To her very soul 'tis stealing, all the springs of life unsealing, Singing stream and rushing river drink it in, and praise the Giver Of the blessed rain. We have already luxuriated over passages from the Pleasures of Imagination, and lingered lovingly amid the sweet images bodied forth by Rogers in the Pleasures of Memory: shall we now hold colloquy with CAMPBELL, and catch some glimpses of his bright visions of Hope? He thus announces his beautiful theme : At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow More pleasing seems than all the past hath been, With thee, sweet Hope! resides the heavenly light, * Auspicious Hope! in thy sweet garden grow Here is a fine apostrophe to Domestic Love : Who hath not paused while Beauty's pensive eye And say, without our hopes, without our fears, The summer wind that shook the spangled tree, And still the stranger wist not where to stray. This beautiful passage closes the poem :— Eternal Hope! when yonder spheres sublime And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile! to any Moir says, "I do not think I overrate the merits of the Pleasures of Hope, whether taking it in its parts or as a whole, in preferring it didactic poem of equal length in the English language. It is like a long fit of inspiration." Campbell wrote it at Edinburgh when he was but twenty-one; and so prolonged was its popularity, that it ultimately brought to its author the sum of four thousand five hundred pounds. His patriotic Odes are so heroic and stirring, and his more serious poems are so inspiring and impressive, that it is no wonder they should have become to us as "household words." What fire and energy characterize those grand naval Odes, The Battle of the Baltic, and Ye Mariners of England; and how sublimely roll out the stanzas of his Last Man, What's Hallowed Ground? and The Rainbow! Irving thought Campbell's Hohenlinden contained more grandeur and moral sublimity than is to be found anywhere else in the same compass of English poetry. This, like most of his descriptive poems, Campbell seems to have written under the very inspiration of the scene. Campbell's lyrics have an exquisite grace and delicacy of touch about them; for example, the following: Withdraw not yet those lips and fingers, And death seems in that word-farewell! Time, whilst I gaze upon thy sweetness, How delicious is the winning Longest stays when sorest chidden,— * Absence: 'Tis not the loss of love's assurance, Or riches buried in the deep. What though, untouched by jealous madness, From more than light, or life, or breath? Campbell has given the following little incident with wonderful felicity and effect; it could scarcely be better told :— The ordeal's fatal trumpet sounded, and sad, pale Adelgitha came, When forth a valiant champion bounded, and slew the slanderer of her fame. She wept, delivered from her danger; but when he knelt to claim. her glove, "Seek not," she cried, "oh, gallant stranger, for hapless Adelgitha's love; For he is in a foreign far land whose arm should now have set me free, And I must wear the willow garland for him that's dead or false to me." "Nay! say not that his faith is tainted!" He raised his visor; at the sight She fell into his arms and fainted: it was, indeed, her own true knight. Campbell's biographer, Dr. Beattie, writes :-" Coming home to my house in Park Square, where, as usual, the poet had dropped in to spend a quiet hour, I told him that I had been agreeably detained listening to some street music near Portman Square. Vocal or instrumental?' he inquired. Vocal: the song was an old favourite, remarkably good, and of at least forty years standing.' 'Ha!' said he, 'I congratulate the author, whoever he is.' And so do I-it was your own song, The Soldier's Dream; and when I came away, the crowd was still increasing.' 'Well,' he added, musing, 'this is something like popularity."" Yet the poet had, as far as a poet can, become for years indifferent to posthumous fame. In 1838, five years before his decease, he had been speaking to some friends in Edinburgh on the subject, thus: "When I think of the existence which shall commence when |