exertion; in your sympathy, a "brotherly kindness" that soothed him in affliction, supported him in difficulties, and sweetened the intercourse of private life.

These are not words of adulation-for to whom can I address myself with such manifest propriety? By connecting the names of ROGERS and CAMPBELL in these posthumous records, I only comply with what duty prescribes, what private taste recommends, what public suffrage will approve and confirm. To you, therefore, who prized his worth, admired his genius, and now cherish his memory, I dedicate the LIFE AND LETTERS of our departed Friend.

I have the honour to be, my dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours,

WILLIAM BEATTIE.

LONDON,

December, 1848.

PREFACE.

COMING before the public as the biographer of Thomas Campbell, I feel myself in a position of great weight and responsibility. With many of his old friends around me, much better qualified for that honourable trust, it may seem that I have usurped a province that should have fallen to an abler pen. This, however, is not the case. It is many years since his desire on this point was first expressed; it was repeated, until a conditional promise was given and accepted; and among the last acts of his life, I was gently reminded of our friendly compact. From this I could not recede-even in deference to better men. By yielding to the partiality of friendship, he may have committed an error of judgment; but if so, its consequences were somewhat obviated by his placing in my hands every document necessary for that portion of his history which belongs to the public. And it is my grateful duty to add, that, whatever was deficient

in the original papers, has been most liberally supplied by his surviving friends. For myself, I enjoyed, during many years, the enviable privilege of his friendship and confidence-unreserved, unbroken; and though too soon called upon to redeem my pledge-to impart information where I would rather have received it-to write for those to whom I would rather have listened; I enter on my task with no claims or recommendation but those of an honest intention. This explanation is due to the public, to the private friends of the Poet, and to myself.

In this labour of love, as I may justly consider it, I have been studious to combine the truthfulness of history with the tenderness of friendship; to exercise the duties of my office with vigilance and discretion. Standing, if I may so express it, between the dead and the living, I have had to discharge a double-often a delicate duty; to omit nothing that his true friends would regret to lose; to revive nothing that Campbell himself would have wished forgotten. If in any instance I have failed to carry out these intentions to the very letter, it has been where allegation had to be met by fact; where the balance had to be

adjusted between the partiality of friendship, and the obligations of truth.

It has been my aim to make Campbell the historian of his own life, as it is preserved in his letters and other documents, from the time he was nine years old, until the year of his death. It has been my aim to show him at school, at college, at home, and abroad in his private study, in social intercourse, in the exercise of his public functions-such as he appeared among ourselves—a genuine example of the mens divinior, but subject, withal, to some of those common failings, from which the favourites of genius are seldom exempt. Such, I humbly repeat, has been my aim; but how far that aim has been realised, is a delicate question. The considerate reader is aware how easily an author's plan may be thwarted by his inexperience; how often retarded by the very earnestness with which he desires to carry it out: how liable, in cases like the present, to be influenced rather by affection than judgment; how difficult it is to bring long-cherished prepossessions to the severe test of biographical history and criticism. But whatever may be objected to the Editor on the score of taste and judgment, it is satisfactory to know that his errors will neither impair the freshness, nor mar the beauty of Campbell's letters, which, like true gems, can lose nothing of their intrinsic value by a plain and homely setting. It is earnestly hoped that what was good in the original manuscript has not

been obscured by superfluous commentary, nor, by false notions of refinement, robbed of its native simplicity. It must not be inferred, however, from what has been said, that the matter contained in these letters is all good--all bearing the stamp of Campbell's genius. Composed at every period within the last half century, in every mood of mind, under every change of outward circumstances-and often hastily-his letters represent him as he actually thought, felt, and wrote

-always in character, and how often in a most amiable light! Of whom may so much be told, with so little cause for apology?

It is easy to foresee that, among the numerous letters quoted in part, or entire, in these volumes, some detached portions may strike the general reader as presenting nothing very characteristic. Taken separately, indeed, they may not; as a whole most likely they will; for if the detached paragraphs be collected like broken pieces of mosaic and reset, the character of the piece will be restored, the features identified; and, examined in more intimate connection, they will be found to exhibit a distinct portrait of the original-so at least I have ventured to think. It is not the fragments of a head or a limb, but the nice adjustment of these, that discovers the classic statue --whether a Minerva or an Apollo.