MEMOIR OF THOMAS CAMPBELL, ESQ.


Of the subject of this memoir, it has been remarked, "that he has not,
that we know of, written one line, which, dying, he could wish to blot."
These few words will better illustrate the fitness of Mr. Campbell's
portrait for our volume, than a laudatory memoir of many pages. He has
not inaptly been styled the Tyrtaeus of modern English poetry, and one
of the most chaste and tender as well as original of poets. He owes less
than any other British poet to his predecessors and contemporaries.
He has lived to see his lines quoted like those of earlier poets in the
literature of his day, lisped by children, and sung at public festivals.
The war-odes of Campbell have scarcely anything to match them in-the
English language for energy and fire, while their condensation and the
felicitous selection of their versification are in remarkable harmony.
Campbell, in allusion to Cymon, has been said to have "conquered both
on land and sea," from his Naval Odes and "Hohenlinden" embracing both
scenes of warfare.

Scotland gave birth to Thomas Campbell. He is the son of a second
marriage, and was born at Glasgow, in 1777. His father was born in 1710,
and was consequently nearly seventy years of age when the poet, his son,
was ushered into the world. He was sent early to school, in his native
place, and his instructor was Dr. David Alison, a man of great celebrity
in the practice of education. He had a method of instruction in the
classics purely his own, by which he taught with great facility, and
at the same time rejected all harsh discipline, substituting kindness