Cyrus Redding: Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell

Campbell was in Glasgow at the time of his first re-election. I find two notes to myself from that city. The first, dated November 4th, 1827. By these it was evident that he had sustained some kind of indisposition while there:—

Copies of his letters to the students were printed and sent to Glasgow, where he presented them to the students. It would appear, from the following letter, that a proof of one of them, the third, had been sent to Glasgow by a wrong coach, which he, in his absence of mind, supposed came from me. He was not satisfied with it, and begged me to send him the magazine proof, a thing in reality of no use, because, had he used the incorrect proof sent him by the printers, and returned it to them, they would have made all right. He did not reflect upon this simple process, hence the following letter.

This letter was characteristic of Campbell’s abstraction at times. The printers were excellent at their craft. In a long experience of that patient craft, I never encountered better. Mr. Samuel Bentley was an excellent scholar as well as a man, and attended closely to the proofs himself. In order to save time in conveyance, a proof, not perfectly corrected by the copy, is frequently sent to an author, who has only to mark with his own, the printer’s corrections not made, and the end is secured of getting the proof returned in time. Campbell did not reflect upon this, nor how late he almost always was with his manuscript, rendering it necessary for the printer to use every precaution to prevent delay. “Praxitites” was corrected without Campbell’s proof, and the sheet printed as it stood in the publication by myself. But his excitability and lack of reflection, that the incorrect proof he had in his hand would naturally be corrected in London, by his own original copy, made him write off as if every thing depended upon his letter.

A circumstance indicative of his haste on first impressions, and at the same time his want of reflection, occurred this year, and occasioned much comment. Campbell was surprised at a letter from Northcote, the painter, charging Hazlitt with a breach of confidence wholly unwarrantable, in publishing conversations pretended to be confidential. But no breach of confidence could take place where no pledge was exacted, and the party presumed to be injured, by the disclosure of what was not denied to be true, had been dead sixty-nine years. The whole affair arose from Northcote’s vanity and forgetfulness of the consequences of his own acts. The painter wished to stand well in his native county, and to appear there as great a man as possible. I knew him well, and also a brother of his, a watchmaker, and cleverer man, before I knew the poet. Northcote was an excellent relator of anecdotes, and knew how to season them with sauce piquante when it suited him. He was a man of very narrow soul, and left all the savings of his life to a rich Devonshire baronet, who was no relation, but bore the same name, in order to leave the impression behind him of such a connexion really existing. He wrote a life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, some Fables, and

LITERARY REMINISCENCES AND

a life of Titian, in doing which a great portion of the literary credit was due to Hazlitt. Northcote had no erudition; he had been patronised by Reynolds in early life, as a fellow-countryman. During the interviews of Hazlitt and Northcote, the former strung together amusingly enough the conversations of the artist, and in July, 1826, sent them to the magazine, under the title of “Boswell Redivivus.” They were continued till the sixth number, a period of nine months, during which Northcote had read the papers and been delighted with them, because they tickled his petty vanity. Campbell, too had seen them, for I took care, and it was one main secret of our never differing, that nothing involving personality should appear in the publication which he did not see, as he dreaded being involved in any controversy. He saw nothing objectionable in them—how should he about individuals who had been long dead?

Northcote had not foreseen that his anecdotes of old Parson Mudge would make a noise at Plymouth, where, I believe, all Mudge’s immediate descendants were defunct. The Rev. Mr. Mudge, of Plymouth, was the same individual who flattered Johnson, and whose sermons Johnson in return took it into his head to praise extravagantly. Mudge was a clever, shrewd man of the world, of humble origin. His nearest

MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL.

descendants had proved themselves able and honourable men, the last of whom, General Mudge, died, I believe, in 1819 or 1820. Now, no sensible person could have been hurt by the statement of any fact that was not dishonourable relative to an ancestor, and when the characters of men are brought before the world and extolled by others, no matter from what motive, the world has a right to know the real truth about them.

In the present case there was an impress of truth about Northcote’s remarks, for, with much of a snarling disposition, he did not lack shrewdness of mind. Among the other things he told Hazlitt, was the circumstance of Sir Joshua Reynolds wishing to reprint “Mudge’s Sermons,” and asking Northcote to endeavour to procure some particulars of his history. Northcote gave Sir Joshua a manuscript account of Mudge, written by one of his old schoolfellows. “After that,” said Northcote, “nothing more was heard of a life.” He had run away from his school because the housemaid would not have him. He had slept in a sugar-hogshead in Wapping, and found a half-penny in the street, with which he bought a loaf to prevent him from starving. He was obliged to return home in distress, and afterwards left the dissenters to go over to the church, because the dissenters would not give him some post he wanted. It was said by Northcote, that

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Reynolds and his friends were mortified to find that one, whom they had cried up so much, should have been no better in origin. Mudge possessed talent, and much wary plausibility in addition, and personating ultra church notions, recommended himself to Johnson and Reynolds, for both were inclined to those sentiments. “Reynolds,” said Northcote, “had a keen eye for nature, and perceived that the manuscript of the schoolfellow was nearer the truth than Johnson’s pompous character of Mudge, which, like one of Kneller’s portraits, would do for anybody.” “Northcote showed me,” said Hazlitt, “a print of him, after Sir Joshua, which appeared one of a complete high-priest.” His wife, the servant whom he fell in love with, used to say of her husband that he got up and preached that of which he did not believe a word. Northcote stated that his father knew Mudge, and always thought there was a stamp of insincerity about his orthodoxy. Had he been at Rome, he would have been a cardinal, as he had ambition and ability for anything. He grew indolent at last, preached the same sermons over again, and spent his time playing cards with old ladies. This was the substance of the communication made to Hazlitt, to whom no caution was given not to publish it. Northcote made no complaint about it, nor would he ever have done so, for he was too fond of seeing himself thus re-

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flected in print, but for what occurred in the sequel.

The mischievous magazine reached Plymouth, where some of the friends of Mudge still survived. Northcote, who, as already said, had in this respect played the short-sighted part, or perhaps not calculating upon the article producing any such effect at this distance of time, was assailed by letters from his native town, strongly remonstrating with what was not attempted to be denied. Northcote could not escape from declaring himself the father of the anecdotes, but then he could deny the authority to publish, by saying it was only a private communication dishonourably made public by Hazlitt—dishonourably after the publication had gone on, as all the world knew, for many months! Northcote’s answer should have been that he did communicate the facts to Hazlitt, who had published them without consulting him on the propriety. So far the painter might have gone honourably, but not a step further. Northcote, however, was not content with accusing Hazlitt to the Plymouth people of a most dishonourable breach of private intercourse in publishing what Northcote had seen, known, and was delighted at his publishing for so many consecutive months, but probably having his qualms lest the Plymouth folk should sagaciously scent the true state of the case, determined to vituperate Hazlitt to Camp-

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bell, in order to get a reply from Campbell which he might employ to strengthen his excuses. This plan succeeded. On getting Northcote’s letter, the poet believed that all in it was without subterfuge, and not thinking of the past numbers, believed that, as Northcote stated, Hazlitt had violated a confidential communication. The moment, therefore, he got the note, he replied in the strongest terms of indignation against such conduct on the part of Hazlitt, in a haste, too often his way, quickened, perhaps, by his known dislike to Hazlitt himself.

Correct, indeed, was my anticipation. Campbell’s letter was full of strong expressions of his own indignant feelings at Northcote’s complaint, and at the ill-treatment he had received so unexpectedly. He styled it “infernal” in Hazlitt to act in such a way. Northcote, delighted, as I had foreseen, to screen himself at any cost, sent Campbell’s letter to Plymouth. In this letter Campbell stated further, that Hazlitt should write no more for the publication, having so wantonly wounded the feelings of a venerable man of genius!

Campbell had an acquaintance with an amiable and excellent family in the West, some connexions of which resided in London; and connected also with that family, I believe only through business, was a Mr. Richard Rosdew, a wine-merchant, stamp-distributor, and banker. The letter of Campbell got to Plymouth, was canvassed there, and Mr. Rosdew getting the poet’s address, wrote to him about it, though it is hardly possible to know upon what ground he took up the question.

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He was a man wholly unacquainted with literature, and was so ignorant as to suppose that printing Johnson’s character of Mudge could put down a conversation and matter-of-fact incident between Reynolds and Northcote, which, amid all, the last did not deny to be correct, and no doubt was so. Northcote wanted to clear himself of willingly making public the secret; Rosdew, to extinguish a positive fact by a quotation from Johnson, who really knew nothing of Mudge’s previous history, it is probable, and was prejudiced for and against people very often without reason. “Well,” said Campbell, “we can put the letter in the small print, and the matter will end.” It did not put an end to it, for a second pertinaciously followed. This Mr. Rosdew weakly imagining that an extract from an opinion of Johnson’s could extinguish a positive fact!

Northcote’s want of moral courage, and unworthy sacrifice of Hazlitt to save his own want of forecast, and his shrewdness in getting and using a letter from Campbell as he did, mark the man’s character exactly. He tried to march out of the scrape by a crooked road. Northcote was not really offended, for he left Hazlitt a hundred pounds in his will.

Campbell said he had been precipitate in his reply, and that the Plymouth people must naturally have thought as he did, that Hazlitt was the party to be censured. I appealed to the former numbers of the same series. If in one case there was a violation of confidence, it was the same in all. Hazlitt was a valuable contributor. The poet said he only intended to prohibit that series of articles, nor did he think his own letter would have been made public. In a little time, Hazlitt’s writing in the magazine was resumed, Campbell began to see the case in a right point of view, for I omitted no opportunity of urging it upon him. He knew that Hazlitt and myself were little more than “speaking acquaintance,” and that I was disinterested in the part I took.

The political changes this year put the poet in high spirits. The vacation of office by Lord Liverpool, in consequence of illness, and Canning’s accession to power, naturally enlivened the hearts of the liberal party, to be re-acted upon by the death of the minister to whom it had given its disinterested support. Campbell expressed his astonishment that Peel had charged the Catholics with idolatry, and remarked that he thought Peel more a man of the world than to do what he was thus charged with doing, by the Duke of Norfolk, at the Catholic meeting. He regretted Peel’s going out of office, as an anti-emancipatist, with the other ministers, for he expressed his hope, that as both Canning and Peel were of the people, if we could not have a Whig ministry, at least a liberal Tory one might govern the country. In the meanwhile he proposed that we should begin to take a political character in one or two stirring articles, but nothing was done more than my giving in the summary something little beyond the milk-and-water colour which had been the previous tone. All hopes, however, on the moderate side were destroyed by the death of Canning. The reign of bigotry was to triumph again for a season.

Flaxman, another friend of Campbell, dropped off this year, in the ripeness of a full age. Campbell declared him the first of sculptors for realising his idea of the Greek antique. Though by no means an amateur in the arts, nor able to discriminate sculptural or pictorial excellence in detail, he had formed certain general ideas from the different collections of sculpture he had seen, which were very near the truth. It was impossible that, with the poet’s fine eye, and the natural feeling for the symmetrical and beautiful, which is innate with genius, that a pretty close approximation in idea to perfect beauty of form should not be almost unconsciously acquired, and stamped upon such a mind; yet Campbell was unable to use a pencil in the delineation of the simplest natural object, and this he sometimes lamented, though he said he had tried to draw in his youth. Nor do I ever remember his indicating any comprehension of the science of music, although he was greatly delighted with certain musical pieces when he heard them played, not, perhaps, in accordance with the

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choice of the many in the taste of the hour, but in what was better, an accordance with his own feelings. Talma, the French actor, whom he much admired, his friend, Miss Benger, and Gifford of the Quarterly Review, whom, when any one used to censure, he would always defend, were among those whom I remember his speaking of at the close of the year as having been taken off by death, among those he had known. He spoke of such deprivations, not only as painful, but as to him unaccountable, but upon the supposition of our ignorance of the real end of our existence at all. “I am convinced there is no man that knows life well, and remembers all the incidents of his past existence, who would accept it again; we are certainly here to punish precedent sins.”

Overtaking Pringle in the street one day, I

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found he was going to the poet’s house in Upper Seymour Street West; and bent the same way, we proceeded together. Mrs. Campbell was gone out; it was approaching sunset on a fine June evening, and we agreed to try and get the poet to walk into the park. He would not move a step after dinner, but hunting the sideboard found some wine, which he placed upon the table, and ordering glasses, said that Mrs. Campbell being out, he did not know where the key of his wine was, but he had no doubt she would return before we had emptied the decanter which stood before us. We might let the wine alone if we pleased, but he would not go out for walking’s sake, as he had been in town that day. “In fact,” he said, addressing Pringle, “if you claim to be my countryman, if you are an honest son of a Scotch daddie, you will leave that Saxon to go by himself, if he is determined to depart, and let us be cozy over this sherry.”

Pringle insisted this was an old story, and the poet did not get well out of the scrape. Then we had some reflections on the attachment of lawyers to mystification. An aged woman, a grandmother, somewhere in the north, it had been decided for the parochial authorities, was bound to maintain the grandchildren of one of her sons. In such a case a grandmother ought to inherit a grandchild’s property. Would the law give it so?

“Friend Banim accompanied me to Irving’s on Sunday, and we had the pleasure of hearing him fall most bitterly on the Papists and the Scarlet Lady,” said Pringle.

“You have not yet heard Irving, he will make a convert of you; every body, high and low, has heard him—all the town runs after him.”

“You are demolishing my idol,” said Pringle, laughing; “but, in truth, I cannot tell what to make of him, between jest and earnest—what do you think of him?” turning to me, who had sat an idle listener.

“Hush!” said Pringle, “that is lese-majesty towards ecclesiastical powers and sectaries.”

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Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) Letters to the Students of Glasgow on the Epochs of Literature. (London: Henry Colburn, 1827). A pamphlet; reprinted from the New Monthly Magazine, July 1827-April 1828.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) “Boswell redivivus” in New Monthly Magazine. Vol. 17-19 (August 1826-March 1827). Reprinted as Conversations with Northcote.

James Northcote (1746-1831) The Life of Titian: with Anecdotes of the distinguished Persons of his Time. 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1830). Written with William Hazlitt.

James Northcote (1746-1831) Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knt. comprising original Anecdotes of many Persons, his Contemporaries; and a brief Analysis of his Discourses, to which are added, Varieties on Art. (London: Henry Colburn, 1813).

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Cyrus Redding (1785-1870) “Death of Mr. Canning” in New Monthly Magazine. Vol. 20 (September 1827): 269-280.

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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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