Thomas Campbell | |
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 Portrait bySir Thomas Lawrencec. 1810 | |
| Born | (1777-07-27)27 July 1777 Glasgow, Scotland,Kingdom of Great Britain |
| Died | 15 June 1844(1844-06-15) (aged 66) Boulogne, France |
| Resting place | Westminster Abbey |
| Period | 1790s–1840s |
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Thomas Campbell (27 July 1777 – 15 June 1844) was a Scottish poet. He was a founder and the first President of theClarence Club and a co-founder of theLiterary Association of the Friends of Poland; he was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what becameUniversity College London. In 1799 he wrotePleasures of Hope, a traditional 18th-centurydidactic poem inheroic couplets. He also produced several patriotic war songs— "Ye Mariners of England", "The Soldier's Dream", "Hohenlinden" and, in 1801,The Battle of the Baltic, but was no less at home in delicate lyrics such as "At Love's Beginning".
Born onHigh Street, Glasgow in 1777, he was the youngest of the eleven children of Alexander Campbell (1710–1801), son of the 6th and lastLaird of Kirnan,Argyll, descended from theMacIver-Campbells. His mother, Margaret (born 1736), was the daughter of JohnCampbell of Craignish and Mary, daughter of Robert Simpson, "a celebrated RoyalArmourer".[1]
In about 1737, his father went toFalmouth, Virginia as a merchant in business with his wife's brother Daniel Campbell, becoming aTobacco Lord trading between there and Glasgow. They enjoyed a long period of prosperity until he lost his property and their old and respectable firm collapsed in consequence of theAmerican Revolutionary War. Having personally lost nearly £20,000, Campbell's father was nearly ruined.[2] Several of Thomas' brothers remained in Virginia, one of whom married a daughter ofPatrick Henry.[3]
Both his parents were intellectually inclined, his father being a close friend ofThomas Reid (for whom Campbell was named) while his mother was known for her refined taste and love of literature and music.[4] Thomas Campbell was educated at theHigh School of Glasgow and theUniversity of Glasgow, where he won prizes forclassics andverse-writing. He spent the holidays as a tutor in the westernHighlands and his poemsGlenara and theBallad of Lord Ullin's Daughter were written during this time while visiting theIsle of Mull.[5][6]
In 1797, Campbell travelled toUniversity of Edinburgh to attend lectures onlaw. He continued to support himself as a tutor and through his writing, aided byRobert Anderson, the editor of the British Poets. Among his contemporaries in Edinburgh wereSir Walter Scott,Henry Brougham,Francis Jeffrey,Thomas Brown,John Leyden andJames Grahame. These early days in Edinburgh influenced such works asThe Wounded Hussar,The Dirge of Wallace and theEpistle to Three Ladies.[5][7]
In 1799, six months after the publication of theLyrical Ballads ofWordsworth andColeridge, "The Pleasures of Hope" was published. It is a rhetorical and didactic poem in the taste of his time, and owed much to the fact that it dealt with topics near to men's hearts, with theFrench Revolution, the partition ofPoland and with negro slavery. Its success was instantaneous, but Campbell was deficient in energy and perseverance and did not follow it up. He went abroad in June 1800 without any very definite aim, visitedGottlieb Friedrich Klopstock atHamburg, and made his way toRegensburg, which was taken by the French three days after his arrival. He found refuge in a Scottishmonastery. Some of his best lyrics, "Hohenlinden", "Ye Mariners of England" and "The Soldier's Dream" (which was later set by Beethoven),[8] belong to his German tour. He spent the winter inAltona, where he met an Irish exile, Anthony McCann, whose history suggestedThe Exile of Erin.[5]
He had at that time the intention of writing an epic on Edinburgh to be entitled "The Queen of the North". On the outbreak of war between Denmark and England he hurried home, the "Battle of the Baltic" being drafted soon after. At Edinburgh he was introduced to the firstLord Minto, who took him in the next year to London as occasional secretary. In June 1803 appeared a new edition of the "Pleasures of Hope", to which some lyrics were added.[5]
In 1803 Campbell married his second cousin, Matilda Sinclair, and settled in London. He was well received inWhig society, especially atHolland House. His prospects, however, were slight when in 1805 he received a government pension of £200. In that year the Campbells removed to Peak Hill,Sydenham.[9] Campbell was at this time regularly employed on theStar newspaper, for which he translated the foreign news. In 1809 he published a narrative poem in theSpenserianstanza,Gertrude of Wyoming – referring to theWyoming Valley ofPennsylvania and theWyoming Valley Massacre – with which were printed some of his best lyrics. He was slow and fastidious in composition, and the poem suffered from overelaboration. Francis Jeffrey wrote to the author:
"Your timidity or fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give your conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as they present themselves; but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth, till half their nature and grandeur is chiselled away from them. Believe me, the world will never know how truly you are a great and original poet till you venture to cast before it some of the rough pearls of your fancy."[5]
In 1812 he delivered a series of lectures on poetry in London at theRoyal Institution; and he was urged by Sir Walter Scott to become a candidate for the chair of literature at Edinburgh University. In 1814 he went to Paris, making there the acquaintance of theelder Schlegel, ofBaron Cuvier and others. His pecuniary anxieties were relieved in 1815 by a legacy of £4000. He continued to occupy himself with hisSpecimens of the British Poets, the design of which had been projected years before. The work was published in 1819. It contains a selection with short lives of the poets, and prefixed to it a critical essay on poetry. In 1820 he accepted the editorship of theNew Monthly Magazine, and in the same year made another tour in Germany. Four years later appeared his "Theodric", a not very successful poem of domestic life.[5]
Campbell took an active share in the foundation ofUniversity College London (originally known as London University), visitingBerlin to inquire into the German system of education, and making recommendations which were adopted by Lord Brougham. He was elected LordRector of Glasgow University (1826–1829) in competition against SirWalter Scott. Campbell retired from the editorship of theNew Monthly Magazine in 1830, and a year later made an unsuccessful venture withThe Metropolitan Magazine. He had championed the cause of the Poles in "The Pleasures of Hope", and the news of the capture ofWarsaw by the Russians in 1831 affected him as if it had been the deepest of personal calamities. "Poland preys on my heart night and day," he wrote in one of his letters, and his sympathy found a practical expression in the foundation in London of theLiterary Association of the Friends of Poland. In 1834 he travelled to Paris andAlgiers, where he wrote hisLetters from the South (printed 1837).[5]
His wife died in 1828. Of his two sons, one died in infancy and the other became insane. His own health suffered, and he gradually withdrew from public life. He died atBoulogne on 15 June 1844 and was buried on 3 July 1844[10]Westminster Abbey atPoet's Corner.[5]
Campbell's other works include aLife ofMrs Siddons (1834),[11] and a narrative poem, "The Pilgrim ofGlencoe" (1842). SeeLife and Letters of Thomas Campbell (3 vols., 1849), edited by William Beattie, M.D.;Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell (1860), byCyrus Redding;The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (1860);The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (1875), in theAldine Edition of theBritish Poets, edited by the Rev. V. Alfred Hill, with a sketch of the poet's life byWilliam Allingham; and theOxford Edition of theComplete Works of Thomas Campbell (1908), edited by J. Logie Robertson. See alsoThomas Campbell byJ. Cuthbert Hadden, (Edinburgh:Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1899,Famous Scots Series), and a selection by Lewis Campbell (1904) for the Golden Treasury Series.[5]
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Campbell, Thomas".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 130.
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| Preceded by | Rector of the University of Glasgow 1826—1829 | Succeeded by |
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