to keep its place in the world's
favor. The scene of the poem is laid in an impossible Pennsylvania
where the bison and the beaver, the crocodile, the condor, and the
flamingo, live in happy neighborhood in groves of magnolia and olive;
while the red Indian launches his pirogue upon the Michigan to hunt
the bison, while blissful shepherd swains trip with maidens to the
timbrel, and blue-eyed Germans change their swords to pruning-hooks,
Andalusians dance the saraband, poor Caledonians drown their homesick
cares in transatlantic whisky, and Englishmen plant fair Freedom's
tree! The story is as unreal as the landscape, and it is told in a
style more labored and artificial by far than that of Pope, to whom
indeed the younger poet was often injudiciously compared. Yet it is to
be noted that Campbell's prose style was as direct and unaffected as
could be wished, while in his two best lyrical poems, 'Ye Mariners of
England,' and the first cast of 'The Battle of the Baltic,' he shows a
vividness of conception and a power of striking out expression at
white heat in which no one of his contemporaries excelled him.

Campbell was deservedly a great favorite in society, and the story
of his life at this time is largely the record of his meeting with
distinguished people. The Princess of Wales freely welcomed him to her
court; he had corresponded with Madame de Stael, and when she came to
England he visited her often and at her request read her his lectures
on poetry; he saw much of Mrs. Siddons, and when in Paris in 1814,
visited the Louvre in her company to see the statues and pictures of
which Napoleon had plundered Italy.

In 1826 Campbell was made Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and in
1828 he was re-elected unanimously. During this second term his wife
died, and in 1829 the unprecedented honor of an election for a third
term was bestowed upon him, although he had to dispute it with no less
a rival than Sir Walter Scott. "When he went to Glasgow to be
inaugurated as Lord Rector," says his biographer, "on reaching the
college green he found the boys pelting each other with snowballs. He
rushed into the melee and flung about his snowballs right and left
with great dexterity, much to the delight of the boys but to the great
scandal of the professors. He was proud of the piece of plate given
him by the Glasgow lads, but of the honor conferred by his college
title he was less sensible. He hated the sound of _Doctor_ Campbell,