Thomas Campbell. J. Cuthbert Hadden
as the Principal at Louvain, in ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ found that he could do without Greek itself.
With all his enthusiasm for the classics, Campbell does not seem to have been anything less of a boy than his fellows at the Grammar School. He loved Greek, but he loved games too. There are tales of stone fights with the Shettleston urchins, such as Scott has described in his story of Green-breeks, and of strawberry raids in suburban gardens which for days afterwards made him restive under the pious literature prescribed by his father. That he was indeed a very boy is shown by at least one amusing anecdote. His mother had a cousin, an old bedridden lady, about whose frail tenure of life she felt much anxiety. Every morning she would send either Tom or his brother Daniel to ask ‘how Mrs. Simpson was to-day.’ One day Tom wanted to go on a blackberry expedition; his mother wanted him to inquire, as usual, about ‘this deil of an auld wife that would neither die nor get better.’ Daniel suggested that there was no need to go: ‘just say that she’s better or worse.’ The boys continued to report in this way for weeks and months, but finding that an unfavourable bulletin only sent them back earlier next morning, they agreed that the old lady should get better. One day Tom announced that Mrs. Simpson had quite recovered—and a few hours later the funeral invitation arrived! Campbell, in telling the story long after, says he was much less pained by the cuffing he received from his mother than by a few words from his father. The old man ‘never raised a hand to us, and I would advise all fathers who would have their children to love their memory to follow his example.’ The wisdom is not Solomonic, but that Campbell set much store by it is quite evident from the frequent reference which he makes in later life to his father’s sparing of the rod.
Meanwhile he was giving indication of his literary bent in the manner usual with youngsters. The ‘magic of nature,’ to quote his own words, had first ‘breathed on his mind’ during his six weeks in the country, and the result was a ‘Poem on the Seasons,’ in which the conventional expression of the obvious runs through some hundred lines or more. A year later, that is to say in 1788, he wrote an elegy ‘On the death of a favourite parrot,’ of which one can only remark that it will at least bear comparison with the reputed tribute of Master Samuel Johnson to his duck. Strange to say among the last things which Campbell wrote were some lines on a parrot, so that any one who is interested enough can make a critical comparison between his elegiac poems in youth and age.
But Campbell was doing better things than calling upon Melpomene, the queen of tears, to attend his ‘dirge of woe’ on account of poor Poll. Mr. Allison was in the habit of prescribing translations from the classics into English, which might be either in prose or in verse, as his pupils thought fit. Campbell chose verse. He made translations from Anacreon, from Virgil, from Horace, and from other Greek and Latin writers, all with a fair measure of success, considering his years. Indeed these verse translations are much superior to his original efforts of the same and even of later date. Beattie, who saw the manuscripts, remarked upon the almost total absence of punctuation in them all. It seems that Campbell regarded the art of pointing as one of the mysteries, to which for many years he paid as little attention as if he had been an eighteenth century lawyer’s clerk. Even as late as ‘Theodoric’ (1824), he had to ask a literary friend to look after the punctuation in the proofs.
There was, however, no printer’s convenience to study in these early days; and the verse translations, punctuated or not, served their purpose, not only in bringing prizes to the young student, but in contributing towards the acquirement of that facility in verse-making which helped to lay the foundation of his future fame. The provoking thing was that his father did not approve of making verses. Like Jack Lofty, he thought poetry ‘a pretty thing enough’ for one’s wives and daughters, but not for men who have to make their living in the world; and he would much rather have seen his son writing in the sober prose of his beloved Doddridge and Sherlock than after the manner of Dryden and Pope. ‘Many a sheet of nonsense have I beside me,’ wrote Campbell in 1794, ‘insomuch that when my father comes into my room, he tells me I would be much better reading Locke than scribbling so.’ But Campbell believed that he had been born a poet, and although he did not entirely ignore his father’s favourites, he kept thumbing his Milton and other models, and informed the parent—actually in verse too!—that while philosophers and sages are not without their influence on the stream of life, it is after all the poet who
Refines its fountain springs,
The nobler passions of the soul.
CHAPTER II
COLLEGE AND HIGHLAND TUTORSHIPS
When Campbell said farewell to the Grammar School prior to entering his name at College, it was observed of him that no boy of his age had ever left more esteemed by his classfellows or with better prospects at the University. His first College session began in October 1791. At that time the University was located in the High Street, the classic Molendinar, as yet uncovered, finding a way to the Clyde through its park and gardens. Johnson thought it was ‘without a sufficient share in the magnificence of the place’; and not unlikely the scarlet gowns worn by the students were in Campbell’s day pretty much what they were when Wesley reported them ‘very dirty, some very ragged, and all of coarse cloth.’ But there must have been something very pleasant about the quaint old world life which was then lived in and around the College Squares. Close upon four hundred students used to gather about the time-honoured courts, the windows of the professors’ houses looking down upon them from the north side; and the memories of many generations must have gone some little way to atone for the lack of ‘magnificence’ so much deplored by the great Cham of literature.
The list of professors in 1791, when Campbell entered, did not include any name of outstanding note. His father’s old friend, Dr. Reid, now a veteran of eighty-one, had retired, though he was still living in the Professors’ Court, and had been succeeded by Professor Arthur, a scholar of respectable ability and varied acquirements, for whom Campbell expressed a sincere admiration. The Greek class was taught by Professor Young, a character of the Christopher North and John Stuart Blackie type, ‘a strangely beautiful and radiant figure in the then grave and solemn group of Glasgow professors.’ William Richardson filled the Humanity—in other words the Latin—Chair, and filled it with some distinction too, in his curled wig, lace ruffles, knee breeches and silk stockings. Richardson was not of those who combine plain living with high thinking. Dining out was his passion. It is told of him that one evening, when the turtle soup was unusually fine, he exclaimed, after repeated helpings, ‘I know there is gout in every spoonful, but I can’t resist it.’ For all this, he was a good scholar and an expert teacher, enjoying some repute as one of Mackenzie’s coadjutors in The Mirror; a poet, too, and the author of one or two books which were read in their day. The Logic class was in the hands of Professor Jardine, ‘the philosophic Jardine,’ as Campbell calls him—‘a most worthy, honest man, neither proud nor partial.’ Campbell says he could not boast of deriving any great advantage from Jardine’s class, but he ‘found its employment very agreeable’ nevertheless, and he seems to have honestly liked the professor. The Law Chair was occupied by Professor Millar, a violent democrat, who, in the dark days of Toryism, ‘did much in Glasgow to inoculate Jeffrey and the academic Liberals with zealous views of progress.’ Campbell regarded him as the ablest of all the professors; and although he was not a regular student of law, he attended some of the lectures, and was inclined to credit Millar with influencing his views on what he termed the ascendency of freedom.
Such were the men under whose direction the poet completed his education. Of fellow-students with whom he was intimate it is not necessary to say much. Perhaps the best known was Hamilton Paul, a jovial youth with a talent for verse, who afterwards, when minister of Broughton, narrowly escaped censure from the Church courts for an attempt to palliate the shortcomings of Burns by indiscreet allusions to his own clerical brethren. Paul and Campbell were frequently rivals in competing for academical rewards offered for the best compositions in verse, and in one case at least Campbell was beaten. It was Paul who founded the College Debating Club, which usually met in his lodgings and occasionally continued its debates till midnight; and in some published