-1844), Scottish poet, eighth son of Alexander
Campbell, was born at Glasgow on the 27th of July 1777. His father, who
was a cadet of the family of Campbell of Kirnan, Argyllshire, belonged
to a Glasgow firm trading in Virginia, and lost his money in consequence
of the American war. Campbell was educated at the grammar school and
university of his native town. He won prizes for classics and for
verse-writing, and the vacations he spent as a tutor in the western
Highlands. His poem "Glenara" and the ballad of "Lord Ullin's Daughter"
owe their origin to a visit to Mull. In May 1797 he went to Edinburgh to
attend lectures on law. He supported himself by private teaching and by
writing, towards which he was helped by Dr Robert Anderson, the editor
of the _British Poets_. Among his contemporaries in Edinburgh were Sir
Walter Scott, Henry Brougham, Francis Jeffrey, Dr Thomas Brown, John
Leyden and James Grahame. To these early days in Edinburgh may be
referred "The Wounded Hussar," "The Dirge of Wallace" and the "Epistle
to Three Ladies." In 1799, six months after the publication of the
_Lyrical Ballads_ of Wordsworth and Coleridge, _The Pleasures of Hope_
was published. It is a rhetorical and didactic poem in the taste of his
time, and owed much to the fact that it dealt with topics near to men's
hearts, with the French Revolution, the partition of Poland and with
negro slavery. Its success was instantaneous, but Campbell was deficient
in energy and perseverance and did not follow it up. He went abroad in
June 1800 without any very definite aim, visited Klopstock at Hamburg,
and made his way to Regensburg, which was taken by the French three days
after his arrival. He found refuge in a Scottish monastery. Some of his
best lyrics, "Hohenlinden," "Ye Mariners of England" and "The Soldier's
Dream," belong to his German tour. He spent the winter in Altona, where
he met an Irish exile, Anthony McCann, whose history suggested "The
Exile of Erin."[1] He had at that time the intention of writing an epic
on Edinburgh to be entitled "The Queen of the North." On the outbreak of
war between Denmark and England he hurried home, the "Battle of the
Baltic" being drafted soon after. At Edinburgh he was introduced to the
first Lord Minto, who took him in the next year to London as occasional
secretary. In June 1803 appeared a new edition of the _Pleasures of
Hope_, which some lyrics were added.

In 1803 Campbell married his second cousin, Mat