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THE Chevalier Pecchio was
an accomplished Italian, who had been driven into exile by the tyranny of the Austrian
government. He formed one of the little circle of foreigners among the poet’s
acquaintance. He went out to Greece in 1825, in order to fulfil a commission for the Greek
deputies in London, in behalf of a cause of which he had ever been the warm advocate. The
account of his voyage was not at
that moment devoid of interest. Touching events move like cloud-shadows over the grass, and
pass away into the general oblivion.
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Pecchio became a candidate for the professorship of
Italian in the London University, but gave up the application on finding it was of very
small value. He received afterwards the appointment of master in foreign languages at a
Dissenting college near York, where he married a lady of considerable fortune. He
ultimately settled at Brighton, where he died. He was of an amiable temper, a warm friend,
and an agreeable companion. He was one of the few who
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The poet continued to watch the cause of Greece with the greatest
anxiety. He took a deep interest on the subject of Greek education. He made inquiries of
Pecchio about the difference between the ancient
and the modern tongue, and whether they were not in general much greater than those given
by Byron as parallels from St. John’s gospel. He
seemed at one time as if he thought it possible for the Greeks to return to their pure
tongue again through the medium of well—appointed schools, overlooking too much the
physical obstacles existing to such a restoration, as was often his mode in considering
favourite subjects. In fancy every obstacle was
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“How mighty is still the name of that little country,” said Campbell, speaking of it. “Rome carries no resemblance to what it was in the days of the Cæsars, and after all they are still Greek as they were in the days of Homer, they have risen again. They have much of their old spirit, too, according to our friend Pecchio, who says their names are in sound like those that must have come upon the generations two or three thousand years ago.”
With the rest of the empire Campbell had great hopes from the influence of Canning in settling the affairs of Greece. The ancient valour of the people
did not seem to be diminished by their long slavery, although slavery might have deprived
them of many virtues enjoyed by freemen. He was much affected with one letter of Count Santa Rosa, which Pecchio added to his notes, breathing the integrity of a most excellent and
accomplished states-
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“I cannot tell how I was so pleased with Santa Rosa, but among all the illustrious exiles whom the despots of the continent have driven to our shores, I know none to compare with him, and he has fallen! Byron, too, has fallen there, and a great number of able men—something must come of it. How sickening it is to see the great powers looking on without interference out of jealousy of each other.”
During the year 1826, the only poetical effort of Campbell was the pretty little poem called “Field Flowers.” The last portion of
his lectures upon poetry comprised his prose articles. There were one or two instances
afforded, also, this year, of that inconsistency, or rather fluctuation, of feeling and
opinion which, in certain things, marked the poet’s literary career through life. A
short, but severe, notice of the
Rev. W. L. Bowles’ letter to the elder
Roscoe he consented should appear in print, or
did not object, on my proposing it to him; a ticklish thing.
Bowles’ letter was entitled “Lessons in Criticism to William Roscoe, Esq., in answer to a
Letter to the Rev. W. L. Bowles, on the Character and Poetry of Pope; with further
lessons in Criticism to a Quarterly Reviewer, &c.” He now forgot his
former resolutions about omitting all relative to
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“That a clergyman of the church of England, a gentleman of
respectable station in society, and a man of letters, should condescend to exhibit to
the world his vindictive feelings and angry temper, his love of personality, and his
taste for sarcasm, must be a subject of regret to everyone who is anxious for the
respectability of our literature. It is, indeed, very painful to see a writer like
Mr. Bowles, who has attained a certain
degree of reputation, and who, by the exertion of his poetical
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I believe, but am not certain, for I have only recollection for a guide,
that the notice of Joanna Baillie’s
“Martyr” was the
poet’s own. If so, favourite as Mrs. Baillie was with him, his
usual idleness prevented his giving a more full and satisfactory account of that pleasing
drama. This year, too, I think, he put into my hand a ridiculous publication from the
notorious Stockdale, of Harriet Wilson celebrity, complaining he felt unwell, and could not write
about it himself in time
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“You know Lord
Holland,” he observed: “now to me, Fox was, and yet was not, like him; in general he resembled him,
particularly as to person and temper, with that urbane, attaching, straightforward
openness of character so conspicuous in Lord Holland, but in
dress, style of speaking, and in their pleasures, the resemblance did not so well
hold. No one could know either without becoming attached, but Lord
Holland was the better scholar, he had never wantoned in dissipation
as Fox had. They were alike in that they never suffered
themselves to be discouraged when there was little hope of seeing their own
principles triumphant. They had a conviction of the soundness of the principles
they supported. He was surprised to see any statesman so meek and simple in his
manners as Fox, having been deeply struck with the accounts of
his speeches in the newspapers, and calculated on a very dif-
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Of Lord Holland, he remarked that he never felt anything like a home out of his own house, but he never left Lord Holland’s society without reluctance. He felt free from constraint, and “comfortable,” when he visited him, which he could scarcely say of other persons of rank where he had been entertained.
“In truth,” said Campbell, “I never see so much downright goodnature in anybody as
in Lord Holland; his taste, too, is pure, and
his views upon every subject perfectly just;” adding, “he will not
suffer his prejudices to cloud his reason for a moment. I wish I could imitate him; and
yet he is not passive either. I do not think his imaginative powers equal to his
uncle’s, but he is wonderfully lucid in all he says, and ever to the point. He is
so honest; you feel you can trust him with anything. The Tories do not at all like him,
since all he does is from the heart. He opposes his justice to their policy, and he is
never sensitive or fearful about anything.” With a proper delicacy towards
his friend, he never spoke
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The intelligence often received from Ireland, public and private, was correct, clever, and to the purpose. Postages were costly then, and it often happened that the poet and myself had communications written upon the same sheet of paper. Campbell was a strenuous supporter, as already stated, of Catholic Emancipation. A private letter of that time, curious now, said,—
“The Catholic movement va son
train, even in spite of the Catholic leaders. The better the
cause goes on the more mad are its conductors, and what is worse, there is no method in
their madness. I did not meet a man in England who did not abuse Shiel. However, this only proves how much slavery
degrades, and how necessary emancipation is, to put the Catholics on a level with their
age. We are still overrun with fever, and starvation, its parent. I distrust very much
the florid accounts of the potato crops; though it is to be believed that some
improvement took place in the later portion of them, still the worst remains
behind—the total disorganisation of Irish society and the growing distress in the
labouring classes. True it is that our revenues increase, but, excepting the excise on
spirits, how little do the peasantry contribute to the excess! The fact seems to be,
that though agriculture improves
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“Ay,” said Campbell, “they are rogues not designedly, but involuntarily, from long habit. We are creatures of habit, even unintentionally, in our bodily organs as well as in our mental dispositions. Does not the mouth like to repeat the same sounds, and often without design, almost against the will? My hand, when I was writing just now, went to find the ink where it stood a little while ago, though it is some minutes since I removed it to another part of the table. These landlords are only followers of bad habits, are selfish, destitute of will, and moved by custom in what they do, because it was done before.”
“Then the country suffers, because men will
* The new court for the sale of lands in Ireland has since shewn the state of the landed proprietary there, and confirmed the justice of the above remarks. |
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“I do not say they should not mend their manners; but it is the potato does it all—that cursed potato—men can live so cheap. It is the greatest plague ever sent into a country.”
Here we commonly had a very long discussion, the poet supporting the doctrines of a well-known school, while I met his arguments by the assertion that the whole mischief was owing to our artificial state, and our public burdens; that the idea of accommodating nature and her dictates, the state of population and the charities and sympathies of existence to the political expediency of past bad government, was absurd. Then would follow a good-humoured hail-storm of politico-economical arguments, which I generally met by admitting the truth of them in the main, when they did not war with nature, and, as in the case of his countryman, M‘Culloch, in regard to Ireland, with indisputable truth. Upon which he would say he feared he must resign me to the “hardness of my own heart.”
In these little discussions the poet ever displayed good-humour. If,
however, he commenced a serious discussion upon a grave subject, and he was met by joke or
badinage, he instantly took offence, and when he put on a
serious face upon such things, he never did it without earnestness
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He got a little work, I think, about this time, but I know not from what quarter, that set him at once upon his hobby of the origin of the ancient inhabitants of these islands. It was an essay on the physiognomy and physiology of the present English. Upon this treatise he wrote the following remarks:—
“This author combats and
completely overthrows that system of national physiology that originated with the
insane and impudent Pinkerton, and, we are sorry
to add, found a defender in the learned and worthy Dr.
M‘Culloch—a system which maintained that the Gothic and the
Celtic races were originally and generally different, and that this difference has been
ever clear and distinct in their physiological, physiognomical, and moral character,
neither time nor accident having had power to change it. Having exposed the fallacy of
this system, our author proceeds to answer the question, ‘How we are to account
for the variety of character which we continually observe in the human species?’
His answer is, that the difference of physiological character in the human race is
altogether the result of external and accidental causes, and not of any original
generic variety; and these causes he considers to be com-
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He asked me what I thought of the theory of coal-black eyes, and I was enabled to gratify his own view of the matter, by citing certain districts, the inhabitants of which made great way against the writer’s opinion.
Anything like formality, above all, the idea of being invited out for
any other than a social and friendly object, rendered Campbell silent and ill at ease. I know that this was the case at the house
of an individual of opposite politics, high in a public office. “They asked me to
show me,” he observed, afterwards; “I will never dine there
again.” It was remarked that he preserved great reserve, and disappointed
expectation upon that occasion among those who had never seen him before, appearing the
reverse of what he really was in a place where he felt himself free. He was not formed by
habit or mode of thinking for public life. He shrunk from saying and doing things which men
who mingle largely in
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During the first six months of 1827 the poet contributed nothing to the press, either prose or poetry. The writer of some observations on Paley, expressing his belief that the doctor had subscribed the church articles without too narrowly examining them, Campbell remarked that it was hard upon the clergy, they were compelled to swear to do and believe so many things neither they nor anybody else could do or believe. None but the clergy here, and the Jesuits abroad, were allowed to swear with reservations that a gentleman dare not make even upon his bare word. The ecclesiastical law was a many-headed hydra, every head ready to devour its brother.
He continually lamented that he wanted a subject to write upon. “Give me a subject and I will get up an article for you,” he would often say.
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At one time I suggested the modern poets, in continuation of his former topic in the lectures, for I knew he had thought of such a subject. But from that he shrunk as much from a distaste for saying anything about his contemporaries, as from his being tired of his lectures on poetry, upon which, for him, he had dwelt a long time. Would he not, then, take up the defunct English poets, whom he had neglected or only touched upon cursorily in his “Essay,” or he might give us specimens of the continental muse. He might, for example, begin with Germany. Singular enough, he stated he should have too much reading to make for such a purpose. He had directed his attention very little to the German poets. He said he could not do justice to German poetry within any reasonable time. It has been seen that to conquer existing difficulties was no part of his disposition.
Soon after his election to the lord rectorship of Glasgow, in November,
1826, so highly flattering to his feelings as coming from his own university, it was
proposed to give him a public dinner, which he declined, lest it should be deemed
political. His election provided him with a subject, in his “Letters to the Students of Glasgow,” of which
he published the first in the month of July, 1827. The men opposed to him were men of no
mean consideration, namely, Mr. Canning and
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Campbell went to Scotland, and his inaugural address
was delivered in April, 1827, a garbled report of which only appeared in the newspapers.
When he reached the college-green on his way to deliver it, the snow lay on the ground, and
he found the youths pelting each other with snowballs. That he was just going to deliver a
solemn address to the same youth never for a moment crossed his mind. Such an absence of
mind, on an occasion of similar importance, so incongruous, pompous doctors or stiff
ceremonialists would have it, was not to be palliated, but it was strictly in character.
The feeling of his youth came upon him, the spirit of past years animated him. He rushed
into the melée, and joined in the frolic in his fiftieth year, as if
he had been but fifteen. He flung about his snowballs with no inconsiderable dexterity as
well as rapidity. Then when the moment for delivering the address was come, the students
being summoned, and he proceeding in the van, they entered the hall together. It was
impossible to say who most delighted in the scene,
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He was a second time unanimously elected lord rector, in the month of
November in that same year, so highly were the students pleased with their last choice. On
this second occasion the students paid him a spontaneous mark of regard they had not shown
to any preceding rector. As soon as the re-election had taken place, all the scholars of
the university proceeded in a body, marching in regular procession and in the order of
their classes, to the house in which Campbell was
staying, that of Mr. Gray, in Claremont Place. A
deputation then waited upon the newly-elected lord rector to congratulate him on the
unanimity which had prevailed among them in regard to their choice.
Campbell threw up the window, and made an animated address to
them, which was received with the highest marks of youthful enthusiasm. As soon as it was
con-
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