| 156 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
The following description of Campbell’s personal appearance was written during his life-time, and formed part of what was intended as a series of Sketches from Real Life, taken at one of the chief resorts of the literary and other celebrities of the day:—
The person of this exquisite writer and delightful man is small, delicately
formed, and neatly put together, without being little or insignificant. His face has all
the harmonious arrangement of features which marks his gentle and elegant mind; it is oval,
perfectly regular in its details, and lighted up not merely by ‘eyes of youth,’
but by a bland smile of intellectual serenity that seems to pervade and penetrate all the
features, and impart to them all a corresponding expression, such as the moonlight lends to
a summer landscape: the moonlight, not the sunshine; for there is
| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 157 |
There are persons whom we cannot help associating together in our
imagination, without feeling or being able to fancy any sufficient reason for doing so.
When we see one, we think of the other, as naturally and necessarily as if they stood to
each other in the relation of mutual cause and effect. The poets Campbell and Rogers
hold this imaginary relationship in many more minds, we suspect, than ours, or we should
not have felt it to be worth a passing word of mention, much less have made it the reason,
as we shall now do, of placing them as companion portraits in our literary gallery. But
there is, in fact, a curious and beautiful assimilation between the minds and persons of
the bards of Hope and of Memory, a similitude in dissimilitude, and one of a nature which
corresponds as curiously with the subject of their best known works, Hope and Memory; the
one looking eagerly onward, as if life were in the future only; the other looking
| 158 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
It must not be supposed from the above, that we see or fancy any actual
physical resemblance between the person and features of Mr.
Campbell and those of Mr. Rogers. If
we did, our visual organs would be essentially unfitted for the task we have imposed upon
them. All we mean to intimate is, that a similar conformation of mind and
| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 159 |
| 160 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
Begging indulgence for yielding to the temptation of straying so far from the mechanical limits of our task, we return to them by pointing to the head and face of Mr. Rogers, as an object of peculiar interest and curiosity to those who are students in such living lore. There is something preternatural in the cold, clear, marbly paleness that pervades, and, as it were, penetrates his features to a depth that seems to preclude all change, even that of death itself. Yet there is nothing in the least degree painful or repulsive in the sight, nothing that is suggestive of death, or even of decay—but, on the contrary, something that seems to speak beforehand of that immortality at which this poet has so earnestly aimed, and of which he is entitled to entertain so fair a hope. It is scarcely fanciful to say that the living bust of the author of ‘Human Life,’ ‘The Pleasures of Memory,’ &c., can scarcely be looked upon without calling to mind the bust of marble, sculptured by some immortal hand, which he so well deserves to have consecrated to him in the Temple of Fame.
| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 161 |
The following characteristic letters have never appeared in print, except in the ephemeral pages of a newspaper. The first was sent to me in MS., by Campbell, to be used as I might think fit, and I inserted it in a popular weekly journal of the day.
“My dear Moore,—A thousand thanks to you for the kind things which you have said of me in your ‘Life of Lord Byron,’—but forgive me for animadverting to what his lordship says, at page 463 of your first volume.—It is not every day that one is mentioned in such joint pages as those of Moore and Byron.
“Lord Byron there
states that, one evening at Lord
Holland’s, I was nettled at
something, and the whole passage, if believed, leaves it to be inferred that I
was angry, envious, and ill-mannered.—Now I never envied Lord
Byron, but, on the contrary, rejoiced in his fame; in the first
place from a sense of justice, and in the next place, because, as a poetical
critic, he was my beneficent friend.—I never was nettled in Lord
| 162 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
“What feeling but that of kindness could I have towards
Lord Byron?—He was always affectionate
towards me, both in his writings and in his personal interviews. How strange
that he should misunderstand my manner on the occasion alluded to—and what
temptation could I have to show myself pettish and envious before my
inestimable friend Lord Holland. The whole
scene, as described by Lord Byron, is a phantom of his own
imagination. Ah, my dear Moore, if we
had him but back again, how easily could we settle these matters. But I have
| THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 163 |
“Sir,—I am obliged to you for discrediting a silly paragraph from the ‘Sligo Observer,’ which is quoted in your paper to-day.
“It charges me with having abstracted the MS. of the
‘Exile of
Erin’ from the papers of the late duke (you call him marquis) of
Buckingham. If my character did not
repel this calumny, I could refute it by the fact that I never in my life had
access to any papers of either a Duke or Marquis of Buckingham. I wrote the
song of the ‘Exile of Erin’ at Altona,
and sent it off immediately from thence to London, where it was published by my
friend, Mr. Perry, in the ‘Morning Chronicle.’ With the
evidence of my being the author of this little piece I shall not trouble the
world at present. Only if my Irish accuser has any proof that George Nugent Reynolds, Esq., ever affected
| 164 | THOMAS CAMPBELL. |
“But the whole charge is so absurd, that I scarcely think the ‘Sligo Observer’ will renew it. If they do, they will only expose their folly
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