Then there is the quarter of roebuck we got at Gordon Castle; and Ornither has furnished us with a brace of wild ducks, three leash of snipes, and a brace of golden plovers, by his mountain expedition of yesterday; and for fish we depend on you. Yet our host says there are fresh herrings to be had, and small cod-fish, and salmon and trout in any quantity, and the claret and the Ferintosh are safe. Hal. Why, we shall fare sumptuously. As it is not time yet for shooting grouse, we must divide our spoil for the few days we shall stay here. Yet there are young snipes and plovers on the mountains above, and I have no doubt we might obtain the Laird's permission to kill a roebuck in the woods or a hart in the mountains; but this is always an uncertain event, and I advise you, Ornither, to become a fisherman. Orn. I shall wait till I see the results of your skill. At all events, in this country I can never want amusement, and I dare say there are plenty of seals at the mouth of the river, and killing them is more useful to other fishermen than catching fish. Hal. Let there be a kettle of water with salt ready boiling in an hour, mine host, for the fish we catch or buy; and see that the potatoes are well dressed: the servants will look to the rest of our fare. Now for our rods. (From Salmonia.) The Future State. Ambrosio. Revelation has not disclosed to us the nature of this state, but only fixed its certainty. We are sure from geological facts, as well as from sacred history, that man is a recent animal on the globe, and that this globe has undergone one considerable revolution, since the creation, by water; and we are taught that it is to undergo another, by fire, preparatory to a new and glorified state of existence of man; but this is all we are permitted to know, and as this state is to be entirely different from the present one of misery and probation, any knowledge respecting it would be useless, and indeed almost impossible. Philalethes. My genius has placed the more exalted spiritual natures in cometary worlds, and this last fiery revolution may be produced by the appulse of a comet. Amb. Human fancy may imagine a thousand ways in which it may be produced; but upon such notions it is absurd to dwell. I will not allow your genius the slightest approach to inspiration, and I can admit no verisimility in a reverie which is fixed on a foundation you now allow to be so weak. But see, the twilight is beginning to appear in the orient sky, and there are some dark clouds on the horizon opposite to the crater of Vesuvius, the lower edges of which transmit a bright light, shewing the sun is already risen in the country beneath them. I would say that they may serve as an image of the hopes of immortality derived from revelation; for we are sure from the light reflected in those clouds that the lands below us are in the brightest sunshine, but we are entirely ignorant of the surface and the scenery; so, by revelation, the light of an imperishable and glorious world is disclosed to us; but it is in eternity, and its objects cannot be seen by mortal eye or imaged by mortal imagination. Phil. I am not so well read in the Scriptures as I hope I shall be at no very distant time; but I believe the pleasures of heaven are mentioned more distinctly than you allow in the sacred writings. I think I remember that the saints are said to be crowned with palms and amaranths, and that they are described as perpetually hymning and praising God. Amb. This is evidently only metaphorical; music is the sensual pleasure which approaches nearest to an intellectual one, and probably may represent the delight resulting from the perception of the harmony of things and of truth seen in God. The palm as an evergreen tree, and the amaranth a perdurable flower, are emblems of immortality. If I am allowed to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blessed, I should image it by the orange-grove in that sheltered glen, on which the sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are at the same time loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one eternal feeling. (From the Consolations.) There was an edition of Davy's collected works (9 vols.) in 1839-40; and his brother, Dr John Davy, prepared his Memoirs (2 vols.). See also his Fragmentary Remains (1858), and the Lives by Dr Paris (1831) and Dr T. E. Thorpe (1895). His Dr Thomas M'Crie (1772-1835), Scottish historian, biographer, and divine, was born at Duns in Berwickshire, studied at Edinburgh, and was ordained in 1795 pastor of a Secession congregation there belonging to the section known as 'Anti-burgher,' from their refusal to sanction the burgess's oath of allegiance to an uncovenanted king. He also acted as professor of divinity. works exhibit vast and minute research, and conscientious though they are, are almost inevitably biassed in favour of the high Presbyterian polity and its defenders and heroes. His best-known books are a scholarly Life of Knox (1812), which for the first time gave a substantially historical and not obviously partisan view of a great actor on the national stage; an equally original Life of Andrew Melville (1819); and histories of the 'progress and suppression of the Reformation in Italy and in Spain (1827-29). In 1817 he published in three. successive numbers of the Christian Instructor a trenchant review of The Tales of My Landlord, whose authorship was not yet revealed, as regards their treatment of the Covenanters and their persecutors. His aim was to prove that the author showed gross partiality to the persecution of the Presbyterians by ignoring or glossing over the severities and cruelties they perpetrated, and by making the oppressors, especially Claverhouse, seem admirable, contrary to historical truth; while he unfairly exaggerated the peculiarities of certain extreme Covenanters, and, in defiance of fact, represented the Covenanters generally as mere ignorant, foolish, and violent fanatics. On these matters M'Crie was a much more accurate historian than Scott, and easily convicted him of many misapprehensions and misstatements in general and detail. By his own side he was held as having had a magnificent triumph over 'the Great Unknown.' Scott had at first pooh-poohed M'Crie's strictures, and resolved not even to read them; but, as Lockhart said, he found the impression they were producing so strong that he soon changed his purpose and devoted a very large part of his article for the Quarterly Review to an elaborate defence of his own picture of the Covenanters 'that is, Scott as Scott defended in the Quarterly, in a review of his own unacknowledged works, his own historical representations there set forth. The following extracts are from the earlier part of M'Crie's famous review of The Tales: The same regard to the truth of history must be observed when fictitious personages are introduced, provided the reader is taught or induced to form a judgment from them of the parties to which they are represented as belonging. If it is permitted to make embellishments on the scene, with the view of giving greater interest to the piece, the utmost care ought to be taken that they do not violate the integrity of character; and they must be impartially distributed, and equally extended to all parties, and to the virtues and vices of each. This is a delicate task, but the undertaker imposes it upon himself, with all its responsibilities. Besides fidelity, impartiality, and judgment, it requires an extensive, and minute, and accurate acquaintance with the history of the period selected, including the history of opinions and habits, as well as of events. And we do not hesitate to say that this is a species of intelligence which is not likely to be possessed by the person who holds in sovereign contempt the opinions which were then deemed of the utmost moment, and turns with disgust from the very exterior manners of the men whose inmost habits he affects to disclose. Nor will the multifarious reading of the dabbler in everything, from the highest affairs of church and state down to the economy of the kitchen and the management of the stable, keep him from blundering here at every step. The guides of public opinion cannot be too jealous in guarding against the encroachments of the writers of fiction upon the province of true history, nor too faithful in pointing out every transgression, however small it may appear, of the sacred fences by which it is protected. Such writers have it in their power to do much mischief, from the engaging form in which they convey their sentiments to a numerous and, in general, unsuspecting class of readers. When the scene is laid in a remote and fabulous period, or when the merits and conduct of the men who are made to figure in it do not affect the great cause of truth and of public good, the writer may be allowed to exercise his ingenuity, and to amuse his readers, without our narrowly inquiring whether his representations are historically correct or not. But when he speaks of those men who were engaged in the great struggle for national and individual rights, civil and religious, which took place in this country previous to the Revolution, and of all the cruelties of the oppressors, and all the sufferings of the oppressed, he is not to be tolerated in giving a false and distorted view of men and measures, whether this proceed from ignorance or from prejudice. Nor should his misrepresentations be allowed to pass without severe reprehension when their native tendency is to shade the atrocities of persecution, to diminish the horror with which the conduct of a tyrannical and unprincipled government has been so long and so justly regarded, and to traduce and vilify the characters of those men who, while they were made to feel all the weight of its severity, continued to resist, until they succeeded in emancipating themselves, and securing their posterity from the galling yoke. On this supposition, it is not sufficient to atone for such faults that the work in which they are found displays great talents; that it contains scenes which are described with exquisite propriety and truth; that the leading facts in the history of those times are brought forward; that the author has condemned the severities of the government; that he is often in a mirthful and facetious mood; and that some allowances must be made for a desire to amuse his readers, and to impart greater interest to a story which, after all, is for the most part fictitious. . One charge which he frequently brings against the strict Presbyterians is that of a morose and gloomy bigotry, displayed by their censuring of all innocent recreations. This he endeavours to impress on the imagination of his reader in the very first scene, by representing them as refusing, from such scruples, to attend the weaponschaws appointed by government. The rigour of the strict Calvinists,' says he, 'increased in proportion to the wishes of the government that it should be relaxed. A supercilious condemnation of all manly pastimes and harmless recreations distinguished those who professed a more than ordinary share of sanctity.'. . . The fact is, that from the Reformation down to the period in which the scene of this tale is laid, such exercises and pastimes were quite common throughout Scotland; children were carefully trained to them when at school; professors in universities attended and joined in them, as well as their students; and the Presbyterian ministers, having practised them at school and at college, instead of condemning them as unlawful, did not scruple to countenance them with their presence. There were some of these precise preachers for whom, we suspect, our author (with all his intimate knowledge of such sports) might not have been quite a match in shooting at the popinjay; and in playing with them at the rapier or small-sword, or in wrestling a fall, we are afraid he might have come off as badly as Sergeant Bothwell did from the brawny arms of John Balfour of Burley. . . . The second instance which goes to prove that the author's statements respecting the religious sentiments and customs of that period are not to be depended upon relates to the use of the Book of Common Prayer. The young at arms,' says he, 'were unable to avoid listening to the prayers read in the churches on these occasions, and thus, in the opinion of their repining parents, meddling with the accursed thing which is an abomination in the sight of the Lord.' Now, though the author had not stood in awe of that 'dreadful name," which all Christians are taught to venerate, nor been afraid of the threatening, 'The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain,' we would have thought that he would have at least been careful to save himself from ridicule by ascertaining the truth of the fact which he assumes as the foundation of his irreverent jest. How, then, does the fact stand? Prayers were not read in the parish churches of Scotland at that time, any more than they were in the meeting-houses of the indulged, or in the conventicles of the stricter Presbyterians. The author has taken it for granted that the Prayer-Book was introduced into Scotland along with Episcopal government at the Restoration. We are astonished that any one who professed to be acquainted with the history of that period, and especially one who undertakes to describe its religious manners, should take up this erroneous notion. The English Book of Common Prayer was never introduced into Scotland, and, previous to 1637, was used only in the Chapel Royal, and perhaps occasionally in one or two other places, to please the king. The history of the short-lived Scottish PrayerBook is well known. At the Restoration neither the one nor the other was imposed, but the public worship was left to be conducted as it had been practised in the Presbyterian Church. Charles II. was not so fond of prayers, whether read or extempore, as to interest himself in that matter; his maxim was, that Presbyterianism was not fit for a gentleman; his dissipated and irreligious courtiers were of the same opinion; and therefore Episcopacy was established. As for the aspiring churchmen who farthered and pressed the change, they were satisfied with seating themselves in their rich bishoprics. Accordingly, the author will not find the Presbyterians repining' at this imposition; and had he examined their writings, as he ought to have done, he would have found them repeatedly admitting that they had no such grievance. . . . For the sake of giving effect to a particular scene, the author does not hesitate to violate historic truth and probability, and even to contradict his own statements or admissions. Instances of this occur in some of his best descriptions, and they show that though he has the imagination and feeling of a poet, he is deficient in the judgment and discriminating taste of a historian. M'Crie's works fill four volumes (1855-57); and there is a Life by his son (1840). Thomas Campbell was born in Glasgow on the 27th July 1777. The youngest of eleven, he came of a good Highland family, the Campbells of Kirnan in Argyllshire, who traced their origin to the first lord of Lochawe. The property, however, had passed from the old race, and the poet's father carried on business in Glasgow as a trader with Virginia. The American Revolution brought disaster, and in his latter days Alexander Campbell subsisted on a small income derived from a merchant's society, aided by his industrious wife, who took in young collegians as boarders. Thomas passed in 1791 from the grammar-school to the University of Glasgow, and was particularly distinguished for his translations from the Greek; a translation of part of the Clouds of Aristophanes being specially commended. He had already gained a prize for an English poem, an Essay on the Origin of Evil, modelled on Pope. Other poetical pieces, written between his fourteenth and sixteenth year, show his delicate taste and care of diction. He became tutor to a family in Mull, and about this time met with his 'Caroline of the West,' the daughter of a minister of Inveraray. In 1794 he begged five shillings from his mother, and walked to Edinburgh to attend the trials of Muir and Gerald for sedition-for he was already a stout Reformer and admirer of the French Revolution. The winter of 1795 saw him again at college work in Glasgow, and supporting himself by private tuition. Next. year he was again tutor in the Highlands, this time in Appin; thereafter he repaired to Edin burgh, hesitated between the Church and the law, but soon abandoning all hopes of either, employed himself in private teaching and work for the booksellers. Poetry was not neglected, and in April 1799 appeared his Pleasures of Hope. The copyright was sold for £60; but for some years the publishers gave the poet £50 on every new edition of two thousand copies, and allowed him, in 1803, to publish a quarto subscription-copy, from which he realised about 1000. It was in a 'dusky lodging' in Alison Square, Edinburgh, that the Pleasures of Hope was composed; much of it was thought out in walks round Arthur's Seat, and the opening lines were suggested by the Firth of Forth as seen from the Calton Hill. The poem went through four editions in a twelvemonth, having THOMAS CAMPBELL. From the Portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the National captivated all readers by its varied melody, polished diction, generous sentiment, and touching episodes; and in picturing the horrors of war and the partition of Poland the poet warmed to noble rage: Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time! Earth shook, red meteors flashed along the sky, And conscious Nature shuddered at the cry! Defects were noted in the Pleasures of Hope-lack of connection between the parts, florid lines, and imperfect metaphors; but such a series of genial pictures, of dignified and suggestive thoughts, in such terse and polished verse had rarely been found in a poem written at the age of twenty-one. More than a hundred and fifty new lines were added after the first edition. Shortly after its publication Campbell visited the Continent. He sailed from Leith for Hamburg in June 1800, and proceeding thence to Ratisbon, witnessed the action which gave that city to the French. The poet stood with the monks of the Scottish college of St James on the ramparts near the monastery while the Austrian cavalry charged the French. He saw no other battle-Hohenlinden was fought some weeks after he had left Bavaria-but made many excursions and was well received by Moreau and other French officers. The progress of the war drove him north to Hamburg, where he settled for a winter; and here he wrote some of his minor poems, published in the Morning Chronicle. Ye Mariners of England was 'made in Germany;' The Battle of the Baltic too was inspired by the arrival of the British fleet in the Sound. In another vein were some poems in which he imitated Klopstock, whose acquaintance he had made here. And the Exile of Erin was suggested by a meeting at Hamburg with an Irish rebel, Anthony MacCann. For this- -so jealous was the British Government of that day-Campbell was suspected of being a spy, and on his arrival in Edinburgh was subjected to an examination by the sheriff, which ended happily in mirth and conviviality. Shortly afterwards the poetical wanderer was received by Lord Minto as secretary and literary companion-a function Campbell's temper and democratic spirit rendered uncongenial, and erelong intolerable. To the year 1802 belong Lochiel's Warning and Hohenlinden-the latter surely a remarkable battle-piece, though it was rejected by the editor of the Greenock Advertiser, and was called by its author a 'mere drum and trumpet thing.' In 1803 he settled in London, making literature his profession, and living with Telford the engineer, who continued his friendship throughout a long life. For the Edinburgh Encyclopædia Campbell wrote biographies, an account of the drama, and other articles; he compiled three volumes of the Annals of Great Britain from the Accession of George III. to the Peace of Amiens, a continuation of Smollett, and, like Goldsmith, often contrived to brighten mere hack-work with literary grace. In 1805, through Fox's influence, the Government granted him a pension of £200-a well-merited tribute to the author of Ye Mariners of England and the Battle of the Baltic. In 1809 was published his second great poem, Gertrude of Wyoming, a Pennsyl vanian Tale, a pathetic story sweetly told in Spenserian stanzas, how 'the junction of European with Indian arms converted a terrestrial paradise into a frightful waste.' The best of his later pieces were contributed to the New Monthly Magazine, which he edited from 1820 to 1831. One of these minor poems, 'The Last Man,' is one of his most notable creations. In 1814, with Mrs Siddons and John Kemble, Campbell visited Paris, and so keenly enjoyed the sculpture and other works of art in the Louvre that they seemed to give his mind a new sense of the harmony of art. In 1818 he revisited Germany, and the year after his return published his Specimens of the British Poets, with biographical and critical notices, in seven volumes-a sound, sensible, and for the time eminently serviceable piece of work, though some of the criticism has now an antiquated air, and the standard is not that of the present day. In 1820 he lectured on poetry at the Surrey Institution; in 1824 he published Theodric, an extravagant tale, pompous and wooden, but containing one fine passage. O'Connor's Child Sir Henry Taylor pronounced to be 'the very soul of song-tragic, romantic, passionate'—and held that some of the other minor poems, The Spectre Boat, Glenara, The Ritter Bann, and Lord Ullin's Daughter, have an almost equal charm. Though busy in establishing the London University, he was in 1827 elected Lord Rector of the university of his native city-a compliment heightened by his re-election the two following years, the last time Sir Walter Scott being the rejected. In 1834 he made a voyage to Algiers, of which he published an account; and in 1842 he appeared again as a poet in a slight narrative piece unworthy of his fame, The Pilgrim of Glencoe. Among the literary engagements of his latter years were Lives of Mrs Siddons and of Petrarch. In the summer of 1843 he fixed his residence at Boulogne, but his health was now much impaired; he died the following summer, on the 15th of June 1844, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Campbell's early favourites and models were Milton and Gray, Thomson and Goldsmith, but especially Pope, whom he vehemently and, as Byron said, gloriously defended against Bowles and other critics. He shows the influence of these his masters, as well as of Akenside and Rogers and even Erasmus Darwin. Spite of his long life of literary work, the whole of his poetry fills but a small volume, and his best a very small bulk. 'What a pity it is,' said Sir Walter Scott, 'that Campbell does not write more and oftener, and give full sweep to his genius! He has wings that would bear him to the skies; and he does, now and then, spread them grandly, but folds them up again, and resumes his perch, as if he was afraid to launch away. What a grand idea is that,' said the kindly critic, 'about prophetic boding, or, in common parlance, second sight Coming events cast their shadows before! The fact is,' Scott added, 'Campbell is, in a manner, a bugbear to himself. The brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his further efforts. He is afraid of the shadow that his own fame casts before him.' Most of Campbell's longer poems are didactic and uninspired save in brief passages, felicitous and mellifluous but monotonous. Only in his war songs is he magnificent; and though most of his other work is little read, these are of universal acceptance and imperishable. And he is secure, as a critic said, of an 'immortality of quotation.' Though 'Like angel visits few and far between,' oftenest quoted, was borrowed by Campbell as well as by Blair from Norris of Bemerton (page 259), some of his phrases, lines, and couplets are household words: 'A sunburst in the storm of death;' 'Broken hearts die slow;' 'To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die;' 'With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe;' and 'mortal pleasure' defined as 'the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below :' 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue. 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before. Elegy written in Mull (June 1795). The tempest blackens on the dusky moor, And billows lash the long-resounding shore; In pensive mood, I roam the desert ground, And vainly sigh for scenes no longer found. O whither fled the pleasurable hours That chased each care and fired the Muse's powers?— Far different scenes allure my wondering eye- Far different these from all that charmed before, From the 'Pleasures of Hope.' Thy pencil traces on the lover's thought O'er all his heart shall Taste and Beauty sway! Free on the sunny slope, or winding shore, The moon is up-the watch-tower dimly burns-- The Death of Gertrude. Past was the flight, and welcome seemed the tower, Wove like a diadem its tracery round The lofty summit of that mountain green; Here stood secure the group, and eyed a distant scene. A scene of death! where fires beneath the sun, |