Campbell had something of Southey’s amiable weakness for minor bards, and would often praise work which he must have known to be of poor quality. He thought very highly of James Montgomery of Sheffield; and he once called Mrs Hemans ‘the most elegant poetess that England has produced.’ He had no great admiration for the Lake School of poets. He declared that while doing some good in freeing writers from profitless and custom-ridden rules, they went too far by substituting licentiousness for wholesome freedom. For Coleridge’s poetry he evinced an especial distaste, due partly, no doubt, to the fact that Coleridge had attacked ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ in his lectures. Of his criticism he spoke more favourably, but maintained that he had borrowed many of his ideas from Schlegel. In French poetry his favourite was Racine, whose tenderness, he said, was unequalled even by Shakespeare. But perhaps of all the poets his darling was Pope, whom he defended in a manner described by Byron as ‘glorious.’ The ‘Rape of the Lock’ he held to be unsurpassed. Of three American writers—Channing, Irving and Bryant—he had the highest opinion. The first he considered ‘superior as a prose writer to every other living author,’ a statement at which we can only raise our eyebrows. Among the novelists he specially extolled Smollett and Fielding. To the latter he says he never did justice in his youth, but shortly before his death he wrote that he had come to ‘venerate’ him, and to regard him as the better philosopher of the two, the truer painter of life. All this shows no exceptional critical discernment; and Sydney Smith was no less happy in his phrase than usual when he said that Campbell’s mind had ‘rolled over’ a large field. A rolling stone gathers no moss. But that is more than Smith could have meant.

And now what, it must be asked, is Campbell’s place as a poet? Before trying to answer the question it is necessary to understand exactly what we mean by it. If a poet’s place depends on the extent to which he is read, then Campbell has no place, or almost none. He is not read, save by school-children for examinations. Milton and many another, it might be said, are in the same case; but there is a difference. Milton will always remain a supreme model, or at least a suggestive fount of inspiration; and the lover of poetry can be sure of never turning to him without some pleasure, some gain. But Campbell’s pages are not turned to by the lover of poetry for solace or refreshment, for inspiration or guidance. As Horace Walpole said of two poems by writers to whom Campbell owed something—Akenside and Thomson—‘the age has done approving these poems, and has forgot them.’ What is this but to say that the poems in the main are lacking in the one essential—the poetic? The well-spring of poetry was not vouchsafed to Campbell. He worked from the outside, not from the depths of his own spirit. He spoke of having a poem ‘on the stocks,’ of beating out a poem ‘on the anvil.’ By these words does he not stand, before the highest tribunal, condemned? We read of him polishing and polishing until what little of original idea there was must have been almost refined away. We never hear of him bringing forth his thoughts with pain and travail. His letters are full of complaints about his vein being dried up, of his mind being too much cumbered with mundane concerns to have leisure for poetry; but we never once get a hint of any real misgiving as to his powers. ‘There is no greater sin,’ said Keats, ‘than to flatter oneself with the idea of being a great poet… How comfortable a thing it is to feel that such a crime must bring its own penalty, that if one be a self-deluder, accounts must be balanced!’

Time has brought in its revenges for Campbell. His poems enshrine no great thoughts, engender no consummate expression. Felicities, prettinesses, harmonies of a sort one may find; respectabilities, vigour, patriotic and liberal sentiments declaimed with gusto. But these do not raise him above the level of a third-rate poet. His war songs will keep him alive, and that after all is no mean praise.

FOOTNOTES

[1] It may be convenient to set down in a note a list of Campbell’s brothers and sisters, with dates of birth and death. The details are from the family Bible: Mary, 1757-1843; Isabella, 1758-1837; Archibald, 1760-1830; Alexander, 1761-1826; John, 1763-1806; Elizabeth, 1765-1829; Daniel, 1767-1767; Robert, 1768-1807; James, 1770-1783; Daniel, 1773-? Archibald and Robert went to Virginia, and John to Demerara.

[2] As these sheets are passing through the press, Mr W. K. Leask reminds me of Aytoun’s visit to the Scottish Monastery as recorded in the ‘Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers.’ And of course the reference in ‘Redgauntlet’ is well known.

[3] Since these lines were written, a memorial tablet has been placed on the house in the Rue St Jean where Campbell resided. The tablet describes him as ‘the celebrated English poet.’ Was he not, then, a Famous Scot?