Still fiercer is his denunciation of England's cowardice in his Lines on Poland (11. 98-105): "Public Murder! that with pomp and gaud, And royal scorn of Justice, walks abroad To wring more tears and blood than e'er were wrung By all the culprits Justice ever hung! We read the diadem'd Assassin's vaunt, And wince, and wish we had not hearts to pant With useless indignation-sigh and frown, But have not hearts to throw the gauntlet down." Or again, in his poem entitled The Power of Russia, the second stanza of which runs thus: "Nations, mute accessories to the fact ! That Upas-tree of power, whose fostering dew To all that's hallowed, righteous, pure, and great, Campbell's Lines on a Scene in Bavaria; his verses To Sir Francis Burdett, commending his parliamentary denunciation (August 7th, 1832) of England's attitude towards Russia; his Ode to the Germans; his Song of the Greeks; his gruesome picture, in The Death Boat of Heligoland, of the fate of the statesmen who advocated the repression of Irish freedom: all these are animated by this same inextinguishable hatred of every form of political oppression. On Campbell's patriotism it is needless to dwell. He (c) Patriotism. is the Tyrtæus of England; and as long as the Union Jack floats over our navy, his Men of England, Ye Mariners of England, and The Battle of the Baltic will be the (d) Social reform. inspiration and the pride of his countrymen. Most "Is there a son of generous England here, The rose, the shamrock, and the thistle twine! As rocks resist the billows round their shore ; Their country leave unconquered as of yore !" It is matter for regret that Campbell's best energies should have been wasted on the phantom cause of Polish independence. He might have done better work as the champion of Labour against Capital. His references in The Pilgrim of Glencoe (11. 121, 122) to the "Cold-blooded tories of the modern stock, Who starve the breadless poor with fraud and cant"; and the newer doctrine, which presents itself to the liberal-souled Ronald, with regard to his father's blind assurance of the divine right of kings, in the hesitating query, "If men were made for kings, or kings for men," point in a direction along which Campbell might well have gone further as a pioneer in real reform. His poem, On Revisiting a Scottish River, is inspired by a similar feeling, and shows a happy union of clearsighted intellectual conviction, with philanthropic passion. The absence of religion, in any definite sense of the (e) Absence of religion. word, from Campbell's pages is remarkable, considering the character of his home education. Herein he is wholly unlike our greatest poets. Leaving Milton aside, as an avowedly religious writer, Shakspere's plays, though purely secular compositions, are profoundly leavened with the teachings of the Bible; and Burns's The Cottar's Saturday Night shows that evangelical truth had taken hold of his intellect and saturated his imagination. A curious illustration of this absence of any reference to Christianity lies in the fact that the first edition of The Pleasures of Hope, except for an appeal in one passage to the Divine vengeance, was frankly heathen. In the First Part the heavenly stage was occupied by the ancient gods of Greece and Rome, and by the modern personifications of Love, Mercy, and Wisdom, together with the Hindu deities, Brama, Seriswattee, “Camdeo bright," and "Ganesa sublime"; while in the Second Part the human soul was wafted from its deathbed on earth straight to the "morning dream of life's eternal day" by the sole agency of Hope. Campbell's friends appear to have remonstrated with him, with the result that succeeding editions contained an interpolation of fifty lines (11. 367-416), in which the soul, instead of simply "burning like a phoenix," is hurled like a comet back "to her source, the bosom of her God." But, except perhaps for the mention of the angelic music heard by the shepherds of Bethlehem, the passage is devoid of any true religious emotion. POETRY. In a passage in his journal his friend, Sir Walter Campbell's Scott, thus accounts for Campbell's ill success : "Some- (a)Its defects: how he wants audacity, fears the public, and-what is finish and (1) Want of accuracy. worse-fears the shadow of his own reputation. He is a great corrector too, which succeeds as ill in composition as in education." This last sentence (not italicized in the original) is strikingly untrue in fact, as well as irrelevant in explanation. Some of the greatest poets, Tennyson for example, have been the most addicted to unsparing "correction." It is true that Campbell often wrote and re-wrote, altered and re-altered; but this was mainly because he had not strength of resolution enough to fix his thoughts steadily till the true inspiration came. But "corrector" in a true sense he was not. One of the leading defects in his poetry is the want of accurate finish; a constantly recurring slovenliness either of expression or of thought. Take, for example, that beautiful lyric, To the Evening Star, which, otherwise equal to the best of Keats's odes, contains two blemishes in three stanzas. Thus the last line of the second stanza is untrue to fact. If cottage smoke "curls yellow in the sun," the sun must be well above the horizon; and in that case, the Evening Star would be inconspicuous, and the whole ode is out of character. What Campbell obviously meant was "curls yellow in the golden twilight that hangs over the departed sun." Again, it seems incredible that he should have allowed the third line of the middle stanza to appear in print "Whilst far-off lowing herds are heard," with its cacophonous assonance as irritating to the ear as it is easily avoidable. In The Battle of the Baltic the feeble and almost unmeaning word "raise" ("Now joy, Old England, raise!") is inserted simply to procure a rhyme to "blaze." To the "mermaid" of the last stanza we shall refer later; but it may be remarked here that the mermaid of prescription sings for the express purpose of drowning and not condoling with sailors; so that, if such a fabulous monster is to be introduced into a serious historical ode, her conduct should at least be made conventionally accurate.1 un Even Ye Mariners of England has some doubtful expressions. Thus, in the first stanza, England's standard is "launched," where the poet should have said " furled." And in the third stanza we are told that "Britannia needs no bulwarks," a word which in so eminently nautical a song ought to have its strict nautical meaning, instead of the comparatively unfamiliar one of "rampart or "fortification "- -a blemish which recurs in line 11 of The Battle of the Baltic. Campbell also misuses the word "mutual" in his song "How delicious is the winning," where he talks of "two mutual hearts." Two hearts may have a "mutual" attraction; but to speak of "hearts" themselves as "mutual" is unmeaning. metre and Of bad or slovenly rhymes Campbell has several (2) Faults of "cataract" is made to rhyme with "slack," "back," and grammar. "rack" in Part II., stanza xiv., of Gertrude of Wyoming, and similarly in stanza xv. of O'Connor's Child we have "cataracts" and "backs"; while in stanza x. 'murderers" rhymes but ill with "fierce." Again, his rhymes of "revere us" with "heroes" in Song of the Greeks, and of "wild wood" with "childhood" in the Exile of Erin are 1 This accuracy Campbell preserves in the case of the mermaids that beset the sailor Byron, which are classed with "hyenas." See note to Battle of the Baltic, 1. 70. |