often very sagacious: this morning, after finishing his reading in Roman history, he said, 'I like this Roman history better than the Greek which we read last.' I asked him the reason. He thought some time-dear little fellow-and said, 'I see a progress in the Roman history; they always take advantage of their victories, and grow greater after them!'

"I spent a day or two with Madame de Staël this spring, and read her my lectures-one of them against her own doctrines on poetry. She battled hard with me ;

but was very good-natured and complimentary. Every now and then she said, 'When you publish more lectures, they will make a great impression over all Europe. I know nothing in English but Burke's writings so striking.' This she said before Lord Harrowby and a large party; and if her praise was flattery, she at least committed herself. It is because you are my sister, that I dare to send you this account-not, I assure you, from vanity. . God bless you, my dear Mary.

T. C."

His second Course of Lectures, at the Royal Institution, was applauded to the echo. "You have been lecturing on poetry with great éclat," writes an eminent classic then at the Bar; "and as your head must be full of speculations and brilliant sentences, I hope you will not disdain to string a few of them together for our use.

*

In allusion to the strong military reinforcements, which the critical state of affairs abroad had rendered imperative, the following jeu d'esprit, or "suggestions" by Campbell, appeared in the columns of a Morning paper. The lines evince a strong party spirit, but are very characteristic of that vein of pleasantry, by which he often turned the rancour of political prejudice into a harmless jest :

ET. 34.]

NEW RECRUITS FOR THE ARMY.

"As recruits, in these times, are not easily got,

And the Marshal must have them, pray why should we not,
As the last—and I grant you the worst-of our loans to him,
Ship off the whole Ministry, body and bones, to him?
There's not in all England, I'll venture to swear,

Any men we could half so conveniently spare ;

:

And, though they 've been helping the French for years past,
We may thus make them useful to England at last :-
Cgh, in our sieges, might save some disgraces,
Being versed in the taking, and keeping, of places;
And Chancellor E- -n, still canting and whining,
Might show off his talents, in sly undermining;
Could the Household but spare us its glory and pride,
Old H-f-t at horn-works, again might be tried,
And the Chief-Justice make a bold charge at his side;
While Vrt might victual the troops upon tick,
And the Doctor look after the baggage and sick.

-nt himself

"Nay, I do not see why the great R-
Should, in times such as these, lie at home on the shelf;
Though in narrow defiles he's not fitted to pass,
Yet, who could resist, if he bore down en masse?
And though, of an evening, he sometimes might prove,
Like our brave Spanish Allies, "unable to move!"
Yet one thing there is, of advantage unbounded,
Which is that he could not with ease be surrounded.—
"In my next, I shall sing of their arms and equipment;
At present no more-but good luck to the shipment !"

229

230

CHAPTER VIII.

VISIT TO BRIGHTON.

AT the close of the season Campbell writes, "My health is getting sadly crazy again."-"Sept. 3. A severe fit of illness has obliged me to leave home. I have trifled with my complaints this summer till they have got ahead of me. This morning, a physician attended me, and directed that I should repair to sea-bathing. I write you from bed in the 'Salopian;' and to-morrow I am to start for the coast. I have suffered some hours of acute pain." Such was the actual state of his health at this moment; yet in a strain that, to those unacquainted with his real character, would appear to savour of levity, he forces his sad thoughts, to use his own expression, into a new channel; and affects much ease and gaiety," while, in fact, his mind is anxious, and his health impaired.

His journey to the modern Baia is preserved in a humorous diary, entitled, "Journal of an old Poet of the Eighteenth Century," from which, and his letters, I am enabled to present the following extracts:

"September 6, Thursday Night. Could not sleep at the 'Salopian;' set off at seven next morning; looked at myself

*This, as it repeatedly struck the narrator, was very characteristic of Campbell, who often appeared lively and companionable, while actually suffering from pain or anxiety. In this mood he endeavoured to forget himself-drew from incidents, however trivial, something for the mind to lay hold of; but, in his very playfulness, he was still a philosopher.

ET. 34.] ARRIVAL IN BRIGHTON-LETTERS AND DIARY. 231

in the glass, pale, unshaven; an ugly man and a bad author. . . Mem. Since the year 1810 my physical beauty has much declined. N. B. to treasure up the beauties of the mind. . . A silly fellow-passenger in the coach with four dumbies; heard the talker named Alison; deigned to speak to him for the sake of his name. After a long pause, one of them, an officer, asked me if I had been 'amused counting the mile-stones?' Answered by-'Is that your mode of amusing yourself on a road?' Not another word exchanged. . . Nearer Brighton the country grows more beautiful; the smooth Downs are very striking -interspersed with wide expanses of green, and fields of fine corn; the landscape looks like a coloured print; the oats like fine plush velvet, so thick, so rich, and glossy; the potatoe fields, like green carpets spread upon the Downs. Mem. to keep this nice comparison for a clap-trap at the Institution Lectures! . . Dined at the White Horse Inn upon a fine fried sole.

Saturday Morning. Stepped over to a house near the sea, and saw lodgings at a guinea a week; neat, very small, civil. The landlady of the White Horse calls the folks of the house 'good, 'sponsible people;' so I took the lodgings. Called upon Disraeli, a good, modest man; invited to dine with him to-morrow. Mem. forgot to mention an important event of yesterday: On the road saw some nets hanging out to dry, in which an unlucky cow had got entangled, and other cows were assisting her out. The sight was interesting. T. C."

66

BRIGHTON, September 11.

". . . The ‘seasoning cold' is going off. Matilda's arrival is important. You women are delightful beings; but your fault is, never making distinctions. An illness might be intolerably troublesome, without being dangerous;

yet you all set me down as very ill. Before Matilda's arrival, I had a world of troubles. Mrs. Drake advised us to go to a boarding-house-without seeing the rooms! I bespoke boarding for us all at seven guineas a week. I had been told the rooms were good; when, lo! on being shown them, they were high, bleak attics-no place for a fire-and it was chilling cold. This complimentary allusion to my attic poetry at the expence of my constitution, I did not relish; yet how was I to untwist the Gordian knot? . . But the boarding-mistress was civil, and disembarrassed me, as soon as I found another lodging—for three guineas a week, the suite of splendid apartments from which I have now the honour of writing to you. I had asked if they were quiet? "Oh, the quietest in the world." Nothing had the landlady said to me of a family of a dozen children, I suppose, graduated most regularly in their scale of noises, from the wail of sucking infancy, to the roar of naughty boyhood; nothing in the world had she said to me of a beautiful Poll-parrot, of the first powers of mimickry, who gives me all their gamut of melody at second hand, interspersing his own natural shrieks and ho-ho-laughs, and whistlings, and triumphant chuckles in the midst of his ludicrous imitations. . .

"But, after all, I cannot get rid of this terrestrial paradise; for when you go to an alluring window-pane, instead of lodgings, you find something about a milch-ass or a donkeycart.-Friend N. coming out of the bathing machine is very like a water-rat. . . I have seen Mrs. Siddons-every day that I could stir out, in a chair or without it. Herschel the astronomer is here, and I expect to be introduced to him. His son, a very young man, is going to turn out a second Newton. T. C."

To another Sydenham friend he writes in continuation: