Before the publication of ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ Campbell was practically a nonentity; after that event he became a literary lion. His experience was that of Burns over again on a smaller scale; indeed some of the distinguished men who had hailed Burns’ arrival in the capital were still alive to give their acclamations to Campbell, whom they may not unlikely have regarded as a possible successor. Scott invited him to dinner and proposed his health amid a strong muster of his literary friends. Dr Gregory—whose name has survived in connection with what Stevenson calls ‘our good old Scotch medicine’—discovered his poem on Mundell’s counter fresh from the printer, and at once sought him out. Everybody wanted to meet him; and invitations poured in upon him until, like Sterne after the publication of ‘Tristram Shandy,’ he found himself deep in social engagements for months ahead. How he bore it all we have no means of knowing. Thirty years later he speaks of himself as being at this time ‘a young, shrinking, bashful creature,’ though he is honest enough to add that he had a very high opinion of himself and his powers. Probably the right measure of his timidity was taken by the lady who described him as ‘swaggering about’ in a Suwarrow jacket.
With the exception of ‘Gilderoy,’ Campbell does not seem to have written anything during the remainder of 1799. He conceived the idea of a poem on ‘the patriot Tell,’ but notwithstanding that the subject must have been exactly to his liking he never utilised it. Another idea which occurred to him also failed of fruition, although references continue to be made to it in his correspondence for some time. This was a poem to be called ‘The Queen of the North,’ in which—with Edinburgh as the locale—such themes as the independence of Scotland and the achievements of her great men were to be employed to revive the old spirit of freedom. In the meantime, while these projects were passing through his mind, a new edition of ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ had been called for, and with Mundell’s additional payment of £50 in his pocket, Campbell decided to make a tour in Germany.
The objects to be gained by this pilgrimage were perfectly plain to him. He would acquire another language, and he would enlarge his views of society. In the conversation of his travelled friends he could detect the advantages of intercourse with the foreigner, and in travelling, as they had travelled, he hoped to rid himself of the imputation that ‘home-keeping youths have ever homely wits.’ In spite of his recent poetic performance, he felt that he was still a raw youth, who would make but a poor figure in a company of London wits; and although he expected to be stared at for his awkwardness and ridiculed for his broken German, yet, to be ‘uncaged from the insipid scenes of life,’ to ‘see the wonders of the world abroad,’ to make first-hand acquaintance with that literature, so prominently represented by Goethe, which was then rising like a star on the intellectual world—all this he regarded as a compensation for greater evils than his friends could suggest or his fears imagine.
For one must not forget that the contemplated tour was not without some risks. The year 1800 was not exactly the time that one who valued above all things his personal comfort, perhaps even his personal liberty, would have chosen for a continental holiday. The long wars of the French Revolution had been in progress for some time, and Napoleon had just begun to make himself famous. England was at war with France; France was at war with Austria, and Russia had formed a coalition with Sweden and Denmark against England. In short, Europe was at the time in such a state of military unrest that no one knew what a day or an hour might bring forth. But Campbell, living at home at ease, thought very lightly of the hazards of war. He was tired of his ‘dully sluggardised’ existence, without definite aim or ambition; and so, in the beginning of June, he walked down to Leith, and, with a sheaf of introductions in his pocket, set sail for Hamburg.
CHAPTER IV
CONTINENTAL TRAVELS
Campbell’s intention had been to proceed from Harwich after a week’s visit to London, but, on mature reflection, he decided that the ‘modern Babel’ must wait. Some months later he realised that he had made a mistake. ‘It is a sad want not to be able to tell foreigners anything of London,’ he then wrote; ‘I have blushed for shame when the ladies asked me questions about it.’ This, however, was a point he had not foreseen, and his immediate reasons for delaying the London visit were both frank and amusing. On the eve of his departure he explains to Thomson that he had resisted the seductions of the great city because his finances were not equal to both London and Germany, and Germany he would on no account forego. Moreover, he knew his own nature too well. New sights and new acquaintances would have dismissed the little industry he possessed, and would have soon reduced him to the fettered state of a bookseller’s fag. There was still another consideration. He was not fitted for shining in a London company just yet. When he had added to the number of his books, he might think of making his debût, but for the present he would not run the risk of ridicule on account of his northern brogue and his ‘braw Scotch boos.’ And then comes this curious announcement: ‘In reality my fixed intention on returning from Germany is to set up a course of lectures on the Belles Lettres. I had some thoughts of lecturing in Edinburgh, but cannot think of remaining any longer in one place. If London should not offer encouragement, I mean to try Dublin. I think this a respectable profession, as the showman of the bear and monkey said when he gave his name to the commissioners of the income tax as an “itinerant lecturer on natural history.”’ The last sentence suggests—though it is impossible to be sure, for Campbell’s jokes were rather heavy-handed—that he threw out this idea in jest. If he was serious, it is another indication of his habit of easily adopting new professions, of which we may learn more in the sequel.
Campbell had a cordial reception from the British residents in Hamburg. He met Klopstock, and presented him with a copy of ‘The Pleasures of Hope.’ He describes the poet as ‘a mild, civil old man,’ one of the first really great men in the world of letters he ever knew, and adds that his only intercourse with him was in Latin, with which language he made his way tolerably well among the French and Germans, and still better among the Hungarians. How long he remained in Hamburg is not certain: as we shall see presently, he had arrived at Ratisbon in time to witness the startling military events of July. The political excitement was now at its height. Several of the Bavarian towns were in the hands of the French, and the upper valley of the Danube was under military government. ‘Everything here,’ says Campbell, writing soon after his arrival, ‘is whisper, surmise, and suspense. If war breaks out, the bridge over the Danube is expected to be blown up. You may guess what a devil of a splutter twenty-four large arches will make flying miles high in the air and coming down like falling planets to crush the town!… Ratisbon will be shivered to atoms; and as no warning is expected, the inhabitants may be buried under the ruins.’
To be thus plunged, as it were, into the thick of the fray was hardly a pleasant experience for the British pilgrim. The richest fields of Europe desolated by contending troops; peasants driven from their homes to starve and beg in the streets; horses dying of hunger, and men dying of their wounds—such were the ‘dreadful novelties’ that Campbell had come from Edinburgh to see. He describes the whole thing very vividly in letters to his eldest brother. The following refers particularly to the action which gave the French possession of Ratisbon. He says: