In the meantime he went on with his abridgment, and wrote a few verses. Among the latter was ‘The Wounded Hussar,’ a lyric suggested by an incident in one of the recent battles on the Danube. This ballad, now entirely forgotten, attained an extraordinary popularity. It had been published only a few weeks when all Glasgow was ringing with it. Subsequently it found its way to London, where it was sung on the streets and encored in the theatres. It seemed as if the fame for which the author hungered was to be his at last, but curiously enough, in this case he would have none of it. ‘That accursed song,’ he would say, and forbid his friends to mention ‘The Wounded Hussar’ again in his presence. About this time also he wrote his ‘Lines on revisiting Cathcart,’ besides a ‘Dirge of Wallace,’ which he sensibly excluded from his collected works as being too rhapsodical, though it was often printed against his wish in the Galignani editions.
Having finished his work for Mundell, Campbell returned to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1797. What his plans now were is not very clear, though from the fact that he spoke to his parents about following him when his circumstances permitted, it is evident that he had made up his mind to reside permanently in the capital. At present his prospects were as gloomy as ever. Mundell had promised him some employment for the winter, and a further slight engagement on a contemplated geographical work seemed probable. At the best, however, these were but feeble supports; the booksellers—who, he enquired, could depend on them? Some time before this he had, as we have seen, tried medicine and surgery and failed; now, as a sort of forlorn hope, he again betook himself to the study of chemistry and anatomy. That, too, was soon abandoned, and he fell back once more on the dernier resort of a tutorship. By and by his younger brother Robert sent him a pressing invitation to come out to Virginia, and he decided to quit Scotland in the spring of 1798. But here again his design was defeated; his elder brother in Demerara wisely interposed his experienced advice against it, and Campbell’s oft-expressed desire to see the land of Washington was never realised.
In all these shifting plans and projects one discerns thus early what proved the chief defect in Campbell’s character—that irresolution and that caprice which were so largely to blame for many of the vexations and disappointments of his later life. No doubt to some extent his friends were responsible for his unsteadiness of purpose. He was the Benjamin of his family, petted and pampered, applauded for his little clevernesses, and encouraged in his belief that he had been cut out for something great. Had he been alone in the world, and absolutely penniless, he would have had to exert himself to some purpose. As it was, he never stuck at an honest calling long enough to know what he could do at it; but having tried many things perfunctorily, and failed in them, he at length derived inspiration from his empty pocket, braced himself to what after all was most congenial to him, and in a sense, like Silas Wegg, ‘dropped into poetry.’
Speaking afterwards of this period, he says: ‘I lived in the Scottish metropolis by instructing pupils in Greek and Latin. In that vocation I made a comfortable livelihood as long as I was industrious. But “The Pleasures of Hope” came over me. I took long walks about Arthur’s Seat, conning over my own (as I thought) magnificent lines; and as my “Pleasures of Hope” got on, my pupils fell off.’ Here we have the first intimation that Campbell was actually working upon the poem by which he made his grand entry on the stage of public life. But the subject had engaged his thoughts long before this. So far back as 1795, when slaving as a tutor in Mull, he had asked his friend Hamilton Paul to send him ‘some lines consolatory to a hermit.’ Paul replied with a set of verses on ‘The Pleasures of Solitude,’ adding: ‘We have now three “Pleasures” by first-rate men of genius—“The Pleasures of Imagination,” “The Pleasures of Memory,” and “The Pleasures of Solitude.” Let us cherish “The Pleasures of Hope” that we may soon meet in Alma Mater.’
The subject thus playfully suggested dwelt in Campbell’s mind; and although there is nothing to show that he at once began the composition of the poem, there is every reason to believe that some parts of it had been at least drafted during his two periods of exile in the Highlands. At any rate, in his ‘dusky lodging’ in Rose Street he now set to work upon it in earnest; and by the close of 1798 it was being shown to his private circle as practically ready for the press. Campbell’s intention appears to have been to publish it by subscription, and on that understanding a friend gave him £15 to pay for the printing. Dr Anderson, however, intervened; and after he had discussed the merits of the poem with Mundell, the latter bought the entire copyright, as the note of agreement has it, ‘for two hundred copies of the book in quires.’ This would mean something over £50, the volume having been published at six shillings. At the time Campbell probably thought the bargain fair enough, but he naturally took a different view of the case after some thousands of copies of the poem had been sold. It was, he said towards the end of his life, worth an annuity of £200, but he added that he must not forget how for two or three years the publishers gave him £50 for every new edition. When we recall the fact that for ‘Paradise Lost’ Milton got exactly £10, we must regard Campbell as having been unusually well paid.
After being subjected to a great deal of correction, mainly at the instigation of Anderson, to whom it was dedicated, ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ was published on the 29th of April, 1799, when the poet was twenty-one years and nine months old. It had been announced as in the press some time before, and there was now a brisk demand for copies, four editions being called for in the first year. So early a success had only a near parallel in the case of Byron, who awoke to find himself famous at twenty-four. The author, it was remarked, had suddenly emerged like a star from his obscurity, and had thrown a brilliant light over the literary horizon of his country. His poem was quoted as ‘an epitome of sound morals, inculcating by lofty examples the practice of every domestic virtue, and conveying the most instructive lessons in the most harmonious language.’ One critic said it gave fair promise of his rivalling some of the greatest poets of modern times; another critic commended it for its sublimity of conception, its boldness of imagery, its vigour of language and its manliness of sentiment. And so they swelled the chorus, to the same tune of extravagant eulogy.
Much of the success of the poem was no doubt due to the circumstance that it touched with such sympathy on the burning questions of the hour. If, as Stevenson remarks, the poet is to speak efficaciously, he must say what is already in his hearer’s mind. This Campbell did, as perhaps no English poet had done before. The French Revolution, the partition of Poland, the abolition of negro-slavery—these had set the passion for freedom burning in many breasts, and ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ gave at once vigorous and feeling expression to the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man. Moreover, the moment was favourable in that there were so few rivals in the field. Burns had been dead for three years, and Rogers might now be said to stand alone in the front rank. Crabbe, suffering under domestic sorrow, had been all but silent since his ‘Village’ appeared in 1783; Cowper was sunk in hopeless insanity. Neither Wordsworth nor Coleridge, both older than Campbell, had secured a following; Scott had printed but a few translations from the German. Byron was at school, Moore at college; Hogg had not spoken, and Southey’s fame was still to make. There could hardly have been a stronger case of the felix opportunitate.
It is not easy at this time of day to approach ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ without a want of sympathy, if not an absolute prejudice, resulting from a whole century of poetical development. The ideals, the standards of Campbell’s day, have wholly altered; were indeed passing away even in his own time. The little volume of ‘Lyrical Ballads,’ published only a few months before Campbell’s poem, sounded, as it has been expressed, the clarion-call of the new poetry. The manner thus introduced by Wordsworth and Coleridge completely changed the critical standpoint; and it is perfectly safe to say that any poem which appeared to-day with the opening line of ‘The Pleasures of Hope’—‘At summer eve, when heaven’s ethereal bow‘—would meet with very severe treatment at the hands of the critics, if indeed the critics condescended to notice it at all.
Further, too much stress must not be laid on the fact, already referred to, and always so carefully stated by the school editors, that the poem met with a phenomenal success on its first appearance. In literature popularity bears no strict proportion to merit. Neither Keats nor Shelley nor Wordsworth was ever ‘popular’; of ‘The Christian,’ we are given to understand, a hundred copies were sold for every one of ‘Richard Feverel.’ The popularity of ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ might easily have been foretold by any one reading it before publication, not for any poetic excellence it possessed—though it was not without poetic excellence—but because it accorded so well with the prevalent moods and opinions of a large section of the public at the time. Given certain vulgar ideas, the power of fluent and forcible expression, and no great depth of thought or subtlety of imagination, and the breath of popular applause may generally be counted upon.