December 7th.

I thank you for speaking with Mr. Murray. In consequence of seeing no definite term to my expectation, respecting the partnership of Messrs. Baldwin, Cadell, and Davies; and being obliged, for the sake of a temporary supply, to take some articles from a periodical work, I have a month's employment on my hands. At the expiration of that month, I shall be perfectly pleased to close with the terms which Mr. Murray has sent. In six months from the 8th of January next, the book will be ready for the press, provided I receive the bill, and only such books as I can show to be indispensably necessary for me to consult. These will certainly not be numerous; and to lessen this trouble to the proprietor, I will send back the Review, and Magazines. T. C.

Thus, with improved health and prospects, a new line of exertion at the Royal Institution, congenial labours on the wide field of English Poetry, critical reviews, and biographical sketches for a periodical, Campbell entered upon the new year with much to encourage and reward his industry.

In a letter to his brother Alexander, he writes:

"I have been appointed to give lectures on Poetry at the Royal Institution. It is a very honourable appointment.""I hope," says Sir Walter Scott, "that Campbell's plan of lectures will succeed. I think the brogue may be got over, if he will not trouble himself by attempting to correct it, but read with fire and feeling. He is an animated reciter-but I never heard him read."

ET. 34.]

DEATH OF THE POET'S MOTHER.

209

At the commencement of this year, the health of the Poet's mother, Mrs. Campbell, then residing near Edinburgh, had become seriously worse. She had lingered several months under the effects of paralysis, which had greatly impaired her mental faculties; but, as far as human ministry could go, her wants were supplied, her pains soothed by the same friends who, twelve years before, had attended the death-bed of her husband-"the placid, pious old man"-as he was emphatically called; and on the 24th of February, she concluded her earthly pilgrimage, at the age of seventy-six. To the sad event, her son-her "best of sons,"-thus briefly adverts :

SYDENHAM, March 4, 1812.

I thought and felt it very kind of you to write me a voluntary note. Alas! the subject of it is serious, my dear comforting friend. Perhaps another would think me unfeeling, if I expressed my sincere acquiescence in the dispensation of Heaven respecting my poor old mother. But I know you would not attribute my quiet to any but the rational cause. She had suffered much since her first attack of palsy. She was at times in possession of her memory, and expressed great desire to be at rest. Her exit was without pain, and rather the close of her sufferings than a struggle to get away from them. I felt more at the news of her first shock than on the present occasion; and it is only when I imagine her alive, in my dreams, that I feel strongly on the subject.

MacArthur Stewart, of Milton, my Highland cousin, was so kind as to order a superb funeral for my poor mother at his own expense. It was attended by more than two hundred people. The kindness of this attention to my mother's memory pleases me more than the value of it.

*

With regard to your advice, for which I thank youit might have been, perhaps, necessary to decide a struggle between my opposite inclinations: but unhappily, in one sense, I do need such bracing to my resolution of doing justice to my own family. I have some debts pressing heavily, which will require four years' application of the sum I had hitherto spared from my income-even when these debts are discharged. What in the interim may be the sufferings of those who may be thus disappointed, God knows; but I will be commonly honest, before I pretend to be, even in a humble degree, benevolent. These melancholy subjects insensibly tinge my mind with a less cheerful tone than that I should wish to bear in your company. . . But let me be off dull subjects, and speak of my lecturesthough that perhaps may turn out as dull as any of them.

I begin my First lecture with the Principles of PoetryI proceed in my Second, to Scripture, to Hebrew, and to Greek Poetry. In the Fourth, I discuss the Poetry of the Troubadours and Romancers, the rise of Italian Poetry with Dante, and its progress with Ariosto and Tasso. In the Fifth, I discuss the French theatre, and enter on English Poetry-Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare. In the Sixth-Milton, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Cowper, and Burns, are the yet unfinished subjects. It forms a sort of chronological-though necessarily imperfect-sketch of the whole history of Poetry. My endeavour is to give portraits of the succession of the truly great Poets, in the

*The advice alluded to, was-That he should not bring distress upon his own family, by continuing to other branches the annuity hitherto paid to his mother (about seventy pounds per annum, since March, 1801); but lay by a part to pay off old debts, and part to obviate the necessity of literary drudgery, and the losses caused by frequent illness. His affection and generosity, however, were too warm and uncalculating, to turn this to much profit: for though the principal annuity had now dropped, he still charged himself with many smaller sums, in the various forms of "donations and subsidies."

ET. 34.] LETTER TO HIS SISTER-SYDENHAM FRIENDS. 211

most poetical countries of Europe. I forgot to say that I have touched also on oriental Poetry. T. C.

Introducing his sister Mary to his much valued friends, the Mayows, he writes:

April 12, 1812.

I have ventured to agree with the ladies that they are to call on you in Dover-street. . . . You will see they wish to consider you as already acquainted with them by name. . . They are the daughters of a gentle

*

man who died at Sydenham, where they now reside some months of the year, on their own estate, with their mother. Their father, Mr. Mayow, was a law-officer of the Excise a lucrative and important station, which he filled with great reputation for his integrity, and merciful dealings with those who came under the hands of the Excise.. He was one of the worthiest of human beings -the most mild, venerable character I ever saw. I had reason to believe I was a great favourite with him; and, had he lived, I should have found him an important friend. That circumstance has made Mrs. Mayow and her family show me marks of regard. Mr. M. was, in fact, more like our dear father than any person I remember.

I say all this that you may be frank and unreserved with the family. They will know how much I wish for a proof of their friendship by their interest in you. Their sisters are married; one to Mr. Courtenay,+ a brother of [the present] Lord Devon; another to Mr. Adams, secretary to the late Duke of Portland, and formerly to Mr. Pitt-son of the member for Totness, Devonshire. He

• Mayow Wynell Mayow, Esq., died [in London] lamented, as he had lived respected and beloved, by all who knew him, on the 14th January, 1807. + The late Right Honourable T. P. Courtenay, P. C., Vice-president of the Board of Trade, a Commissioner of the Board of Control, one of the Members for Totness, &c. Vide p. 99.

is a truly excellent man *.

I have told you all this

to avoid the awkwardness of people calling upon you whom you do not know. . . .

T. C.

The critical season had now arrived when Campbell was to make his appearance before a London auditory; and on the morning of his first lecture he writes:—

April 24, 1812.

I am just setting off to preach at the Royal Institution. Whatever be the result, whether adverse or fortunate, M. will probably tell you by the next post. I know you will be happy to learn that, on the eve of my trial, I am in tolerable health and composure. Sydney Smith cautioned me against joking in my lectures! Was it not Satan reproving sin?

T. C.

The result of this "trial at the bar of the Institution" is told with great naïveté, and in a vein of humour that evinces his own satisfaction with the event-but in which, it will be allowed, there is less of vanity than humility.

TO THE REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON.

MY DEAREST ALISON,

SYDENHAM, April 26, 1812.

The day before yestedray I gave my first lecture at the Royal Institution, with as much success as ever your heart could have wished, and with more than my most sanguine expectations anticipated. Indeed, I had occasionally pretty sanguine expectations of a very different sort of reception. I took, however, great pains with the first lecture, and though I was flattered by some friends saying,— I had thrown away too many good things for the audience, yet I have a very different opinion. I felt the effect of

• William Dacres Adams, Esq., of Bowdon, Devonshire, late one of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Woods and Forests, and elder brother of General Sir George Pownall Adams, K. C. H., of Ockington, Somersetshire.