Such, in brief, is the history of the undertaking which was to have united in one ‘superb work’ the names of Scott and Campbell. It is unnecessary to dwell further on it, unless, perhaps, to note that Campbell’s notoriously rabid opinions of publishers seem to have had their origin in the negotiations. Everybody has heard how he once toasted Napoleon because he had ordered a bookseller to be shot! The booksellers, he remarks to Scott, are the greatest ravens on earth, liberal enough as booksellers go, but still ‘ravens, croakers, suckers of innocent blood and living men’s brains.’ They ‘pledge one another in authors’ skulls, the publisher always taking the lion’s share.’ Dependence upon these ‘cunning ones’ he finds to be so humiliating—they are so prone to insult all but the prosperous and independent—that he secretly determines to have in future as little to do with them as possible. He is no match for them: they know the low state of his finances, and take advantage of him accordingly. Murray is ‘a very excellent and gentleman-like man—albeit a bookseller—the only gentleman, except Constable, in the trade.’ And much more to the same effect. There was really nothing in the correspondence about the ‘Specimens’ which should have led Campbell thus to traduce a body of men upon whom he was so dependent, and by whom, with hardly a single exception, he was always honourably and even generously treated. He asked too much for his work—£1000 was his figure—the booksellers thought they could not afford so much, and they said so. It was Campbell himself who was at fault. He took absurdly high ground—boasted, in fact, of taking high ground—and talked of £1000 as quite a perquisite. In short, he had as little personal justification for libelling the booksellers as Byron had for comparing them with Barabbas.

Defeated in his design for the British poets, Campbell now went about whimpering that he had no hopes of an agreeable undertaking, unless Scott could hit upon some plan which would admit of their joining hands in the editorship. Longman & Rees had engaged him to edit a small collection of specimens of Scottish poetry, with a glossary and notices of two or three lives, but that he regarded as ‘a most pitiful thing.’ Scott had no suggestion to make, and Campbell, fretting over his prospects and his frustrated hopes—or as Beattie hints, neglecting his food—again fell ill. A second son, whom he named Alison, after his old Edinburgh friend, had been born to him in June 1805, but the jubilation over the event was short-lived. He became, in fact, more moody and disconsolate than ever. He described himself as a wreck, and looked forward to his sleepless nights being ‘quieted soon and everlastingly.’ Even the daily journey to town proved too much for him, and he took a temporary lodging in Pimlico, going to Sydenham only on Sundays. By and by he recovered himself a little. Medical skill did something, but improved finances did more. In a letter to Scott, dated October 2, 1805, we find this curt but pregnant postscript: ‘His Majesty has been pleased to confer a pension of £200 a year upon me. GOD SAVE THE KING.’ Campbell says the ‘bountiful allowance’ was obtained through several influences, but he mentions Charles Fox (who liked him because he was ‘so right about Virgil’), Lord Holland and Lord Minto as being specially active in the matter.

It was insinuated that the pension came as a reward for writing a series of newspaper articles in defence of the Grenville administration, but this was certainly not the case. Campbell was no political writer, no ‘scribbler for a party.’ Among his many faults it cannot be laid to his charge that he sold his principles for pay. In 1824, mercenary as he was, he declined £100 a year from a certain society because to take the money meant ‘canting and time-serving.’ We need therefore have no hesitation in accepting his assurance that he received the present grant ‘purely and exclusively as an act of literary patronage.’ There is perhaps a suspicion of the poseur in his palaver about the ‘mortification’ which his pride had suffered in the matter, but beyond that, there seems to be no reason for casting doubts on his political honesty.

The new accession of fortune was not princely, but it must have helped Campbell very considerably. Deducting office fees, duties, etc., the allowance amounted to something like £168 per annum, and that sum he enjoyed for close upon forty years. He says that his physicians—who were surely Job’s comforters all—told him he must regard it as the only barrier between him and premature dissolution; and he speaks about making it ‘do’ in the cheapest corner of England. His friends, however, were by this time thoroughly alive to the necessity, which indeed should never have existed, of doing something to put his finances on a satisfactory basis, and to this end the publication of another subscription edition of his poems was arranged. Campbell indulged in his usual idle talk about ‘mortification’ at having again to ask support in this way, but his friends wisely kept the matter in their own hands and paid no heed to his maunderings.

At the same time some impatience was not unnaturally being felt with Campbell. Francis Horner, a judicious acquaintance upon whom he afterwards wrote an unfinished elegy, was giving himself no end of trouble over the new edition, and this is the way he writes to Richardson. Speaking of a permanent fund as a motive to economy he says:

You must teach him [Campbell] to consider this subscription as an exertion which cannot with propriety, nor even perhaps with success, be tried another time; and that from this time he must look forward to a plan of income and expense wholly depending upon himself and most strictly adjusted. He gets four guineas a week for translating foreign gazettes at the Star office; it is not quite the best employment for a man of genius, but it occupies him only four hours of the morning, and the payment ought to go a great length in defraying his annual expenses. You will be able to convey to Campbell these views of his situation and others that will easily occur to you: none of us are entitled to use so much freedom with him.

One can read a good deal between the lines here. Campbell, as he mildly puts it himself, was never ‘over head and ears in love with working’; he preferred his friends to work for him. Some years before this he looked to them to get him a Government situation, ‘unshackled by conditional service’; and even now, with his pension running, and much as he prated about his pride, he ‘trusts in God’ that it will be followed up by an appointment of ‘some emolument’ in one of the Government offices. It was clearly an object with him to have his affairs made easy by outsiders. Nor was this all. There is no doubt that he had, temporarily at least, given way to convivial habits which his well-wishers could not but regard with regret. He admits as much himself, and Beattie only seeks to hide the fact by speaking in his solemn, periphrastic way about ‘the social pleasures of the evening’ and a ‘too-easy compliance’ with the solicitations of company. In these circumstances, it was only natural that Campbell’s friends should desire to impress upon him the necessity of guiding his affairs with greater circumspection so as to depend more upon himself. Meanwhile they went on collecting subscribers’ names for the new edition, and Campbell returned to Sydenham to continue his work on the ‘Annals’ and think about something less irksome and more remunerative.

It was at this juncture that Murray considerately came to his aid. Though the original scheme of the British Poets had fallen through, Campbell had by no means given up the idea of a work of the kind; and now, having discussed the plan with Murray, it was arranged between them that the undertaking should go on. Murray was naturally anxious that Scott’s name should be connected with the editorship, but Scott, although he at first agreed to co-operate, ultimately found it necessary to restrict himself to works more exclusively his own, and Campbell was accordingly left to proceed alone.

In the summer of 1807 his labours were interrupted by a visit to the Isle of Wight. His old complaint had returned, and he was advised to try a change of air and scene. He left London in the beginning of June, but the change did not prove successful. The demon of insomnia still haunted him, and the ennui of the place became so intolerable that he was driven to act as reader to the ladies in the boarding-house where he stayed! What, he cries, must Siberia be when Ryde is so bad! By August he was at Sydenham again, only to find his ‘abhorred sleeplessness returning fast and inveterately.’ He had written very little poetry for some time, and such as he did write—the tribute to Sir John Moore, for example—is, like the Greek mentioned by Pallet, not worth repeating. He was now engaged almost solely upon ‘Gertrude of Wyoming,’ but his head was ‘constantly confused,’ and the poem was often laid aside for weeks at a time. Still, the manuscript advanced, and by Christmas the greater part of it was complete enough for reading to a private circle of friends.

‘Gertrude’ finally appeared, after a long process of polishing, alteration and addition, in April 1809. Some time before its publication Campbell wrote that he had no fear as to its reception; only let him have it out, and, like Sterne, he cared not a curse what the critics might say. The critics were in the main favourable. Jeffrey had already seen the proofs, and had written a long letter to the author, pointing out certain ‘dangerous faults,’ but commending the poem for its ‘great beauty and great tenderness and fancy’; and on the same day that the poem was published, the Edinburgh Review appeared with an article in which the editor rejoiced ‘once more to see a polished and pathetic poem in the old style of English pathos and poetry.’ Its merits, he said, ‘consist chiefly in the feeling and tenderness of the whole delineation, and the taste and delicacy with which all the subordinate parts are made to contribute to the general effect.’ At the same time he found the story confused, some passages were unintelligible, and there was a laborious effort at emphasis and condensation which had led to ‘constraint and obscurity of the diction.’ The Quarterly reviewer, none other than Sir Walter Scott, was more severe upon its blemishes. He complained of the ‘indistinctness’ of the narrative, of the numerous blanks which were left to be filled up by the imagination of the reader, of its occasional ambiguity and abruptness. Its excellences were, however, generously admitted; and in fact, on the whole, the Quarterly said as much in its favour as could be expected. In those days party spirit led to incredible freaks of literary criticism; and it was only Scott’s magnanimity that could have allowed him to forgive Campbell’s Whig politics for the sake of his poetry. Curiously enough, considering their intimacy, Campbell did not know that Scott was his reviewer, though he was not very wide of the mark when he spoke of the writer as ‘a candid and sensible man,’ who ‘reviews like a gentleman, a Christian, and a scholar.’ Of other contemporary criticisms we need not speak. The poet’s friends were of course blindly eulogistic. Alison was ‘delighted and conquered,’ and Telford, with his characteristic bombast, anticipated such applause from the public as would drive the author frantic!