Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/398

 among suffering patriots. His ‘Harper’ and ‘Gilderoy’ close this first great literary period of his life.

Campbell meditated following up his success with a national poem to be called ‘The Queen of the North,’ but though he long had the subject in his mind, he never produced more than unimportant fragments. Meanwhile he went (June 1800) to the continent, settling first at Hamburg. After making the acquaintance of Klopstock here, he went to Ratisbon, where he stayed, in a time of military stress and danger, under the protection of Arbuthnot, president of the Benedictine College, to whom he pays a tribute in his impressive ballad the ‘Ritter Bann.’ A skirmish witnessed from this retreat was Campbell's only experience of active warfare. His letters to his Edinburgh friends at this time are striking pictures of his own state of mind and the political situation. During a short truce he got as far as Munich, returning thence by the Valley of the Iser to Ratisbon, and thereafter, late in the autumn, to Leipzig, Hamburg, and Altona, where he was staying when the battle of Hohenlinden was fought (December 1800). Wintering here he studied hard, and produced a number of his best-known minor poems, several of which he sent for publication to Perry of the ‘Morning Chronicle.’ Among Irish refugees at Hamburg he had met and deeply sympathised with Anthony MacCann, whose troubles suggested ‘The Exile of Erin.’ During this sojourn also were produced ‘Ye Mariners of England,’ written to the tune of ‘Ye Gentlemen of England,’ a song which he was fond of singing, and ‘The Soldier's Dream,’ besides several less known but meritorious poems, such as ‘Judith,’ ‘Lines on visiting a Scene in Argyllshire’ (in reference to Kirnan), ‘The Beech Tree's Petition,’ and ‘The Name Unknown,’ in imitation of Klopstock. A desire to go down the Danube may have suggested (as Dr. Beattie pleasantly fancies) the ballad of ‘The Turkish Lady.’ The sudden appearance of the English fleet off the Sound (March 1801), indicating the intention of punishing Denmark for her French bias, caused Campbell and other English residents to make an abrupt departure from Altona. The view he had of the Danish batteries as he sailed past in the Royal George suggested to him his strenuous war-song, ‘The Battle of the Baltic.’

Landing at Yarmouth, 7 April 1801, Campbell proceeded to London, where through Perry he came to know Lord Holland, and so speedily began to mingle in the best literary society of the metropolis. The death of his father soon took him to Edinburgh, and we find him (after satisfying the sheriff of Edinburgh that he was not a revolutionary spy) alternating between England and Scotland for about a year. After his mother and sisters were comfortably settled he undertook work for the booksellers in their interests. He spent a good deal of time at the town and country residences of Lord Minto, to whom Dugald Stewart had introduced him, and through Lord Minto his circle of London acquaintance was widened, the Kembles in particular proving very attractive to Campbell. It was during this unsettled time that he undertook a continuation of Hume and Smollett's ‘England’ (which is of no importance in an estimate of his work), and published together, with a dedication to the Rev. Archibald Alison, his ‘Lochiel’ and ‘Hohenlinden.’ The latter (rejected, it is said, by the ‘Greenock Advertiser’ as ‘not up to the editor's standard’) he himself was inclined to depreciate, as a mere ‘drum and trumpet thing,’ but it appealed to Scott's sense of martial dignity, and he was fond of repeating it. Scott says (Life, vi. 326) that when he declaimed it to Leyden, he received this criticism:—‘Dash it, man, tell the fellow that I hate him, but, dash him, he has written the finest verses that have been published these fifty years.’ Campbell's reply, when Scott reported this, was, ‘Tell Leyden that I detest him; but I know the value of his critical approbation.’

Satisfied with the success of a reissue of ‘The Pleasures of Hope and other Poems,’ Campbell married (10 Oct. 1803, misdated September by Dr. Beattie and Campbell himself) Miss Matilda Sinclair, daughter of his mother's cousin, Robert Sinclair, then resident in London, and formerly a wealthy and influential man in Greenock. Declining the offer of a chair at Wilna, Campbell gave himself up to literary work in London, where he remained for the rest of his days. His first child, whom he named Thomas Telford, after his friend the famous engineer, was born in July 1804, and shortly afterwards the family settled at Sydenham, the poet working steadily for his own household as well as for his mother and sisters. His critical and translated work soon marked him out as no ordinary judge of poets and poetry, and when it occurred to him that ‘Specimens of the British Poets’ was a likely title for a successful book, Sir Walter Scott and others to whom he mentioned it were charmed with the idea. It took some time, however, before the publication of such a work could be arranged for, and then the author's laborious method delayed its appearance after it was expected.