Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/251

 Rh disregard. It is recorded that when Campbell spent two days at the country seat of Mr. James Craig, the Misses Craig kept him busy most of that time composing verses for their albums,—a pleasant way of entertaining a poet guest. On another occasion he writes to Mrs. Arkwright, lamenting, though with much good-humour, the importunities of mothers. "Mrs. Grahame has a plot upon me that I should write a poem upon her boy, three years old. Oh, such a boy! But in the way of writing lines on lovely children, I am engaged three deep, and dare not promise."

It seems that parents not only petitioned for these poetic windfalls, but pressed their claims hard. Campbell, one of the most amiable of men, yielded in time to this demand, as he had yielded to many others, and sent to little Master Grahame some verses of singular ineptitude.

Sweet bud of life! thy future doom

Is present to my eyes,

And joyously I see thee bloom

In Fortune's fairest skies.

One day that breast, scarce conscious now,

Shall burn with patriot flame;