gagement; and to Campbell the pleasing recollection of having served the cause of real but unobtrusive merit. The immediate effect of his own improved circumstances was an expanding benevolence towards every human being in difficulty or distress. Active himself, in charity and good works, he had a few cordial friends on whose cheerful co-operation he could always depend; and, on behalf of a miserable outcast, who was now suffering the penalty of his offences, Campbell makes the following appeal : TO MRS. FLETCHER, EDINBURGH. 15 DUKE-STREET, ADELPHI, Dec. 24, 1815. I have been casting about in my mind to whom I should apply for executing a small commission of humanity, and am almost ashamed of my hesitation, my dear Mrs. Fletcher, when I think upon your name. This commission relates to an outcast of pity, a poor man who wrote to me, some years ago, from the hulks at Woolwich, and who has lately sent me the inclosed communication from Botany Bay. His letters, I remember, struck me with a melancholy and almost horrible interest; for though he certainly had merited punishment, he seemed to writhe under it with such anguish, and his letters had such a piercing tone of despair, that I could not forbear applying to the Secretary of State's office, though I did not succeed, to get his punishment commuted from transportation for life to a limited term. By the way, he does me injustice, when he says in the inclosed that I did not answer his last letter; for I well remember having sent him a long and exhortatory answer. I heard with great joy of late from an officer of the Botany corps, who had known him, that he was a sober and decent character. The officer added that he had known him well. Now, although this Stewart was known in Edinburgh, I fear under too many disadvantages, and the Edinburgh people, with whom I have spoken of him, speak harshly of him-yet it appears from this letter, and from authority which I trust still more, that he is an amended man. His letter, I think, is well written; his journal I mean to encourage him to send-it will be valuable if he complies with what I have conjured him to do, viz., to give the bare and rigid facts, and to allow not a particle of fiction or imagination to mix with his narrative. But, what is of more importance than his narrative-he is to all appearance, as I said, an amended man. Surely, when amendment is begun, the object of punishment is attained, and punishment should cease; and what a scourge of ex ÆT. 37.] LETTER TO MRS. FLETCHER- -CONVICT POET. 65 istence will be the terrible and dead letter of the law, if we let it fall unmitigated by attention to circumstances that commend its victims to consideration and compassion? Poor man! he writes to me in February last, and his letter reached me only a few days ago. A fellow-being at the other side of the globe calls for our compassion, and his cry takes nine months to reach us! My object in troubling you is to get an exact report of his sentence, and to answer the question-which it does no discredit to the convict to have put-if his aged father be alive? Perhaps, if you have any old newspapers lying about,-it is a charity worth suggesting to your humane mind, to assist in forming the packet which he seems to expect from me, and in which I feel somewhat more difficulty, with regard to newspapers, than I imagined. However, I ought not to trouble you about this. I beg you to remember that it is only conditionally thrown out, provided you happen to have such lumber in your house. Before now I ought to have been in Edinburgh, renewing my intercourse among my old and dear friends, which was lately to me like a renovation of my existence. I lament sometimes, when I am in bad spirits, the too much appearance which this broken promise may have of levity, or inconsistency; but be assured that never was prospect more defined and certain, than mine was of having my time at my own disposal this winter for Edinburgh; and never was an intention more cruelly frustrated. It would be tedious, and would oblige me to crowd too many circumstances together, if I were to tell you all the outs and ins of the disappointment. The main cause was shortly this:-The publication of my intended "Specimens" required an aid, which I had long been promised, viz., the loan of a collection of books from the only man who could lend them— Richard Heber, and he disappointed me. I believe now, at the expiration of three years, and after a hundred delays, he will at last, thus late, give me the volumes; but he has kept me in suspense (had I not learnt a little philosophy, it would have been despairing vexation) respecting my publication, which could not come out without his aid. No one is admitted to his library; but he will at last, I believe, send me the books, and let my work appear. Mr. Heber, you probably know, is the fiercest and strongest of all the bibliomaniacs; and has more than twenty thousand works which are famous for being scarcely known. Strange to say, though he has been to me more treacherous than Ney to 66 Louis XVIII.," he is really a good-hearted fellow; ana is-excepting practical penitence-quite as much hurt, surprised, and indignant at his own conduct, as I am myself. But to pass to a pleasanter subject from convicts and traitors -I trust that this will find all your domestic circle happy and well, and Mr. Fletcher's health much better than when I was under your roof. May I beg my kindest, sincere compliments and remembrance to your son and daughters; and to our common friend, Dr. Brown? Writing under the awful precincts of a frank, I fear I have scribbled too closely for legibility; but, as the sailors say-you will excuse bad writing. God bless you and yours. Believe me, with best regards to Mr. Fletcher, your respectful and affectionate T. CAMPBELL. As the reader may feel desirous to know something farther of a man whose case had excited so much interest and sympathy in the mind of Campbell, I annex the following note.* The only stanzas of this year's production are those "To the Memory of Burns;" with the following "Troubadour Song," written for the Eighteenth of June :— * In the end of 1808, a young man, named Andrew Stewart, who had figured for some years before as a poetical contributor to "The Scot's Magazine," and inserted there, among other things, a set of Stanzas in honor of "The Last Minstrel," was tried and capitally convicted on a charge of burglary. He addressed, some weeks after his sentence had been pronounced, two letters to Sir Walter Scott, who took so feeling an interest in his unhappy case, that an appeal was made to the Royal Mercy, and sentence of death commuted to that of transportation for life. His letters addressed to Campbell, while suffering the penalty of his offence, have not been found; but, from the active exertions made for a remission of his punishment, as will be seen hereafter, he was liberated. From his letters to Sir Walter Scott, written while under sentence of death, I borrow the following passage:-" My age is only twenty-three, and to all appearance will be cut off in my prime. I was tried for breaking into the workshop of Peter More, calico glazer, Edinburgh, and received the dreadful sentence, to be executed on the 22d of February next. We have no friends to apply for Royal Mercy. If I had any friend to mention my case to my Lord Justice Clerk, perhaps I might get my sentence mitigated. You will see my poems are of the humorous cast. Alas! it is now the contrary. I have to mention, as a dying man, that it was not the greed of money that made me commit the crime, but the extreme pressure of poverty and want." "Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, by Andrew Stewart; printed for the benefit of the Author's Father, and sold by Manners and Miller, and A. Constable and Co.," appeared soon after the convict's departure for Botany Bay. See Life of Sir Walter Scott, Vol. II., pp. 239-241. ET. 37.] TROUBADOUR SONG. THE BATTLE-MORN. "I have buckled the sword to my side, "Oh, my saint! Oh, my mistress! this morn In the moment of death and alarm! "Fallen chiefs, when the battle is o'er, While the heart that loves thee to its core, Let my love in thy memory rest; Nor my name shall be lost-for I know That it lives in the shrine of thy breast!"-T. C. 67 CHAPTER IV. LECTURES AND SPECIMENS. AFTER much anxious labor, and some unavoidable delays, it was at length decided that the "Specimens " should be brought out in April; and to that event Campbell looked forward as the day of his "emancipation !" This, however, was retarded by unforeseen occurrences; but, having completed the Essay, the most arduous portion of the work, he found leisure to deliberate and to write upon other subjects, to which his attention had been strongly directed. At the new year he was honored with a visit from Mrs. Siddons, to whom he had the pleasure of presenting an American friend. The visit was accepted as a happy omen, and his correspondence is thus pleasantly resumed. "SYDENHAM, January 14, 1816. "Your old friend, the pensioner, my dearest Alison, comes again his quarterly round to you. As the compliments of the season are passing thick, and the tradesmen exceedingly polite in swarming about me with their good wishes, I shall be obliged to you to present also, in due season, my compliments and best wishes to the Exchequer of Scotland! More pleasing visitants than tradesmen, however, have done me the honor of calling upon me-independently of a most interesting day which Mrs. Siddons came down and spent with us-a day in which we looked often, and with much conversation, at your likeness* by Heming in my parlor... And now I cannot help boasting, also, of my hospitality to a robin, who slept last night in a geranium close to my writing-table. He passed the night in my study, and in the morning I found him perched over my folios, on which he had bestowed some relics of his presence, as if in contempt of human learning. This morning he pecked the butter instead of the bread. Another bird, I suppose his mate, came to the window, fluttered and chirrupped; we opened it, and my guest flew off and joined his partner. T. C." * The medallion, already noticed. |