competition for college prizes, could not but be injurious; and that it was above all things fortunate when he was separated from Glasgow, and forced into the solitudes of the Hebrides. His prize-verses had been the subject of such admiration that he ran the chance of being spoiled forever; and nothing less than a separation from Glasgow and its coteries could have saved him. On the 18th of May, 1795, he started from Glasgow, in company with a class-fellow, Joseph Finlay son, and took the road to Inverary. Wordsworth, in a note to the Excursion, vindicating his choice of a pedlar as the hero of his poem, quotes a passage from Heron's Letters from Scotland, in which he says: "A young man going from any part of Scotland to England, of purpose to carry the pack, was considered as going to lead the life and acquire the fortune of a gentleman." Poor Campbell, carrying his store of learning to the Hebrides, did not feel the same elevation of spirit, when he thought of the value likely to be set on the articles in which he dealt. "I was fain," he says, "from my father's reduced circumstances, to accept, for six months, of a tutorship in a Highland family at the farthest end of the Isle of Mull. To this, it is true, my poverty rather than my will consented. I was so little proud of it, that in passing through Greenock, I purposely omitted to call on my mother's cousin, Mr. Robert Sinclair, at that time a wealthy merchant, and first magistrate of the town, with a family of nine daughters, one of whom I married some nine years terwards." He would not tell his pretty cousins he was going out in that capacity. He tells of an evening passed in the open air for the sake of economy. When he and Finlayson were repairing dinnerless to their beds, they saved the life of a boy who was drowning, and then thought they earned a a fair right to their dinner. The poet tells of beef-steaks vanishing before them like smoke;" then came tankards of ale; and then a night passed in singing and reciting poetry.

believed in Ossian, and Ossian had given an interest to the Gaelic people in their eyes. The Highland inns gave them herrings, potatoes and whiskey, and nothing else. Their walk seems to have been in glorious weather. Full forty years afterwards, when Campbell wrote of it, he tells of his unmeasured delight at the roaring streams and torrents—— the yellow primroses and the cuckoos-the heathy mountains, with the sound of the goats' bleating at their tops. "I felt a soul in every muscle of my body, and my mind was satisfied that I was going to earn my bread by my own labor."

"Life," says Campbell, speaking of this scene, "is happier in the transition than in the retrospect, but still I am bound to regard this part of my recollections of life as very agreeable. I was, it is true, very poor, but I was as gay as a lark and hardy as the Highland heather." We wish we had room for Campbell's account of this journey. "The wide world contained not two merrier boys. We sang and recited poetry throughout the long wild Highland glens." They

"At first I felt melancholy in this situation, missing my college chums, and wrote a poem on my exile as doleful as anything in Ovid's Tristia. But I soon get reconciled to it. The Point of Callioch commands a magnificent prospect of thirteen Hebrid islands, among which are Staffa and Icolmkill, which I visited with enthusiasm. I had also, now and then, a sight of wild deer, sweeping across that wilder country, and of eagles perching on its shore. These objects fed the romance of my fancy, and I may say that I was attached to Sunipol before I took leave of it. Nevertheless, God wot, I was better pleased to look on the kirk steeples and whinstone causeways of Glasgow than on all the eagles and wild deer of the Highlands."

The solitude in which Campbell now lived was strangely contrasted with the busy

"The Point Callioch" is on the northern shore of Mull, where the house of Sunipol may be easily seen by any one sailing from Tobermory to Stafia. It stands quite upon the shore, and occupies the centre of a bay immediately before you turn that point of Mull where you first get a view of the wondrous island which contains the cave of Fingal.

scenery is quite admirable. But for this we can only refer to the book, as within the space to which we must limit our paper it is quite impossible to give any lengthened quotation. Campbell himself describes Iona and Staffa in one or two letters, but there is nothing peculiar in his account, and we think Dr. Beattie might have not unwisely omitted or greatly abridged these letters. Of the superstitions of the people an amusing instance is given, of which the poet was him

self the hero and the historian:

"A mile or two from the house where I lived was a burial-ground, on the lonely moor. It was enclosed with an iron railing, so high as to be thought unscaleable. I contrived, by help of my handkerchief, to scale the railing, and was soon scampering over the tombs. Some of the natives chanced to see me skipping over the burial-ground. In a day or two after this adventure, I observed the family looking on me with an expression of not angry but mournful seriousness. It was to me unaccountable; but at last the old grandmother told me, with tears in her eyes, that I could not live long, for that my wraith, or apparition, had been seen. And where, pray?' Oh, leaping over the old burial-ground!' The good old lady was much relieved, by hearing that it was not my wraith but myself."

Dr. Beattie had inquiries made at Mull, as to any recollections of the poet that might linger there. Nothing was remembered, but that he was "a pretty young man." Some local tradition also exists there, that the heroine of his poem, Caroline, was some fair Caroline of that district; and to this opinion his biographer inclines, though he tells us of

another Caroline that claims the same distinction. Goethe got into a serious scrape, by transcribing the same love verses into the album of more than one young lady; but we have no evidence that Campbell gave either lady any reason to think that she was the source of his inspiration. We suspect that the Carolines and the Marias of the poets have no earthly representatives; that the golden locks which the poet describes are not in general to be regarded as proving his ad

miration of red-haired beauties, but rather as his form of escaping from the plain realities of earth; that when we find the place of his residence is, in a prose letter, described as "only fit for the residence of the damned,"

and verses of the same date, such as follow:

"Oh, gentle gale of Eden bowers,

If back thy rosy feet should roam, To revel with the cloudless hours

In Nature's more propitious home,

Name to thy loved Elysian groves,

That o'er enchanted spirits twine,
A fairer form than Cherub loves,

And let that name be Caroline."

The lady, in such verses, seems to us as unreal as the landscape; and we regret to say, that the poem called Caroline, though for a considerable time not printed in any of the poet's own editions of his works, has been introduced into the last. It is, we think, wholly unworthy of the poet's reputation.

In the winter of 1796 he returned to Glasgow, to continue attending his classes, and to support himself by private tuition. Among his pupils, in this and a former session, was one who is described in Campbell's journals, "as a youth named Cuninghame, now Lord Cuninghame, in the Justiciary Court of Edingburgh. Grave as he now is, he was, when I taught him Xenophon and Lucian,' a fine, laughing, open-hearted boy, and so near my own age, that we were rather like playfellows than preceptor and pupil. Sometimes, indeed, I used to belabor him— jocosely alleging my sacred duty as a tutor but I seldom succeeded in suppressing his risibility."

Lord Cuninghame's recollections of the period are distinct. "He left on my mind, young as I was, a high impression, not only of his talents as a classical scholar, but of the elevation and purity of his sentiments." He tells us, that in reading Cicero and Demosthenes, he was fond of contrasting their speeches with those of modern orators. He used to repeat Chatham's most impassioned passages in favor of American freedom, Burke's declamation against Warren Hastings, and Wilberforce's description of the 'Middle Passage." In the domestic circle, consisting of Campbell's parents, sisters, and some lodgers, the elder portion of the society were deep haters of democracy and all innovation. Tom Campbell and his brother Daniel

were earnest democrats.

66

When this session closed, Campbell again Hamilton went to the Highlands, as tutor. Paul was similarly occupied in the same neighborhood, and the friends often met. "In the course of the autumn," says Dr. Beattie, Campbell and his friend Paul indulged in frequent rambles along the shore. rocky precipice, to enjoy the landscape at of Loch Fyne. They then would climb some ease, and afterwards enjoy a frugal dinner at the Inverary Arms." We have Paul's account of their last day of this kind. They dined, by appointment, at the Inverary Arms, with two college friends. All met punctually

at the inn-door. All were joyous; "but never did school-boy enjoy an unexpected holiday more than Campbell. He danced, sang, and capered, half frantic with joy. Our friends had to return to the low country, and we accompanied them across Loch Fyne to St. Katharine's, where we parted; they taking their way to Lochgilphead, while Campbell and I promenaded the shore of the loch to Strachur. The evening sun was just setting behind the Grampians. The woodfringed shores of the lake-the sylvan scenes around the castle of Inverary-the sunlit summits of the mountains in the distanceall were inspiring. Thomas was in ecstacy. He recited poetry of his own composition, some of which has never been printed, and then addressed me :-'Paul, you and I must go in search of adventures; you will be Roderick Random, and I will go through the world with you, as Strap.' At Strachur they parted, not without visiting the inn. there, and taking a bowl of punch with the landlord. "We parted with much regret. We never saw each other again, until we met at the great public dinner given to him, as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow." Campbell's letters, from what he calls "the solitary nook," in which he lived, are dreary enough. They have also the misfortune of being the letters of a man whose time hangs heavy on his hands, and who is always complaining that friends, who have demands on their time, are not as active correspondents as he could wish. His cause of complaint with the world seems his own inaction. The present moments," he says, "are of little importance to me. I must expect all my pleasure and pain from the remembrance of the past, and the anticipation of the future. * ** I have neat pocket copies of Virgil and Horace, affluence of English poets, a rod and flute, and a choice collection of Scotch and Irish airs." It would appear that he read diligently for awhile, with some hope of making his way to the bar, and afterwards, when want of funds rendered this out of the question, with some view of becoming an attorney, or earning his bread in an attorney's office.

The young poet was in love; and he tells of the enchantment of his evening walks, accompanied by one who "for a twelvemonth past has won my purest but most ardent affection:

"Dear, precious name-rest ever unrevealed, Nor pass these lips, in holy silence sealed."

He speaks of sending his friend some lately written morsels of poetry. In fact, "The Pleasures of Hope," playfully alluded to by Hamilton Paul, in a letter of the year before, was now seriously commenced.

The Reverend Mr. Wright, Campbell's successor at Downie, has supplied Dr. Beattie with some account of the scenery of this part of the Western Highlands, and of the poet's habits. Everything recorded proves, what we have before suggested, that all the elements of Campbell's poetical life were at this time formed; indeed, almost all the subjects which afterwards appeared in succession, and after a late manifestation, were here first presented to his kindling fancy. In the Pilgrim of Glencoe, his last poem of any length, the very house in which he lived is described.

The "Jacobite white rose" festooned their door, and the inmates

"All had that peculiar courtly grace,

That marks the meanest of the Highland race; Warm hearts, that burn alike in weal or woe, As if the north-wind fanned their bosom's glow."

Far

From a hill above the farm-house, which was his residence at Downie, and which was the poet's constant place of resort, the eye looks down towards the beach, where considerable masses of rock bar all access to the coast; while the vast expanse of the Sound of Jura, with all its varying aspects of tempest and of calm, stretches directly in front of the spectator. The island of Jura forms the boundary of the opposite coast. southwards, the sea opens in broader expanse towards the northern shores of Ireland, which, in certain states of the atmosphere, may be faintly descried. Northward, at a much shorter distance, is the whirlpool of Corrievrecken, whose mysterious noises may be heard occasionally along the coast." The pictures in Gertrude, of the scenery, calculated to affect the Highland emigrant's imagination, were no doubt suggested by what the poet was fond of beholding at this period of his life.

"But who is he that yet a dearer land

Remembers, over hills and far away? Green Albin! what though he no more survey Thy ships at anchor on her quiet shore, Thy pellochs rolling from the mountain bay, Thy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor, And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar?

Alas! poor Caledonia's mountaineer,

That want's stern edict e'er, and feudal grief, Had forced him from a home he loved so dear!"