THOMAS CAMPBELL.
PTO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."" SIR,—May I be allowed to say that, while agreeing in the main with your reviewer's estimate of the merits of Camp- bell's two long poems, " The Pleasures of Hope " and -" Gertrude of Wyoming," it is but fair to point out that each has contributed a line which will not be forgotten P The former gives us the well-known-
"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view ; " the latter,- " The torrent's smoothness, ere it dash below," —a line as often quoted without knowledge of its source as is this still more famous line from " Lochiel's Warning :"— " Coming events cast their shadows before."
Is not the truth about Campbell this, that he was really a link between the age of "correct " poetry (i.e., the age of saying commonplaces felicitously) and the romantic age ?—for he cer- tainly has two styles of writing, the somewhat wearisome, not to say pretentious, style which gave us the passage about Kosciusko, so rightly criticised by your reviewer, and that which, for want of a better word, I will call his " war-horse " style, seen in his immortal " Lochiel," &c.—I am, Sir, &c.,
RICHARD F. JIIPP.
Lathland, West Hartlepool, October 16th.
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