hope of allying his 
 poetry with the expressive music of Ireland ; of 
 giving appropriate vocal utterance to the strains 
 which had broken fitfully from out the tumults 
 and tramplings of centuries of unblest rule. A 
 noble task ! in which even partial success demands 
 great powers and deserves high praise. The execu- 
 tion of the long-meditated design now commenced ; 
 and the Melodies, as they appeared, obtained 
 immense and well-deserved popularity. It is upon 
 these that his fame as a poet mainly rests ; and no 
 one can deny that, as a whole, they exhibit great 
 felicity of expression, and much graceful tenderness 
 of thought and feeling, frequently relieved by 
 flashes of gay and genial wit and humour. No 
 one could be more keenly aware, or could more 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 169 
 
 gracefully acknowledge than Moore, the great help 
 to a poet's present reputation of connecting his 
 verse with national or local associations. He 
 instances in proof of its value the popularity in 
 Bermuda of a song comparatively valueless in itself 
 — a popularity owing to its association with a well- 
 known tree growing near Walsingham in that 
 group of islets : 
 
 'Twas there in the shade of the calabash tree, 
 With a few who could feel and remember like me. 
 
 Mr Dudley Costello brought him home a goblet, the 
 inscription on which states that it was formed of 
 one of the fruit-shells of the tree which he had 
 rendered famous, and which now bears his name. 
 
 If, therefore, Moore's songs are, as we are 
 frequently told, to perpetuate the music and poetry 
 and romance of Ireland in distant climes, it must 
 be for some other reason than because they were 
 once heard on the banks of the Shannon, or that 
 they allude incidentally to Irish events, or bear 
 Irish names. It is not from individual local associa- 
 tion that the song of the captives of Israel awakens 
 a tide of gushing emotions in the Jewish soul. The 
 song embodies an enduring national sentiment, 
 expresses and enshrines a national lamentation and 
 a national hope, in strains exclusively of Israel. Do 
 Moore's graceful, and tender, and witty melodies do 
 this ? How many of them are Irish songs in the 
 sense in which those of Beranger are French — those 
 of Burns Scotch — idiomatic, national, racy of the 
 soil ? There are not very many of them that even 
 allude to Irish topics, and those that do — Oh ! breathe 
 
170 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 not his Name! The Harp that once through Tara's 
 Halls, and a dozen others — are essentially English 
 songs — always excepting the air, to the magical 
 beauty of which English music has no pretence 
 — English in their mode of thought and turn of 
 expression. And the gay, witty melodies — Wreathe 
 the Bowl, Fill the Bumpers Fair, and many others, 
 not even excepting the brilliant song of Through 
 Erin's Isle — are theirs the wit and humour — the 
 Irish wit and humour which the graphic pens of 
 Edgeworth and others have made familiar to us, 
 and of which such ballads as Rory O'More give a 
 faithful reflex, though a pale and faint one ? It is 
 just as much English, French, Italian wit and 
 humour as Irish. 
 
 Again, what distinctive Irish character, or what 
 distinctive national sentiment, is enshrined in the 
 great mass of the more tender and graceful melodies 
 — Flow on, thou Shining River! Fly not Yet, The 
 Young May Moon, Go where Glory ivaits Thee, or 
 Love's Young Dream ? Take, for instance, the con- 
 cluding verse of the last song, where a hackneyed 
 thought — common to all countries — by the aid of 
 the beautiful Irish air sinks with such a dying fall 
 upon the ear — 
 
 Oh that hallowed form is ne'er forgot, 
 
 Which first love traced ; 
 It fondly haunts the greenest spot, 
 
 On memory's waste : 
 'Tis odour fled, as soon as shed — 
 'Tis morning's winged dream — 
 'Tis a light that ne'er will shine again 
 
 On life's dull stream ! 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 171 
 
 The melody of these lines glides into the heart 
 and sparkles in the brain of young and old — har- 
 monising with the fresh romance of youth, and 
 recalling to the aged the far-off music of their 
 prime ; but surely the sentiment the verses embody 
 is cosmopolitan, not Irish chiefly or especially? 
 Moore, whether for good or evil, has, temporarily 
 at least, divorced Irish music — at all events, in the 
 great majority of instances — from Irish sentiment; 
 and the national airs, as illustrated and rendered 
 vocal by him, will recall to the exile and the way- 
 farer not memories of Ireland, but of the home 
 where the brother or the lover first heard a sister 
 or a mistress sing them — be that home in the Green 
 Isle, in Scotland, England, or wherever else the 
 English race dwell and English song is cultivated. 
 In his war-melodies Moore fails, not from coldness 
 of national partisanship, but from want of power. 
 Compare the best of them with the Battle-song of 
 Burns, and the difference between the two men in 
 high poetic faculty will be at once apparent. The 
 Minstrel Boy, and Let Erin remember the Days of 
 Old, would find appropriate expression from a lady's 
 voice and a pianoforte accompaniment. Burns's 
 'war ode' would most fitly resound from the lips 
 of valiant men in the very shock and grasp of 
 battle, accompanied by the flash of swords and the 
 roar of cannon. 
 
 Moore is not the poet of strong emotions. Yet is 
 there genuine pathos in many of his beautiful songs ; 
 but it is pathos of the gentle kind, such as a cambric 
 handkerchief wipes away, to leave the eyes of the 
 fair songstress only the more radiant for such sweet 
 
172 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 tears, and revealing an expression, or rather realising 
 one of the most charming similes Moore himself has 
 ever penned : 
 
 Her floating eyes ! Oh, they resemble 
 
 Blue water-lilies, when the breeze 
 
 Is making the waves around them tremble ! 
 
 It must not, however, be forgotten, in estimating 
 the value of Moore's ballads, that before his time 
 fashionable English songs were, almost without 
 exception, as far as words went, mere rubbish. He 
 effected a valuable reform in this department of 
 poetry and verse, and hosts of imitators maintained 
 the improvement so well that it was sometimes diffi- 
 cult to distinguish between the productions of the 
 master and those of some of his self-constituted 
 pupils and followers. His wit, however, could not 
 be so easily imitated ; and there is certainly a wide 
 difference between the classical and polished fancies 
 of Moore and the tinsel conceits of his imitators. 
 
 The lines of Moore's beautiful Irish melody, The 
 Meeting of the Waters, were suggested by a visit to 
 the vale of Avoca in 1807. This romantic spot 
 lies between Rathdrum and Arklow, in the county 
 of Wicklow. 
 
 THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. 
 
 There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet 
 
 As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet ; 
 
 Oh ! the last rays of feeling and life must depart 
 
 Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart. 
 
 Yet it was not that Nature had shed o'er the scene 
 Her purest of crystal and brightest of green ; 
 'Twas not her soft. magic of streamlet or hill, 
 Oh no ! it was something more exquisite still. 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 175 
 
 'Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom, were near, 
 Who made every dear scene of enchantment more dear, 
 And who felt how the best charms of nature improve 
 When we see them reflected from looks that we love. 
 
 Sweet vale of Avoca ! how calm could I rest 
 
 In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best, 
 
 Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease, 
 
 And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace. 
 
 In 1812 Moore determined on writing an Eastern 
 tale in verse ; and his friend Mr Perry of the 
 Chronicle accompanied him to Messrs Longman, the 
 publishers, to arrange for the sale of a work of 
 which the proposed author had not yet written a 
 line nor even settled the subject. Mr Perry appears 
 to have been an invaluable intermediary. He pro- 
 posed at once, as the basis of the negotiation, that 
 Moore should have the largest sum ever given for 
 such a work. ' That,' observed the Messrs Longman, 
 'was three thousand guineas.' And three thousand 
 guineas it was ultimately covenanted the price should 
 be, thanks to Moore's reputation and the business 
 abilities of his friend Perry. It was further agreed 
 that the manuscript should be furnished at what- 
 ever time might best suit the author's convenience, 
 and that Messrs Longman should accept it for better 
 for worse, and have no power or right to suggest 
 alterations or changes of any kind. The bargain 
 was altogether a safe one on Moore's side, and 
 luckily it turned out equally profitable for the pub- 
 lishers. 
 
 In order to obtain the necessary leisure and quiet 
 for the composition of such a work, Moore resolved 
 to retire from the gaieties of Holland and Lansdowne 
 
176 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Houses, and other mansions of his distinguished 
 patrons and friends, to the seclusion and tranquillity 
 of the country. He made choice of Mayfield Cottage, 
 near Ashbourne in Derbyshire, and not far distant 
 from Donnington Park, Lord Moira's country-seat, 
 where an excellent library was at his service. It 
 may be as well to mention that when this early 
 and influential friend of Moore went out to India 
 as governor-general, he apologised for not being able 
 to present his poetical protege with anything worth 
 his acceptance in that country. 'But,' said Lord 
 Moira (Marquis of Hastings), 'I can perhaps barter 
 a piece of Indian patronage against something at 
 home that might suit you.' This offer, which 
 would have gravely compromised Moore with his 
 Whig friends, he with some asperity declined. The 
 governor-general went to India, and Moore retired 
 to Derbyshire, remaining, with the exception of his 
 Bermudan registrarship, placeless. This offer and 
 refusal Moore communicated by letter to Leigh Hunt. 
 Mayfield Cottage, when the poet and his wife 
 arrived to view it, wore anything but an inviting 
 aspect. 'It was a poor place,' Moore wrote, 'little 
 better than a barn ; but we at once took it, and set 
 about making it habitable and comfortable.' He 
 now commenced the formidable task of working 
 himself up into a proper oriental state of mind for 
 the accomplishment of his work. The first part of 
 this process consisted in reading every work of 
 authority that treated of the topography, climate, 
 zoology, ornithology, entomology, floriculture, horti- 
 culture, agriculture, manners, customs, religion, cere- 
 monies, and languages of the East. Asiatic registers, 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 177 
 
 D'Herbelot, Jones, Tavernier, Flemming, and a host 
 of other writers, were industriously consulted ; and 
 so perfect did Moore become in these various 
 branches of knowledge, that a great Eastern 
 traveller, after reading Lalla Roohh, and being 
 assured that the poet had never visited the scenes 
 in which he placed his stories, remarked that if it 
 were so, a man might learn as much of those 
 countries by reading books as by riding on the back 
 of a camel ! This, however, was but a part of the 
 requisite preparation. 'I am,' says Moore, c a slow, 
 painstaking workman, and at once very imaginative 
 and very matter-of-fact;' and he goes on to say 
 that the slightest exterior interruption or contra- 
 diction to the imaginary state of things he was 
 endeavouring to conjure up in his brain threw all 
 his ideas into confusion and disarray. It was 
 necessary, therefore, to surround himself in some 
 way or other with an Eastern atmosphere. How 
 this could be managed in the face of the snows of 
 three Derbyshire winters, during which the four 
 stories which compose Lalla Rookh were written, 
 it is difficult to conceive, and perhaps to the fact 
 that it could not be effectually done, must be 
 ascribed the ill success which beset the poet during 
 an entire twelvemonth. Yainly did he string 
 together peris and bulbuls, and sunny apples of 
 Totkahar : the inspiration would not come. It was 
 all ' double, double, toil and trouble,' to no purpose. 
 Each story, however trippingly it began, soon 
 flagged, drooped, and, less fortunate than that of 
 The bear and fiddle, 
 Begun and broke off in the middle, 
 L 
 
178 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 expired of collapse after a brief career of a few 
 score lines only, frequently nothing like so many. 
 Some of these fragments have since been published. 
 One of them, The Peri's Daughter, ran to some 
 length, and is rather pretty and sparkling. 
 
 We subjoin a brief specimen. A peri had married 
 the ' rightful Prince of Ormuz/ and must be supposed 
 to have left this heir-apparent de jure to the crown 
 of Ormuz, as after a time she comes floating back 
 to her husband's bower with a charming present in 
 her care : 
 
 Within the boat a baby slept, 
 Like a young pearl within its shell, 
 While one, who seemed of riper years, 
 But not of earth or earth-like spheres, 
 Her watch beside the slumberer kept ; 
 Gracefully waving in her hand 
 The feathers of some holy bird, 
 With which from time to time she stirred 
 The fragrant air, and coolly fanned 
 The baby's brow, or brushed away 
 The butterflies that, bright and blue 
 As on the mountains of Malay, 
 Around the sleeping infant flew. 
 And now the fairy boat hath stopped 
 Beside the bank — the nymph has dropped 
 Her golden anchor in the stream. 
 
 Here concluded both the peri's voyage and the 
 Peri's Daughter, both muse and boat coming alike 
 to a dead stop ; and Moore, finding the Peri's 
 Daughter — spite of his most desperate efforts to 
 get on — immovably aground, abandoned the lady, 
 the child, the ferry-boat, and the golden anchor, 
 notwithstanding the rightful prince was, and is to 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 179 
 
 this day, anxiously but vainly expecting his peri- 
 wife and semi-peri child. 
 
 This uninspiring state of things seemed intermin- 
 able — the three thousand guineas were as far off 
 as ever ; and apprehension of the necessity of a 
 bodily journey to the East, in order to get at the 
 genuine 'atmosphere,' must have suggested itself, 
 when a gleam of light, in the idea of the 'Fire- 
 worshippers,' broke in upon the poet ; the multi- 
 farious collection of Eastern materials deposited in 
 the chambers of his brain arranged themselves in 
 flowing numbers, without encountering any further 
 accident; and at the end of three years Lalla 
 Rookh was ushered before an admiring world. Its 
 success was immense, and the work ran rapidly 
 through many editions. 'Paradise and the Peri,' 
 the second story, although not so much praised as 
 the first and third, is, we fancy, much the most 
 read of the four; and from its light, ringing tone, 
 its delicate and tender sentiment, its graceful and 
 musical flow, will always be a principal favourite 
 with the admirers of Thomas Moore's poetry. 
 Amongst the numerous testimonials to the merits 
 of Lalla Rookh there is one, pridefully recorded by 
 the author, that must have compensated him a 
 thousandfold for the coarse remark of Hazlitt, that 
 Moore ought not to have published Lalla Rookh 
 even for three thousand guineas. Its chief incidents 
 were represented by tableaux vivans at the Chateau- 
 Royal, Berlin, in 1822, by, amongst others, the 
 imperial and royal personages whose names appear 
 in the following extract printed from a French 
 programme of the entertainments : 
 
180 LITERAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 -r, ,, ,. „ , „ . ( Comte Haach, Marshal e de 
 
 .radladm, Grand Nasir < „ 
 
 ( Cour. 
 
 »t ■ ti • i t. i • i S.A.I. le Grand Due Nicholas 
 
 Anns, Roi de Bucnane < . _ 
 
 ( de Russie. 
 
 Lalla RorLkh S.A.I. la Grande Duchesse. 
 
 a i j i n i hi i ( S.A.R. le Prince Guillaume 
 
 Arungzebed, le Grand Mosul.. < „ , -,,-,., 
 
 ( (frere du Roi). 
 
 Abdallah, pere d'Aliris S. A.E. le Due de Cumberland. 
 
 ( S.A.R. la Prin cesse Louise de 
 
 La Reine, son epouse. 
 
 Radzivil. 
 
 Some portions of the scenery were magnificent, 
 especially the gate of Eden, with its crystal bar, 
 and occasional glimpses of splendour jetting through 
 and falling upon the repentant Peri. At the close 
 of the entertainments, Son Altesse Imperiale la 
 Grande Duchesse, afterwards Empress of all the 
 Russias, made, it is said, the following speech : 
 ' Is it, then, all over ? Are we now at the close 
 of all that has given us so much delight ? And 
 lives there no poet who will impart to others and 
 to future times some notion of the happiness we 
 have enjoyed this evening ? ' In answer to this 
 irresistible appeal one of the actors, the poetical 
 Baron de la Motte Fouque, stepped gallantly forward, 
 and vowed that he would give the poem to the 
 world in a German dress. On hearing which the 
 Empress Lalla Rookh 'graciously smiled/ This 
 story, we beg to . observe, rests for its authority 
 on the preface to Monsieur Le Baron de la Motte 
 Fouque's translation. 
 
 It has been already remarked that the local 
 descriptions in Lalla Rookh have been pronounced 
 by excellent authority to be surprisingly accurate. 
 The trees and the birds are all called by their 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 181 
 
 proper names, the right sort of perfumes are used, 
 eyelids and finger-nails are stained of the correct 
 colour, Eastern ceremonial is truly described, and 
 men in these tales wear turbans and swear by 
 Allah, with many other accuracies of the same kind. 
 All this is said to constitute their beauty and 
 excellence as oriental romances. With all proper 
 deference to the critical authority which thus pro- 
 nounces, we beg to demur to such a dictum. The 
 mechanical and elaborate accuracy so much extolled 
 relates only to the dress, the externals of Eastern 
 society, and does not touch its life, its peculiar 
 modes of thought, impulse, action. If to dress 
 people in Eastern clothes, and to take care that 
 neither they in their speech, nor the author in his 
 descriptions, miscall anything, nor make any con- 
 siderable blunder in the conventional language of 
 ceremony, be to write an Eastern tale, then are 
 Racine's Frenchmen, with classical tropes and figures 
 in their mouths, and tunics and togas on their 
 backs — Pyrrhus, Orestes, Britannicus — true Greeks 
 and Romans; and Shakspeare's Coriolanus, Brutus, 
 Antony, who talk very little mythology, and utter 
 not a few anachronisms, are not true types — real 
 living incarnations of the Roman character and 
 spirit. Neither is Juliet — in whose glowing im- 
 passioned speech we hear nothing about myrtles, 
 or sunny skies, or Madonnas — a true Italian woman ! 
 Surely that which stamps men and women, Greeks, 
 Italians, Turks, is the character which religion, 
 manners, usages, climate, institutions, impress upon 
 their minds, giving to each separate well-defined 
 nationality its peculiar ideas, expression, action ! 
 
182 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Judged by this test, where is the orientalism of 
 these tales ? The actors in them, so far as they 
 have any individuality, are all Europeans — chiefly 
 English and Irish. Hafed talks lofty patriotism, 
 just as Captain Rock would had he the faculty 
 of verse — Al Hassan is the stereotyped European 
 tyrant. The love of Azib has not a tint of 
 orientalism about it ; and Zelica, an enthusiastic 
 young lady, cruelly deceived by a monster — not 
 an uncommon result, we grieve to say here, although 
 not often attended by such extremely fatal results 
 as in her case — has, much to her credit, notions 
 of purity and marriage entirely in accordance with 
 those of the thousands of fair readers who have 
 wept through more than twenty editions of her griefs. 
 The Peri ! Well, perhaps we must let the East 
 have the Peri, although even she looks at times 
 remarkably like a young and gentle Irish Sister 
 of Mercy. As for Fadladeen, he is a very 'old 
 courtier of the Queen's,' and Mokanna dates as 
 far back as the invention of minor theatres and 
 blue flame. 
 
 No, no ! Lalla Roohh sparkles with pretty fancies 
 we admit, and contains passages of considerable 
 beauty ; but oriental, in the meaning which ought 
 to attach to the word, the work is not. Nor do 
 we hold that the poetic fame of the writer of the 
 Melodies is really enhanced by it as a whole, 
 although 'Paradise and the Peri' will perhaps always 
 be attractive for innocent and gentle natures. It 
 is in the more impassioned portions of this series 
 of poems that Moore chiefly fails. The light wings 
 of his lyric muse are not fitted for either lofty or 
 
THOMAS MOOEE. 183 
 
 lengthened flights. A brief, gay theme, a lively or 
 tender sentiment breathed through a song — these 
 are Moore's triumphs, and in this varied, if confined, 
 range of composition, he has no superior, perhaps, 
 taken altogether, no equal ; but of highly imagina- 
 tive or sustained poetry he is hopelessly incapable ; 
 and when he does attempt to scale the lofty heights 
 of human passion, the descent is lamentable. 
 
 It were easy to give proofs of this from the 
 tragic portions of Lalla J&ookh, but the task is an 
 ungracious one, and we decline it. Still one may 
 hold this opinion of the comparative inferiority 
 of these poems without subscribing to Hazlitt's 
 remark — that Moore ought not, for his fame's sake, 
 to have written them for three thousand guineas. 
 Whatever is vital in his writings will survive, 
 spite of the earthy matter with which it may be 
 for a time associated and partially confounded. It 
 is difficult besides to pronounce dogmatically upon 
 what a man who has his bread to earn should not 
 do for three thousand guineas, if it may be done 
 without moral offence. But Hazlitt could not be 
 entitled to pronounce such a judgment until after 
 he had himself been similarly tempted, and had not 
 fallen. 
 
 An odd anecdote illustrative of Moore's increas- 
 ing and widely spread fame may here be given. 
 He was surprised one day at receiving from Sweden 
 an offer to be elected a knight of the ancient Order 
 of St Joachim. This distinction, it was announced 
 in the missive, which purported to come from the 
 chancellor of the order, was tendered as a mark 
 of the admiration entertained by the honourable 
 
184 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 fraternity for his very charming poetry. Moore 
 was puzzled — mystified. He had never before heard 
 of the Order of St Joachim, and vehemently sus- 
 pected some kind friend of seeking to play him a 
 malicious trick. St Joachim ! Might it not turn 
 out to be St Joke'm ? He, however, stealthily 
 inquired amongst persons versed in knightly orders, 
 and was informed that there really was a Swedish 
 knighthood of the name mentioned, and that several 
 presentable persons had belonged to it. Still, after 
 due deliberation, he resolved to decline the gene- 
 rously proffered honour. It was too hazardous. Sir 
 Joke'm Moore ! He was a man to face the battery 
 of a three-decker cheerfully rather than risk the 
 possibility of such a sobriquet as that ! 
 
 The bow so long bent required relaxation, and 
 in the first flush of his great success, while his 
 ears were still ringing with the applauses, and his 
 nostrils still titillating with the incense which the 
 press showered upon Lalla Rookh, pronounced by 
 general consent — ' when they do agree, their una- 
 nimity is wonderful' — to be unrivalled as a work 
 of melody, beauty, and power, Moore set out on a 
 continental tour with his friend and brother-poet 
 Rogers. On his return to England he published 
 the Fudge Family — not a very brilliant perform- 
 ance, and which, with the exception of its political 
 hits, is but an imitation of Les Anglaises pour Hire. 
 He also worked at the Melodies, and wrote articles 
 for the Edinburgh Review. In 1818 one of the 
 most pleasing incidents in his life occurred. A 
 public dinner was given in his honour at Dublin, 
 the Earl of Charlemont in the chair — the poet's 
 
THOMAS MOOEE. 185 
 
 venerable father, Garret Moore, being present 
 on the chairman's right hand, the honoured 
 and delighted witness of the enthusiastic welcome 
 bestowed upon his son by his warm-hearted fellow- 
 countrymen. Moore made a graceful, cleverly turned 
 speech ; but he was no orator ; few literary men 
 are. He could not think upon his legs ; and you 
 could see by the abstraction of his look that he 
 was not speaking in the popular sense, but reciting 
 what had previously been carefully composed and 
 committed to memory. Such speeches frequently 
 read well, but if long, they are terrible things to 
 sit and hear. 
 
 The following year Moore accompanied Lord John 
 Russell on a continental tour, taking the road of 
 the Simplon to Italy. Lord John went on to 
 Genoa, and Moore directed his steps toward Venice, 
 for the purpose of seeing Byron. It was during 
 this visit that the noble lord made Moore a present 
 of his personal memoirs, for publication after the 
 writer's death. Moore gives the following account 
 of the transaction : ' We were conversing together 
 when Byron rose and went out. In a minute or 
 two he returned carrying a white leathern bag. 
 "Look here!" he said, holding it up, "this would 
 be worth something to Murray, though you, I dare- 
 say, would not give sixpence for it." " What is 
 it?" I asked. "My life and adventures," he 
 answered. On hearing this I raised my hands in 
 a gesture. " It is not a thing that can be published 
 during my life, but you may have it if you like : 
 then do whatever you please with it." In taking 
 the bag, and thanking him most warmly, I added : 
 
186 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 " This will make a nice legacy for my little Tom, 
 who shall astonish the latter end of the nineteenth 
 century with it." He then added : " You may show 
 it to any of your friends you think worthy of it." 
 This is as nearly as I can recollect all that passed.' 
 
 These memoirs Moore sold to Murray for two 
 thousand guineas, but at Lord Byron's death, his 
 executors and family induced Moore to repay 
 Murray, and destroy the manuscript. The precise 
 reasons which decided Moore to yield to the 
 solicitations of the deceased lord's friends and 
 family are not known, but there can be little 
 doubt that they were urgent, and in a moral sense 
 irresistible. A man does not usually throw away 
 two thousand guineas for a caprice, even of his 
 own, much less for that of others. It is not likely 
 that the world has lost much by the destruction 
 of these memoirs. Lord Byron's life has been 
 sufficiently written in his published works and in 
 contemporary memoirs, for all purposes save that 
 of the gratification of a morbid curiosity and 
 vulgar appetite for scandal. 
 
 During the journey to and from Italy, Moore 
 sketched the Rhymes on the Road, which were soon 
 afterwards published. There is nothing remark- 
 able about them except his abuse of Rousseau and 
 Madame Warens, a propos of a visit to Les Char- 
 mettes. His denunciations of the eccentric and 
 fanciful author of the Confessions were certainly 
 violent and unmeasured, and not perhaps in the 
 very best taste. The man in Goldsmith's play had 
 nothing like the intense horror of anything lovo 
 which Moore had, and this with him, if a weak- 
 
THOMAS MOOEE. 187 
 
 ness, was also a safeguard. The pity and indigna- 
 tion with which, now in his fortieth year of dis- 
 cretion, he looked upon literary talent if applied to 
 other than pure and holy purposes, he traces in 
 quite fiery lines : 
 
 Out on the craft ! I 'd rather be 
 One of those hinds that round me tread, 
 "With just enough of sense to see 
 The noonday sun that 's o'er my head, 
 Than thus with high-trust genius curst, 
 That hath no heart for its foundation, 
 Be all at once that 's brightest, worst, 
 Sublimest, meanest in creation. 
 
 Poor Jean Jacques had little of the ' sublime ' to 
 boast of, and we have met in our time with much 
 meaner people than the half-mad pauper, as Moore 
 pleasantly terms him. 
 
 During the journey to Italy Lord John Russell 
 hinted to his companion that he seriously contem- 
 plated retiring from public life. Moore was dis- 
 tressed by the contemplation of such a possibility, 
 and addressed a miscellaneous poem soon afterwards 
 to his lordship. It is called a 'Remonstrance,' and 
 concludes with the following somewhat bizarre 
 verse : 
 
 Like the boughs of that laurel by Delphic decree, 
 Set apart for the fane and its service divine, 
 So the branches that spring from the old Eussell tree, 
 Are by Liberty claimed for the use of her shrine. 
 
 This is certainly not one of Moore's most brilliant 
 hits. 
 
 Pecuniary difficulties, arising from the misconduct 
 of his deputy in Bermuda, now threatened Moore, 
 
188 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 and flight to France — for process against him had 
 issued from the Court of Admiralty — became 
 immediately necessary. The deputy-registrar, from 
 whom Moore had exacted no securities, had made 
 free with the cargoes of several American vessels, 
 and immediately decamped with the proceeds, leav- 
 ing his principal liable, it was feared, to the serious 
 amount of six thousand pounds. Active and suc- 
 cessful efforts were, however, made by Moore's 
 friends to compromise the claims, and ultimately 
 they were all adjusted by the payment of one 
 thousand guineas. Three hundred pounds towards 
 this sum were contributed by the delinquent's uncle, 
 a London merchant ; so that Moore's ultimate loss 
 was seven hundred and fifty pounds only During 
 the progress and at the close of these negotiations, 
 numerous offers of pecuniary assistance were 
 addressed to Moore, all of which he gratefully but 
 firmly declined. 
 
 Whilst the matter was pending, Moore resided 
 near Paris at La Butte Coaslin, on the road to 
 Belle Yue. This was also the residence of some 
 agreeable Spanish friends of the poet. Kenny, the 
 dramatic writer, lived also in the neighbourhood. 
 Here Moore composed his Loves of the Angels, 
 passing his days, when they were fine, in walking 
 up and down the park of Saint Cloud, 'polishing 
 verses and making them run easy,' and the even- 
 ings in singing Italian duets with his Spanish 
 friends. Previous to leaving Paris at the close of 
 1822, he attended a banquet got up in his honour 
 by many of the most distinguished and wealthy 
 of the English residents in that gay city. His 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 189 
 
 speech on this occasion was a high-flown panegyric 
 upon England and everything English, and griev- 
 ously astonished Byron, Shelley, Hunt, and others 
 when they read it in Italy. Either they thought 
 the tone of some of the Irish melodies was wrong, 
 or the speech was. They did not reflect that a 
 judicious speaker always adapts his speech to his 
 audience. Apt words in apt places are the essentials 
 of true eloquence. 
 
 Moore's publishers' account, delivered in the 
 following June, exhibited a very pleasing aspect. 
 He was credited with one thousand pounds for 
 the Loves of the Angels, and five hundred pounds 
 for Fables for the Holy Alliance. These were the 
 halcyon days of poetry. There was truth as well 
 as mirthful jest in Sir Walter Scott's remark a few 
 years afterwards, in reply to Moore's observation, 
 'that hardly a magazine is now published but 
 contains verses which would once have made a 
 reputation.' 'We were very lucky to come before 
 these fellows !' exclaimed the baronet. 
 
 The Loves of the Angels is throughout but a 
 prolonged, melodious echo of Moore's previous love- 
 poetry. The angels talk of woman's eyes, lips, 
 voices, grace, precisely after the manner of his 
 amatory songs. The opening lines, which are flow- 
 ing and pretty, seem a kind of periphrasis of the 
 Hebrew verse — 'When the morning stars saner 
 together, and the sons of God shouted for joy :' 
 
 'Twas when the world was in its prime, 
 When the fresh stars had just begun 
 Their race of glory, and young Time 
 Told his first birthdays by the sun. 
 
190 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 The three angel-stories, told in very graceful 
 verse, are grounded upon rabbinical and mytho- 
 logical fables and precedents, and excite but the 
 faintest interest in the reader. It is difficult to 
 remember anything about them five minutes after 
 their perusal — the sensation produced resembling 
 that which one feels after listening for half an 
 hour to the silvery murmuring of a brook in the 
 summer month of June. Just as dreamy and inar- 
 ticulate as that sound is the musical and cadenced 
 flow of love-verses, destitute, or nearly so, of 
 interest, true tenderness, or passion. In proof of 
 our assertion that this poem is but a repetition of 
 Moore's early and earthly painting of female 
 beauty, we have only to quote the following lines 
 from the second angel's story : 
 
 You both remember well the day, 
 When unto Eden's new-made bowers 
 He, whom all living things obey, 
 Summoned His chief angelic powers, 
 To witness the one wonder yet, 
 Beyond man, angel, star, or sun, 
 He must achieve, ere He could set 
 His seal upon the world as done ; 
 To see that last perfection rise — 
 That crowning of Creation's birth — 
 When, 'mid the worship and surprise 
 Of circling angels, Woman's eye8 
 First opened upon heaven and earth, 
 And from their lids a thrill was sent, 
 That through each living spirit went, 
 Like first light through the firmament. 
 
 Can you forget her blush, when round 
 Through Eden's lone, enchanted ground, 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 191 
 
 She looked, and at the sea, the skies, 
 And heard the rush of many a wing 
 On high behests then vanishing, 
 And saw the last few angel eyes 
 Still ling'ring, mine among the rest, 
 Eeluctant leaving scenes so blest ? 
 
 In this passage mere jingling exaggeration sup- 
 plies the place of poetical enthusiasm ; and were 
 it not ungenerous to quote Milton twice against 
 Moore, we should be tempted to contrast it with 
 the awakening of the true Eve beside the fountain 
 in the Paradise Lost. But the reader's mind will 
 have spontaneously referred to it, and that must 
 suffice. As this is the last of Moore's poetry we 
 shall have to notice, we would fain take leave of 
 it with a more favourable specimen. The following 
 lines from the close of the book are pleasing, and, 
 moreover, possess a touch of human feeling. One 
 of the angels, we should say, is condemned to waste 
 his immortality on earth ; and to console him in his 
 wanderings, the fair one for whom he has tempor- 
 arily lost heaven is to be his undying companion : 
 
 In what lone region of the earth 
 These pilgrims now may roam or dwell, 
 God and the angels, who look forth 
 To watch their steps, alone can tell. 
 But should we in our wanderings 
 Meet a young pair whose beauty wants 
 But the adornment of bright wings 
 To look like heaven's inhabitants ; 
 Who shine where'er they tread, and yet 
 Are humble in their earthly lot, 
 As is the wayside violet 
 That shines unseen, and were it not 
 For its sweet breath, would be forgot ; 
 
192 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Whose hearts in every thought are one, 
 Whose voices utter the same wills, 
 Answering as echo doth some tone 
 Of fairy music 'mong the hills — 
 So like itself we seek in vain 
 Which is the echo, which the strain ; 
 Whose piety is love, whose love, 
 Though close as 'twere their souls' embrace, 
 Is not of earth but from above ; 
 Like two fair mirrors face to face, 
 Whose light from one to the other thrown 
 Is heaven's reflection, not their own : 
 Should we e'er meet with aught so pure, 
 So perfect here, we may be sure 
 There is but one such pair below ; 
 And, as we bless them on their way 
 Through the world's wilderness, may say, 
 ' There Zaraph and his Nama go.' 
 
 In 1825, Moore paid a visit to Sir Walter Scott 
 at Abbotsford. The meeting was a cordial one, and 
 Scott, Lockhart informs us, pronounced Moore 'to 
 be the prettiest warbler' he ever knew. What 
 somewhat diminishes the value of this praise is, 
 that, according to the warbler himself, Sir Walter 
 — but the thing seems incredible — had no genuine 
 love or taste for music, except indeed for the 
 Jacobite chorus of ' Hey tuttie, tattie,' now indis- 
 solubly united to ' Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled !' 
 which, when sung after supper by the company, 
 with hands clasped across each other, and waving 
 up and down, he hugely delighted in. Scott accom- 
 panied Moore to Edinburgh, and both of them, with 
 Lockhart and his lady, went to the theatre on the 
 same evening that it was honoured by the presence 
 of the celebrated Mrs Coutts, afterwards Duchess 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 193 
 
 of St Albans. Soon after their at first unmarked 
 entrance, the attention of the audience, which had 
 till then been engrossed by the lady-millionaire, 
 was directed towards the new-comers ; and accord- 
 ing to a newspaper report, copied and published 
 by Moore in one of his last prefaces, considerable 
 excitement immediately prevailed. ' Eh ! ' exclaimed 
 a man in the pit — ' eh ! yon 's Sir Walter, wi' Lock- 
 hart and his wife ; and wha 's the wee body wi' 
 the pawkie een ? "Wow, but it 's Tarn Moore just ! ' 
 'Scott — Scott! Moore — Moore!' immediately re- 
 sounded through the house. Scott would not rise : 
 Moore did, and bowed several times with his hand 
 on his heart. Scott afterwards acknowledged the 
 plaudits of his countrymen, and the orchestra during 
 the rest of the evening played alternately Scotch 
 and Irish airs. 
 
 At the request of the Marquis of Lansdowne, 
 who was desirous that he should reside near him, 
 Moore at this period took a journey into Wiltshire, 
 to look at a house in the village of Bromham, near 
 Bowood, the seat of the noble Marquis, which it 
 was thought might suit him. He, however, pro- 
 nounced it to be too large, and declined taking it. 
 On his return he told his wife there was a cottage 
 in a thickly wooded lane in the neighbourhood to 
 let, which he thought might be made to do. Mrs 
 Moore immediately left town, secured it, and there 
 they shortly afterwards took up their permanent 
 abode. They greatly improved and enlarged Sloper- 
 ton Cottage ; and covered almost as its front and 
 two porches were with roses and clematis, with the 
 trim miniature lawn and garden in front, along 
 
 M 
 
194 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 which ran a raised walk inclosed with evergreens, 
 from which a fine view was obtained, it presented 
 an entirely satisfactory aspect of well-ordered neat- 
 ness, prettiness, and comfort. It was situated within 
 about two miles of Devizes, and within easy reach 
 of the country residence of Lord Lansdowne. It 
 was here he wrote the biographies of Lord Edward 
 Fitzgerald, Lord Byron, and Richard Brinsley 
 Sheridan, of which we need only remark that they 
 are industriously compiled and pleasantly written. 
 Murray is said to have paid Moore £4870 for his 
 Notices of the Life of Lord Byron, which appeared 
 in 1830. 
 
 In 1824, five years before the passing of the 
 Catholic Relief Act, Moore published The Memoirs 
 of Captain Rock, written by Himself It is a bitter, 
 rhapsodical, and of course one-sided commentary 
 upon the government of Ireland by England, not 
 only since the Reformation, but from the time of 
 Pope Adrian's famous bull, which is twisted into 
 an exclusively English grievance and insult. 
 Captain Rock, assisted at the commencement by a 
 sour gentleman in a flaxen wig and green spectacles, 
 is of course the grim mouthpiece through which 
 Moore pours his unpent wrath upon the devoted 
 heads of the oppressors of his country. Truly a 
 terrible fellow, if one were to believe him in 
 serious earnest, is this tremendous captain — 
 
 Through. Connaught, Leinster, Ulster, Munster, 
 He 's the boy to make the fun stir. 
 
 But to take him at his word would be a very great 
 mistake indeed, and especially, we are sure, annoy- 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 195 
 
 ing, if not alarming to himself. He is not half 
 such a terrible desperado as he looks, for all his 
 cut -throat-looking beard and whiskers. They are 
 shams put on for the nonce to hide a decidedly- 
 festive physiognomy — ' a mouth good-humoured, 
 with dimples, and a nose not aquiline, but,' says 
 the literal painter, 'with a character of scenting 
 feasts and orchards.' These are not the features 
 of men fitted to the pulling down of strongholds 
 and plucking kings by the beard. In truth, 
 rebellion was never at all in Moore's line. It lay 
 in his way ; he foolishly stumbled over it ; and 
 instantly cut its acquaintance, except in so far as 
 a pretty song or musical sentiment may be held to 
 constitute the continuance of a tender and fragile 
 connection. A poet less likely than Moore to kindle 
 a nation into a blaze never perhaps existed. ' Revo- 
 lutions,' said Napoleon, ' are ■ not made with rose- 
 water.' Nor with rose -verse neither, fortunately, 
 or the Bard of Erin might have found himself sud- 
 denly raised upon bucklers to a position in which he 
 would have made the strangest figure, and one too as 
 difficult to get down from as to climb up to. 
 
 Happily, much of the injustice of which Captain 
 Rock is made to declaim so scholarly against has 
 been remedied since the book was written. The 
 style of the book, moreover, proves very clearly 
 that its author, unlike Moliere's ' bourgeois gentil- 
 homme,' had not been talking prose all his life ; 
 for intelligible, honest prose it is not. Neither is it 
 verse ; for the lines are not cut into quantities and 
 rhymed, but it has all the tropes and figures which 
 are found in certain kinds of poetry. 
 
196 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Changes in the personality of the vice-regal 
 government are said to resemble Penelope's web ! 
 The ignoring the existence of an Irish Catholic — 
 Meres Hibernus — by certain of the penal statutes, 
 finds a parallel in Milton's devils, who occupied no 
 space in Pandemonium. The death of Lord 
 Strafford, with which wicked or righteous deed the 
 Irish certainly had nothing to do, is like the awful 
 mementos in the Egyptian banqueting-rooms — 
 placed there to chasten pride and check the exuber- 
 ance of riot ; and throughout the book, Cleopatra 
 and the Rapparees, Pericles and Irish Grand -juries, 
 Limerick and Pharsalia, Orangemen and the Bucen- 
 taur of Venice, jostle each other in the oddest 
 manner conceivable ; presenting a party-coloured 
 melange which, but for the sad truths it occasion- 
 ally sets forth, and the vigorous blows now and 
 then struck at enactments which no longer stain 
 the statute-book, would be purely ludicrous. 
 
 The next considerable work of Moore's — for his 
 light, Parthian warfare in the politics of the hour 
 continued as usual, and with about the same success, 
 as in his younger days — was The Travels of an 
 Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion — a per- 
 fectly serious and earnest book in defence of the 
 Roman Catholic faith. There is a vast amount of 
 erudition displayed in its pages ; and remembering 
 how slow and painstaking a workman Moore 
 declared himself to be, it must, one would suppose, 
 have been the work of years. The author's object 
 is to prove, from the writings of the early fathers 
 and other evidence, that the peculiar dogmas and 
 discipline and practice of the Church of Rome date 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 197 
 
 from the apostolic age, or at least from the -first 
 centuries of the Christian era, and are consequently 
 true. This the writer does entirely, at least to his 
 own satisfaction, which is the case, we believe, with 
 controversial writers generally. The book concludes 
 with the following words, addressed to the Catholic 
 Church, which his after-life proves to have been 
 earnest and sincere : ' In the shadow of thy sacred 
 mysteries let my soul henceforth repose, remote 
 alike from the infidel who scoffs at their darkness, 
 and the rash believer who would pry into its 
 recesses.' 
 
 These imaginary travels were published anony- 
 mously, but the book was always known to be 
 Moore's. Apart from any other evidence, the 
 poetic translations of portions of the writings of 
 ancient bishops would have amply sufficed to deter- 
 mine the authorship. Without adverting to the 
 elegant and tender stanzas addressed to A Virgin 
 by St Basil, which the gravest bishop might be 
 proud of, who, let us ask, save the author of the 
 Loves of the Angels, would have raked amongst 
 the homilies of St Chrysostom, and turned some 
 of them into verse. The style of these travels is 
 a great improvement on the ornate slipshod of 
 Captain Kock. Great liveliness of manner is ex- 
 hibited throughout, and some of the political hits 
 are striking. 
 
 The last, and, according to Moore's own authority, 
 one of the most successful of his works, as far as a 
 great sale constitutes success, was the prose romance 
 of The Epicurean. There is much learning dis- 
 played in this book, and it contains some striking 
 
198 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 descriptions. We also meet occasionally with 
 passages of simple and natural beauty and eloquence, 
 the more striking and effective from the contrast 
 they afford to the cumbrous and ambitious rhetoric 
 through which they are sparsely scattered. It was 
 commenced in verse, and gradually reached to a 
 considerable length in that form, but ultimately, 
 like the Peri's Daughter, broke down irretrievably. 
 No one who respects Moore's poetical fame will 
 regret this after reading the fragment which has 
 been published. The Epicurean is a moral and 
 religious story ; and it has this great merit, that it 
 has very little of the merely sensuous imagery in 
 which Moore generally indulged. The plot is of 
 the most commonplace kind, and the conduct of the 
 story so entirely languid and lulling, that it may 
 be freely indulged in without the slightest fear of 
 ill consequences by the most nervous and impression- 
 able lady-reader in the three kingdoms. Let us 
 glance it through. 
 
 The hero is Alciphron, the chief of the sect of 
 Epicureans established at Athens. Those philo- 
 sophic votaries of Pleasure, whilst following out 
 the essential principle of their founder — a danger- 
 ous deceit, if there was ever one, plausibly and 
 ingeniously as it has been defended, necessarily 
 rejecting, as it does, self-sacrifice, without which 
 virtue is a mere sound — these votaries, we repeat, 
 whilst adhering strictly to the principle of their 
 founder, that pleasure is the highest good, had 
 neglected his subsidiary, and, strictly speaking, 
 inconsequent teachings, that the highest pleasure 
 must be found in the gratification of the purest and 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 199 
 
 simplest tastes. Upon that — the goal to be obtained, 
 pleasure, being the prime end of the philosophy — 
 each disciple would of course have his own opinion. 
 Well, Alciphron had drunk deep of 'pleasure,' had 
 drained the cup of indulgence to its dregs, and was 
 unsatisfied. Man delighted not him, nor woman 
 neither, and he was weary of all things beneath 
 the sun. A passionate longing to throw off the 
 burden of the mystery, which to his eyes hung 
 like a pall over a world without a purpose, an 
 existence without an object, possessed and consumed 
 him. 
 
 The 'perhaps' of Hamlet incarnated, or, more 
 correctly speaking, shadowed forth in that divine 
 soliloquy, was with Alciphron, as with all of us who 
 think, 'the question.' Finally, determined by a 
 dream, he journeys to Egypt, with a view to dis- 
 cover if possible the ' sacred interior meaning ' of 
 the religion of its priests, and ascertain if therein 
 lay the key to the riddle of the universe. Alciphron, 
 not long after his arrival in Egypt, penetrates by 
 accident into the subterranean Elysium of the 
 priests, beneath the Pyramids. Once there, the 
 thousand-and-one magical deceptions of heathen 
 priestcraft familiar to most readers are played off 
 upon the distinguished Greek, whom Orcus, the 
 Egyptian high-priest, and an irredeemable villain 
 of course, is desirous of winning to the faith of the 
 Pharaohs. His high-flying verbosities, however, 
 produce but slight effect upon the refined and subtle 
 Epicurean — the dark riddle appears as insoluble as 
 ever — and of all that surrounds him he believes 
 only in the beauty of a young priestess of the moon, 
 
200 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Alethe, with whom he falls desperately in love; 
 which sentiment, we need hardly say, is fervently 
 reciprocated by Alethe. Even the eager question- 
 ing of Alciphron's restless spirit upon creation, 
 destiny, life, and death, is hushed in the presence 
 of the young beauty, and the Athenian philosopher 
 is made to rhapsodise thus : ' The future was now 
 but of secondary consideration; the present, and 
 that deity of the present, woman, were the objects 
 that engrossed my whole soul. It was indeed for 
 the sake of such beings alone that I considered 
 immortality desirable ; nor without them would 
 eternal life have appeared worth a single prayer. 
 
 The fair priestess of the moon is secretly attached 
 to the religion of Christ, though as yet but dimly 
 so; a glimpse only of its radiant and consoling 
 light and truth having reached her from her mother, 
 who had some time before her death been instructed 
 in the new and elevating faith then dawning upon 
 the dark horrors of bewildered and bewildering 
 heathenism. She bears about with her the emblem 
 of the religion of sorrow, and hope, and love — a 
 small gold cross, of which Alciphron once or twice 
 obtains a glimpse. Finally, Alethe, during the pro- 
 gress of one of the gorgeous illusions got up for 
 the especial edification of Alciphron, contrives her 
 own and his escape from the subterranean Elysium. 
 They fortunately reach undiscovered a very curious 
 and convenient carriage, used by the high-priest in 
 his journeys to the outer world. It runs in grooves, 
 and when they have comfortably seated themselves, 
 it at once flies down the inclined plane immediately 
 before it, and by the impetus of its descent climbs 
 
THOMAS MOOEE. 201 
 
 up the next acclivity; and so on, up and down, 
 without pause or intermission. As there was only 
 one of these surprising carriages in the establish- 
 ment, successful pursuit was out of the question. 
 
 They get clear off, ascend the Nile, and reach a 
 Christian hermitage. The venerable recluse dwell- 
 ing there knew Alethe's mother, and receives her 
 with great joy. Alciphron is also warmly welcomed. 
 The venerable father discourses to him of the 
 Christian faith, and supplies him with a copy of 
 the Scriptures, which, read by the light of Alethe's 
 eyes, rapidly produce conviction in the mind of 
 the enamoured Greek. The lovers are ultimately 
 betrothed to each other; and we seem to be 
 approaching a pleasant matrimonial catastrophe, 
 when the bright prospect is suddenly overcast — 
 gloom, thunder, and eclipse succeed, and continue 
 till the curtain falls. A terrible decree of the 
 Roman emperor against the Christians is fulmin- 
 ated, and the ferocious edict is as remorselessly 
 enforced on the banks of the Nile as on those of 
 the Tiber — the facile polytheism of Rome tolerating 
 and enforcing all religions save that alone, which 
 not only glides into the cell of the captive, whisper- 
 ing hope and consolation, but mounts the steps of 
 the loftiest throne to speak of life, death, and 
 judgment to come. The recluse and Alethe are 
 seized, with many others — hurried before the Roman 
 governor and Orcus the high-priest — and commanded, 
 as a proof of their renunciation of Christianity, to 
 burn incense before idols. They refuse, and the 
 old man is instantly sacrificed. Alethe is about to 
 undergo the same fate, when the Roman governor, 
 
202 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 touched by her beauty and gentleness, adjourns her 
 punishment till the morrow, spite of the opposition 
 of Orcus, who is furious at the thought of the 
 renegade priestess escaping her terrible doom. The 
 Roman chief expresses a hope that reflection will 
 induce Alethe to save her life by an act so easy 
 of performance as that of casting a few grains of 
 incense upon the idol altars, and she is borne away 
 in custody; not, however, till after Orcus, in 
 mockery of an ornament and ceremony usual with 
 Christian maidens when about to suffer martyrdom, 
 has caused a fillet of coral-berries to be fastened 
 round her brows. Alciphron, who in the mean- 
 while had been distracted with grief and terror, 
 obtains access to Alethe through the intervention 
 of a Roman officer whom he had known at Athens, 
 and finds her resigned, constant, and cheerful, but 
 for a burning, throbbing pain in her temples. 
 Alciphron fancying the coral-chaplet might be too 
 tightly bound, unties and endeavours to take it off 
 It resists his efforts. 
 
 ' It would not come away ! ' exclaims Alciphron ; 
 and he repeats these passionate, despairing, agonising 
 words, wrung from him by the overwhelming bitter- 
 ness and horror of the moment — 'It would not 
 come away ! ' The berries, it is discovered, had 
 been saturated with a deadly poison by order of 
 Orcus, in order to insure the destruction of his 
 victim. Alethe, after smiling placidly upon her 
 betrothed husband, dies. This is the catastrophe 
 of the Epicurean — melancholy and distressing, no 
 doubt, but so feebly, so inartistically told, that it 
 merely shocks the reader ; and the tumultuous 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 203 
 
 emotions of pity, love, grief, indignation, which the 
 death of the beautiful, the innocent, the young, 
 brought about by violence, should excite, are scarcely 
 more awakened than by a newspaper report of a 
 fatal accident having befallen a person whom the 
 reader had never seen or heard of before. The 
 book has already virtually fallen out of the litera- 
 ture of the country. Fashion and the influence of 
 a popular name may rule for a time, but in the 
 long-run common-sense and a cultivated taste will 
 pronounce the irreversible verdict. 
 
 On the 30th of June 1827, the day after the pub- 
 lication of The Epicurean, Moore was one of the 
 gay and distinguished assemblage at a magnificent 
 fete at Boyle Farm, in the environs of London, the 
 cost of which had been clubbed by five or six rich 
 young lords. It appears by Moore's description to 
 have been a very brilliant affair. There were crowds 
 of the elite of society present of both sexes; well- 
 dressed men and groups of fair women, ' all looking 
 their best;' together with dancing, music, the 
 Tyrolese minstrels, and Madame Vestris and Fanny 
 Ayton, rowing up and down the river, singing 
 Moore's Oh come to Me when Daylight sets ! and so 
 on. The author of The Epicurean relates all this 
 for the purpose of introducing an anecdote concern- 
 ing his book, and we notice it for the same reason. 
 During one of the pauses of the music, the Marquis 
 of Palmella (Moore disguises the name of the 
 Portuguese ambassador in this impenetrable mode, 
 
 the Marquis of P-lm a), approaching the poet, 
 
 remarked upon the magnificence of the fete. Moore 
 agreed. 
 
204 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 ' The tents,' he remarked, ' had a fine effect.' 
 
 ' Nay,' said the marquis, ' I was thinking of your 
 fete at Athens. I read it this morning in the news- 
 paper.' 
 
 ' Confound the newspaper ! ' 
 
 Moore had a great aversion to having his best 
 onorceaux served up without the context in that 
 
 manner ; but worse remained behind. A Mr D 
 
 accosted him a few minutes afterwards, and men- 
 tioning the book, added these flattering words: 'I 
 never read anything so touching as the death of 
 your heroine.' 
 
 'What!' exclaimed the delighted author, 'have 
 you got so far as that already ? ' 
 
 'O dear, no, I have not seen the book — I read 
 what I mentioned in the Literary Gazette.' 
 
 ' Shameful ! ' says Moore, ' to anticipate my 
 catastrophe in that manner ! ' Perhaps so ; but that 
 which we should like especially to know is whether 
 
 Mr B m, who is mentioned as being present at 
 
 the enunciation of these courtesies, was Brougham. 
 If so, the flash of the keen gray eyes that followed 
 the compliment on the touching death of Alethe, 
 must, to an observant looker-on, have been one of 
 the most entertaining incidents of the fete. 
 
 The smart political squibs, scattered like fireflies 
 through the dreary waste of journalism during the 
 last active years of Moore's life, are not obnoxious 
 to criticism. Squire Corn, Famished Cotton, Weep- 
 ing Chancellors, Salmagundian Kings, and knavish 
 Benthamites, as pencilled by Moore, have passed 
 from the domain of wit and verse into that of the 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 205 
 
 historian and the antiquary, into the hands of the 
 collector of forgotten trifles; and there we very 
 willingly leave them, pleasant, piquant, and welcome 
 as we fully admit them in their day to have been. 
 Moore also wrote several pieces of religious verse, 
 which, although not of very high merit as poetry, 
 finely at times bring out and illustrate the Christian 
 spirit in its most engaging aspect. As, for instance, 
 in the following : 
 
 The turf shall be my fragrant shrine, 
 My temple, Lord ! that arch of thine, 
 My censer's breath, the mountain airs, 
 And silent thoughts my only prayers. 
 
 My choir shall be the moonlight waves, 
 When murmuring homeward to their caves, 
 Or when the stillness of the sea, 
 Even more than music, breathes of Thee ! 
 
 I '11 seek, by day, some glade unknown, 
 All light and silence, like Thy throne ! 
 And the pale stars shall be, at night, 
 The only eyes that watch my rite. 
 
 Thy heaven, on which 'tis bliss to look, 
 Shall be my pure and shining book, 
 Where I shall read, in words of flame, 
 The glories of Thy wondrous name. 
 
 I '11 read Thy anger in the rack 
 
 That clouds awhile the day-beam's track ; 
 
 Thy mercy in the azure hue 
 
 Of sunny brightness breaking through ! 
 
 There 's nothing bright, above, below, 
 From flowers that bloom to stars that glow, 
 But in its light my soul can see 
 Some feature of Thy deity ! 
 
206 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 There 's nothing dark, below, above, 
 But in its gloom I trace Thy love, 
 And meekly wait that moment, when 
 Thy touch shall turn all bright again ! 
 
 The spirit that inspired these lines is infinitely more 
 spiritual and Christian than that which breathes 
 upon and gives galvanic momentary life to the dry 
 bones of mouldering controversial bigotry. Such a 
 hymn is worth the Travels of an Irish Gentleman 
 a thousand times over, and Sullivan's replies to 
 them into the bargain. 
 
 Moore wrote a History of Ireland for Lardner's 
 Cyclopaedia, but this not being congenial work to 
 the poet, it was a wearisome task which lasted for 
 nearly fifteen years, and was left unfinished in 1845, 
 when he was afflicted with softening of the brain. 
 A pension of £300 a year was conferred upon him 
 in 1833. His last years were troubled by the mis- 
 conduct of his sons, and by his pecuniary difficulties. 
 One of his sons died in the French service in 
 Algeria, and another of consumption in 1842. After 
 the death of his last surviving child in 1845, Moore 
 became a total wreck. He lingered on till the 26th 
 of February 1852. He was buried in Bromham 
 Cemetery, in the neighbourhood of Sloperton. His 
 Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence, which he 
 seems to have kept, that it might be the means of 
 making some provision for his wife, was edited by 
 his friend Lord John Russell, and appeared in eight 
 volumes (1852-56). It realised a sum of £3000 for 
 Moore's widow. 
 
 Our brief passage through the trim gardens, gay 
 with flowers, sparkling with light, and vocal with 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 207 
 
 melody, of Moore's poetry, verse and prose, here 
 concludes, and we have now, it may be presumed, 
 the means of forming a sound judgment upon his 
 pretensions as poet, romancist, and politician. First, 
 then, as to his rank as poet. Whilst freely express- 
 ing our opinion as to his deficiency in highly 
 imaginative, sustained, poetical genius, and his 
 entire want of dramatic power, we have at the 
 same time done justice to the point and quickness 
 of his wit, the varied brilliancy of his sparkling 
 fancies, and the fine harmony and cadenced flow 
 of his verse. That he was not an inspired creative 
 poet like Shakspeare, Milton, Burns, and a few 
 others, is true ; but beneath those heaven-reaching 
 heights there are many still lofty eminences upon 
 which gifted spirits sit enthroned, their brows 
 encircled with coronets bright with gems of purest 
 ray, serene, though pale, indeed, and dim in presence 
 of the radiant crowns of the kings of poetry and 
 song, between whom also there are degrees of glory; 
 for immeasurably above all, far beyond even the 
 constellated splendour 
 
 Of the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle, 
 
 soars Shakspeare, palm-wreathed and diademed 
 with stars. One of these lesser heights and circlets 
 must unquestionably be awarded to Thomas Moore. 
 His wing, it must be admitted, is feeble, requiring 
 artificial stimulants and help to lift him above 
 the ground a sufficient time for warbling a brief 
 melody. He did not sing as a flower exhales — 
 from the law and necessity of its nature ; still there 
 is at times a grace, and tenderness, and music, about 
 
208 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 his carefully polished snatches of song, which the 
 world is not sufficiently rich in to willingly let 
 die. 
 
 The truly inspired poet, we need hardly add, 
 requires no artificial preparations of congenial 
 ' atmospheres ' to perfect and pour forth the divine 
 thoughts and harmonies which crowd his brain, 
 inflame his blood, and stir his heart. He sings 
 because it is a vital condition of his life that he 
 should do so. The thoughts of Burns kindled into 
 glorious song as he followed his plough along the 
 level field or mountain-side. To Mary in Heaven 
 welled up from his throbbing heart as the sudden 
 inrush of tumultuous memories brought back the 
 image of the loved and lost, and came forth with 
 stifling sobs and blinding tears of passionate regret 
 and tenderness; and as the Poet of all Time lay 
 dreaming in his youth by the silver Avon, the 
 immortal creations with which he has peopled the 
 world, thronged dimly in his brain, with a confused 
 murmur of the sorrows, the remorse, the griefs, the 
 agonies, the mirth, the wit, the joys, the tears, the 
 love, afterwards incarnated and winged forth from 
 amid the din and drudgery of a play-house. 
 
 Who can read the account of Moore's painful 
 three years' incubation at Mayfield Cottage — which 
 we have given nearly in his own words — and for 
 another moment believe in his poetic inspiration ? 
 Fancy a really inspired man, possessed of the 
 necessary faculty of verse, coming forth, after brood- 
 ing for that long period over his work, and pre- 
 senting to the world a pretty, perfumed, spangled 
 lay-figure like Lalla Rookh, as a true, living crea- 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 20t> 
 
 tion, radiant with the light and vital with the 
 breath of poetry ! 
 
 With respect to the somewhat objectionable char- 
 acter of Moore's earlier productions, much excuse 
 is to be found in the heartless, soulless, withered 
 state of society — not in which he was born, that 
 was sound and healthy, if somewhat perverse, but 
 in which he chiefly passed his youth and prime 
 of manhood. The debased and debasing tone of 
 'good' Irish society, at a time when such men as 
 Toler and others of the same stamp could rise by 
 dint of unblushing subserviency and hair-trigger 
 pistols to the highest and most dignified offices in 
 the state, and when corruption in its unveiled 
 loathsomeness was the admitted principle of govern- 
 ment, can only be truly estimated by those who, 
 for their sins doubtless, have been compelled to 
 rake in the private histories of that altogether 
 disreputable period. This fetid atmosphere neces- 
 sarily affected the imitative and impressionable 
 genius of Moore, and his juvenile songs may be 
 said to have been but a reflex — a refined one too — 
 of the reckless, bacchanalian, sensuous tone of senti- 
 ment and manners then so fatally prevalent. 
 
 The air of the regent's court was scarcely healthier 
 or more purifying ; and exposed to such influences — 
 poor, and ambitious of applause, intoxicated by the 
 smiles of exclusive fashionable circles, in which he 
 was not indeed born, but which gradually became 
 a necessity of his existence, and whose continued 
 favour could only be purchased by ministering to 
 their tastes — Moore, under such circumstances, should 
 be forgiven much. As public sentiment acquired 
 
210 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 a healthier tone, so did his writings ; and his last 
 considerable effort, The Epicurean, is as distinguished 
 for the reticence of its language and the purity 
 of its sentiment as for the absence of the fanciful 
 genius which threw a glittering veil over the pro- 
 ductions of his earlier life. This excusatory sugges- 
 tion has been forestalled by Moore himself, and 
 is well expressed in the following verse of one of 
 his songs : 
 
 Oh blame not the Bard if he fly to the bowers 
 Where Pleasure lies carelessly smiling at Fame : 
 He was born for much more, and in happier hours 
 His soul might have burned with a holier flame ! 
 
 Turning from Moore the poet to Moore the politi- 
 cian, there is not much to remark upon; neither 
 certainly is there place for two opinions. Moore 
 wrote politics at times — pointed, bitter, rankling 
 politics — but he was really at heart no politician. 
 There was no earnestness in what he did in this 
 way, and it was early and abundantly evident from 
 his alternate eulogies and vituperation of democratic 
 institutions, that he had no firmly based convic- 
 tions. His love for Ireland was a sentiment only: 
 it never rose to the dignity of a passion. Not one 
 of his patriotic songs breathes the fiery energy, 
 the martyr zeal, the heroic hate and love, which 
 pulsate in the veins of men who ardently sympathise 
 with a people really oppressed, or presumed to 
 be so. 
 
 But let us hasten to say, that if there was little 
 of the hero or martyr, there was nothing of the 
 renegade or traitor, about Thomas Moore. The 
 pension of three hundred a year obtained for him 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 211 
 
 of the crown by his influential friends was not 
 the reward of baseness or of political tergiversation. 
 It was the prize and reward of his eminence as 
 a writer, and his varied social accomplishments. 
 If he did not feel strongly, he at all events felt 
 honestly ; and although he had no mission to evoke 
 the lightning of the national spirit, and hurl its 
 consuming fire at the men who, had they possessed 
 the power, would have riveted the bondage of 
 his people, he could and did soothe their angry 
 paroxysms with lulling words of praise and hope, 
 and, transforming their terribly real, physical, and 
 moral griefs and ills into picturesque and senti- 
 mental sorrows, awakened a languid admiration, 
 and a passing sympathy for a nation which could 
 boast such beautiful music, and whose woes were 
 so agreeably, so charmingly sung. Liberal opinions 
 Moore supported by tongue and pen, but then they 
 were fashionable within a sufficiently extensive circle 
 of notabilities, and had nothing of the extremes 
 and downrightness of Radicalism about them. 
 The political idiosyncrasy of Moore is developed 
 in the same essential aspect in his memoir of Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald as in his national songs. There 
 is nothing impassioned, nothing which hurries the 
 pulse or kindles the eye — but a graceful regret, 
 a carefully guarded appreciation of the acts and 
 motives of that unfortunate and misguided noble- 
 man run throughout. 
 
 Moore was what men call a fair-weather politi- 
 cian — which means, not that storms do not fre- 
 quently surround them, but that by a prudent fore- 
 thought, a happy avoidance of prematurely com- 
 
212 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 mitting themselves, they contrive to make fair 
 weather for themselves, however dark and tem- 
 pestuous may be the time to other and less sagacious 
 men, and who, when their sun does at last shine, 
 come out with extreme effulgence and brilliancy. 
 Moore, therefore, as a politician, was quite unexcep- 
 tionable, though not eminent. He was at once a 
 pensioned and unpurchased, and, we verily believe, 
 unpurchasable partisan ; an honest, sincere, and very 
 mild patriot; a faithful, and at the same time 
 prudent and circumspect lover of his country, its 
 people, and its faith. There are very high-sounding 
 names in the list of political celebrities, of whom 
 it would be well if such real though not highly 
 flattering praise could be truly spoken. 
 
 Moore's prose works require but little notice at 
 our hands beyond that incidentally bestowed upon 
 them in our passage through his works. None of 
 them that we are acquainted with adds at all to the 
 reputation for genius acquired by his poetry. The 
 flow and rhyme of verse are indispensable to carry 
 the reader through stories without probability 
 or interest, and to render men and women, not 
 only without originality — that frequently happens 
 — but destitute of individualism, decently tolerable. 
 Moore's contributions to the Edinburgh Review 
 could scarcely have much enhanced the power and 
 attractiveness of a periodical which in his time 
 numbered amongst its contributors such names as 
 Jeffrey, Brougham, Sydney Smith, Hallam, Macaulay, 
 and others of that mint and standard. 
 
 We give, however, Moore's description of the per- 
 sonal appearance of Lord Byron, as a specimen of 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 213 
 
 his prose style : ' His eyes, though of a light gray, 
 were capable of all extremes of expression, from the 
 most joyous hilarity to the deepest sadness, from the 
 very sunshine of benevolence to the most concen- 
 trated scorn or rage. But it was in the mouth and 
 chin that the great beauty as well as expression of 
 his fine countenance lay. " Many pictures have been 
 painted of him," says a fair critic of his features, 
 " with various success ; but the excessive beauty of 
 his lips escaped every painter and sculptor. In 
 their ceaseless play they represented every emotion, 
 whether pale with anger, curled in disdain, smiling 
 in triumph, or dimpled with archness and love." 
 His head was remarkably small — so much so as to 
 be rather out of proportion with his face. The 
 forehead, though a little too narrow, was high, and 
 appeared more so from his having his hair (to pre- 
 serve it, as he said) shaved over the temples, while 
 the glossy dark-brown curls, clustering over his 
 head, gave the finish to its beauty. When to this 
 is added, that his nose, though handsomely, was 
 rather too thickly shaped, that his teeth were white 
 and regular, and his complexion colourless, as good 
 an idea perhaps as it is in the power of mere words 
 to convey may be conceived of his features. In 
 height he was, as he himself has informed us, five 
 feet eight inches and a half, and to the length of 
 his limbs he attributed his being such a good swim- 
 mer. His hands were very white, and — according 
 to his own notion of the size of hands as indicating 
 birth — aristocratically small. The lameness of his 
 right foot, though an obstacle to grace, but little 
 impeded the activity of his movements.' 
 
214 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 It is, after all, in the home-life of individuals 
 that their true character must be read and studied. 
 The poet and the politician — the latter more especi- 
 ally — dwell, as regards their vocations, apart from 
 the household tests which really measure the worth, 
 the truth, the kindliness, of individual men and 
 women. Moore, we are pleased to be able to repeat, 
 as a son, a husband, a father, a friend and neighbour, 
 bore, and deservedly, the highest character. His 
 domestic affections were ardent, tender, and sincere, 
 and the brilliant accomplishments which caused his 
 society to be courted by the great ones of the 
 world shed its genial charm over the quiet fire- 
 side at which sat his wife, and in whose light 
 and warmth the children whose loss bowed him 
 to the grave grew up only to bloom and perish. 
 There have been much greater poets, more self- 
 sacrificing, though perhaps no more sincere lovers 
 of their country ; but in the intimate relations of 
 domestic life, and the discharge of its common, 
 every-day, but sacred obligations, there are few men 
 who have borne a more unspotted and deservedly 
 high reputation than Thomas Moore. 
 
 One word as to the music — the airs of the 
 melodies. They were for the most part, it is well 
 known, arranged, and the accompaniments generally 
 written, by Sir John Stevenson. The changes in 
 the melody which not unfrequently occur, whether 
 hurtfully or otherwise individual taste must deter- 
 mine, were, Moore himself emphatically assures us, 
 invariably his own. 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 
 
 HE national importance of Lord Jeffrey's 
 career; his eminence as a man of letters, 
 as a lawyer, and as a politician ; the public 
 positions he occupied ; the influence on contemporary 
 literature of his work as a critic ; and the permanent 
 value of the political reforms which he assisted in 
 carrying through, entitle him to perennial remem- 
 brance. And certainly the most durable and fitting 
 memorial of such a career is an impartial record 
 of its leading events, the personal good qualities 
 of its subject shining through it all. It will be 
 found that the history of Francis Jeffrey is of 
 interest to all classes. It furnishes one of those 
 examples which are the peculiar glory of a free 
 state ; for it exhibits talents, integrity, and per- 
 severance — without extrinsic aid, and without one 
 shade of subserviency or moral debasement — con- 
 ducting its. possessor to the highest professional 
 rank, to opulence and fame. 
 
 It is instructive to note the stages in his onward 
 march, as difficulties disappear, and honours gather 
 round his name, and to perceive that, though 
 endowed by nature with various and exquisite 
 powers, he was no less remarkable for indefatigable 
 study and patient application. It was by the union 
 
218 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 of those intellectual gifts and acquirements with 
 inflexible principle, with energy, and with the 
 graces of private life, that he won his way to 
 public and social distinction. His course was long 
 and prosperous. 
 
 Another race hath heen, and other palms are won. 
 
 His work was accomplished. His early and courage- 
 ous championship of toleration and freedom had 
 been crowned with success ; the school of criticism, 
 which he had founded and built up with such 
 incessant care, was crowded with new and worthy 
 disciples, and its essential principles had spread 
 into all lands. He was still able, however, to serve 
 his country on the judicial seat as a most upright, 
 laborious, and penetrating judge. He was still able 
 to counsel and direct, and to dispense a generous 
 but not ostentatious hospitality. There was a sunset 
 brilliancy and benignity in his later days that 
 made his age beloved as well as venerable. 
 
 It is to the honour of the profession of the law 
 that some of its most eminent members have been 
 great also in literature and science, and have dignified 
 their legal career with important public services. 
 The names of Sir Thomas More, of Bacon, Coke, 
 and Selden — of Clarendon and Somers — of Mans- 
 field, Blackstone, and Sir William Jones — the 
 unrivalled forensic oratory of Erskine and the 
 enlightened humanity of Romilly and Mackintosh — 
 form a splendid bead-roll. The Scottish list is less 
 brilliant; but we may instance, not without pride, 
 Viscount Stair, whose Institutes form the text- 
 book of the Scottish lawyer, and who was also a 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 219 
 
 philosopher and statesman ; Lord Fountainhall, who 
 resisted the tyranny of the Stuarts, and vindicated 
 the independence of the bar ; Sir George Mackenzie, 
 who, though the persecutor of the Covenanters, 
 was an elegant author, the friend of Dryden, and the 
 founder of the Advocates' Library; Duncan Forbes, 
 the upright and intrepid judge, the scholar, and the 
 pure self-sacrificing patriot ; and Lord Hailes, the 
 early and accurate explorer of Scottish history, and 
 the opponent of Gibbon. We may notice the meta- 
 physical acuteness and learning of Karnes and 
 Monboddo, and the accomplished associates of the 
 Mirror and Lounger, with their chief, Henry Mac- 
 kenzie, the ' Man of Feeling.' The world is slow to 
 admit that a man can excel pre-eminently in more 
 than one pursuit, but even the proverbial severity of 
 legal studies need not exclude from more elegant 
 attainments, and extensive legal practice need not 
 extinguish taste or patriotism. 
 
 Francis Jeffrey was born in the city of Edin- 
 burgh on the 23d of October 1773, at 7 Charles 
 Street, off George Square. He could boast of no 
 high lineage. His family was one of humble 
 industrious Edinburgh citizens ; but his father, 
 Mr George Jeffrey, being bred to the law, had 
 attained to the position of a depute-clerk of Session. 
 He has been described as a writer or attorney 
 in respectable practice, chiefly from the northern 
 counties. His wife's name was Henrietta Loudon, 
 and she was a native of Lanarkshire. This 
 worthy, careful, and respected couple had several 
 children, of whom Francis was the eldest. The 
 
220 LITERARY CELERRITIES. 
 
 family afterwards removed to Buchanan's Court, 
 Lawnmarket, which some accounts wrongfully give 
 as being the birthplace of Jeffrey. The Lawn- 
 market is one of the upper sections of that great 
 line of buildings extending about a mile in length 
 from Holyrood Palace to the Castle, and which, 
 from the stupendous height of the houses, their 
 air of antiquity, the steepness of the ascent, the 
 crowded and various population, and the historical 
 associations connected with the Old Town, is perhaps 
 the most remarkable and unique street in Europe. 
 The lines of Scott — which it is impossible not to 
 recall — give a glowing yet accurate picture of the 
 outline of this great thoroughfare : 
 
 Such dusky grandeur clothed the height 
 Where the huge castle holds its state, 
 
 And all the steep slope down, 
 Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky, 
 Piled deep and massy, close and high — 
 
 Mine own romantic town ! 
 
 Francis Jeffrey was of a slight and delicate 
 frame. From his infancy he evinced the greatest 
 quickness of apprehension and lively curiosity ; 
 and he could read well when only in his fourth 
 year. Alexander Smellie, printer (son of William 
 Smellie the naturalist, and correspondent of Burns), 
 used to relate the story of Jeffrey's debut at 
 school. It took place at a seminary situated in a 
 den of the Old Town, called Bailie Fyfe's Close. 
 Smellie was in the Collection Class, so called from 
 the book taught being a Collection of the Beauties 
 of English Authors, and which was usually intro- 
 
FKANCIS JEFFREY. 221 
 
 duced about the third year of an ordinary English 
 course. Jeffrey came, a small creature in petticoats, 
 and was put into the lowest class. From the mar- 
 vellous quickness of parts shown by the tiny scholar, 
 he was soon transferred to the Collection Class, the 
 top of which he gained in half an hour. Cockburn, 
 the schoolmaster, prophesied that the little fellow 
 would come to something ; and Smellie cried heartily 
 at being so completely beaten by a child not yet 
 deemed fit for male attire. 
 
 Having made rapid progress at a day-school, he 
 was sent to the High School of Edinburgh, and in 
 October 1781 (when he had about completed his 
 eighth year) was entered in the second Latin class, 
 then taught by Mr Luke Fraser. He remained 
 under Mr Fraser four years, until October 1785, 
 when, according to the usual routine, he was trans- 
 ferred to the class of the rector, Dr Adam, the 
 author of the Roman Antiquities, where he con- 
 tinued two years. In Fraser s class Jeffrey dis- 
 tinguished himself; although in the higher depart- 
 ment of the rector he never attained the honour 
 of dux. He was, however, a good Latin scholar; 
 and in 1825, when the High School was rebuilt, 
 chiefly by public subscription, he signified his 
 gratitude to the institution by contributing the sum 
 of fifty pounds. It was during his last session at 
 the High School that he saw Robert Burns. He 
 was walking along the High Street, when he was 
 attracted by the appearance of a man standing 
 on the pavement. Some one standing at a shop 
 door tapped him on the shoulder, and said: 'Ay, 
 laddie, you may weel look at that man: that's 
 
222 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Robert Burns.' He never saw the poet again, but 
 he used to dwell with pleasure on the incident. 
 
 From the High School of Edinburgh Jeffrey pro- 
 ceeded to the university of Glasgow. He matricu- 
 lated as a student of the logic class, under Pro- 
 fessor Jardine, in the session of 1787-8, having just 
 completed his fourteenth year. Glasgow was then 
 famous for its professors. Mr Young, who held 
 the Greek chair, was one of the most eminent 
 philologists of his day, and a highly successful 
 teacher. Professor Jardine was not less able in 
 his department of logic and belles lettres; and 
 Jeffrey said he owed to the judicious instructions 
 of this gentleman his taste for letters, and any 
 literary distinction he had attained. Dr John 
 Millar was then professor of law ; and being him- 
 self a zealous Whig, he seems to have instilled his 
 own opinions into the minds of his admiring 
 pupils. 'By his learning, sagacity, and wit,' says 
 Thomas Campbell, ' John Millar made many converts.' 
 Jeffrey has also borne testimony to Millar's exten- 
 sive learning and penetrating judgment, and to 
 the 'magical vivacity' which he infused into his 
 lectures and conversation. The chair of moral 
 philosophy was held by Professor Arthur, but his 
 great predecessor, Dr Thomas Reid, still super- 
 intended the progress of the class — 'hallowing,' as 
 Jeffrey has finely remarked, 'with the sanctity of 
 his venerable age, and the primitive simplicity of 
 his character, the scene over which his genius has 
 thrown so imperishable a lustre.' 
 
 With such able and congenial instructors, it is 
 to be regretted that Jeffrey did not remain longer 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 223 
 
 than two sessions. His academical career was 
 desultory and incomplete; but he was always pre- 
 paring himself for the profession of the law, to 
 which he was early destined. In December 1789, 
 his name appears in the records of the university 
 of Edinburgh as a student in the Scots Law Class, 
 taught by Professor Hume. The following winter 
 he was again at the university of Glasgow. In 
 1791 he proceeded to Oxford, and was entered of 
 Queens' College. His journey southwards had been 
 very leisurely performed, for he was twelve days 
 in getting to London, and he remained a week 
 in the metropolis. He seems to have entered 
 Oxford with no prepossessions in favour of that 
 ancient seat of learning ; and its classical renown had 
 no inspiration for the young metaphysical law- 
 student. 
 
 It was a jocular remark of Johnson that much 
 might be made of a Scotchman if he was caught 
 young; but Jeffrey would not be caught. In a 
 letter written six days after his arrival, and 
 addressed to one of his college companions in 
 Glasgow, he says : ' Separated as I am from all 
 my friends, and confined to the society of the 
 students of one college, I shall not cease to regret 
 the liberty and variety of intercourse which was 
 permitted, and I hope not abused, at Glasgow. I 
 have been too much in the company of ladies and 
 relations to be much interested with the conversa- 
 tion of pedants, coxcombs, and strangers.' In a 
 second letter to the same friend, without date, but 
 apparently about a month after the former, the 
 young student writes : ' You ask me to drop you 
 
224 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 some English ideas. My dear fellow, I am as 
 much, nay, more a Scotchman, than I was while 
 an inhabitant of Scotland. My opinions, ideas, 
 prejudices, and systems, are all Scotch. The only 
 part of a Scotchman I mean to abandon is the 
 language, and language is all that I expect to 
 learn in England. And indeed, except it be prayers 
 and drinking, I see nothing else that it seems 
 possible to acquire in this place.' 
 
 He then describes the scenes of uproar and 
 dissipation which took place among the students, 
 and the fragments, of broken doors, windows, and 
 stairs, which lay scattered about. Of the fellows 
 and heads of colleges he gives a very unfavour- 
 able account. ' They are men,' he says, ' who had 
 in their youth, by dint of regular, persevering, 
 and indefatigable study, painfully acquired a con- 
 siderable knowledge of the requisite branches of 
 science, which knowledge served only to make them 
 pedants, and to render still more austere and dis- 
 gusting that torpid insensibility and awkwardness 
 which they had contracted in the course of their 
 painful retirement from the world — men who accus- 
 tomed themselves to a vile and sycophantical rever- 
 ence to their superiors while they had them, and 
 now insist upon a similar adoration and observance 
 to themselves. If you add to this a violent attach- 
 ment to the game of whist, and to the wine called 
 port, you will have a pretty accurate conception 
 of the venerable men to whose hands I am now 
 committed.' In a third letter he indulges in the 
 same querulous and lachrymose strain: the home- 
 sickness was evidently strong upon him : 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 225 
 
 'As for the times, I know little more of them 
 than that they are such as have succeeded to the 
 past, and must pass away before the future can 
 come on; that they are measured out by hours, 
 and days, and years ; and that people observe their 
 lapse with the same testifications of joy and sorrow 
 as have divided their sensations from the creation 
 of the world. To say the truth, I know less of 
 the world than almost any man alive in it. I 
 hardly ever see a newspaper, politics are banished 
 from our conversation, and a man may spend ten 
 years in Oxford without hearing anything but 
 the history of foxes and fox-chases, and riots and 
 trials. Such an institute as your Juridical Society, 
 which seems to occupy so much of your time, would 
 have no more chance of succeeding here than an 
 institution which required a sermon from each of 
 its members once a week. The collected and accu- 
 mulated study of an Oxonian in a whole year is 
 not in general equivalent to the reflection you 
 bestow upon one of your orations. But I would 
 labour to no purpose to give you an idea of the 
 indolence which prevails here. For my own part, 
 I would attempt to persuade you that I am an 
 exception; but I hate to tell lies, and I had better 
 say nothing at all about it.' 
 
 These graphic sketches are probably a little 
 exaggerated. The writer, like most young artists, 
 may have been more intent on force and liveliness 
 of colouring than on correctness of outline or literal 
 truth. His opportunities for observation had at 
 least been too limited to justify such wholesale 
 censure of the fellows and heads of colleges. It 
 
 o 
 
226 LITERAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 is clear that the atmosphere of Oxford did not agree 
 with his Scottish tastes and feelings. He might 
 not have been prepared to appreciate the importance 
 which is attached to classical learning at that 
 university, and his patience would be sorely tried 
 by the syllogisms of Aristotle and the system of 
 college tutors, so different from popular lectures in 
 natural and moral philosophy, and from the social 
 studies to which he had been accustomed. That 
 there was at that time, and long previously, as 
 well as afterwards, no small share of bigotry and 
 careless discipline in the colleges and halls of Oxford, 
 has been proved from various sources. Jeffrey's 
 statements agree in a remarkable manner — even to 
 the port-wine potations — with the experiences of 
 Gibbon, which he could not have seen (for the 
 Memoir by Lord Sheffield was not published till 
 1795); and it is obvious, from the constitution of 
 the colleges, that, along with the quiet and retire- 
 ment of the monastic life, a considerable portion 
 of its indolence and prejudice had descended to those 
 venerable institutions. 
 
 The letters of Jeffrey at this early period evince 
 his acuteness and discrimination, his love of intel- 
 lectual pursuits, and that strong attachment to 
 home and friends which marked him throughout 
 life. Even the style of his composition seems to 
 have been formed. Its flexibility, vigour, and 
 copiousness are already there, and no small portion 
 of the polish which afterwards more highly dis- 
 tinguished it. In nearly all of his letters he makes 
 apologies for writing so much at length, and this 
 was another peculiarity in his character. He was 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 227 
 
 always a voluminous letter-writer, and was seldom 
 a day absent from his family or familiar friends 
 without communicating with them in long and lively 
 epistles. 
 
 It is a tradition at Queen's College that Jeffrey 
 left Oxford in disgust at the intense idleness which 
 prevailed at the time. He remained only one session, 
 and consequently did not graduate at the university. 
 On his return to Edinburgh he resumed his legal 
 studies. In the session of 1791-2 he again attended 
 the Scots Law Class under Professor Hume. In the 
 session of 1792-3 he repeated his attendance at this 
 class, adding to it the study of civil law under 
 Professor Wilde, and that of civil history and Greek 
 and Koman antiquities under Professor Tytler. 
 He is not entered as having attended any of 
 Dugald Stewart's classes, which is the more remark- 
 able, considering his partiality for ethical studies, 
 and the high reputation of the professor. He 
 may, however, have been present occasionally at 
 the lectures without being enrolled as a student. 
 
 In December 1792 Jeffrey became a member of 
 the Speculative Society — an extra-academical school 
 of oratory and debate, and of literary composition, 
 connected with the university of Edinburgh, and 
 sanctioned by the Senatus Academicus. Institu- 
 tions of this kind have long been popular with 
 young and ambitious students, as affording a ready 
 mode of trying their scarce-Hedged powers in 
 generous rivalry with their fellows, and of pre- 
 paring them for a higher flight. Of all our modern 
 orators or statesmen, the second William Pitt was 
 perhaps the only one who, when barely of age, 
 
228 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 started into full maturity as a public speaker. 
 The flower and the fruit were of simultaneous 
 growth. But his rivals and compatriots, Burke, 
 Sheridan, Curran, &c, were early members of Debat- 
 ing Clubs. 
 
 The Speculative Society of Edinburgh is an 
 institution of a higher class : the members are nearly 
 all, or have been, students at the university. They 
 are required to produce written essays, as well as 
 take part in debates on questions of political 
 economy, legislation, and philosophical history ; and 
 the rules with regard to attendance, the selection 
 of topics, and the conduct of the proceedings, are 
 judicious and rigid. The society has been in exist- 
 ence since the year 1764, and many of the greatest 
 Scottish lawyers and professors disciplined their 
 minds in its exciting discussions. There Dugald 
 Stewart, the most accomplished and eloquent of 
 all commentators on moral 'philosophy, read his first 
 essay; there Sir James Mackintosh made his first 
 speech ; there Playfair, so distinguished in physical 
 science, and the classic Dr James Gregory, found 
 a fitting audience. Divines mingled with lawyers 
 and philosophers ; theologians, such as Professor 
 Hill and Sir Henry Moncreiff, were members of 
 the Speculative. Baron Hume the able lecturer 
 on Scots law, John Clerk (Lord Eldon), Malcolm 
 Laing the historian, Benjamin Constant the French 
 economist and statesman, and Sir Astley Cooper 
 the eminent physician, participated at the same 
 period in its debates ; and when Jeffrey entered, 
 to add new attraction and celebrity to the society, 
 he found Walter Scott officiating as its secretary. 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 229 
 
 In a few years he was joined by Henry Brougham, 
 by Francis Horner, John Archibald Murray, James 
 Moncreiff, and Henry Cockburn. Three students 
 destined to eminence as British statesmen — the 
 Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Glenelg, and Lord 
 John Kussell — were subsequently members of this 
 society. An institution boasting such an array of 
 varied and commanding talent, and enriched with 
 historical associations, might well breathe an in- 
 vigorating spirit and generous emulation into all 
 its members. Its fame and importance imposed 
 the necessity for careful preparation ; knowledge 
 was acquired in its debates ; and the practice it 
 gave in the mechanical part of public speaking 
 was of inestimable importance to the future advocate 
 or senator. 
 
 The meetings of the Speculative Society were 
 held once a week in the evening, during the winter 
 session of the university, from November to May. 
 At the meeting when Jeffrey first saw Scott, who 
 was for several years secretary and treasurer, the 
 future prince of novelists read an essay on ballads, 
 which so much interested the new member, that 
 he requested to be introduced to him. Jeffrey 
 called on him next evening, and they adjourned 
 to a tavern and supped together. ' Such,' says 
 Lockhart, 'was the commencement of an acquaint- 
 ance, which by degrees ripened into friendship, 
 between the two most distinguished men of letters 
 whom Edinburgh produced in their time.' The 
 secretary must have been gratified by the kindred 
 ardour which his new acquaintance evinced in the 
 business of the society. He was a frequent speaker, 
 
230 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 and during four sessions, from 1794-5 to 1797-8, 
 he was annually elected one of the presidents. 
 We find he brought forward the following ques- 
 tions : 
 
 1793, Feb. 12. Is a System of influence necessary to the 
 
 Support of a Free Government ? Carried 
 in the affirmative by 8 to 3 votes. 
 ii Dec. 17. Is the National Debt to be considered as a 
 Grievance ? Carried unanimously in the 
 affirmative. 
 
 1794, Jan. 21. Is Monarchy more favourable than Demo- 
 
 cracy to Excellence in the Arts and 
 Sciences ? Carried in the affirmative by 
 3 to 1. 
 ii Feb. 3. Whether is Theism or Polytheism most 
 natural to a rude state ? Carried by a 
 majority of 3 that polytheism is most 
 natural. 
 
 The essays contributed by Jeffrey were on the 
 following subjects : 1. Nobility ; 2. Effects derived 
 to Europe from the discovery of America ; 3. Authen- 
 ticity of Ossian's Poems (a subject on which he 
 had already produced two essays) ; 4. Metrical 
 Harmony ; 5. The Character of Commercial Nations. 
 The titles of these early prelections indicate the 
 writer's prevailing tastes and studies. 
 
 In the discussions of the Speculative Society 
 questions of party politics and religion were pro- 
 hibited ; and in 1798, when the celebrated Irish 
 barrister, Thomas Addis Emmet, became a member 
 of the Executive Directory of the Irish Union, and 
 was privy to the carrying on a treasonable corre- 
 spondence with France, his name was expunged 
 from the records of the society. This was done 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 231 
 
 at the instance of Henry Brougham. But notwith- 
 standing the prudent caution and abstinence of 
 the members, the Speculative Society fell under 
 the ban of one of the political parties of the day. 
 The French Kevolution had roused the fears and 
 jealousies of men in authority. The Reflections 
 of Burke, followed by the Vindicice Gallicce of 
 Mackintosh, had made political discussion the 
 favourite exercise of young and ardent minds. 
 Then came the stormy debates in parliament, the 
 secret associations, and state trials throughout the 
 kingdom — all filling the minds of the timid and 
 anxious with suspicion and alarm. These were years 
 of agitation and doubt, during which the constitu- 
 tion was in danger both from the excesses of revolu- 
 tionary zeal and the uncontrolled exercise of arbitrary 
 power. The crisis passed, but parties were not 
 reconciled : 
 
 They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
 Like cliffs that had been rent asunder. 
 
 Jeffrey was no unmoved spectator of the rapidly 
 shifting scenes of this great drama. He had been 
 present at the trials of Muir, Palmer, and Gerald 
 (1793-4-5), and was deeply affected by what 
 he witnessed. The lofty bearing of the accused 
 parties, their romantic enthusiasm, and the severity 
 of the sentences inflicted on them, deepened his 
 convictions in favour of reform. Another eminent 
 Scotsman — Thomas Campbell, then a youth of six- 
 teen — had walked from Glasgow to Edinburgh to 
 witness the trial of Gerald, and from that day was 
 a sworn enemy to oppression. Jeffrey was less 
 
232 LITERAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 of a democrat than Campbell. He was a Whig 
 of the school of Fox and Burke, before Burke had 
 receded from his ancient principles, scared by the 
 horrors of the French Revolution. His leanings 
 were all towards the popular branch of the con- 
 stitution, but without the slightest tincture of demo- 
 cratic violence. He conceived that the prerogatives 
 of the crown had encroached on the rights of the 
 commons, and required to be curtailed. He saw 
 state prosecutions conducted with oppressive rigour, 
 and he contended for freedom of opinion, and 
 the impartial administration of justice. There 
 was a native independence in his character, and 
 a jealousy of all power and control, which kept 
 him apart from the slavish adherents of party 
 and the unscrupulous dispensers of patronage. 
 
 The suspicion that the Speculative Society, under 
 the guise of academical debate, had been converted 
 into a political club, led to the secession of above 
 twenty of its members. Jeffrey exerted himself 
 to protect the institution. He joined in drawing 
 up an earnest appeal ; and committees of the Senatus 
 Academicus and the town-council having investi- 
 gated the charge, it was found to be groundless. 
 The society soon regained its popularity and influ- 
 ence; and from 1797 to 1805 — with the exception 
 of the temporary cloud we have alluded to — has 
 been considered the most splendid period of its 
 history. Long afterwards, Jeffrey delighted to recall 
 his connection with the society. He was present 
 at two great anniversary dinners of the old members 
 — one in 1814, and another in 1835. At the latter 
 he presided. Several of his early associates were 
 
FRANCIS JEFFEEY. 233 
 
 gone — dropped through the broken arches of the 
 Bridge of Life. Horner had been cut off in his 
 prime, and the unrivalled genius of Scott had 
 been extinguished. Mackintosh also had departed. 
 But around him were Cockburn, Murray, and 
 Moncreiff — judges — and he had risen to be a judge 
 himself. Henry Brougham was a peer, and had 
 been chancellor of England. These were examples 
 of the advantages of such institutions in training 
 men at an early period of life to vigorous exertion 
 and to the use of their minds. 
 
 ' For my own part/ said Jeffrey, ' in looking 
 back to that period of my life when I had experi- 
 ence of this society, I can hardly conceive anything 
 in after-life more to be envied than the recollection 
 of that first burst of intellect, when, free from 
 scholastic restraint, and throwing off the thraldom 
 of a somewhat servile docility, the mind first aspired 
 to reason and question nature for itself; and half 
 wondering at its own temerity, first ventured with- 
 out a guide into the mazes of speculation, or 
 tried its unaided flight into the regions of intel- 
 lectual adventure, to revel uncontrolled through 
 the bright and boundless realms of literature and 
 science.' 
 
 Having duly qualified himself by his studies in 
 the classes of Scots and Civil Law, Jeffrey passed 
 his trials, and was called to the bar. The official 
 record bears, that on the 13th of December 1794 
 Francis Jeffrey was 'publicly examined on Title 7, 
 Lib. 50, Pand. de Legationibus, and was found suffi- 
 ciently qualified.' The minute is signed by the 
 
234 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 witty and famous Henry Erskine, then dean of the 
 Faculty of Advocates. The study of the Pandects 
 and Institutes — Roman jurisprudence and Scots law 
 — would now be varied by attendance at the Parlia- 
 ment House and the drudgery of Session papers. 
 Jeffrey applied himself with his usual energy to his 
 profession. Success at the bar, however, is seldom 
 attained until after years of dreary toil and per- 
 severance. Sir Walter Scott, though assisted by 
 business from his father — a Writer to the Signet, 
 in good practice — was four years an advocate ere 
 his professional earnings amounted to £100 per 
 annum. He ascribed his failure mainly 'to the 
 prejudices of the Scotch solicitors against employ- 
 ing, in weighty cases at least, any barrister supposed 
 to be strongly imbued with the love of literature ; ' 
 and he instanced the case of his friend Jeffrey as 
 almost the solitary instance within his experience 
 of such prejudices being entirely overcome. 
 
 Overcome they were at last, but not without a 
 tedious and disheartening probation. The really 
 valuable part of the practice was engrossed by his 
 seniors, who had toiled up the steep ascent, or by 
 plodding junior counsel, who never diverged into 
 the flowery paths of literature, or presumed to 
 meddle with politics. So late as 1803, in writing 
 to his brother in America, and discussing the possible 
 effect which literary pursuits might have on his 
 business, Jeffrey expressed indifference on the sub- 
 ject, because, he said, he had never in any one year 
 made £100 by his profession. His indifferent success, 
 however, did not prevent him from assuming the 
 dignity of a housekeeper, and giving, as Lord Bacon 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 235 
 
 has said, 'hostages to fortune.' On the 1st of 
 November 1801, Jeffrey was married to Miss 
 Catherine Wilson, daughter of the Rev. Charles 
 Wilson, professor of ecclesiastical history in St 
 Mary's College, St Andrews. This lady (described 
 by Mrs Grant of Laggan as a 'beloved and very 
 deserving wife ' ) survived the union only a few 
 years : she died August 8, 1805. 
 
 Their social circle had received a valuable addition 
 by the arrival in Edinburgh, in the year 1797, of an 
 accomplished Englishman — the Rev. Sydney Smith, 
 one of the most original and genial of wits, with 
 the classical learning of an Oxford M.A. ; and with 
 a fund of natural sagacity, toleration, and manly 
 simplicity, which kept him free from the slightest 
 tinge of pedantry. 
 
 Sydney Smith had been a curate, as he has humor- 
 ously told the world, 'in the middle of Salisbury 
 Plain ' — at Netheravon, near Amesbury. ' The squire 
 of the parish,' he adds, ' took a fancy to me, and 
 requested me to go with his son to reside at the uni- 
 versity of Weimar. Before we could get there, Ger- 
 many became the seat of war; and in stress of politics 
 we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years. 
 Among the first persons with whom I became 
 acquainted were Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray, and 
 Lord Brougham ; all of them maintaining opinions 
 upon political subjects a little too liberal for the 
 dynasty of Dundas, then exercising supreme power 
 over the northern division of the island. One day 
 we happened to meet, in the eighth or ninth story, 
 or flat, in Buccleuch Place, the elevated residence of 
 the then Mr Jeffrey. I proposed that we should 
 
236 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 set up a Review ; this was acceded to with acclama- 
 tion. I was appointed editor, and remained long- 
 enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of 
 the Edinburgh Revieiv. The motto I proposed for 
 the Review was : 
 
 Tenui musam meditamur avena 
 (We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal). 
 
 But this was too near the truth to be admitted ;. and 
 so we took our present grave motto from Publius 
 Syrus* of whom none of us had, I am sure, ever 
 read a single line. And so began what has since 
 turned out to be a very important and able journal. 
 When I left Edinburgh, it fell into the stronger 
 hands of Lord Jeffrey and Lord Brougham, and 
 reached the highest point of popularity and success.' 
 
 We are happy at being able to produce a still 
 more interesting and detailed statement of the cir- 
 cumstances attending the commencement of the 
 Review — a document written by Lord Jeffrey, 
 at the request of the late Robert Chambers, in 
 November 1846. It is as follows : ' I cannot say 
 exactly where the project of the Edinburgh 
 Review was first talked of among the projectors. 
 But the first serious consultations about it — and 
 which led to our application to a publisher — 
 were held in a small house, where I then lived, 
 
 * [Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitor. Literally : 'The judge 
 is condemned when the guilty is absolved.' This famous motto was 
 much canvassed at the time. The adventurers, it was said, had 
 hung out the bloody flag on their title-page. ' It was a sort of 
 imprecation on themselves and their infant publication, if they 
 withheld their arm from battle for pity, need, or respect of 
 persons.' — Scott.] 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 237 
 
 in Buccleuch Place (I forget the number). They 
 were attended by S. Smith, F. Horner, Dr Thomas 
 Brown, Lord Murray, and some of them also by 
 Lord Webb Seymour, Dr John Thomson, and 
 Thomas Thomson. The first three numbers were 
 given to the publisher — he taking the risk, and 
 defraying the charges. There was then no individual 
 editor ; but as many of us as could be got to attend 
 used to meet in a dingy room of Willison's printing- 
 office in Craig's Close, where the proofs of our own 
 articles were read over and remarked upon, and 
 attempts made also to sit in judgment on the few 
 manuscripts which were then offered by strangers. 
 But we had seldom patience to go through with this; 
 and it was soon found necessary to have a respon- 
 sible editor, and the office was pressed upon me. 
 About the same time Constable was told that he 
 must allow ten guineas a sheet to the contributors, 
 to which he at once assented ; and not long after, 
 the minimum was raised to sixteen guineas, at 
 which it remained during my reign. Two-thirds of 
 the articles were paid much higher — averaging, I 
 should think, from twenty to twenty-five guineas a 
 sheet on the whole number. I had, I might say, an 
 unlimited discretion in this respect, and must do 
 the publishers the justice to say that they never 
 made the slightest objection. Indeed, as we all 
 knew that they had (for a long time at least) a 
 very great profit, they probably felt that they were 
 at our mercy. 
 
 'Smith was by far the most timid of the con- 
 federacy, and believed that, unless our incognito 
 was strictly maintained, we could not go on a day ; 
 
238 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 and this was his object for making us hold our 
 dark divans at Willison's office, to which he insisted 
 on our repairing singly, and by back approaches or 
 different lanes ! He also had so strong an impression 
 of Brougham's indiscretion and rashness, that he 
 would not let him be a member of our association, 
 though wished for by all the rest. He was admitted, 
 however, after the third number, and did more work 
 for us than anybody. Brown took offence at some 
 alterations Smith had made in a trifling article of 
 his in the second number, and left us thus early: 
 publishing at the same time in a magazine the fact 
 of his secession — a step which we all deeply 
 regretted, and thought scarcely justified by the pro- 
 vocation. Nothing of the kind occurred ever after.' 
 
 In this document the distinguished writer has 
 made no mention of his own emoluments as editor 
 of the Review. The principal publisher was 
 Archibald Constable — a liberal and enterprising 
 bookseller, the Maecenas of Scottish authors, whose 
 highest pride it was to elevate the literary repu- 
 tation of his country, and associate his name with 
 all its triumphs. Constable remunerated the editor 
 of the Edinburgh Review on a scale of what must 
 then have appeared princely liberality. From 
 1803 to 1809 a sum of 200 guineas was given 
 for editing each number. The account-books are 
 missing for three years after 1809, but from 1813 
 on to 1826 Jeffrey is credited 'for editing' £700 a 
 number, so that his salary appears to have been 
 more than trebled. 
 
 The youth of the Edinburgh critics was at first a 
 fertile subject of comment and ridicule. The Review 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 239 
 
 was pronounced to be the result of ' a conspiracy of 
 beardless boys,' and the veteran Richard Cumberland 
 wrote against the young gentlemen of the Edinburgh 
 Review. It may be as well, therefore, for the sake 
 of accuracy, to note the respective ages of the lead- 
 ing contributors. The youngest of the band, it will 
 be seen, was about as old as Pitt when he became a 
 cabinet minister and chancellor of the exchequer. 
 In 1802 Sydney Smith was in his 31st year, Jeffrey 
 was 29, Dr Thomas Brown 24, Horner 24, Brougham 
 23, Allen 32, Dr John Thomson 38, and Thomas 
 Thomson 32. The title of the work, and some parts 
 of its general plan, were most probably suggested 
 by a periodical of a superior class, bearing the name 
 of The Edinburgh Review, which was started in 
 1755 under the auspices of Adam Smith, Robertson, 
 and Blair, but which was discontinued for want of 
 encouragement after two half-yearly numbers had 
 been issued. As a medium between the half-yearly 
 plan and the ordinary monthly term, the quarterly 
 form of publication was a happy and judicious 
 arrangement. It allowed the critics a greater 
 variety of selection than the shorter period could 
 furnish, as well as more time and space for their 
 lucubrations. They were not under the necessity 
 of noticing the trivial and ephemeral works which 
 the press throws off in the summer months when 
 publishers rarely launch their important ventures, 
 but which were indispensable towards filling the 
 pages of the monthly miscellany ; and they had no 
 occasion, within their enlarged bounds, to continue 
 any article from one number to another. Thus a 
 fenerally crave and permanent character was given 
 
240 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 to the work, distinguishing it from all its critical 
 contemporaries of that period. The liberal copy- 
 right allowance made to the writers was also a 
 novel and judicious feature in the scheme. It 
 tempted and rewarded study, and no contributor 
 could be degraded by what was one of the con- 
 ditions of authorship imposed upon all. 
 
 A still more favourable circumstance for the new 
 adventurers was the low state into which periodical 
 criticism had then fallen. The Monthly Review was 
 the principal critical journal of that day, and it had 
 been much improved in its management since the 
 time that poor Goldsmith groaned under the tyranny 
 of Griffiths and his wife. Sir James Mackintosh, 
 William Taylor of Norwich, Southey, and other men 
 of talent, made it the repository of their political 
 and literary theories. There were other respectable 
 literary journals, but none of an independent or 
 commanding character, none supported by an organ- 
 ised body of able well-paid contributors, working 
 on a regular plan, and exempt from bookselling 
 influence and control. The general complexion of 
 the whole was that of insipid compliment and tame 
 uniformity, and both writing and quotation were 
 dealt out in scanty measure. The advent of the 
 northern Khadamanthus in the midst of this rose- 
 water criticism was an event startling to authors 
 and booksellers, but sure to arrest in a strong degree 
 the attention of the public, who have a malicious 
 satisfaction in witnessing high pretensions brought 
 low, or drowsy learning and gentle dullness routed 
 by the lively forces of wit and satire. 
 
 The first number of the Edinburgh Review 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 241 
 
 appeared on the 1st of November 1802. The 
 greater part had been written, and even printed, 
 some months previous, but it was suggested by 
 Constable that the publication should be deferred 
 until the commencement of the winter season. The 
 number of copies printed was 750. The demand, 
 however, exceeded this limited supply : 750 more 
 were thrown off, and successive editions still more 
 numerous were called for. In 1808 the quarterly 
 circulation of the Review had risen to about 9000 ; 
 and it is believed to have reached its maximum 
 about 1813, when 12,000 or 13,000 copies were 
 printed. Before the poems of Byron and the novels 
 of Scott had taken the public, as it were, by storm, 
 this success was unprecedented. 
 
 Never again perhaps will one generation of critics 
 have such a splendid harvest to reap — such a magni- 
 ficent vintage to gather in. Could the editor have 
 surveyed the thirty years' produce that lay before 
 him, awaiting his critical distribution, he must have 
 been overwhelmed by its prodigality and richness. 
 There was the poetry of Crabbe, of Campbell, Moore, 
 Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth — types of 
 different schools; there was the gorgeous chivalry 
 of Scott, with his long file of novels and romances, 
 like an endless procession of the representatives of 
 all ages, conditions, and countries; there was the 
 oriental splendour and grace of Byron, alternating 
 with his fierce energy and gloomy philosophy — the 
 still more erring and extravagant genius of Shelley 
 — and the youthful bloom of Keats ; there were the 
 tales of Maria Edgeworth, of Miss Austen, Gait, 
 Wilson, and other not unworthy associates; the 
 
242 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 histories of Hallam, and the historical pictures of 
 Macaulay; innumerable biographies of great con- 
 temporaries who had gone before — the Sheridans, 
 Currans, Wilberforces, and Hebers ; innumerable 
 books of travels, that threw open the world to our 
 curious gaze ; the gossiping treasures of Strawberry- 
 Hill and other family repositories, that revived the 
 wits, and poets, and beauties of a past age; the 
 diaries of Evelyn and Pepys ; the inimitable letters 
 of Cowper drawn from their sacred privacy; the 
 policy and intrigues of courts laid bare ; the whole 
 world of literature and the living world of Europe 
 stirred to their inmost depths. What rich materials 
 in the wars and politics of the times — in the rise 
 and fall of Napoleon — in the overthrow of kings 
 and dynasties — in the perturbations even of the 
 mighty heart of England throbbing to be free ! 
 What discoveries in science and the arts — steam, 
 gas, railways, and all that facilitates and sweetens 
 social intercourse ! Over such vast and interesting 
 fields had the Edinburgh Review to travel, moving 
 firmly under the guidance of its editor, with elate 
 and confident step, and attended by thousands who 
 caught its enthusiasm, and echoed its sentiments and 
 opinions. 
 
 We have traced some of the circumstances which 
 imparted interest and novelty to the plan- of the 
 Review. Its grand distinction, however, and the 
 genuine source of its success, was the ability and 
 genius it displayed, coupled with the perfect 
 independence and boldness of the writers. Within 
 the small circle of its projectors were men qualified 
 to deal with questions in physical science, in political 
 
FKANCIS JEFFKEY. 243 
 
 economy (the chosen field of Horner), in politics 
 (the favourite ground of Brougham), in law, poetry, 
 and the belles lettres. They had wit, irony, and 
 sarcasm at will, with the higher attributes of 
 eloquence, correct principles of reasoning and 
 analysis, strong sense, and a love of freedom. They 
 were free from all external restraint ; they were 
 young, and had both fortune and reputation to 
 achieve. To give consistency and stability to the 
 scheme, the editor laboured with unceasing attention 
 and judgment. No other member of the fraternity 
 could have supplied his place. His own contribu- 
 tions were also from the first the most popular and 
 effective in the work. He selected the departments 
 of poetry, biography, and moral philosophy, with 
 occasional excursions into the neighbouring domains 
 of history and politics. The first number of the 
 Keview displayed the leading characteristics of his 
 style and manner. It could not show the whole 
 extent and richness of the vein, but we saw its 
 peculiar quality, and could form an estimate of its 
 probable value. The opening paper is a critique on 
 the now-forgotten work of M. Mounier on the 
 Causes of the French Revolution, and it is dis- 
 tinguished by great ability in tracing and com- 
 paring political events, and trying them by the tests 
 of history and philosophy. Some of the reviewer's 
 distinctions and illustrations are very happy, and a 
 high moral tone is preserved throughout the whole. 
 This first effort is a key-note to much of Jeffrey's 
 reasoning and to his clear and pointed expression. 
 Subsequently his style became more loose and 
 oratorical — from his increased practice at the bar, 
 
244 LITEEARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 and the haste with which he wrote many of his 
 reviews — but it gained also in power and copious- 
 ness. To the state of society and literature in 
 France at this period he paid much attention ; and 
 his admirable articles on Marmontel, on Grimm, on 
 Madame du Duffand, &c. are invaluable for the 
 moral lessons they inculcate, and the earnestness 
 with which the importance of our social and 
 domestic duties is portrayed and recommended. 
 The reviewer penetrated through the gaiety and 
 glitter of the salons of Paris, and showed how little 
 of real worth or of real happiness was contained 
 amidst all their splendour. He delighted to expatiate 
 on the superiority of those humble virtues which 
 are of daily use and benefit, which brighten the 
 domestic hearth, and shed contentment and joy on 
 all the private and ordinary relations of life. And 
 in this respect the example of the critic was in 
 beautiful accordance with his precepts. He was 
 the most affectionate relation — 'not in the least 
 ambitious of new or distinguished acquaintances, 
 nor by any means fond of large parties or the show 
 and bustle of life ; there was no one to whom all 
 the charities of home and kindred were more 
 endeared/ 
 
 In the first number of the Review Jeffrey also 
 propounded his canons of poetical criticism, and 
 began his warfare with the Lake Poets. He pro- 
 duced an elaborate critique on Southey's Thalaba, 
 prefaced with observations on the perverted taste 
 for simplicity, which he considered as the dis- 
 tinguishing mark of the modern school of poetry, 
 of which Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Lamb 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 245 
 
 were represented as the masters or disciples. The 
 gauntlet was thus thrown down. It was obvious 
 that the great critic of the Edinburgh Review had 
 taken his stand on certain limited principles of 
 taste, and that, however tolerant he might be of 
 political innovation, he was to be strongly conserva- 
 tive in poetry. His rules were calculated to make 
 correct poets, not great ones. He forgot that 
 
 The native bards first plunged the deep 
 Before the artful dared to leap. 
 
 The same circumstances which had convulsed society, 
 and laid bare the whole organisation of governments, 
 gave an impulse to the powers of creative genius, 
 and led it into new fields free from the convention- 
 alism of the old regime. Notwithstanding all the 
 errors and puerilities of the modern school — aided 
 by importations from the German dramatists — it 
 had infinitely more of nature, of originality and 
 boldness, than the artificial system it sought to 
 supplant. The critic's severe and restricted standard 
 of poetical excellence was further illustrated by his 
 criticism on Scott's poetry. He concluded that the 
 popularity of the Lay of the Last Minstrel would 
 be obstructed by the locality of the subject, while 
 this very circumstance was in reality one great 
 cause of its success. The old Border country was 
 consecrated to song and romantic traditions. The 
 aged minstrel, the chivalrous and superstitious 
 incidents, and the feudal manners of the poem, were 
 all native to the ' Braes of Yarrow,' and familiar to 
 the lovers of poetry. Marmion was still more 
 unmercifully dealt with. Its errors were dwelt 
 
246 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 upon with iteration and emphasis, and little or no 
 sympathy was evinced with respect to the nobler 
 passages which redeem the work, and which rendered 
 it so universally popular. The miscalculations of 
 the critic as to the probable success of Scott's poems, 
 and the effect of such minute painting of ancient 
 manners, arose from the limited faith he had in 
 the power of genius to mould the national taste and 
 awaken enthusiasm. Scott broke through the rules 
 of criticism in writing a modern romance of chivalry, 
 but he infused into it the life and fire of genius, 
 and many of the popular elements of poetry. 
 
 In the same number of the Review which con- 
 tained the depreciatory critique on Marmion, 
 appeared one not less elaborate on the poems of 
 Crabbe. The simultaneous publication of the two 
 articles was an unlucky combination, for the prin- 
 ciples laid down in one cannot be well reconciled 
 with those in the other. If the ingenious critic 
 be right in condemning the minute descriptions 
 of Scott as deficient in interest and dignity, the same 
 rule must be applicable to Crabbe, who is still more 
 prolix and minute, and whose descriptions are of 
 the humblest and lowest character. The account 
 of Lord Marmion, with his mail of Milan steel, the 
 blue ribbons on his horse's mane, and his blue velvet 
 housings — even the attire of his men-at-arms — 
 was as natural and necessary to the poet of chivalry 
 as the cottage furniture, the cock-fights, the dirt 
 and squalor of village life, were necessary to enable 
 the poet of the poor to complete his pictures. The 
 critic was inconsistent. Scott had not profited by 
 his former schooling, and the lash, therefore, was 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 247 
 
 laid on without mercy. In Crabbe, too, there was 
 more of real life, of keen observation, and simple 
 pathos, which possessed a greater charm for the 
 mind and feelings of Jeffrey than the warlike 
 chivalry and tournaments of the middle ages. He 
 saw and felt the truth of these village paintings, 
 and he forgave their Dutch-like minuteness in con- 
 sideration of their reality. The works of Campbell 
 and Eogers Jeffrey was peculiarly qualified to feel 
 and appreciate, and friendship for the authors may 
 have led to a warmth of praise unusual with the 
 stern reviewer. 
 
 Poetry has many mansions, and even Francis 
 Jeffrey had not then a key to all, or else he wilfully 
 refused to enter some of its most select and august 
 chambers. In the epic creations of Southey, and 
 particularly in his Curse of Kehama, there are 
 sublime conceptions, and an affluence of poetical 
 resources, which the critic did not rightly estimate ; 
 the fine imagination and rich diction of Coleridge 
 he neglected or contemned; and to Wordsworth he 
 was uniformly unjust. It required some courage 
 to reprint in 1844 the critique on The Excursion, 
 beginning 'This will never do,' after the world 
 had decided that it would do, and had reversed 
 his judgment by calling for successive editions of 
 the poem. The purity and elevation of Words- 
 worth's poetry, his profound sympathy with external 
 nature and humanity, and the consecration of his 
 whole mind and genius to his art, would have formed 
 a noble and congenial theme for Jeffrey; but he 
 saw only the puerilities and ridiculous theories of 
 some of the Lyrical Ballads, which no more repre- 
 
248 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 sent the great body of Wordsworth's poetry than 
 the weeds of a garden represent its flowers and 
 fruits. 
 
 In his disquisitions on the old masters of our 
 literature Jeffrey did good service. His reviews 
 of the writers of the Elizabethan age and of later 
 periods are generally excellent. He revelled among 
 the creations of Shakspeare, Massinger, and 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, and dwelt with cordial 
 delight on the ornate graces of Jeremy Taylor, 
 or Sir Thomas Browne, as on the milder charms 
 of Addison, the sweep of Dryden's versification, 
 and the pointed brilliancy of Pope. The modern 
 revival of a taste for those great authors may be 
 partly ascribed to the Edinburgh Review. And 
 for the critic's severity in assailing those on the 
 lower slopes of Parnassus who departed from such 
 models, he had this excuse — that he conceived it 
 to be his duty to punish all sins of irregularity 
 and conceit, that he might keep the public taste 
 from corruption, and reform the offender. He had 
 another apology common to periodical writers, and 
 which, in his genial frankness and acknowledged 
 supremacy, he could afford to produce. When 
 recanting some of his strictures on the character 
 of Burns, he said : ' A certain tone of exaggeration 
 is incident, we fear, to the sort of writing in which 
 we are engaged. Beckoning a little too much per- 
 haps on the dullness of our readers, we are often 
 unconsciously led to overstate our sentiments in 
 order to make them understood ; and when a little 
 controversial warmth is added to a little love of 
 effect, an excess of colouring is apt to steal over 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 249 
 
 the canvas, which ultimately offends no eye so 
 much as our own.' He seems also to have aimed 
 at blending a conversational freedom and careless- 
 ness with his criticisms, as if ambitious, like Con- 
 greve, to be more of the gentleman than the author. 
 This contributed to the tone of superiority which 
 the Review assumed from its commencement, and 
 which the suffering authors felt to be peculiarly 
 galling. It unquestionably made the articles more 
 piquant; and when the reviewer rose above the 
 conventional level, the contrast afforded by his finer 
 passages was the more conspicuous and effective. 
 If he had been more profound in imagination or 
 feeling, he must have lost some of that airy elegance, 
 and fancy, and spontaneous grace, which con- 
 tributed so much to his success. Another distinctive 
 quality was the great taste with which Jeffrey 
 made selections from the works he reviewed. What- 
 ever was new or striking, solemn, picturesque, or 
 figurative in language or matter, was sure to be 
 extracted. The finest scenes in a new novel, the 
 best passages of a poem, a book of travels, or a 
 work of biography, were generally to be found 
 in the Edinburgh Review, and the criticism with 
 which the whole was linked together, or the manner 
 in which the plot was described by the acute and 
 lively critic, rivalled, if it did not excel, the work 
 of the author. The setting was as precious as the 
 jewels. 
 
 One of the most memorable incidents in the 
 critical and personal history of Jeffrey was his 
 duel with Moore the poet, of which an account 
 has already been presented in the life of the 
 
250 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 latter. We now give more minutely Jeffrey's 
 side of the affair. In this case the sentiment 
 that no man should write with his pen what he 
 is not prepared to defend with his sword, was 
 substantially verified ; for though in the modern 
 duello the instrument of warfare has been changed, 
 the danger has not thereby been lessened. Liter- 
 ary duels, common in France, have always been 
 rare in this country. The effusion of ink sufficed 
 to revenge even the truculent satires of Dryden 
 and the stinging sarcasms of Pope. Dr Johnson 
 laughed at the Drawcansir threats and hostile 
 message of Macpherson, though he seems to have 
 considered duelling a species of self-defence that 
 might be justified on the same grounds as public 
 war. Happily the force of opinion has now 
 abolished the practice. When literary men have 
 been prompted to manifestations of this kind, it 
 will generally be found that the demon of politics 
 was present ; and this, we suspect, was the case 
 in the misunderstanding between Moore and Jeffrey. 
 In the spring of 1806, the former published his 
 Epistles, Odes, and other Poems. The poet enjoyed 
 considerable social and fashionable celebrity. He 
 was supposed to be a boon companion of the Prince 
 of Wales. His poems were dedicated to the Earl 
 of Moira ; one of the epistles was addressed to 
 Viscount Strangford, and others to the Lady 
 Charlotte Rawdon, to Viscount Forbes, the Hon. 
 William Spencer, &c. In all of these really grace- 
 ful and sparkling poetical offerings, democratic 
 America, with its ' piebald polity ' and its ' fustian 
 flag,' was heartily anathematised — French philosophy 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 251 
 
 and liberty were denounced as unclean things — 
 England was warned to beware of the mob mania — 
 and over every page of the handsome hot-pressed 
 quarto volume was spread an air of courtly fastidious- 
 ness and superiority. All this must have grated 
 on the popular sympathies and Whiggish feelings 
 of the Edinburgh reviewer ; but he had a still more 
 serious ground of offence. Many of the poems 
 were tainted with immorality. 
 
 Youthful flesh and blood — and particularly Irish 
 flesh and blood — could hardly refrain from resent- 
 ing a charge of mercenary immorality. Moore 
 resorted to the mode then sanctioned as the blind 
 arbiter of quarrels. He sent a challenge to his 
 critic, who happened to be at the time in London, 
 and the parties met at Chalk Farm, as before 
 related. Some wag circulated a report that both 
 pistols were leadless ! Hence the sarcastic allu- 
 sion in Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 
 which was afterwards nearly causing a duel 
 between the noble poet and Moore, but ultimately 
 led to their acquaintance and friendship : 
 
 Health to great Jeffrey ! 
 
 Can none remember that eventful day, 
 
 That ever-glorious, almost fatal fray, 
 
 When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, 
 
 And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by ? 
 
 This was of course a false representation of what 
 occurred, but it served as a subject of raillery, not 
 the less we may believe, because Moore was known 
 to be sensitive on the subject, and had even taken 
 the trouble to contradict the report in the news- 
 papers. In a letter written a few days after the 
 
252 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 occurrence, addressed to the editor of the Morning 
 Chronicle, Moore vindicated his conduct. 'The 
 quarrel/ he said, ' was not to be considered as 
 literary. Though by no means indifferent to the 
 decrees of criticism, I am aware that they are not 
 to be reversed by an appeal to the pistol. The 
 review, however, which Jeffrey had written appeared 
 to me to contain more personality than criticism ; 
 to impute to me motives which my heart disclaims 
 and detests ; and to assail me altogether much more 
 as a man than as a writer. Conceiving, therefore, 
 that in the present state of manners no gentleman 
 can hold such language to another with impunity, 
 I returned a contradiction to the assertions of Jeffrey 
 in terms too plain to be misunderstood, and the 
 meeting of which the public has heard was the 
 consequence/ The poet then anxiously explains 
 that the pistol which the officer took from him 
 was found to be regularly loaded, though, from 
 some accident in the carriage of the pistols, that 
 of Jeffrey was certainly without a ball ! 
 
 In this ridiculous affair the public was generally 
 on the side of the critic. It was acknowledged 
 that Moore's muse required to be checked and 
 rebuked, and that though the moral censor might 
 have gone too far, he went in the right direc- 
 tion. There was, however, too much wit, talent, 
 and real worth on both sides for the estrange- 
 ment to continue long. Habits of intimacy com- 
 menced shortly afterwards, and Moore himself 
 became an Edinburgh Reviewer. To the number 
 for September 1814 he contributed a critique on 
 Lord Thurlow's poetry, in which he almost rivalled 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 253 
 
 the editor in critical severity. In one of the pre- 
 faces to his collected works, Moore has said: 'In 
 the most formidable of all my censors — the great 
 master of the art of criticism in our day — I have 
 found since one of the most cordial of all my 
 friends ; ' and on the occasion of his visiting Scotland 
 in 1825, the poet passed some days with Lord 
 Jeffrey at 'his agreeable retreat, Craigcrook,' where 
 he sang his last new song, Ship Ahoy ! and was 
 called upon to repeat it so often, that 'the upland 
 echoes of Craigcrook ought long to have had its 
 burden by heart.' 
 
 The famous critique on Lord Byron's Juvenile 
 Poems (January 1808) was still more remarkable 
 in its results than that on Moore. The merciless 
 severity of the attack was intended to crush the 
 minor poet, but it only nerved him for further 
 exertion, and impelled him on in that poetical career 
 which was destined to be so fertile and glorious. 
 Had Byron's first critic not pronounced his poetry 
 to be a dead fiat, which the author could neither 
 get above nor below, and had he not counselled 
 him to abandon poetry, we should never have had 
 that vigorous satire, English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers, and might have waited long even for 
 Childe Harold. There was some danger at this 
 period that Byron would sink into the idle dissi- 
 pation and frivolity of a town life; and from such 
 a descent the reviewer called him, though with 
 no friendly voice, and added his name to the proud 
 roll of our national poets. Byron's diaries and 
 letters afford evidence that he considered the critique 
 in the Edinburgh Review to be the work of Lord 
 
254 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Brougham. Jeffrey afterwards made amends to the 
 noble poet's feelings by his criticism on his greater 
 works. 
 
 If Sir Walter Scott's critiques on Byron in the 
 Quarterly Review be compared with those of Jeffrey 
 in the Edinburgh, it will be seen that, beautiful 
 as the former are in style and spirit — approaching 
 almost to feminine tenderness, and overflowing with 
 illustration — the professional critic has greatly the 
 advantage in force, discrimination, and eloquence. 
 The early crudities of his poetical faith and opinions 
 had been mellowed down by time and reflection; 
 the range of his poetical emotion was extended; 
 and in the poetry of Byron he had subjects worthy 
 of all his powers and sensibilities. The poet felt 
 the generosity of his critic. He had heard Jeffrey, 
 he said, most highly commended by those who knew 
 him for things independent of his talents, and he 
 admired him for his liberality towards himself. 
 'None but a great soul dared hazard it; a little 
 scribbler would have gone on cavilling to the end 
 of the chapter.' In the tenth canto of Don Juan, 
 written at Pisa in 1822 — when all his ' little feuds ' 
 were over, and his brief career was drawing to 
 a close — Byron paid a noble tribute to his former 
 antagonist, blended with rich allusions to Scotland, 
 to auld langsyne, and to his boyish feelings and 
 dreams, as must ever render the passage one of 
 the finest and most interesting episodes in his poetry 
 and his life. 
 
 As the Beview advanced in public favour, it 
 assumed a bolder tone in politics. The war in 
 Spain ranged the nation into two parties — one, 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 255 
 
 like Scott, animated with a strong anti-Gallican 
 spirit; and another, like Jeffrey, predicting that 
 we should reap nothing but disaster and disgrace 
 from the struggle. An article by Brougham on the 
 'French Usurpation in Spain/ being a review of 
 a work by Don Cevallos (1808), seemed to induce 
 a crisis in the affairs of the Review. ' The Tories,' 
 said Jeffrey in a letter to Horner, 'having got a 
 handle, are running us down with all their might, 
 and the ghosts of all the miserables we have slain 
 are rising to join the vengeance. Walter Scott, and 
 William Erskine, and about twenty-five persons of 
 consideration, have forbidden the Review to enter 
 their doors. The Earl of Buchan, I am informed, 
 opened his street-door, and actually kicked it out !' 
 The editor resolved to eschew party politics, and 
 to practise exemplary moderation for the future ; 
 but this could not well be done. The public events 
 were too exciting to be passed over in silence. 
 Brougham and Horner were now in parliament, and 
 connected with the Opposition. The editor him- 
 self was become too conspicuous to preserve an 
 obscure neutrality. Friends required to be sup- 
 ported, and opponents encountered ; and it was 
 almost inevitable that the Review, to keep its 
 ground, and preserve consistency, should become 
 the recognised organ, defender, and exponent of the 
 Whio- party. A cry of infidelity was also raised 
 against the Review, and it was grounded on articles 
 written by Sydney Smith, who had commented in 
 1807 on Foreign Missions. 
 
 Durino- all this time Jeffrey was steadily advanc- 
 
256 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 ing in his practice and reputation at the bar. In 
 assiduity he rivalled the dullest plodder; for he 
 took no fee without conscientiously studying the 
 case, and he spared no pains to procure a verdict 
 for his client. His fluency and vivacity, and the 
 constant stream of his illustrations, poured out with 
 the rapidity of a cataract, were sometimes too 
 elevated and recondite for a common jury, but in 
 important criminal trials he was highly effective. 
 In political cases he was the intrepid defender of 
 constitutional freedom. In the trials for sedition 
 between 1817 and 1822 he was ever in the front 
 rank. He also took part in public meetings, con- 
 demning the system of intimidation which was then 
 adopted to repress the evils of discontent ; he spoke 
 at the Fox anniversaries; he wrote for the in- 
 struction of the discontented mechanics ; and on 
 all occasions, when oppression or slavery was to be 
 stigmatised, or toleration and liberty promoted, he 
 was ready with his displays of high eloquence, 
 intermingled with effusions of wit or fancy. 
 
 We need not dwell on those party conflicts; on 
 the meetings in the Pantheon or county-halls; on 
 the dinners to Hume or Brougham (in the latter 
 case he disappointed his auditory, as if paralysed 
 by the fierce invectives and tremendous power of 
 Brougham) ; or attempt to depict the glowing 
 scenes of rivalry and contention that have hap- 
 pily passed away. In 1816 the institution of 
 the court for the trial of civil cases by jury in 
 Scotland threw a vast accession of business into 
 the hands of Jeffrey. He was engaged in almost 
 every case; his knowledge, acuteness, and subtle 
 

 ifiiy 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 259 
 
 argumentation having there an appropriate field for 
 exertion. 
 
 In the intervals of his busy toils he made 
 occasional excursions to the Highlands or to the 
 English lakes. In 1811 he made a pilgrimage on 
 foot through the wilds of Inverness-shire, and by 
 the parallel roads of Glenroy. In 1815 we find 
 him in France, noting in his journal that Cambrai 
 was famed for 'its cambric, its league, and its 
 Fe'nelon/ He had about this time taken a 
 country-house — his residence of Craigcrook — 'an 
 old turreted mansion, much patched in the whole 
 mass of its structure,' beautifully situated at the 
 foot of Corstorphine Hill, near Edinburgh. His 
 windows looked out upon a wooded hill : he 
 had a good garden, and some fields for rural 
 occupation and pleasure. The charms of this old 
 chateau and summer retreat were enhanced by 
 the presence of a lady who added much to his 
 happiness, and who lived to mourn his loss. In 
 1811 M. Simond, a French author, his wife, and 
 niece, visited Edinburgh. Jeffrey saw much of 
 them during their stay, and some time after- 
 wards the intercourse was renewed in London. 
 In 1813 Jeffrey followed his visitors to America, 
 and was there married to the young lady, Miss 
 Wilkes, a grand-niece of the celebrated John Wilkes. 
 The following anecdote is related of his Trans- 
 atlantic marriage-journey: 'He met in America a 
 large and brilliant party, who endeavoured to 
 extort political opinions from him. The paltry 
 and unnecessary war between the United States 
 and Great Britain was then in progress, and one 
 
260 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 American statesman, in a very marked manner, 
 asked : " And now, Mr Jeffrey, what is said of the 
 war in Great Britain ? " Jeffrey was determined 
 to mortify the national vanity of the Americans, 
 and he replied : " War — war ? yes, I did hear 
 some talk of it in Liverpool ! " ' 
 
 A few personal traits and anecdotes may be here 
 given. It was the custom of Jeffrey, when review- 
 ing the works of his friends, to give them the 
 perusal of the proof-sheets before publication. In 
 doing this to Mrs Grant of Laggan, he remarked : 
 ' I let them know what I say of them before they are 
 led out to execution. When I take up my review- 
 ing pen, I consider myself as entering the temple 
 of truth, and bound to say what I think.' He 
 courageously sent the proof-sheets of his critique 
 on Marmion to Scott, having to dine with the 
 poet the same day. Scott preserved his equanimity, 
 as may be seen from the detail in Lockhart's 
 Life ; but Mrs Scott could not help saying in her 
 broken English, when her guest was departing : 
 ' Well, good night, Mr Jeffrey ; dey tell me you 
 have abused Scott in de Review, and I hope Mr 
 Constable has paid you well for writing it.' 
 
 Willison, the early printer of the Review, in 
 sending one of the proofs to the editor, wrote 
 on the margin that 'there appeared to be some 
 obscurity in it.' The sheet was returned with this 
 reply : ' Mr J. sees no obscurity here, except such 
 as arises from the great number of commas, which 
 Mr W. seems to keep in a pepper-box beside him 
 for the purpose of dusting all his proofs with.' 
 Jeffrey was somewhat peculiar in the punctuation 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 261 
 
 of his writings, as in his handwriting, which was 
 wretched. 
 
 It has been confidently stated that Jeffrey sent 
 William Hazlitt a sum of £50, to relieve him 
 from difficulty in his last illness. This generosity 
 is alluded to in the Life of Charles Lamb. 
 
 William M'Gavin, a Glasgow merchant, and author 
 of a series of letters entitled The Protestant, was 
 tried and convicted for a libel on a Catholic 
 priest at Glasgow. Jeffrey was retained for the 
 pursuer, and brought his eloquence to bear with a 
 very lively effect on M'Gavin. The latter sat, 
 in mute astonishment, gazing on Jeffrey, while, 
 minute after minute, there rolled forth periods of 
 the fiercest invective against himself. At length 
 the mortified ' Protestant ' took out his watch, and 
 calculated how many words Jeffrey spoke in a 
 minute. He afterwards published that, having 
 compared Johnson's Dictionary with Jeffrey's speech, 
 he found that the voluble gentleman had in two 
 hours spoken the English language three times over ! 
 As so much has been said about Jeffrey and the 
 Lake Poets, we may mention that the critic had 
 little personal intercourse with them. He had met 
 Southey in Edinburgh and Keswick, and Coleridge 
 once only at Keswick. Wordsworth and his critical 
 antagonist had one meeting. This was in June 
 1828, at an evening party in the house of Sir 
 James Mackintosh in London. It was at his own 
 request that the critic was introduced to the poet 
 by their courteous and benevolent host. 
 
 The exuberant fancy and imagery scattered 
 throughout Jeffrey's essays and speeches, and which 
 
262 LITERAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 were constantly sparkling up like a perennial 
 fountain in his conversation, led many to believe 
 that nature had marked him out for a poet, and 
 that, as in the cases of Lord Mansfield and Sir 
 William Blackstone, the goddess Themis, so jealous 
 of her rights, had defrauded the Muses. Rarely 
 have rhetoricians had such command of the elements 
 of poetry as was possessed by Jeffrey. 
 
 Oh ! many are the poets that are sown 
 
 By nature ; men endowed with highest gifts, 
 
 The vision and the faculty divine, 
 
 Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse. 
 
 The Excursion. 
 
 This is the declaration of a high authority, but 
 of one who would not perhaps have included the 
 brilliant reviewer among his own silent brethren. 
 To epic or tragic power, indeed, Jeffrey could have 
 made no approach : the divine afflatus was want- 
 ing. But in that middle class of poetry of which 
 Horace was the great master and exemplar — 
 uniting knowledge of the world and shrewd 
 observation with pictures of manners, just senti- 
 ment, wit, and elegance — Jeffrey, we think, might 
 have attained to a respectable rank. We do not 
 know that he ever attempted translation. The 
 following stanzas from his pen appeared in one of 
 the Annuals in the year 1829, entitled Verses 
 inscribed in a Lady's Album. They belong to the 
 higher class of vers-de-socie'te : 
 
 Why write my name 'midst songs and flowers 
 
 To meet the eye of lady gay ? 
 I have no voice for lady's bowers, 
 
 For page like this no fitting lay. 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 263 
 
 Yet though my heart no more must bound 
 
 At witching call of sprightly joys, 
 Mine is the brow that never frowned 
 
 On laughing lips or sparkling eyes. 
 
 No, though behind me now is closed 
 
 The youthful Paradise of Love, 
 Yet I can bless, with soul composed, 
 
 The lingerers in that happy grove. 
 
 Take, then, fair girls, my blessing take, 
 
 Where'er amid its charms you roam, 
 Or where, by western hill or lake, 
 
 You brighten a serener home. 
 
 And while the youthful lover's name 
 
 Here with the sister beauty's blends, 
 Laugh not to scorn the humbler aim 
 
 That to the list would add a friend's. 
 
 There is more poetry in the following specimen 
 of his prose. In treating of the beauty of land- 
 scapes, as connected with the law of association, in 
 a critique on Alison's Essay on Taste (1811), 
 Jeffrey draws this parallel : 
 
 'Take, for instance, the case of a common 
 English landscape — green meadows, with fat cattle 
 — canals or navigable rivers — well-fenced, well- 
 cultivated fields — neat, clean, scattered cottages — 
 humble antique church, with churchyard elms, and 
 crossing hedgerows — all seen under bright skies, 
 and in good weather : there is much beauty, as 
 every one will acknowledge, in such a scene. But 
 in what does the beauty consist? Not certainly 
 in the mere mixture of colours and forms — for 
 colours more pleasing, and lines more graceful 
 (according to any theory of grace that may be 
 preferred), might be spread upon a board, or a 
 
264 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 painter's palette, without engaging the eye to a 
 second glance, or raising the least emotion in the 
 mind — but in the picture of human happiness that 
 is presented to our imaginations and affections — 
 in the visible and unequivocal signs of comfort, 
 and cheerful and peaceful enjoyment — and of that 
 secure and successful industry that insures its con- 
 tinuance — and of the piety by which it is exalted 
 — and of the simplicity by which it is contrasted 
 with the guilt and the fever of a city life — in 
 the images of health and temperance and plenty 
 which it exhibits to every eye — and in the glimpses 
 which it affords to warmer imaginations, of those 
 primitive or fabulous times when man was un- 
 corrupted by luxury and ambition, and of those 
 humble retreats in which we still delight to 
 imagine that love and philosophy may find 
 an unpolluted asylum. At all events, however, 
 it is human feeling that excites our sympathy, 
 and forms the object of our emotions. It is man, 
 and man alone, that we see in the beauties of 
 the earth which he inhabits ; or, if a more sensi- 
 tive and extended sympathy connect us with the 
 lower families of animated nature, and make us 
 rejoice with the lambs that bleat on the uplands, 
 or the cattle that ruminate in the valley, or even 
 with the living plants that drink the bright sun 
 and the balmy air beside them, it is still the 
 idea of enjoyment — of feelings that animate the 
 existence of sentient beings — that calls forth all our 
 emotions, and is the parent of all the beauty with 
 which we proceed to invest the inanimate creation 
 around us. 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 265 
 
 'Instead of this quiet and tame English land- 
 scape, let us now take a Welsh or a Highland scene, 
 and see whether its beauties will admit of being 
 explained on the same principle. Here we shall 
 have lofty mountains, and rocky and lonely recesses 
 — tufted woods hung over precipices — lakes inter- 
 sected with castled promontories — ample solitudes 
 of unploughed and untrodden valleys — nameless and 
 gigantic ruins — and mountain echoes repeating the 
 scream of the eagle and the roar of the cataract. 
 This, too, is beautiful ; and to those who can inter- 
 pret the language it speaks, far more beautiful than 
 the prosperous scene with which we have contrasted 
 it. Yet lonely as it is, it is to the recollection of 
 man and of human feelings that its beauty also 
 is owing. The mere forms and colours that com- 
 pose its visible appearance are no more capable 
 of exciting any emotion in the mind than the forms 
 and colours of a Turkey carpet. 
 
 'It is sympathy with the present or the past, or 
 the imaginary inhabitants of such a region, that 
 alone gives it either interest or beauty; and the 
 delight of those who behold it will always be found 
 to be in exact proportion to the force of their 
 imaginations and the warmth of their social affec- 
 tions. The leading impressions here are those of 
 romantic seclusion and primeval simplicity; lovers 
 sequestered in these blissful solitudes, "from towns 
 and toils remote ; " and rustic poets and philosophers 
 communing with nature, at a distance from the 
 low pursuits and selfish malignity of ordinary 
 mortals; then there is the sublime impression of 
 the Mighty Power which piled the massive cliffs 
 
266 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 upon one another, and rent the mountains asunder, 
 and scattered their giant fragments at their base — 
 and all the images connected with the monuments 
 of ancient magnificence and extinguished hostility — 
 the feuds, and the combats, and the triumphs of 
 its wild and primitive inhabitants, contrasted with 
 the stillness and desolation of the scenes where 
 they lie interred — and the romantic ideas attached 
 to their ancient traditions and the peculiarities of 
 their present life — their wild and enthusiastic poetry 
 — their gloomy superstitions — their attachment to 
 their chiefs — the dangers, and the hardships, and 
 enjoyments of their lonely huntings and fishings — 
 their pastoral sheilings on the mountains in summer 
 — and the tales and the sports that amuse the little 
 groups that are frozen into their vast and trackless 
 valleys in the winter. Add to all this the traces 
 of vast and obscure antiquity that are impressed 
 on the language and the habits of the people, and 
 on the cliffs and caves, and gulfy torrents of the 
 land — and the solemn and touching reflection per- 
 petually recurring of the weakness and insignificance 
 of perishable man, whose generations thus pass 
 away into oblivion with all their toils and ambition, 
 while nature holds on her unvarying course, and 
 pours out her streams, and renews her forests, with 
 undecaying activity, regardless of the fate of her 
 proud and perishable sovereign.' 
 
 In 1820 Jeffrey was elected Lord Rector of the 
 university of Glasgow. The principle of election 
 for this high academical distinction is of a popular 
 character. By the original statutes, dated so far 
 back as 1450, the suffrage is vested in the whole 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 267 
 
 of the matriculated students, with whom are joined 
 the dean and principal professors. In the earlier 
 periods of our history, before civil rights were 
 extended and denned, the rector possessed vast 
 powers civil and criminal. His court was almost 
 as absolute as the Star Chamber. The duties and 
 powers of the office are now, however, almost 
 nominal. The appointment is an honorary distinc- 
 tion, and is generally bestowed on some eminent 
 public character with whose political sentiments, 
 genius, or learning, the majority of the students 
 sympathise. Burke filled the office in the year 1784: 
 Adam Smith was installed in 1787. At a later 
 date the names of Sir James Mackintosh, Brougham, 
 Campbell, Peel, and Macaulay, shed honour on the 
 office of Lord Bector, and on the choice of the young 
 students. Jeffrey was elected in a time of consider- 
 able excitement by an overwhelming majority, and 
 his appointment was a graceful tribute to his talents 
 and political consistency, rendered the more appro- 
 priate by his having studied at Glasgow University. 
 He delivered his inaugural address on Thursday, 
 December 28, and spoke warmly of the grateful and 
 nattering honour conferred upon him. 
 
 ' It was here,' he said, ' that, now more than thirty 
 years ago, I received the earliest and by far the 
 most valuable part of my academical education, 
 and first imbibed that relish and veneration for 
 letters which has cheered and directed the whole 
 course of my after-life ; and to which, amidst all 
 the distractions of rather too busy an existence, I 
 have never failed to return with fresh and unabated 
 enjoyment. Nor is it merely by those distant and 
 
268 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 pleasing recollections — by the touching retrospect 
 of those scenes of guiltless ambition and youthful 
 delight, when everything around and before me 
 was bright with novelty and hope, that this place, 
 and all the images it recalls, are at this moment 
 endeared to my heart. Though I have been able, 
 I fear, to do but little to honour this early nurse 
 of my studies since I was first separated from her 
 bosom, I will yet presume to say that I have been, 
 during all that interval, an affectionate and not 
 an inattentive son. For the whole of that period 
 I have watched over her progress, and gloried in 
 her fame ; and at your literary Olympics, where 
 your prizes are distributed, and the mature swarm 
 annually cast off to ply its busy task in the wider 
 circuit of the world, I have generally been found 
 a fond and eager spectator of that youthful prowess 
 in which I had ceased to be a sharer, and a delighted 
 chronicler of that excellence which never ceased 
 to be supplied. And thus the tie which originally 
 bound me to the place was never allowed to be 
 broken ; and when called to the high office which 
 I this day assume, I felt that I could not be 
 considered as a stranger, even by the youngest 
 portion of the society over which I was to pre- 
 side/ 
 
 Jeffrey, according to the usual custom, was re- 
 elected Lord Rector at the expiration of his first 
 year of office. He delivered a second inaugural 
 address on the 3d of January 1822, in which he 
 announced that he had determined to give a prize, 
 ' to be awarded by the young men themselves, to 
 the individuals who shall excel in recitation and 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 269 
 
 declamation — a science in the study and knowledge 
 of which we are so much behind our southern 
 neighbours : the prize, a gold medal, to be confined 
 to the two classes where such an excitement seems 
 more particularly called for — the Greek and Latin 
 classes — to each of which it will be given alternately, 
 commencing with the Greek.' By a subsequent 
 arrangement on the part of the Lord Rector, this 
 prize was confined to the most distinguished student 
 in the Greek class, the award to be made by the 
 votes of his fellow-students. In order to place the 
 medal on a permanent footing, the generous donor, 
 in 1849, remitted to the college factor the sum 
 of £120, of which ten guineas were to be applied 
 in procuring two medal dies, the remainder to be 
 invested by the faculty for the purpose of 'pro- 
 viding and engraving annually, in all time coming, 
 a gold medal, of such value as can be obtained for 
 the amount of the yearly interest.' 
 
 Jeffrey received a notable addition to his staff 
 of contributors in 1827. Thomas Carlyle had 
 married and was settled at Comely Bank, a northern 
 suburb of Edinburgh, and was engaged in miscel- 
 laneous literary work, chiefly translations from the 
 German. Some years before, he had volunteered 
 an article to the Edinburgh Review, which had been 
 neither acknowledged nor returned. He hesitated 
 before making another advance, when an oppor- 
 tunity occurred in the shape of a letter of introduc- 
 tion from Procter, the poet. Carlyle called on 
 Jeffrey at his George Street residence, presented 
 his introduction, and had a successful conversation 
 with him; the latter opened the pages of the 
 
270 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Edinburgh Review to Carlyle, who contributed to 
 it his famous essay on Burns in 1828, and various 
 papers on German literature. Jeffrey called on the 
 Carlyles at Comely Bank, and the intimacy in- 
 creased ; he even visited them in their rural retreat 
 at Craigenputtock. But his interest and kindness 
 did not end here, for he acted as the firm friend 
 and prudent adviser of Carlyle when comparatively 
 unknown, and at one time proffered him an 
 annuity. 
 
 In 1829 Jeffrey was chosen Dean of the Faculty 
 of Advocates, an honour unanimously conferred upon 
 him by his brethren of the bar, and which was 
 justly regarded not only as a token of personal 
 confidence and respect, but as an unequivocal recog- 
 nition of his having reached the summit of his 
 profession as an advocate. On his election to 
 this office he resigned the editorship of the Edin- 
 burgh Review into the hands of Mr Macvey Napier. 
 He still, however, took a lively interest in its 
 management, and was consulted by his successor 
 whenever any difficulty occurred. 
 
 The year 1830 brought Jeffrey prominently into 
 public life. It was truly an annus mirabilis. We 
 had the revolution in France agitating all Europe, 
 and the scarcely less decided revolution in England, 
 which began with the overthrow of the Duke of 
 Wellington's administration (considered as impreg- 
 nable as the lines of Torres Vedras), and the acces- 
 sion of the Whig party to power. Jeffrey was 
 now to reap the honours of the well-fought field, 
 and to receive the plaudits of the nation as one 
 
FEANCIS JEFFEEY. 271 
 
 of the victors. With the French success he cordially 
 sympathised, and he joined with his fellow-citizens 
 in publicly commemorating the valour, moderation, 
 and heroism of the people of France. A few months 
 afterwards, he was appointed Lord Advocate in 
 the administration of Earl Grey. This office must 
 always be one of high responsibility, as including 
 the functions of crown lawyer and public prosecutor, 
 and the exercise of political influence and patron- 
 age. The Lord Advocate is the minister for Scot- 
 land. The duties of the appointment were also 
 rendered more arduous and delicate at this time, 
 when a party had acceded to power on popular 
 principles, and pledged to extensive reforms. 
 
 To charm the popular voice into submission and 
 contentment after a period of such unbounded excite- 
 ment and expectation, required more energy and 
 prudence than were ' necessary at first to secure 
 success. Jeffrey said he accepted office with sincere 
 reluctance; for he had to leave the retirement of 
 private life, in which he had his chief solace and 
 delight. He did not covet the office; it had come 
 to him from no solicitation on his part, but from 
 the circumstance that the new government formed 
 by the crown professed all the most important 
 principles it had been the study of his life to assert 
 and maintain. It was necessary that the Lord 
 Advocate should have a seat in parliament. He 
 became a candidate for the representation of the 
 district of burghs including Perth, Dundee, St 
 Andrews, Cupar, and Forfar, for so many important 
 towns were then linked together in unnatural union 
 to return one member to parliament! The three 
 
272 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 first mentioned voted for the Lord Advocate ; the 
 last two for his opponent, Captain Ogilvy of the 
 ' noble House of Airly ; ' and as Forfar was the 
 returning burgh, and had a casting vote, both 
 candidates claimed to be elected. Jeffrey was 
 declared the sitting member, and Captain Ogilvy 
 petitioned against his return. 
 
 Jeffrey took his seat in the House of Commons 
 on the opening of parliament in February 1831. 
 He had thus an opportunity of aiding his friends 
 in the great debate on the second reading of the 
 Reform Bill, which after a four-nights' discussion, 
 was carried on the 2 2d of March. Four days after- 
 wards, the election committee decided in favour 
 of Captain Ogilvy. The Lord Advocate, however, 
 found refuge in the small borough of Malton in 
 Yorkshire, where the influence of Earl Fitzwilliam 
 predominated. Sir James Scarlett, who had opposed 
 the Reform Bill, retired ; and Jeffrey succeeded him 
 as member for Malton on the 12th of April. In 
 less than a fortnight the House of Lords had 
 rejected the Reform Bill, and parliament was dis- 
 solved. Jeffrey then solicited the suffrages of his 
 native city, and no less than 17,400 of the inhabit- 
 ants petitioned the elective body, the town-council, 
 in his favour. He was, however, destined to be 
 defeated by the narrow majority of three — fourteen 
 members of council voting for him, and seventeen 
 for his opponent, Mr R. A. Dundas. So indignant 
 were the populace at the rejection of their favourite 
 candidate, that serious riots took place, and the 
 Lord Provost had to be escorted home by a party 
 of dragoons. 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 273 
 
 The Lord Advocate was again returned — and on 
 a valid election — for the Forfar burghs, his seat 
 in Malton being at the same time kept open till 
 his election was secured. He again co-operated in 
 carrying the Reform Bill through the Commons. 
 The peers gave way, the bill became law ; and under 
 the new constituency, Jeffrey and his friend Mr 
 Abercrombie (afterwards Lord Dunfermline) were 
 almost unanimously elected the representatives 
 for the city of Edinburgh. The Lord Advocate 
 retained his seat until May 1834, when he gladly 
 exchanged the turmoil of party politics for the 
 duties of a judge. He was appointed to the bench 
 on the retirement of an aged judge, Lord Craigie; 
 his parliamentary career having thus extended over 
 a period of three years and three months. 
 
 The impression was universal that Jeffrey had 
 failed in parliament. The case of Erskine was 
 cited as a parallel one, and we were reminded of 
 the saying, that the floor of the House of Commons 
 was strewed with the wreck of eminent lawyers' 
 reputations. All such broad unqualified statements 
 must be received with caution. With the examples 
 of Mansfield and Wedderburn, of Thurlow, Scarlett, 
 and Brougham, before us, it is idle to say that 
 eminent lawyers do not succeed in the House of 
 Commons. Erskine's failure was only comparative. 
 He could not rival Pitt, or Fox, or Sheridan; and 
 he did not apply himself sedulously to cultivate the 
 arts necessary to success in debate. His previous 
 reputation as a forensic orator was so great, that 
 scarcely any appearance could have realised the 
 expectations formed by his friends. 
 
 R 
 
274 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Jeffrey laboured under the same disadvantage. 
 His fame was already high — filled to the brim. 
 He had to contend not only with practised rivals, 
 who waited for his halting, but with the pre- 
 possessions and hopes created by his own genius. 
 He made one brilliant speech in support of the 
 Reform Bill — one of the best which the discussion 
 called forth; but he made no attempt to shine as 
 a debater, and this is the most attractive and 
 valuable accomplishment in a popular assembly. 
 A clever retort or sarcasm, a personal sally, or a 
 strain of witty exaggeration directed against an 
 opponent, will always meet with a better reception 
 in the House of Commons than a speech which 
 deals with the first principles of a question, though 
 abounding in the finest analysis or illustration, 
 and appealing to history and reason. A familiarity 
 with the forms and personnel of the house, a 
 knowledge of parties, and a certain style of 
 masculine plainness and vigour, are also requisite ; 
 and these can rarely be acquired except by early 
 practice and long perseverance. A gentleman who 
 sat with the Lord Advocate in parliament, and was 
 a strenuous supporter of his principles, wrote as 
 follows on the impression made on the House by 
 his distinguished friend : 
 
 'That Jeffrey failed in securing the attention of 
 the House of Commons in a manner commensurate 
 with his extraordinary genius, and his talents as a 
 public speaker in other respects, is, I believe, certain. 
 As to the causes of his being imperfectly listened 
 to, I may begin by saying that his voice was far 
 from clear and distinct, and that he was subject 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 275 
 
 to a tendency to bronchitis. His utterance was 
 also extremely rapid. His pronunciation, though 
 not broad, was not easily followed by an English 
 ear. The shape in which he clothed his thoughts 
 was not very intelligible to an English audience. 
 There was a spontaneous flow of imagery in his 
 ordinary language which it was not easy for him 
 to restrain. There was a good deal of meta- 
 physical theory, and a considerable sprinkling of 
 technical phraseology, which, though quite familiar 
 to his audiences in Edinburgh, was very imperfectly 
 understood in the House of Commons. Besides all 
 this, he did not enter the House till on the borders 
 of sixty, at which no eminent speaker ever com- 
 menced his career.' 
 
 These physical impediments could never have 
 been wholly got over; but at this time Jeffrey 
 laboured under severe indisposition and debility, 
 which disqualified him for active exertion. He 
 was often confined to his house, or could only 
 exchange it for the purer air of the country, free 
 from the stir and noise of the Great Babel. While 
 looking after the Scots Reform Bill, too, he suffered 
 much. If we glance at the few and imperfectly 
 reported speeches delivered by the Lord Advocate 
 in the debates on the Reform Bill, we shall find no 
 trace of mental weakness, or any cause of parlia- 
 mentary failure. How few men in the House could 
 have struck off the following brief and philosophical 
 summary ! 
 
 ' It could not be denied that if they looked back 
 to the career of glory which England had run 
 during the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts, they 
 
276 LITEEAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 found that England during those periods held a 
 high rank among nations for wealth and splendour, 
 and even then was regarded by other nations as 
 the country where the principles of liberty were 
 best understood and practised. But could it be 
 argued that because England held that rank among 
 the nations during the reigns of the Tudors and 
 Stuarts, the country was now to be satisfied with 
 the institutions of those days ? Why, this was an 
 argument contrary to all history ; and, independent 
 of history, it was contrary to all principle. In 
 infant states, the first things in order were wealth 
 and prosperity, and these might exist for a short 
 time without either liberal institutions or freedom : 
 but the fruit of wealth and prosperity was 
 necessarily freedom. The first stage of what might 
 be called civilised society was generally that in 
 which a munificent and prudent tyrant ruled the 
 destinies of a state, and encouraged those persons 
 described in the book of Ecclesiasticus, as men who 
 wrought with their own hands, and were cunning 
 in works of wood, and brass, and iron. When 
 wealth increased, liberty followed; for liberty was 
 the daughter, not the mother, of wealth. This was 
 the case with the Italian republics, with the free 
 towns of Germany, with the ancient state of Corinth, 
 and other Grecian republics ; and, latterly, with the 
 towns and corporations of England. Works of the 
 utmost splendour and genius rendered England as 
 proud a name then as it had been since ; but was 
 that any reason that when society became enlarged, 
 and the various links of it became more multiplied, 
 the basis of the constitution should not be widened, 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 277 
 
 and room be found for the multiplied children of 
 freedom ?' 
 
 He argued that the greatest of all dangers was, 
 that the really distressed or aggrieved in the country- 
 should be led to tolerate doctrines of anarchy in 
 despair of legitimate redress. 'If the reasonably 
 discontented were propitiated and satisfied, would 
 they not feel themselves the stronger, and be the 
 better able to deal with the unreasonable ? He 
 wanted, amid the political chaos, to establish a 
 firmament which should separate the waters above 
 from the infernal. Stygian below.' 
 
 In advocating the Scots Reform Bill, which it 
 was his official duty to prepare and superintend in 
 its progress through the House, Jeffrey gave a 
 lucid and effective exposition of the anomalous and 
 illusory system of representation which then pre- 
 vailed. We may quote his account of Bute as a 
 happy and remarkable illustration : 
 
 'All the voters in the county of Bute were 
 twenty-one, and it was ludicrous to state that 
 twenty out of those twenty-one had no property 
 whatever in that county; so that in that county 
 there was only a single voter connected with it by 
 property, who, like a sovereign, was uncontrolled 
 within it. At one election there, within the memory 
 of man, when the day of election came, only one 
 person qualified to vote attended; and that person 
 was the sheriff. He read the writ to the meeting 
 as sheriff. Then he constituted the meeting. Then, 
 having constituted the meeting, he called over the 
 names on the roll. Then he answered to the names 
 himself. Then he put the vote for a preses to 
 
278 literary celebrities. 
 
 the meeting ; he elected himself preses ; he read 
 over the minutes of the last meeting; he moved 
 that they should be confirmed ; he confirmed them 
 himself ; and, last of all, he put the representation 
 to the vote ; and being himself the whole meeting, 
 made a unanimous return.' 
 
 If Jeffrey retired from parliament without one 
 additional leaf of laurel — harassed with party 
 tactics, and worn out with late divisions — he 
 retired also without one stain on his honesty or 
 disinterestedness as a politician. He was welcomed 
 to the Supreme Court by all the legal profession 
 and by the public; for all had confidence in his 
 learning, his discernment, and his industry. He 
 earned a high reputation as a judge. Suitors were 
 anxious that their cases should be decided by him. 
 He devoted the most careful consideration to every 
 question that came before him ; consulting autho- 
 rities and maturing his opinions in private, and 
 stating fully in court, with his usual candour and 
 precision, the various grounds of his decisions. His 
 quickness in detecting sophistry and error some- 
 times led him to interrupt the counsel with signifi- 
 cant and puzzling questions ; and there was at 
 times an over-solicitude and over-refinement in his 
 mode of handling a case ; partly arising from his 
 conscientious sense of duty, and partly from -his 
 intellectual habits of subtle investigation and nice 
 inquiry. This, however, was counteracted by the 
 alacrity with which he could set to any amount 
 of labour, and his aversion to the accumulation of 
 arrears. No better monument to his legal skill 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 279 
 
 and perseverance need be given than the records 
 of cases decided in the Court of Session during his 
 term of office. 
 
 His judicial labours were relieved by his unabated 
 love of literature. He contributed a few articles 
 to the Edinburgh Review, including critiques on 
 the Lives of Mackintosh and Wilberforce; and at 
 length he consented to the publication of a selection 
 from the whole of his contributions, similar collec- 
 tions having been made and published with great 
 success from the writings of Macaulay and Sydney 
 Smith. Lord Jeffrey's work appeared in 1844, in 
 four volumes, being only about a third of what 
 he had actually written for the Review. The 
 volumes were accompanied by a graceful, half- 
 apologetic preface, and by explanatory notes couched 
 in a gentle and subdued spirit. All traces of the 
 keen invective and caustic irony had disappeared. 
 The 'lord of the unerring bow' had sheathed his 
 arrows. There was a full admission of the errors 
 and indiscretions of the earlier numbers of the 
 Review, and of its 'excesses both of party zeal, 
 overweening confidence, and intemperate blame.' 
 Lord Jeffrey acknowledged that he had said 
 'petulant and provoking things' of Southey, and 
 that he had in many places spoken 'rather too 
 bitterly and confidently of the faults' of Words- 
 worth's poetry. But in these cases, though regret- 
 ting the manner of his strictures, he still adhered 
 substantially to the judgments he had given. 
 Having acknowledged his faults, he intimates his 
 claim to the merit of having more uniformly and 
 earnestly than any preceding critic made the moral 
 
280 LITERAEY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 tendencies of the works under consideration a lead- 
 ing subject of discussion. The praise to which he 
 aspired was, ' that of having constantly endeavoured 
 to combine ethical precepts with literary criticism, 
 and earnestly sought to impress his readers with a 
 sense both of the close connection between sound 
 intellectual attainments and the higher elements of 
 duty and enjoyment, and of the just and ultimate 
 subordination of the former to the latter.' 
 
 The great critic realised all he aspired to, and 
 much more. He made good his claim to 'titles 
 manifold.' His four volumes, though not contain- 
 ing all his most original or striking essays, are a 
 repertory of sound and valuable maxims, fine 
 conceptions, and correct definitions. The actual 
 writings, however, afford no just criterion of the 
 benefits which Jeffrey conferred upon his country. 
 Who can calculate the impulse which he gave to 
 thought and opinion, to the whole current of our 
 literature, to correct principles of taste and reason- 
 ing, to enlarged views of government, of public 
 duty, and private morality ! Much that is valuable 
 and instrumental in periodical writing perishes in 
 their use. The arguments necessary to help on 
 any great cause become to a certain extent super- 
 fluous and antiquated when that cause is won, as 
 elementary dissertations on law or morals cease to 
 interest in an advanced state of society. 
 
 During his twenty-six years of active duty as 
 editor and reviewer, Jeffrey had stored the public 
 mind with principles and opinions which we have 
 seen reduced to practice, and which no party would 
 now dispute, but which were violently assailed 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 281 
 
 when presented in the pages of the Edinburgh 
 Review. To appreciate him aright, we must go 
 back to the times in which he wrote, when literary- 
 criticism was low and servile, and political independ- 
 ence a rare and dangerous quality — when he had 
 to contend with discouragements on every hand, 
 and to inspire or cherish the taste and feelings 
 of which we now reap the advantages. Some of 
 the reviews in his collected works devoted entirely 
 to political questions — to Ireland, the nature of our 
 relations with America, the state of parties in 
 England, and the subjects of parliamentary reform 
 and criminal jurisprudence — are solid and valuable 
 constitutional treatises. He not merely lightens up 
 his subject — he reasons closely on it, and is logical 
 as well as brilliant. 
 
 He loved to play with metaphysical abstractions ; 
 and this, which was one of his early triumphs, 
 now impedes instead of advancing his popularity. 
 He was just in time to catch the last gleams of 
 metaphysical science from Eeid, Stewart, and Alison ; 
 but the 'shadowy tribes of mind' retreated before 
 the certain light of physical science, and the 
 delineation of human passions and manners. The 
 vivacity and ability with which Jeffrey could 
 expound these mental theories astonished his con- 
 temporaries, and certainly have never been exceeded. 
 He had an exhaustless armoury of language of 
 all descriptions, to suit every shade of meaning, 
 and he was always as definite and exact as he was 
 copious and animated. Yet the adventurous critic 
 was very sceptical as to the utility of meta- 
 physical speculations. 
 
282 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Instead of endeavouring to bring out a theory of 
 his own, he set himself to investigate critically all 
 the theories most prevalent in his day — to dis- 
 entangle them from what he deemed doubtful and 
 obscure, and to exhibit within the smallest possible 
 compass what is satisfactory to our reason, or what 
 bears in any degree on practical purposes. Thus he 
 considers the principle of veracity and the principle 
 of credulity, which Reid held to be original prin- 
 ciples in human nature, to be merely excrescences 
 on that philosopher's system, and unnecessary to 
 carry out his views. He also cut off from Alison's 
 theory of association the notion of long trains of 
 ideas and sensations, which he held to be equally 
 superfluous. Jeffrey's exposition of Alison's theory 
 is one of his most elaborate and complete meta- 
 physical dissertations, and it is enriched with some 
 of his most picturesque and beautiful writing. He 
 enlarged the article, and reprinted it as an essay on 
 Beauty in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He 
 evidently regarded it as the corner-stone of his 
 fame. 
 
 His great superiority consists in the versatility of 
 his powers, and the perfect command he had over 
 his faculties and acquirements. There was scarcely 
 a region of the intellectual world that he had not 
 explored, yet his natural endowments were greater 
 than his acquisitions. The demands of a laborious 
 profession precluded any profound knowledge in 
 the sciences or abstruser branches of learning. He 
 was more a man of the world than an erudite 
 scholar — more of a popular orator and lawyer than 
 an author; yet how few have been able to rival 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 283 
 
 him in mental philosophy or polite literature ! His 
 perceptions were so quick as to seem intuitive, and 
 his sensibilities so keen as to include every species 
 of emotion. No poet could have a greater admira- 
 tion of the beauties of external nature, yet his fertile 
 imagination was but the handmaid of his clear and 
 powerful understanding. His reasons and arguments 
 on any subject were as strong and distinct as his 
 illustrations were rich and fanciful. When these 
 were aided by the fire of his eye, the animated 
 expression of his countenance, and that flow of 
 language which seemed as if it were never to cease 
 running and sparkling, and which never made one 
 abrupt or half -formed sentence, the impression made 
 by his genius and acquirements on all minds of 
 the slightest susceptibility was indescribable. Mrs 
 Hemans compared the effect of his conversation to 
 drinking champagne. But Jeffrey aimed at higher 
 things than these. Both by his voice and his pen 
 he sought to make men better, and wiser, and 
 happier. He had a deep sympathy with his kind 
 in all its joys and sorrows — a love of whatever was 
 fair and good, and a scorn of whatever was base, or 
 mean, or hypocritical. His candour was as trans- 
 parent as his truth. His highest flights as an orator 
 or writer were connected with the best feelings and 
 interests of humanity. 
 
 Jeffrey was an admirable letter-writer, and the 
 following epistle to a grandchild, from Craigcrook, 
 20th June 1848, shows his character in an amiable 
 light, and how he could unbend from severer studies 
 and duties: 'My sonsy Nancy !— I love you very 
 much, and think very often of your dimples, and 
 
284 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 your pimples ; and your funny little plays, and all 
 your pretty ways ; and I send you my blessing, and 
 wish I were kissing, your sweet rosy lips, or your 
 fat finger tips ; and that you were here, so that I 
 could hear, your stammering words, from a mouthful 
 of curds; and a great purple tongue (as broad as it's 
 long) ; and see your round eyes, open wide with 
 surprise, and your wondering look, to find yourself 
 at Craigcrook ! To-morrow is Maggie's birthday, 
 and we have built up a great bonfire in honour of 
 it; and Maggie Rutherfurd (do you remember her 
 at all ? ) is coming out to dance round it ; and all 
 the servants are to drink her health, and wish her 
 many happy days with you and Frankie ; and all 
 the mammys and pappys, whether grand or not 
 grand. We are very glad to hear that she and you 
 love each other so well, and are happy in making 
 each other happy ; and that you do not forget dear 
 Tarley or Frankie, when they are out of sight, nor 
 granny either — or even old granny pa, who is in 
 most danger of being forgotten, he thinks. We have 
 had showery weather here, but the garden is full of 
 flowers ; and Frankie has a new wheelbarrow, and 
 does a great deal of work, and some mischief now 
 and then. All the dogs are very well ; and Foxey 
 is mine, and Froggy is Tarley 's, and Frankie has 
 taken up with great white Neddy — so that nothing- 
 is left for granny but old barking Jacky and Dover 
 when the carriage comes. The donkey sends his 
 compliments to you, and maintains that you are a 
 cousin of his ! or a near relation at all events. He 
 wishes, too, that you and Maggie would come, for he 
 thinks that you will not be so heavy on his back as 
 
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 285 
 
 Tarley and Maggie Rutherfurd, who now ride him 
 
 without mercy Grannie and I [are] taking 
 
 care of j Frankie, and he is now hammering very 
 busily at a corner of the carpet, which he says does 
 not lie flat. He is very good, and really too pretty 
 for ^a boy, though I think his two eyebrows are 
 growing into one — stretching and meeting each other 
 above his nose ! But he has not near so many 
 freckles as Tarley — who has a very fine crop of 
 them — which she and I encourage as much as we 
 can. I hope you and Maggie will lay in a stock of 
 them, as I think no little girl can be pretty without 
 them in summer. Our pea-hens are suspected of 
 having young families in some hidden place, for 
 though they pay us short visits now and then, we 
 see them but seldom, and always alone. If you and 
 Maggie were here with your sharp eyes, we think 
 you might find out their secret, and introduce us to 
 a nice new family of young peas. The old papa 
 cock, in the meantime, says he knows nothing about 
 them, and does not care a farthing ! We envy you 
 your young peas of another kind, for we have none 
 yet, nor any asparagus either, and hope you will 
 bring some down to us in your lap. Tarley sends 
 her love, and I send mine to you all ; though I shall 
 think most of Maggie to-morrow morning, and of 
 you when your birth morning comes. "When is that, 
 do you know ? It is never dark now here, and we 
 might all go to bed without candles. And so bless 
 you ever and ever, my dear dimply pussie — Your 
 very loving Grandpa.' 
 
 At a late period of his life Lord Jeffrey was called 
 upon, in his judicial capacity, to deliver judgment in 
 
286 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 a case connected with the political reformers, Muir, 
 Palmer, and Gerald. It was proposed in the year 
 1845 to erect a monument to their memory, but the 
 scheme was objected to chiefly on political grounds. 
 The Court of Session, by a majority of its body, 
 overruled the objection, Lord Jeffrey concurring. 
 'The thoughts/ he said, 'which such a monument 
 should suggest, even to those most opposed to the 
 views and opinions of its founders, are naturally of 
 a solemn and sobering character. And if, in some, 
 they may still be too much mixed up with feelings 
 of anger at supposed injustice, and in others of 
 unmerciful reprobation of offences, of which the 
 mischief and the penalties have been long ago con- 
 summated, I can only say that the blame will be 
 with those who continue, on either side, to cherish 
 sentiments so uncharitable ; and that, if there be 
 any place where the influences of the scene in which 
 they are suggested are likely to soften them down 
 to a more humane and indulgent standard, it is 
 when that scene is laid where the wicked cease from 
 troubling, and the weary rest; and where every- 
 thing should remind us of our own frail mortality 
 and of that awful Seat of Judgment before which 
 none of us can hope to be justified — except through 
 mercy.' 
 
 This solemn and touching admonition may prepare 
 us for the , fast-approaching sequel of our narrative. 
 Lord Jeffrey's health had been shaken by several 
 severe attacks. His cheerfulness and clearness of 
 intellect, however, were undiminished. He scarcely 
 seemed old even at seventy-six. His evening parties 
 at Craigcrook, or at his house in Moray Place, were 
 
FEANCIS JEFFKEY. 287 
 
 the special delight of his friends; his acts of 
 generosity and charity and unaffected kindness were 
 still more numerous. Kecent circumstances had 
 revived^ his interest in the Edinburgh Review. His 
 only child, a daughter, was married to Mr Empson, 
 professor of law in the East India College at 
 Haileybury; and in 1847, on the death of Mr 
 Macvey Napier, Mr Empson succeeded to the editor- 
 ship of that journal from which his illustrious 
 relative had derived such solid and lasting honours. 
 Lord Jeffrey might now be seen in his leisure hours 
 turning over the leaves of a critique destined for 
 publication, and perhaps suggesting some golden 
 thought or happy illustration to be set like a ' coigne 
 of vantage ' in the text. He was so engaged within 
 one week of his death ! Within four days of that 
 event he sat in court, not having missed a day 
 during the season ; and one of his last writings was 
 a letter, full of tenderness, addressed to the widow 
 of his early friend, Sydney Smith, who had sent 
 him a printed copy of the Lectures on Moral Philo- 
 sophy delivered by Smith so far back as 1806. 
 His early associates and occupations — the names and 
 the duties so long familiar — were thus vividly before 
 him at the last ! The closing hours were linked in 
 beautiful sequency and uniformity with the morn- 
 ing splendour. On returning from the court on 
 Tuesday, January 22, 1850, Lord Jeffrey had a slight 
 accession of cold, which brought on his constitutional 
 complaint, bronchitis ; fever followed, and at six 
 o'clock on Saturday afternoon, while his medical 
 attendant was in the act of feeling his pulse, life 
 became extinct. His remains were interred in the 
 
288 LITERARY CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Dean Cemetery, without any funereal pomp, as 
 was his own desire, but mourned deeply and widely 
 with no common sorrow. He had lived and died 
 among his own people ; and his native country, 
 amidst her grief, rejoiced in his fame. 
 
 More extended information about the subject of 
 our notice will be found in the Life of Lord Jeffrey, 
 by his friend Lord Cockburn ; in the Selected Corre- 
 spondence of Macvey Napier; in Carlyle's Reminis- 
 cences; and in Froude's Life of Thomas Carlyle. 
 There is also a good deal that is interesting about 
 Lord Jeffrey in Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord 
 Macaulay. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Edinburgh : 
 Printed by W. & R. Chambers. 
 

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 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; 
 
 
 
 AND EDINBURGH. 
 
 March 1890. 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
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! BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 chambers's 
 
 Encyclopedia 
 
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