| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 121 |
Though Campbell’s nominal editorship of the New Monthly Magazine was pretty nearly a sinecure in respect of
the actual work it exacted from him, it was on that very account the source of frequent and
serious annoyance to him, from the scrapes it thus got him into with his personal friends
and acquaintance, arising out of that want of due watchfulness and care as to the personal
bearing of the articles admitted into it, which it was impossible for anybody but
Campbell himself to exercise, because none else could know the
precise points to which the necessary attention in this respect was required to be
directed. One of these scrapes, the particulars of which I was made acquainted with at the
time by the two persons chiefly interested in it, was so characteristic, in all its
features, of all the parties concerned, that I
| 122 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
As I was more than once present at the conversations so professed to be
reported, and as Hazlitt has himself disclosed the
fact that these reports are by no means to be taken au pied de
la lettre as regards the precise portions to be attributed to the
speakers respectively, there can be no impropriety in stating my belief that, generally
speaking, very little dependence is to be placed on them in this particular, when they
relate to opinions and sentiments, and especially when they relate to personal feelings
about living individuals with whom Hazlitt was acquainted; and that
Hazlitt often puts his own feelings and opinions into the mouth of
Northcote, and vice
versâ. Sometimes this was done consciously and purposely, sometimes not; often merely
to give spirit and verisimilitude to the dialogue; not seldom to vent a little
malice prepense under a guise that would
| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 123 |
Northcote, on his part, had an irrepressible propensity to speak unpalatable truths of his acquaintance and friends, whether dead or alive. In fact, it was his forte to say bitter and cutting things of every one—friend, foe, or stranger—who came under his notice in the course of conversation; and he knew perfectly well that Hazlitt listened to his talk with the view of giving portions of it to the public. He knew also that Hazlitt was wholly without scruple as to what he might put forth, provided it was either characteristic of the speaker, or true of the person spoken of, and that the parts most personally offensive would be those most acceptable to the reading public.
All this Northcote knew; and yet he
gave
| 124 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
It has seemed necessary to premise thus much in explanation of what follows.
In one of the chapters of “Boswell Redivivus” there occur some passages
relating to the celebrated dissenting clergyman, Dr.
Mudge, one of the great ornaments of Sir
| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 125 |
| 126 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
The effect of this exposure, painful as it was, partook of the ludicrous, to those who could not put much faith in the sincerity of the feelings exhibited by Northcote on the occasion. I remember calling on him a few days after the appearance of the paper in question—No. VI. of the series. He knew that I was in the habit of seeing Hazlitt almost daily; and the moment I entered the room (he was not in his usual painting room, but had retreated into the little inner room adjoining it, as if in dread of the personal consequences of what had happened) I perceived that something serious was the matter.
“I am very ill, indeed,” said he, in reply to my inquiry as to his health. “I did not think I should have lived. That monster has nearly killed me.”
I inquired what he meant.
“Why, that diabolical Hazlitt. Have you seen what lies he has been telling about me in his
cursed ‘Boswell
Redivivus’? I have
| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 127 |
| 128 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
And then he showed me the letter he had written to Campbell, and Campbell’s reply.
I think I never read anything more striking in its way than his letter to
Campbell. Though brief, it was a consummate composition—pathetic
even to the excitement of tears—painting the dreadful state of his mind under the blow
which the (alleged) treachery of Hazlitt had given to it, and treating the thing as a deliberate attempt to
“bring his grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.” I particularly seem
to remember that these very words were used in it. The whole tendency of the letter was to
create an inference in Campbell’s mind that the thing had come
upon the writer like a thunder-clap, and that even in regard to those parts of the
Conversations which were truly reported (which he denied to be the case in the matter in
question), he was the most
| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 129 |
It is, of course, with reference to these facts that I have spoken of Northcote’s feelings as “ludicrous,” on this unlooked-for exposure of truths of which he did not wish to be known as the author: for the astonishing force and pungency of the unpalatable truths that he put forth about every living individual of whom he spoke (sometimes in their presence, and even to themselves),* and
* In talking to Hazlitt once about the attacks on |
| 130 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
Campbell’s reply to Northcote was, I remember, in a tone precisely correspondent with the letter which called for it. He declared his unmitigated horror at the outrage that had been committed on Northcote’s feelings; absolved himself from all participation in it by naively stating that he had not seen a line of the Paper till its publication, having been absent from town on other business; and declared that “the diabolical Hazlitt should never write another line in the Magazine during his management of it.” These, I think, were his very words.
“And so,” said Northcote, when I had
“The Cockney School,” in Blackwood’s (which, by the bye, he greatly approved), he said to him,—“I think, Mister Hazlitt, you yourself are the most perfect specimen of the Cockney School that I ever met with:” and then he went on to give him “satisfying reasons” for this opinion! |
| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 131 |
Nothing could be more characteristic than this effusion, apropos to a letter which had every appearance of being written under feelings of sincere and poignant regret at the occasion to which it referred. But all Northcote chose to see in it was the fact that somebody else was in fault as well as the original culprit:—for as to he himself having had any hand in the mischief—(at least in an objectionable point of view)—this seemed never to enter his thoughts. He sowed the seeds of the most bitter personal truths in the most fertile soil for their growth and propagation—namely, the current “table-talk” of the hour—and then was lost in wonder and dismay at finding some of them bear the unexpected fruit of a personal inconvenience to himself.
The sequel of the history of these Con-
| 132 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
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