Long whiles misled me in a blinding Dream:
Fro' you I part, yea, still I'll ne'er misdeem
That long-drawn Memories which your charms enhance
Forbid me changing and, in every chance,
E'en as I farther speed I nearer seem.
Well may my Fortunes hale this instrument
Of Soul o'er new strange regions wide and side,
Offered to winds and watery element:
But hence my Spirit, by you 'companied,
Borne on the nimble wings that Reverie lent,
Flies home and bathes her, Waters! in your tide.

THOMAS CAMPBELL

(1777-1844)

[Illustration: THOMAS CAMPBELL]

The life of Thomas Campbell, though in large measure fortunate,
was uneventful. It was not marked with such brilliant successes as
followed the career of Scott; nor was fame purchased at the price of
so much suffering and error as were paid for their laurels by Byron,
Shelley, and Burns; but his star shone with a clear and steady ray,
from the youthful hours that saw his first triumph until near life's
close. The world's gifts--the poet's fame, and the public honors
and rewards that witnessed to it--were given with a generous hand;
and until the death of a cherished wife and the loss of his two
children--sons, loved with a love beyond the common love of
fathers--broke the charm, Campbell might almost have been taken
as a type of the happy man of letters.

Thomas Campbell was born in Glasgow, July 27th, 1777. His family
connection was large and respectable, and the branch to which he
belonged had been settled for many years in Argyleshire, where they
were called the Campbells of Kirnan, from an estate on which the
poet's grandfather resided and where he died. His third son,
Alexander, the father of the poet, was at one time the head of a firm
in Glasgow, doing a profitable business with Falmouth in Virginia; but
in common with almost all merchants engaged in the American trade, he
was ruined by the War of the Revolution. At the age of sixty-five he
found himself a poor man, involved in a costly suit in chancery, which
was finally decided against him, and with a wife and nine children
dependent upon him. All that he had to live on, at the time his son
Thomas was born, was the little that remained to him of his small
property when the debts were paid, and some small yearly sums from two
provident societies of which he was a member. The poet was fortunate
in his parents: both of them were people of high character, warmly
devoted to their