But literature was after all of more importance to him than politics. Such plans as he had formed at this time he freely discussed with Sir Walter Scott, from whom he received much encouragement and good advice. Lord Minto was another friend who proved of value. Minto had just returned from Vienna, where he had been acting as Envoy Extraordinary, and with the view perhaps of hearing his version of recent events in Germany, he invited the poet to his house at Castle Minto, some forty-five miles from Edinburgh. The visit turned out in every way agreeable, and when Campbell left, it was with the understanding that he would join Lord Minto in London in the course of the parliamentary session. A London visit promised many advantages, among them the opportunity of securing subscribers for the new edition of ‘The Pleasures of Hope,’ and Campbell returned to Edinburgh to make his preparations. He travelled overland, spending a few days in Liverpool with Currie, the biographer of Burns, and while there convulsing his friends by the nervousness he displayed on horseback. When he reached London he found that Minto had prepared a ‘poet’s room’ for him at his house in Hanover Square, and there he took up his residence for the season, giving, it is understood, occasional service as secretary in return for the hospitality.
He says he found Minto’s conversation very instructive, but Minto was a Tory of the Burke school, which Campbell regarded as inimical to political progress. Campbell naïvely remarks in one of his letters that at an early period of their acquaintance they had a discussion on the subject of politics, when he thought of giving Minto his political confession of faith. If it should not meet with Minto’s approval, then the intimacy might end. Campbell does not appear to have rehearsed his whole political creed, but he went so far as to tell Minto that he was a Republican, and that his opinion of the practicability of a Republican form of government had not been materially affected by all that had happened in the French Revolution. Lord Minto was much too sensible a man to disturb himself about the political views of his overweening young guest, which, with a gentle sarcasm apparently unobserved by the poet, he set down as ‘candid errors of judgment.’ Still, there must have been some lively debates around the table now and again. The correspondence makes special mention of Touissant, the negro chieftain of San Domingo, as a subject of frequent wrangling. Campbell looked upon Touissant as a second Kosciusko, while Minto could only dwell upon the horrors that were likely to follow upon his achievements in the cause of so-called freedom.
But these heated discussions were confined mainly to the morning hours. Campbell’s chief concerns lay in other directions. Lord Minto left him very much master of his own time, and his literary friendships were now revived and extended at Perry’s table, at the King of Clubs, and elsewhere. Minto introduced him to Wyndham, whom he describes as ‘a Moloch among the fallen war-makers,’ to Lord Malmesbury and Lord Pelham—‘plain, affable men’—and to others. He met Malthus, whose theories he cordially supported, and found him ‘most ingenious and pleasant, very sensible and good.’ He was much flattered by the friendly notice of Mrs Siddons, and when the Kembles admitted him to their family circle, he announced in a burst of flunkeyism that he had attained the acme of his ambitions. With Telford the engineer, one of his Edinburgh patrons, and a genuine if not very judicious lover of poetry, he spent many of his leisure hours. Telford was intimate with the Secretary of State, and in one of his letters he hints to Alison that he may take some steps to direct the Minister’s practical attention to the ‘young Pope.’
Whether Telford carried out his intention does not appear; but at any rate there was no patronising of the young Pope, who continued to occupy his poet’s room, and presently began to tell his friends in the north that he ardently longed to get away from his present scene of ‘hurry and absurdity,’ to the refined and select society of Edinburgh. Many young fellows in his position would have counted themselves lucky at being housed in such distinguished quarters; but Campbell was in a low state of health at the time, and that doubtless accounted for his aggravated fits of despondency. In any case he had his wish about returning to Edinburgh. At the close of the parliamentary session Minto started for Scotland, taking Campbell with him, and by the end of June he had exchanged his poet’s room for the much humbler abode of his mother and sisters in Alison Square.
During this second visit to London he seems to have written very little, but what he did write has retained at least a certain school-book popularity. There was ‘Hohenlinden,’ finished at this time, and of which we have already spoken, and there was ‘Lochiel’s Warning,’ a ‘furious war prophecy,’ in the composition of which he says he became greatly agitated and excited. ‘Lochiel,’ like ‘Hohenlinden,’ had been intended for the new edition of his poems, but, at the unexplained request of his friends, both pieces were printed anonymously and dedicated to Alison. Both had run the gauntlet of private criticism before being submitted to the public. When the rough draft of ‘Lochiel’ was handed to Minto—who with Currie and other friends criticised several successive drafts—he made some objection to the ‘vulgarity’ of hanging, and this objection was supported later on when the manuscript was passed about in Edinburgh. But Campbell was determined to show how his hero might swing with sufficient dignity in a good cause; and his objectors were silenced when he demonstrated to them that Lochiel had a brother who actually suffered death by means of the rope.
Of course his friends were not all so hypercritical as Minto. When he read ‘Lochiel’ to Mrs Dugald Stewart, she laid her hand on his head with the remark that it would bear another wreath of laurel yet. Campbell said this made a stronger impression upon him than if she had spoken in a strain of the loftiest laudation; nay, he declared it to have been one of the principal incidents in his life that gave him confidence in his own powers. Telford was even more enthusiastic. ‘I am absolutely vain of Thomas Campbell,’ he says in a letter to Alison. ‘There never was anything like him—he is the very spirit of Parnassus. Have you seen his “Lochiel”? He will surpass everything ancient or modern—your Pindars, your Drydens, and your Grays. I expect nothing short of a Scotch Milton, a Shakespeare, or something more than either.’
To transcribe such stuff is really a tax on the biographer’s patience. It was in this atmosphere of foolish adulation that Campbell spent those very years when a young man most needs the tonic air of rigorous criticism. Such coddling and cossetting never yet made a poet. Nothing that Campbell ever did justifies a panegyric like that just quoted; least of all is it justified by ‘Lochiel’s Warning,’ a bit of first-rate fustian which would assuredly be forgotten but for its ‘Coming events cast their shadows before,’ and a certain rhetorical fluency, which—with its convenient length—make it a favourite with teachers of elocution. Campbell told Minto that he was tempted to throw the poem away in vexation at his inability to perfect it, and Scott himself had to insist on his retaining what were considered its finest lines. A writer, above all a poet, ought surely to know—as Tennyson, as Stevenson knew—when he has done a good thing; when he does not know, his friends are ill-advised in keeping his effusions from the flames. Scott, with his usual generosity, called the idea of the line quoted above a ‘noble thought, nobly expressed.’ The thought is Schiller’s; and whatever ‘nobility’ there may be in the expression is spoilt in a great measure by the jingle of the first line of the couplet—
’Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore.
Even if this were not the case, its cachet of nobility could hardly survive the ridiculous story told by Beattie. Campbell, according to this circumstantial tale, was at Minto. He had gone early to bed and was reflecting on the Wizard’s warning when he fell asleep. During the night he suddenly awoke repeating: ‘Events to come cast their shadows before.’ It was the very image for which he had been waiting a week.