Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/387

Campbell  speedily found means of turning to account. He published his speeches; he wrote his autobiography (completed at various times in later years); and in his sixty-third year he set himself to write the lives of the chancellors from the earliest times downwards. The difficulty and magnitude of the task discouraged him at first, and for a time he abandoned it; but he returned to it with such vigour, that in one year and ten months he had in print the first three volumes, down to the revolution of 1688. 'Assuming it,' he wrote afterwards with no misgivings, 'to be a "standard work," as it is at present denominated, I doubt whether any other of the same bulk was ever finished off more rapidly.' The first series of 'Lives' appeared in 1845, the second (to Lord Thurlow's death) in 1846, and the third (to Lord Eldon's death) in 1847. The work had great success. Within a month a second edition of the first series was called for, and 2,050 copies of the second series were sold on the day of publication. The literary honours which were showered upon him inspired him to seek another subject. His ambition was 'to produce a specimen of just historical composition.' He thought, it seems, of writing the 'History of the Long Parliament,' but eventually decided to continue working on his old field. His first intention was to take up the Irish chancellors. He was afraid, however, that in spite of some interesting names, 'as a body they would appear very dull,' so he determined to postpone them till he had completed the 'Lives of the Chief Justices.' Working as rapidly as ever, by 1849 he had brought down his narrative to the death of Lord Mansfield, and published the first two volumes. The third volume, containing the lives of Kenyon, Ellenborough, and Tenterden, appeared in 1857.

The merits of his 'Lives' are very considerable. They are eminently readable. The style is lively, though rough, careless, and incorrect; every incident is presented effectively; they are full of good stories, and they contain a great deal of information about the history of law and lawyers which is not easily to be found elsewhere. The later volumes, moreover, both of the 'Chancellors' and the 'Chief Justices,' have the freshness and interest of personal memoirs. For all these qualities Campbell has received due and sufficient recognition. Nor has time worn away the merits of his books; they still find many readers, and there is little probability that they will be displaced by anything more entertaining written on the same subject. None the less are they among the most censurable publications in our literature. 'As an historical production,' says a careful critic, speaking of the 'Chancellors,' 'the whole work is wanting in a due sense of the obligations imposed by such a task, is disfigured by unblushing plagiarisms, and, as the writer approaches his own times, by much unscrupulous misrepresentation '( and, Introd. to English History, p. 229). This judgment is not too severe. The tone of laborious research which pervades every volume is delusive. No writer ever owed so much to the labours of others who acknowledged so little (for some examples of his method see 'Law Magazine,' xxxv. 119). Literary morality in its other form, the love of historical truth and accuracy, he hardly understood. No one who has ever followed him to the sources of his information will trust him more; for not only was he too hurried and careless to sift such evidence as he gathered, but even plain statements of fact are perverted, and his authorities are constantly misquoted (see 's Shaftesbury Papers, containing a 'minute dissection' of the first chapter of Campbell's life of Shaftesbury; 's Life of Lord Kenyon, written because Lord Campbell's life of Kenyon was unsatisfactory; 's Essays, 127-132; 's Order of the Coif).

The concluding volume of the 'Chancellors,' published after his death, and containing the lives of Lyndhurst and Brougham, is even more lamentable, and has done more than anything else to lower the reputation of Campbell. Lyndhurst's prediction came true. 'I predict,' so he is reported to have said to Brougham, with reference to a judicial appointment of which Campbell was disappointed, 'that he will take his revenge on you by describing you with all the gall of his nature. He will write of you, and perhaps of me too, with envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, for such is his nature' (Life of Brougham, iii. 435. The conversation, which is said to have taken place in 1835, is obviously misreported, for there is a reference in it to the 'Lives of the Chancellors' and to Wetherell's remark that they had added a new sting to death; but if the prediction was not Lyndhurst's it was Brougham's). The book is a marvel of inaccuracy and misrepresentation, and, if not written with actual malice, it exhibits a discreditable absence of generosity and good feeling. The only possible excuse for such a work is one suggested by Lyndhurst himself, that Campbell was not always aware of the effect of the expressions which he used; 'he has been so accustomed to relate degrading 