Campbell now entered on his last session at the University. There is no detailed account of his studies this session, but he remarks himself, in his high-flown style, that the winter was one in which his mind advanced to a more expansive desire of knowledge than he had ever before experienced. He mentions especially the lectures of Professor Millar on Heineccius and on Roman Law. ‘To say that Millar gave me liberal opinions would be understating the obligation which I either owed, or imagined I owed to him. He did more. He made investigations into the principles of justice and the rights and interests of society so captivating to me that I formed opinions for myself and became an emancipated lover of truth.’ The impulse which Millar’s lectures gave to his mind continued long after he heard them. At the time, they seem to have turned his thoughts very seriously towards the law as a profession. ‘Poetry itself, in my love of jurisprudence and history,’ he says, ‘was almost forgotten. At that period, had I possessed but a few hundred pounds to have subsisted upon studying law, I believe I should have bid adieu to the Muses and gone to the Bar; but I had no choice in the matter.’ As it was, the Muses during this session, and for some time after, appear to have received but scant attention. For a whole year he wrote nothing but the lines on Miss Broderick which still retain a place among his published works, and the two poems which gained him his parting prizes at the University. The latter were, it is assumed, sketched out in Mull. One was a translation from the ‘Choephoroe,’ the other of a Chorus in the ‘Medea’ of Euripides, the only prize piece which he afterwards included among his printed poems.
During the whole of this last session at the University he supported himself by private tuition. Among other pupils he had the future Lord Cunninghame of the Court of Session, who indeed boarded with the Campbell family in order to have the benefit of reading Greek with the son. Cunninghame says that Campbell left on his mind a deep impression, not merely of his abilities as a classical scholar, but of the elevation and purity of his sentiments. He read much in Demosthenes and Cicero, and enlarged on their eloquence and the grandeur of their views. It was by these ancient models that he tested the oratory of the moderns. He would repeat with the greatest enthusiasm the most impassioned passages of Lord Chatham’s speeches on behalf of American freedom, and Burke’s declamation against Warren Hastings was often on his lips. He was firmly convinced at this time that the rulers of the universe were in league against mankind, but he looked forward with some hope to the joyful day when the wrongs of society would be vindicated, and freedom again assume the ascendant. Lord Cunninghame draws a charming picture of the fireside politicians, with Campbell at their head, discussing the French Revolution, and defending their ultra-liberal opinions against the assaults of outsiders. For his age the poet probably took the world and the powers that be much too seriously; but his early political leanings are not without a certain significance in view of his after interest in the cause of liberty.
His last session at the University ended, Campbell, in June 1796, returned to Argyllshire, again as a tutor. This time his engagement was at Downie, near Lochgilphead. The house stood in a secluded spot on the shore of that great arm of the sea known as the Sound of Jura. The view to be obtained from its neighbourhood made a wonderful combination of sea and mountain scenery; but, like Sunipol, the place was altogether too dull for the city-bred youth. Campbell speaks of himself as living the life of a poor starling, caged in by rocks and seas from the haunts of man; as ‘lying dormant in a solitary nook of the world, where there is nothing to chase the spleen,’ and where the people ‘seem to moulder away in sluggishness and deplorable ignorance.’ Still, it was not quite so bad as Mull. For one thing, Inverary was comparatively near, and Hamilton Paul was there, as well as the adorable Caroline, to whose charms Paul, as appears from a poetical tribute, had also succumbed. Campbell, we may be sure, was oftener at Inverary than his letters show, for the ‘Hebe of the West’ clearly had magnetic powers of a quite unusual kind.
Paul has a lively account of the last day he spent with his friend at Inverary. It was the occasion of a ‘frugal dinner,’ when two old college companions joined the tutors around the table at the Inverary Arms. ‘Never,’ says Paul, ‘did schoolboy enjoy an unexpected holiday more than Campbell. He danced, sang, and capered, half frantic with joy. Had he been only invested with the philabeg, he would have exhibited a striking resemblance to little Donald, leaping and dancing at a Highland wedding.’ The company had a delightful afternoon together, and on the way home Campbell worked himself up into a state of ecstacy. He ‘recited poetry of his own composition—some of which has never been printed—and then, after a moment’s pause, addressed me: “Paul, you and I must go in search of adventures. If you will personate Roderick Random, I will go through the world with you as Strap.” “Yes, Tom,” said I, “I perceive what is to be the result: you are to be a poet by profession.”’
Campbell’s greatest difficulty at present was to settle upon any profession; but if his penchant for reciting poetry in the open air could have made him a poet, then indeed was his title clear. He told Scott some years after this that he repeated the ‘Cadzow Castle’ verses so often, stamping and shaking his head ferociously, while walking along the North Bridge of Edinburgh, that all the coachmen knew him by tongue, and quizzed him as he passed. The habit was mad enough in Edinburgh; in the Highlands it evidently suggested something like lunacy. His successor in the tutorship says that in Campbell’s frequent walks along the shore he was often observed by the natives to be ‘in a state of high and rapturous excitement,’ of the cause and tendency of which they formed very strange and inconsistent ideas.
If the simple natives had suspected that the tutor was in love, they might, without knowing their Shakespeare, have paid less heed to these manifestations. Campbell had told Paul some time before that a poet should have only his muse for mistress; but it was easier to preach the precept than to practise it. It is in a letter to his friend Thomson that we first hear of this amourette. Speaking of a temporary brightening of his prospects, he says: ‘To console me still further (but Thomson, I challenge your secrecy by all our former friendship), my evening walks are sometimes accompanied by one who, for a twelvemonth past, has won my purest but most ardent affection.
“Dear, precious name! rest ever unreveal’d,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal’d.”
You may well imagine how the consoling words of such a person warm my heart into ecstacy of a most delightful kind. I say no more at present; and, my friend, I rely on your secrecy.’ Campbell’s secret has been kept, for the identity of this particular Amanda has never been disclosed. Can it have been the adorable Caroline herself? Whoever she was, she had, if we may trust Beattie, a very favourable influence in promoting Campbell’s appeals to the muse. Defeated in all other prospects, he took refuge in ‘the enchanted garden of love,’ and, in the interchange of mutual affection, found compensation for all his disappointments.
But Campbell had his duties as a tutor to attend to. His pupil was the future Sir William Napier of Milliken, a great-great-grandson of the celebrated Napier of Merchiston. He was now about eight years old, and was living with his mother at Downie, his grandfather’s estate. His father, Colonel Napier, returned from the West Indies shortly after Campbell entered on his engagement. Campbell describes him as ‘a most agreeable gentleman, with all the mildness of a scholar and the majesty of a British Grenadier.’ The Colonel took an eager interest in the tutor’s welfare, and did all he could to settle him in some permanent employment. ‘He has,’ says Campbell to Thomson, ‘been active to consult, to advise, to recommend me, with warmth and success, and that to friends of the first rank.’ With a local physician he united to obtain for him a favourable situation in the office of a leading Edinburgh lawyer, but unfortunately a combination of circumstances baffled the poet’s aims in this direction; and, the term of his engagement having expired, he returned once more to Glasgow, in a state of the greatest concern about his future. ‘I will,’ he declared, with that unnecessary rhetoric to which he was prone, ‘I will maintain my independence by lessening my wants, if I should live upon a barren heath.’