On the 15th of June 1844, his spirit passed calmly, without a struggle, to a better world.
The body of the poet was brought to England, and on the 3rd of July buried in Westminster Abbey, near the centre of the Poet’s Corner. His funeral was attended by numerous friends and admirers, amongst whom were his chief, the Duke of Argyle, and Sir Robert Peel, then premier.
Thus closed the life of one of the most popular poets of the beginning of our century. Prosperous in its public phase—very sad and sorely tried in its domestic one. He had refined taste and pleasing manners; and no reproach rests upon his private or public character. In his youth he was singularly beautiful in person. Leigh Hunt tells us (in his autobiography) that Campbell’s face and person were rather on a small scale, “his features regular, his eye lively and penetrating, and when he spoke, dimples played about his mouth, which, nevertheless, had something restrained and close in it. Some gentle Puritan seemed to have crossed the breed, and to have left a stamp on his face, such as we often see in the female Scotch face rather than the male.”
No poet, except Shakespeare, has been so frequently quoted as Campbell. Many of his lines have become proverbs:—“Coming events cast their shadows before,” “’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,” &c., &c., are as familiar to us as household words. “His verses” says a writer in Chambers’s Papers for the People, “cannot be mistaken for those of any other English poet—his odes do not resemble those of Dryden, Collins, or Gray—they stand alone.... Scott said, ‘he could imitate all the modern poets but Tom Campbell,’ he could not imitate him because his peculiarity was more in the matter than the manner.” High praise this! Byron said that he believed Campbell wrote so little poetry because he was afraid of comparison with his early and famous poem: we have not the volume to quote the exact words. We are rather inclined to think that the true reason why he gave us no more poems than we possess at present was, not only that his taste was exceedingly refined and fastidious—he would not admit many charming minor poems into his collected works—but that, like Goldsmith, his time was much occupied by task-work for the publishers; and as he would not suffer hastily written lines to appear, or any which he had not carefully polished, the quantity he produced was necessarily small. We are told in Notes and Queries that he took some pains (returning to the house where he had written it for the purpose) to substitute a single word which he believed would be an improvement on another in his Stanzas to Florine! Consequently, his poems must have occupied time and thought beyond what we may imagine from their length, and his leisure could not have been great. It would have been better, perhaps, if more voluminous poets had imitated his reticence, and given us quality rather than quantity.
Campbell was a pleasant companion, and when he pleased could (we have Byron’s authority for it) talk delightfully; but he was occasionally absent and silent. His poetry is much admired by foreigners. Madame de Staël was enraptured with the Pleasures of Hope, and Goethe was a warm admirer of the Poet.
His domestic character was excellent, and his family sorrows—of which this is no place to speak—were borne by him with patient courage.
His Life, admirably given us by his friend Dr. Beattie,[1] is well worth reading as a record of Genius, aided by patient perseverance, struggling with difficulties, and vanquishing them; and to it, for fuller and far more interesting details, we refer the readers of this brief Prefatory Memoir.
To this collection of his poems we have added his Lines on Marie Antoinette, the Dirge of Wallace, and one or two other poems, published in the New Monthly Magazine.
[1] Life and Letters of Campbell, by Dr. Beattie.