THE LIFE OF DR. CAM]?BELL.*

IT is difficult, when the taste receives a violent shock, to keep the judgment cool ; to remember that vulgarity is not a synonym for baseness, or inordinate vanity always the cloak of mental naked- ness. But it is quite necessary to fortify the mind with all such props to candour as it can bring to its aid, before it ventures to touch such a biography as this.

Biographical writing is as true an art as the painting of the human figure, and should be subject to laws as inexorable, were it possible, which it is not, seeing that the human soul, to its nearest and closest observer, is over-laden with clothes, which hide its proportions, conceal its hue, and go far to disguise its nature. Thus it is, perhaps, that the histories of the greatest men have often been written in the smallest compass. They have bequeathed their works as the only autobiography they cared to vouchsafe. And the farther history which may have succeeded has been but as the pen-and-ink sketch, which with a few strokes suggests an outline each imagination fills up for itself, as it would have done if in living relationship, but the prominent features of which are stamped indelibly upon the memory. But there are souls so small as to find constant need to assert their own existence. Conscious they cannot be seen, they are determined to be heard ; and doubtful of all sound that doss not rebound, they are for ever shouting, that they may catch the echo of their own voices.

It is so in the instance before us. Unconsciously Dr. Campbell writes his own epitaph,—" I have lived sixty-nine years in the world, and for the world." The italics are our own, but the senti- ment expressed is the clue to the man's whole life, so far as we gather it from the memoir before us. And for that memoir we fear we cannot hold him irresponsible, since we find "the editors have undertaken the preparation of this volume in conformity with the wish of its lamented subject, which he more than once ex- pressed to them during his life." These joint writers were for a time coadjutors with Dr. Campbell in connection with the British Standard, and we cannot give a better idea of his style than by inserting the letter which, "on resigning the editorial chair, he wrote to each of these gentlemen :"— " December 15th, 1866.

"MT NOBLE AND GIFTED FRIEND, AND MOST VALUED COADJUTOR,—One word of cheerful, yet somewhat painful, valediction :—The great drama, of many acts, is now closed. The curtain has fallen to rise no more, and the chief actor disappears for ever ! You are therefore released from your oath of allegiance, and at liberty to seek for laurels and usefulness on the boards of a new theatre. May the wisdom which erreth not accompany you thither, giving you favour with the Church and with the world, blessing and making you a blessing ! With a thousand thanks for all past good offices and kindnesses of every sort, I remain, your obliged and grateful Friend."

We are informed that in a very early stage of his career" Heaven was laying deep a train of events inseparable from the accomplish- ment of His own purposes, in whose development and determination Mr. Campbell was destined to act a more conspicuous part,"—a curious inversion, to say the least, of an old proverb ; but we find shortly after that "just SS a star which emerges from the depths of night attracts the most wandering eye, so the pastor of the small town of Kilmarnock was destined ere long to fill the vision of Christian England—of Christendom itself." Lest, however, any of our readers should unfortunately share our own obliquity of vision, we will just state that Dr. Campbell was the son of a surgeon in Kirriemuir, his father died when he was quite young, and the boy had the struggle, common to most Scotch lads, between poverty on one side, and the intense desire to get on on the other. He tried his hand at mechanical pursuits "simply as an amateur, under the counsel and guidance of his relative ;" but we are glad to say, to his credit, that the amateur blacksmith was noted for doing his work well, though his conduct on one occasion in chasing the manager out of the shop with a red-hot bar of iron, threatening to run him through with it, does not seem to us quite so heroic an act as his eulogists find it to be ; it savours to us more of brutality than of courage. His comrades were" amused," but the fun is at least all on one side when one fights with red hot-iron. Soon after John Campbell went to sea, having bound himself to a ship- owner in Sunderland; but disliking the life, "and not considering himself under any moral obligation to remain," he ran away. "Such, however, was his conscientiousness, that he secured the boat in which he escaped to another vessel, that it might not be lost to the George," the boat from which he escaped. A shilling in the bottom of the same boat he took, "as from Providence, seeing it would set him going." We have quoted verbatim. After a brief period, during which he joined the Methodists, he determined to renounce business, and give himself to literary pursuits and pre- paration for the ministry. In 1817 he entered the University of St. Andrew, in 1824 he accepted the invitation of three weavers in Kilmarnock to form a Congregational Church there ; he had at this time joined the Congregationalists or Independents, the body to which for the rest of his life he belonged. His anxiety to collect funds for the chapel and manse which he had begun to build led him to Loudon, and his visit to the metropolis ended in his final settlement as the successor of George Whitfield and Matthew Wilks in the chapels they had filled. We are referred continually to the high opinion Mr. Wilks enter- tained of Dr. Campbell's preaching ; of one sermon "he was pleased to say, it contained many brilliant passages not inferior to the finest parts of Massillon." If this were so, the editors have been most unfortunate in their selections. They tell us, it is true, that Dr. Campbell lives in his works , and that "some of these works will be fresh and vital till the world itself is wrapped in the flames of its final fire." So, it seems, will the works of Dr. P. Smith, on the deity of Christ and the personality of the Holy Spirit, the same brilliant phrase being used on their behalf. We may write fearlessly, as, in the prospect of such an immortality, our feeble comments must be powerless to wound. And we are glad, for in the space allotted him Dr. Campbell did not do his work amiss. As editor of the British Banner, and afterwards of the British Standard and other periodicals, he brought considerable industry, courage, and perseverance to his work. The same qualities led him to conduct to a successful issue the share he took in the question of the Bible monopoly, while as pastor of no inconsiderable body of Nonconformists he strove to inculcate among them a spirit of practical piety and philan- thropic effort ; but it is to his literary reputation our attention is called, and this the compilers of his life have done their best to render ridiculous. The vanity which was ingrained in Dr. Campbell's nature made him believe his simplest act of value to posterity. He says, "I desire to leave behind me a correct record of my own course on earth. This I consider due, not only to my- self and to the multitude of excellent men, my friends and helpers in good works, but to posterity and to truth itself." And the materials for his life which it was his express wish to have written were carefully collected. But for this fact we should hesitate to quote from letters which, in our judgment, ought never to have been published. As it is, they help us in what might be a curious psychological study. Writing to his friend the Rev. Robert Robinson, he encloses a leaf from his diary with these words :— " Now that I am writing, I transmit to my friend a bit of a curiosity, on which I dare say he will feel somewhat disposed to congratulate himself. At any rate, it will show that the remarks which were recently made by me were not thoughts of yesterday, and will, perhaps, in his ingenuous estimation, add somewhat to the value of them. It may further be cherished by him when I am gone, as the relic of a bygone day."

To Mrs. Fontaine, just before his marriage with her in the 70th year of his age, he writes a letter which we trust is unique. We would fain insert the whole as a curiosity, but the following sentences must suffice :— " Darling Emma will see that she is not alone, but ranks with a dis- tinguished class of ladies, who counted it an honour to minister to the comfort of the latter years of great and good men. . . . My dearest Emma will know how to use all these facts with the gossips and busybodies, who prate of years to her, and would rather see her wedded tcka green fool than to a ripe philosopher. She is only doing what a multitude of ladies of the first respectability and the highest excellence have done, are doing now and will continue to do to the end of time. Thousands would have been proud to be called Mrs. Jay, and a noble band would not blush to be called Mrs. Dr. —. There now, that point is settled."

No man could wish his enemy a worse fate than to have his literary reputation committed to the care of bewildered and

The Life of Dr. Campbell. By the Rev. Robert Ferguson, LL.D., and the Bev. A. Morton Brown, LL.D. London: Bentley.

bedazzled friends, who believe his vulgarest words worthy of immortality. Speaking of the simple fact that Dr. Campbell liked the society of intelligent women, the editors observe, "When in their presence, his heart, like an /Eolian harp swept by the breath of heaven, vibrated with emotion, and poetry kindled upon his

lips:— " The lily's hue, the rose's dye,

The kindling lustre of an eye,— Who but owns their magic sway ? Who but knows they all decay ? The tender thrill, the pitying tear, The generous purpose—nobly dear, The gentle look that rage disarms— These are all immortal charms."

Nor is this the only specimen of Dr. Campbell's poetical powers with which we are favoured, or, as the compilers put it, this was "not the only occasion on which the Muses favoured him with a draught of inspiration, as the following lines, addressed to the present Mrs. Campbell, shortly before their marriage, will prove." This announcement is followed by sixteen verses addressed to

"Amanda and her Welsh friends," beginning :—

"Amanda, dear to many hearts,

So to the land of love and kindness, Where young and old will do their parts, And where to worth there is no blindness.

"Amanda's watchful eyes and ears Will furnish food for meditation, And lightened by the Lord she fears She'll make it bear on her vocation."

It is possible to be hypercritical. Well for the world, perhaps, that it has some lower platforms, which yet look high to the intellects which believe "Dr. Campbell ascended the highest walks of enlightened and sanctified literature, and took his place side by side with the scholar, the philosopher, the patriot, the preacher, the evangelist, the missionary, the commentator, the theologian, the divine ;" who find " seraphic " the choicest appendage to the names of Fletcher and J. A. James ; and who can without a blush observe, "Speaking of newspapers, Shakespeare says, they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the day, to show virtue her own features, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the Time her form and pressure."

Dante might have added to his Inferno some quiet nook, where vain men, with their eyes opened, should be doomed to read the

lives men writ of them. Dr. Campbell has paid a heavy penalty for his desire for earthly fame. He loved praise, however silly, and it has come upon him. It is a garment which covers him, and a girdle wherewith he is girded continually ; but beneath the weight of it, the work he did in the world,—whatever good there might have been in it,—is buried utterly.