racter among her neighbours, but at home, and in her family, a firm disciplinarian. 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; Robert, 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, 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 disposition 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 commensurate 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 which Samuel Johnson made upon his duck. Somewhat 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 THOMAS CAMPBELL. THE THE biography of a literary man is to be found in the history of his works startling incident and romantic adventure are not to be expected. The development of the progress 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 that name, on the borders of Inverary. The estate produced a small independent rental, and came by inheritance to Robert 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. 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 cha racter among her neighbours, but at home, and in her family, a firm disciplinarian. 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; Robert, 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, 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 disposition 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 commensurate 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 which Samuel Johnson made upon his duck. Somewhat 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 occasionally 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 superiority over the productions of the generality of schoolboys at so early an age; marking a certain precocity of intellect, and a power of close application, however desultory, rare in youth of so vivacious 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 instruction 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. In the midst of this toil the poet went on with his metrical compositions, both original and translated. 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,' published, 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 gaining 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 parliament. The trial of Gerald made a deep impression upon his mind, and he inveighed against the unfairness 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 passages 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 profession, but here he had to combat the want of the requisite finances. He was of too sensitive a temperament to withstand the sight of a surgical operation, 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 painful state of indecision, and thinking about the church, he wrote some lines beginning 6 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 being left only a small income derived from certain mercantile annuities, young Campbell felt his dependent position more keenly. His father 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 travelled with a friend as far as Oban, saving a boy from being drowned on the way. 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 Callioch. Here, besides attending to his pupils, he continued his translation of the 'Clouds of Aristophanes,' and portions of 'Eschylus,' and composed some of the best lines he had written previous to that |