Cyrus Redding: Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell

“THEODORIC,” unintentionally perhaps, on the part of the author, inclined much more in style to the modern taste in poetry than the “Pleasures of Hope.” The romantic school succeeded in tempering the formality of the classic, but by this term must not be understood that prevailing flood of diluted rhyme which has been since misnamed poetry, seeming in its admirers’ view more excellent in proportion to the meanness of the subject and the

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facility with which its torrent of words can be poured forth with little regard to the sense. The merit of a fine picture by Raphael or Titian does not consist in the flimsiness with which it is executed, nor in the trivial character of the subject. Campbell, from inclining in his last productions towards the later taste, gained nothing, and lost much of the effect his previous style secured for him. A portion of the inferiority of “Theodoric” arises from this cause, independently of its feebleness as a story.

The concluding portion of “Theodoric” is not worthy of the commencement. It is always

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politic to wind up well, that the reader may leave off with a favourable impression from what he has perused. The “Pleasures of Hope” comes nobly to its conclusion, and the gentle “Gertrude” terminates her song in a manner equally effective and appropriate; but “Theodoric” is brought to its termination faintly and wearily, without a line that leaves upon the mind of the reader the reflection that he has been perusing a work to which he may return with renewed pleasure. It is singular that so perfect a master of his art should have overlooked this point, for he could hardly have intended to try how far his verse might be led to please by extreme gentleness and even tameness in contrast to the vigour and strength it had before displayed. He composed much of “Theodoric” in his study in Seymour Street. I once wrote letters there, while he worked at his task. He corrected several of the proofs at another time while I was present, during which I employed myself in reading; for then there was not a word of conversation. Although he spoke of what he had in hand, I never saw the entire manuscript until just before he had copied it out for the printer. When he mentioned the title, I said, “What, the king of the Ostrogoths?”

Theodoric was, of course, reviewed in the “Quarterly,” then under the editorship of Mr. Coleridge. The diatribe was marked by all the virulence that an obscure individual, suddenly elevated to an office he had not the capacity to fill, could pour out. His incompetence for his post, his displacement in due time fully proved. The splenetic feeling of the party the review advocated, was fully displayed on the occasion. The Whig was denounced in the “Quarterly,” and the Tory in the “Edinburgh Review scandal and falsehood being unsparingly used by both; but in “flinging dirt,” the “Quarterly” had the advantage. Gifford was no more, but Wilson Croker still continued to violate in its pages the maxim of Jonathan Wild, under a new editor, that mischief should be husbanded, being too precious a commodity to be wasted. The uncle of Mr. Coleridge had lectured against the “Pleasures of Hope” in times gone past. This, perhaps, moved the editor upon the occasion. Even the unfortunate hero of the poem was christened Macbeth in the review. I remarked to Campbell, that Croker and the editor had no doubt held a consultation on the subject. The poet smiled, but it was easy to see, that while trying to bear it heroically, he

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felt it keenly. His “Specimens of the Poets,” were not reviewed at all in the “Quarterly,” because they were the property of Murray, to whom the “Quarterly” belonged, and to damn them in its pages being the law if they appeared at all, they were spared.

“Here,” said Campbell, “are a dozen copies of a ‘Letter to the Editor of the Quarterly,’ sent me from Edinburgh; I know not by whom written; it is pleasant to have unknown defenders.”

About that time, Campbell was surprised by a call from a friend of Brant, or Brandt, the Indian chief whom he had charged with such atrocities in his “Gertrude.” Some travellers, and among them Lieutenant Hall, of the dragoons, had, in visiting America, made mention in their published tours of an Indian chief having held the rank of colonel in the British service in America. Brant was the only son of the chief whom Campbell denounced as the destroyer of the village of Wyoming, upon the banks of the Susquehanna, where now stands the town of Wilksbarre. It appeared that Brandt had settled in Canada under the protection of his British allies: that he had accustomed his people, the Mohawks, to farming; had built a church, and translated one of the Gospels into the Mohawk language. His grave was found by Lieutenant Hall (so his travels stated) under the walls of the church he had erected. He left behind him a son and daughter. The British government had erected a large house for the chief, near Burlington, on Lake Erie. His son was a fine young man, of gentlemanly manners and appearance, who spoke and wrote English well, dressed in the English fashion, and was a lieutenant in the English service. His sister would not have disgraced the circles of fashion in Europe; her face and person were fine and

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graceful. She spoke English elegantly, and comported herself both in address and manner with almost Oriental softness.

There was a note subjoined to the letter thus addressed to Brant, which slightly noticed his own feelings about hostile criticism, and the submission of his work to the censorship of friends. I believe,—from something like the best part of thirty years’ closer intimacy with Campbell, for the best part of that time, than any other man,—I believe that what he states is strictly correct. Except in early life, when he submitted to the kind advice and critical judgment of Dr. Anderson the manuscript copy of the “Pleasures of Hope,” he consulted nobody in the composition of his poems. In solitude and silence he conceived and composed them. He was a proud man in this sense; he would have thought it an insult to his own understanding to consult this individual or that, who might be among his friends, and to take their judgment in preference to his own, after his former efforts had been crowned with great success. He might have read the manuscript to a friend or two before he put it into the printer’s

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hand, but only when it was perfected. The world has a notion, that a different is a wise course, because in these matters the world is as foolish as its own idea. Who are the critics of the hour, but men nine times out of ten utterly incapable of themselves exhibiting a tithe of the merit upon which they assume to sit in judgment? If Racine read his verses to an old woman, it was only that he might avail himself of obvious objections that would strike plain minds before a theatrical audience, and afford him the means of considering those meriting alteration. Such is the corruption of what is miscalled criticism in modern times, that interest, party feeling, private dislike, or the reverse, govern notices of new works, since criticisms they cannot be called, where no analysation of such works takes place—where the critic, self-styled, rarely gives the work he treats upon even a decent perusal.

Still Campbell could not forgive any who made a blow at him, where the result would not admit of being interpreted but to his disadvantage. He felt, then, that he had the worst of the matter at issue, the criticism being no party or personal matter, and that he was, in consequence, so far injured. This it must be confessed he never forgot. He did not care what spleen or party feeling or malevolence might do; these unjust attacks his own position and consciousness of merit might repel, but real justice in an attack struck home, and he never got over his antipathy to its author.

Before the “Spirits of the Age” appeared in a volume, Hazlitt had made known the incident respecting the line from Blair. Campbell never referred to that circumstance in our conversation about Hazlitt’s contributions, as might’be judged he would not, since it would thus induce a suspicion of the cause of his antipathy, at least, so I imagined—but I was wrong. A paper on Milton’s “Comus,” which I had written, and in

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which, without thinking about it, I had commented upon Pope’s borrowing from Milton, word for word, in the epistle of “Eloise and Abelard,” and had further remarked that Pope had diminished the grace of Milton’s language by his interpolations, I showed to the poet at the time we had been talking of Hazlitt. This was ill-timed, but Campbell, so far from applying it, as he might have done, to a parallel between himself and Blair, and imagining, as I had fought strenuously for the admission of Hazlitt’s articles, that I had something personal in view in such a paper, whereas the coincidence was perfectly accidental, said it was curious he had not remarked Pope’s plagiarisms himself, and seemed rather pleased with the observation. I had wished the article in the fire when it was too late; yet it went into the Magazine. How very different would a suspicious mind have acted under the circumstances. The simplicity and integrity of Campbell’s heart prevented that construction, which, without much blame, anyone might have been induced to construe into design. His habitual forgetfulness could not have interposed in this instance. I believe a more guileless man, one less capable of imagining evil towards another, never breathed.

Still his prejudices were insurmountable even

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where the error detected was founded on justice and could not be set aside. The “Spirits of the Age” was not published until 1825, but the remarks of the critic, it has been said, had a long prior existence, indeed as far back as 1816 or 1817, when they were first broached by Hazlitt in his lectures. It was difficult to imagine how Campbell at that time writhed under a few remarks that could not do him the slightest injury. No writer is faultless, and Campbell’s lofty elevation and established reputation as a poet it was impossible could be affected by observations which it was natural enough for any critic to entertain, and in the present case, were made by one almost unknown at the time. He would not, from indolence or self-love, correct palpable mistakes in his works acknowledged to be such by himself, and it was too much to suppose they would not be matter of comment to critics. Hazlitt was splenetic, and dealt unsparingly with some writers, but he by no means used Campbell so as his character of the poet’s verse in the “Spirits of the Age,” abundantly testifies.

Now as with Hazlitt, so with Coleridge, though in a less degree, for Coleridge spoke of the style of poetry, and did not criticise the individual. He attacked all works of a peculiar class. Campbell ever showed a great distaste afterwards towards Coleridge. Indeed, speaking of his better days, he was no lover of the Lake School of poets generally. He was no believer in their theories, theories delivered with no small mixture of conceit and self-assumption. Campbell thought that while doing good in untrammelling writers from superfluous and custom-ridden rules, they, on the other hand, went too far, and substituted licentiousness in place of wholesome freedom, when they scorned to discipline their verse, and advocated its running wild without curb or rein. He contended that painstaking in composition and careful finish were necessary to ensure endurance in poetry, and that poetical composition requires pruning and judicious management to bear good fruit fully as much as the espalier of the garden. Coleridge, for paradox, and talking’s sake perhaps, denied the existence of Homer. What did Coleridge know about Homer more than other people, when he thus flatly asserted this, of which he could have no competent knowledge? He would have entered upon a denial of his own identity if he had nothing else to talk about, that people would

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listen to, for his talk he must have had, or ceased to exist.

No one will regret that both Campbell and Byron wrote upon the same subject: their poems are both exquisitely beautiful, and yet bear little resemblance to each other. They speak how various are the phases of genius, and yet how perfect each may be in itself.

I found the image in an obscure printed poem, the date of which was 1811; the lines were as follow, and I took them to Campbell, who had clung to the opinion that the idea was primitive with himself; he could not gainsay a work with the date affixed:

“You are right,” said Campbell, “the idea is not original with me. I thought it had been, for I never met with it before. Foscolo has said rightly enough, that original ideas are few, the modes of putting them are countless, and there I suppose lies the novelty.”

“My Dear Friend,

“The criticisms in your review of my last volume of poems can form no proper subject for any printed animadversions of mine; but I hope the readers of this letter will excuse me for answering one of your observations, which relates rather to a matter of fact than to a matter of opinion.

“You say that my poem, the ‘Last Man,’ seems to have been suggested by Lord Byron’s poem, ‘Darkness.’—Now the truth is, that fifteen, or it may be more, years ago, I called on Lord Byron, who at that time had lodgings near St. James’s Street; and we had a long and, to me, a very memorable conversation, from which, I have not a doubt that his Lordship imbibed those few ideas in the poem, ‘Darkness,’ which have any resemblance to mine in the ‘Last Man.’—I remember my saying to him, that I thought the idea of a being witnessing the extinction of his species and of the creation, and of his looking, under the fading eye of nature, at desolate cities, ships floating at sea with the dead, would make a striking subject for a poem.—I met those very ideas, many years afterwards, when I read Lord Byron’s poem, ‘Darkness.’—It may be asked, why I did not then appeal to Lord Byron about the originality of those few ideas? As circumstances have turned out, I now wish that I had done so. Lord Byron’s most attached friend has given me his opinion, that if his Lordship had not forgotten the conversation, and was conscious of using an idea which I had suggested to him, he did so, prepared to give me credit for the suggestion whenever I should claim that credit. Had I taken this view of the case, and had I also then
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finished my little poem, I should in all probability have written to Lord B. But I had not written the piece, and at that time thought I never should write it. Unimportant as the leading idea was, I was discouraged by its being taken from me. There seemed to me to be no use in setting on foot a correspondence with Lord Byron, merely to dun him for an acknowledgment of my right to a stray idea. He might, or he might not, have recollected our conversation; but if he had forgotten it, his telling me so would have only increased a petty mortification.—Then as for ascertaining the matter by proofs, after years had past, how was I to rake up the recollections of those persons, to whom I might have, long ago, mentioned the design of my poem? One might be dead; a second might be uncertain as to dates; and a third certainly had so domestic a relation to me, that the evidence was no better than my own. In reality, I abandoned, for a great many years, the idea of fulfilling my sketch. But I was provoked to change my mind, when my friend Barry Cornwall informed me that an acquaintance of his intended to write a long poem, entitled the ‘Last Man.’—I thought this hard! The conception of the Last Man had been mine fifteen years ago; even Lord Byron had spared the title to me: I therefore wrote my poem so called,
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and sent it to the press; for not one idea in which was I indebted to Lord Byron, or to any other person.

“Had I foreseen events, I should have communicated with Lord Byron, during his lifetime, on this subject: but I could, no more than any one else, foreknow the loss of his mighty genius to the world.

“If it should be alleged that this declaration of mine implies a reflection on Lord Byron’s memory, I have to answer, that it by no means necessarily does so. His glory goes against the supposition that he was a conscious plagiary from me; and I am only affirming, what I feel to be true, that I could not be either consciously or unconsciously a plagiary from him. There are really not many ideas in the two pieces which are similar. But supposing my statement to be true, do I depreciate Lord Byron?—No!—He either thought my suggestions “fair game,” or forgot that it was not himself who had started them. A poor man easily remembers from what quarter he has received each of his few pieces of money or banknotes; but a rich man easily forgets where he got this or that coin or bank-note amidst his accumulated thousands!—In like manner, Lord Byron was the most likely person in the world to forget the sources of his ideas.

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“For the acceptance of what I have declared, I have nothing more to rely upon, than my own character and credibility. It would be attaching a ludicrous importance to this matter, for me to offer any stronger affirmation than my word of honour. How few or how many will believe that word, must depend on the common notions of my veracity; but supposing me conscious that this is truth, I ask if I have not a right to state it?

I am,
Yours, very truly,

T. Campbell.”

It has been stated how much Campbell was taken with political economy and doctrines that, however clear in themselves, and beneficial in their results to the nation, had not at that time the smallest chance of being adopted by the government. These principles became subjects of discussion at the poet’s almost daily. They were matured in minds hopeless of seeing any other benefit from them than that arising from the discussion of fifty other great and beneficial truths of a public character opposed to dominant interests. Not but that there were a few in parliament who, fully assenting to those doctrines, never expected to see them become the guides of our legislation. When, so long afterwards, Mr. Charles Pelham Villiers, to whom the merit primarily belongs of bringing forward in parliament, year after year, the repeal of the corn-laws, one of those great principles nobody expected to see carried out, until, like the slave-trade repeal, thirty or more sessions had been occupied in convincing unrighteous interests that the principle of justice was not extinct among mankind. For a time there were animated conversations about these doctrines pro and con.

“But consider, Campbell, we cannot cultivate the ground under so much per quarter for wheat; how shall men with landed estates live? It is all very well for you poets. How shall we keep our incomes?”

In this way Campbell would argue the point pleasantly with Mr. C—— and Lord Dillon, and two or three others, who took the anti-popular side of the question. In conversation he was lively at such times. The Scotch accent was not discoverable, unless when he chose to adopt it for humour’s sake, and this he would frequently do on such occasions as the above. I have often thought since upon these discussions, and those times when “the wisdom of Parliament,” in the

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large majority, was not wisdom with the multitude of counsellors. The poet was cold in death when Peel, more far-seeing than his old friends, pressed upon by the conviction of its necessity, freed his wrists from the handcuffs of a party; vindicated his own reason, and scattered to the winds the law, the existence of which was the best proof upon what principles the people of England had been too long governed. The poet was no more, but his advocacy of the triumphant principle, twenty-five years before his decease, is an evidence of his patriotism and soundness of judgment. Thus, among intellectual persons, in privacy, the principles are canvassed and cultivated, that come forth at last to change the policy of governments and amend society.

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Cyrus Redding (1785-1870) “Milton's Comus” in New Monthly Magazine. Vol. 7 (March 1823): 222-229.

Cyrus Redding (1785-1870) Mount Edgcumbe, a Poem. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1811). A topographical poem in couplets.

Edward Smedley the younger (1788-1836) “Theodric” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 31 (March 1825): 342-349.

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Author: Redding, Cyrus, 1785-1870

Title: Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1860).

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