sition does not seem altogether fanciful. Geological researches show us that the original forms of organised beings constantly underwent a change of size and type until many of them finally disappeared; while those that have left representatives have bequeathed them to us in a most deteriorated and diminished form, as we may see by comparing the gigantic fossil iguanadon with the modern iguana. When man and the

domestic animals were called into existence, it is presumable that these wholesale devourers were materially reduced in size, or altogether annihilated, that they might not claim too large a share of the earth's produce, or become unfitting contemporaries for the new visitants-the destined lords of creation.

To

Has the physical man gained or lost in stature and personal powers since the days of Adam? Tradition will support both conjectures, for both sacred and profane history assert the ancient existence of giants; while the pigmies and their wars are recorded in classic annals. stand the wear and tear of a thousand years, Methuselah must surely have required more corporeal bulk than an ephemeral mannikin of our dege-nerate days. The Israelites who traversed the holy land told their bre-thren that they had seen giants of Anak's race, in comparison with whom men were as grasshoppers. Moses informs us that the bed of Og, king of Bashan, was fifteen feet four inches and a half long. Goliath was ten feet seven inches high; and these existed after the life of man had been cut down to its present average! Have the moderns been reduced from these Anakim and Rephilim, or have we been enlarged and developed from the monkeys? The latter supposition is without physical support; and though we often disinter the bones of an individual giant, the Egyptian mummies, our most ancient remains of whole races, are rather below than above the average stature of the moderns.

Is mankind then in its childhood, maturity, or declension? Judging from geological evidences of the world's infinite antiquity, and of the longenduring cycles before any of the former animal races underwent any material alteration of type, or became finally extinct, and recollecting also the comparative recency of man's appearance upon the globe, analogy will support the inference of his being only in the outset of his career. That he should undergo any corporeal changes seems to be a hardly tenable conjecture; but as the instinct of animals is fixed and immutable, remaining the same now as it was at the creation, leaving their frames alone to be modified and changed, we may infer that while the human form remains unaltered, man's development will be confined to his distinguishing attribute, his reason. Assuming him, then, to be in the outset of his career, and summing up the mighty conquests in science that he has already achieved, and his general advancement in civilisation, what imagination can set bounds to the glorious destiny that awaits the youngster, as he wins his triumphant way towards maturity? Let every man believe in these exalting aspirations, and he will do much to realize them. Let every man find his own happiness in depositing upon the altar of human improvement an offering suitable to his means and opportunities, and he will best fulfil the purposes for which he was intended, best propitiate the benevolent Deity who called him into existence that he might best enjoy it by becoming an instrument of good to his fellow

H.

LIFE AND REMINISCENCES OF THOMAS CAMPBELL.

BY CYRUS REDDING.

CHAPTER I.

Introductory Remarks-Birth-place of the Poet-Family of Campbell-The Poet's Parents-Placed at Glasgow Grammar School-Character as a Scholar-Juvenile Compositions-His own Statements of his Early Verses -School Anecdote-Obtains a Bursary at Glasgow University-Great Progress in Study-Attachment to Classical Learning-Attends the Lectures of Professor Millar-His Character of the Professor-Early Friends-Leaves Glasgow for Argyleshire-Arrival in Edinburgh-The Pleasures of HopeSale of Copyright-Dr. Anderson and Dugald Stewart-Character of Dr. Anderson-Mode of Composition-Singular Oversights-High Tone of Feeling-Consciousness of his Own Position.

THE real biography of a literary man is the history of his works answering to that of the achievements or adventures of other extraordinary individuals, or occupying the place of the petty details of business in the short lived memoirs of persons merely professional. The mental peculiarities of such, all that is linked with sensation, serve in place of stirring incident to attract notice and interest the heart. If less exciting, the effects are more lasting, from being allied with intellect, and while more instructive enlisting powerfully on their side the better sympathies of human nature. In this view the biography of the imaginative writer, above all that of the poet, has a peculiar hold upon the attention.

There was as little of extraneous incident in the career of Campbell, as is encountered generally in the lives of other literary men. The foundation of his poetical fame was deeply and early laid; his verse will represent itself to posterity, but a complete knowledge of the man can only be handed down by detailing the mode in which that verse was achieved, and snatching from oblivion some traits of the make and disposition which worked out its peculiar character and merits. Two years have passed since the poet belonged to the living, and endless have been the misrepresentations propagated regarding him. It is time that some attempt should be made to remove them, and exhibit him as he was. This cannot be done efficiently by any individual who was unacquainted with the man before senility laid its hand upon him, rendering more than customarily feeble a frame of considerable activity, until the last three or four years of life bore upon it, pressing down the powers of a mind once sensitive and yet vigorous, highly endowed and yet full of touching simplicity. The likeness which is to remain the lasting portrait should be taken from life during the maturity of character and being, which constitute the acme of existence, in reputation as well as physical organisation.

The correspondence of the earlier years of the poet's life might do much to illustrate an interesting portion of his existence; but all men to be properly described must be thoroughly known, during those years when acting their most conspicuous part. The present writer was intimate with the poet, as is pretty well known, for the space of nearly thirty years. For twelve years of that term, from 1820 to 1832, as the sequel will show, he was, owing to particular circumstances, so situated in relation to the poet as no other individual ever could have been before or subsequently. His intercourse was confidential during the time Campbell was in the

zenith of his reputation; and reserved as the poet was in those days in disposition, it may be imagined it required a certain time to work out a confidence that never diminished, to judge by the latest interviews that took place between them during the three or four last years of the poet's life-interviews unavoidably very few to what they had previously been, arising solely from obstacles connected with distance of residence and the imperative demands of laborious occupation. Yet was the loss scarcely to be deplored by the living from sparing friendship the spectacleof a decay sufficiently painful to contemplate.

The present narration from 1819, has been drawn up from personal knowledge, from documents and notes exclusively the writer's own, and partly from a correspondence with the poet, when he was occasionally absent from town between the years 1820 and 1832. A correspondence could only occur under such circumstances. When both were in town, not more than two or three days ever elapsed without a meeting, generally rendered necessary by matters of business. These letters, the present writer's own property, so the law declares, could not be published in the present state of that incomprehensible jargon of self-styled wisdom, without the consent of other parties, of whom the owner has no knowledge. He has, therefore, referred to them only as guides, to keep up the continuous chain of his recollections.

The present publication is that most fitting for such a record. It is that which for ten years was intimately connected with the poet himself as its editor during the better portion of his life. The New Monthly Magazine stood alone among periodical works. Then, as now, the widest circulated at the highest price of all the works of its class here; it was reprinted in America, and eagerly sought wherever English was spoken or read. Its contributors were the first among the literary men of the time. Many have paid with Campbell the debt of nature, others survive, some of whom have been distinguished in the senate, at the bar, and in state offices. In no periodical work, therefore, could any recollections of the poet be more suitably ushered into the world.

The biographical statements regarding the poet have been drawn, as the reader will perceive, from various sources, and some of the circumstances thus stated for the first time, are in themselves curious. The narrative will sufficiently explain the time when the writer speaks from his own personal knowledge. He trusts he has not suffered truth to be anywhere overlayed by panegyric, nor, as is too often done, made a demi-god out of a mortal and fallible nature, but rather endeavoured to exhibit one of the common family of mankind rising above himself and creating out of his own perishing nature a being indestructible.

From the date of his marriage the poet was eminently a domestic man, fond of solitude at intervals, and given to abstract studies, which were attended with no practical result. Yet the muse of Campbell, when she did take wing soared on the track of the bird of Jove in advance of the time, bearing all the promises which futurity realises-those hopes of which imagination excites genius to the realisation, by untiring efforts under new impulses for that end. The muse of Campbell appealed to the noblest feelings of humanity, unpolluted by immoral imagery, unstained by sycophancy, unmarked by that puling sentimentality which degrades the poet's art, while in some qualities his verse remains unsurpassed in the circle of British poesy.

Those details which in the memoir of one whose life is a continual change

of incident, and which in an extreme instance of living adventure, would be thought trivial, cannot be deemed out of place, where the endeavour is more immediately to discriminate between physical differences and the superior and more refined attributes of human nature. The rough hand of the ploughman can ill appreciate the delicate touch of the finger that constructs the almost magical time-piece destined to direct the proud vessel along the depths of the ocean. Trivial, and apparently insignificant as the last may be to the ignorant, who cannot comprehend its use, that use is evident to the professional and cultivated. The nice shades of mental difference are sometimes to be observed through analogy only, or are to be read by the medium of this or that symptomatic expression of feeling, oftentimes sufficiently insignificant. Hence there is nothing said or done by the man of genius that is unworthy of record, and upon this sound principle it will be hereafter seen much is retained, trivial in itself, relating to the present poet, eminently contributive to the means of forming a conception of the character of the individual.

The truth is, too, that writers of imagination furnish still less events for the memoir writer, because they live in an ideal kingdom of their own, in which "the shows of things" are accommodated to the "desires of the mind." The pursuits of every day life not being included in the poet's category of adventure, and his not belonging to the coarser part of human action, unless the reader take a pleasure in analysing delicate intellectual distinctions, he may not find gratification in biographical details relative to such men. Still there are a sufficient number who do this, and who will feel pleasure at being made acquainted with the minutest circumstances attaching to those whose productions they have been accustomed to admire.

The present memoir being arranged in the order of time in which the circumstances occurred, or nearly so, as far as memory permits, will still exhibit instances where association has recalled an event of the past and attached it to one more recent, or the last has been had recourse to for the illustration of the first. There can be no necessity for that formality in such a memoir as the present, which properly belongs to a life of the poet compiled from every possible source that was accessible when no more remained to be told, and the perfected and last classic biography of the poet was to be completed. The first memoirs of distinguished men coming from various sources, each with some contributions unknown to the others are but accessories to the last, who may avail himself of the aggregate of all to work out at some coming time that which it was impossible to render equally complete so soon after the subject had de parted from among the living.

Correct views of fact are the great duty of those who put together narrations similar to the present, and that without regard or favour to the living or the dead. It has been too frequently the custom to disguise errors in men of genius as if they were not, in all besides, members of the common family of man. It has also been too much the habit to make memoirs of the dead burn the incense of flattery to the living-in the present case it is hoped both these faults will be avoided.

Thomas Campbell was born at Glasgow on the 27th of July, 1777. His ancestors appear to have resided in Argyleshire, which indeed may be gathered from the beautiful lines upon his revisiting a scene in that county. A statement has appeared, apparently upon authority, that the parish of Kilmartin, North Knapdale, in Argyleshire, was the poet's birth

place. This statement was strengthened by its author's declaration that he had made a pilgrimage there a few years ago, and visited the hamlet where the poet was born, that it was situated at the bottom of a valley, and beautifully sheltered on either side by the birch, the mountain ash, and the pine tree; the whole scenery being much esteemed for wild and romantic beauty.

There must be some mistake in the foregoing statement. Campbell often spoke of Glasgow as his birthplace, and in one of his public addresses alluded to it expressly as the "spot" of his birth, a word he would not have used in a general sense for any locality at a distance from that city. Sometimes in the way of joke at the expense of the lowlanders he would extol the inhabitants of the Highlands and generally draw an inference to their advantage, but by this he did not allude to himself immediately, but to his descent; no other inference could be drawn from what he said on such occasions.

He was the youngest of ten children, all of whom he survived, and he came into the world after a considerable interval from the preceding addition to his family, the last of whom that rested with her fathers, before he departed himself, was a sister at the advanced age of eightysix. He stated to the present narrator that his father was born in 1710. A picture lay on its edge one day upon his study floor which he said was the portrait of his father. It bore the resemblance of a venerable man in a wig and old-fashioned costume, but there was not the least trace of the poet's likeness in that of his parent, which he admitted he did not see himself. It was remarked to him that from his father having lived to beyond ninety, it was probable he himself inherited a long life. "If that were a rule," he remarked, "I might expect long life with some reason, for adding my birthday to my father's, we want but a year or two, of dividing four generations between us, reckoning them at thirty years, and I am only forty-eight."*

The name of his mother was Mary Campbell; she is said to have been an intelligent clever woman. The poet rarely mentioned her, although he often spoke of his father as a sensible, shrewd man of the old school, and any thing but a churl. His father was a merchant of Glasgow, and it may be inferred was a native of the country rather than the city, from the poet's saying one day that he was informed by his father that his grandfather had said they drank no wine but claret in Scotland in his day, and that the quantities consumed were so great as to be out of comparison with all the other kinds of wine united, for that they used to fence their gardens and orchards with the staves of the claret hogsheads.

It it is melancholy to reflect how quickly time places human action beyond the reach of oral testimony. The poet, had he lived until July in the present year (1846), would be but seventy, yet of whom can inquiry be now made respecting his earlier years and the relations of his youth! His celebrity may make some friends in Scotland disclose what others in may, a few instances, have told about him, but there is a natural desire to know more than this, and to gratify curiosity to the same extent as we are enabled to gratify it, respecting those individuals in the full vigour of existence whom we see around us.

Of the childish days of Thomas Campbell very little is upon recollec

* In 1825.