CAMPBELL, George (1719-1796), a theologian and Biblical critic, was born at Aberdeen on the 25th December 1719. His father, the Rev. Colin Campbell, one of the ministers of Aberdeen, was the son of George Campbell of Westhall, who claimed to belong to the Argyll branch of the family. Mr Colin Campbell died in 1728, leaving a widow and six children in somewhat straitened circumstances. George, the youngest son, was destined for the legal profession, and after attending the grammar school of Aberdeen and the arts classes at Marischal College, he was sent to Edinburgh to serve as an apprentice to a writer to the Signet. But he does not seem to have had any liking for law—at any rate he found in theology a study much more to his taste. While at Edinburgh he fell into the habit of attending the theological lectures, and this was followed, when the term of his apprenticeship expired, by his enrolment as a regular student in the Aberdeen divinity hall. After a distinguished career he was, in 1746, licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Aberdeen; but his first attempt to obtain a charge—that of Fordoun in Ki^cardine-shire—was unsuccessful. In 1748, however, he was ordained minister of Banchory Ternan, a parish on the Dee, some twenty miles from Aberdeen. Here he spent the next nine years, labouring with much success as a country minister, and planning two at least of the works by which he was afterwards to make himself known. In 1757 he left Banchory Ternan to become one of the ministers of Aberdeen. That city was at the time the centre of no inconsiderable intellectual activity. Reid was professor of philosophy at King’s College; John Gregory, Reid’s predecessor, held the chair of medicine; Alexander Gerard was professor of divinity at Marischal College; and in 1760 Beattie became professor of moral philosophy in the same college. These men, with others of less note, formed themselves in 1758 into a society for the discussion of questions in philosophy. Reid was its first secretary, and Campbell one of its founders. It lasted till about 1773, and during this period not a few papers were read, particularly those by Reid and Campbell, which were afterwards extended in the form of published treatises.

Meanwhile Campbell was, in 1759, made principal of Marischal College, an appointment due rather to the high estimation in which he was held by those who knew him, and perhaps also to his family influence with the duke of Argyll, than to any published evidence he had given of his fitness for the post. But this evidence, if it was required, was soon forthcoming. In 1763 he published his celebrated Dissertation on Miracles, a work that originated in a sermon preached two years previously before the Synod of Aberdeen. In it he seeks to show, in opposition to Hume, that miracles are capable of proof by testimony, and that the miracles of Christianity are sufficiently attested. Hume derived our belief in testimony equally with our belief in the laws of nature from experience; he held that where the laws of nature, being a uniform experience, contradict testimony, the latter must give way; and he further held that in the case of miracles the laws of nature do actually contradict the testimony in favour of miracles, i.e., miracles are incapable of proof. In reply Campbell asserts—(1) that testimony is not derived from experience, but “has a natural and original influence on belief antecedent to experience.” As, however, he admits that experience is, if not the source, at least the measure, of testimony, he virtually grants all that Hume desires, and leaves the question where it was. But (2) he urges, and with more success, that testimony can prove a miracle. There is no contradiction, he argues, as Hume said there was, between what we know by testimony and the evidence upon which a law of nature is based; they are of a different description indeed, but we can without inconsistency believe that both are true. He also dwells at considerable length upon the ambiguity of the word “experience” as it is used by Hume, and devotes the rest of the work to a discussion of the actual evidence for the miracles of Christianity. The Dissertation is not a complete treatise upon miracles, and does not approach the subject from points of view it would be regarded from now, but with all deductions it was and still is a valuable contribution to theological literature.

In 1771 Campbell was elected professor of theology at Marischal College, and in consequence he resigned his city charge, although he still preached as minister of Greyfriars, a duty then attached to the chair. His next work was not a theological one. During his early ministerial life at Banchory Ternan he planned and began the composition of a work on rhetoric. The results of his labours were partly communicated to the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, for most of the papers he read there were on “Eloquence” and cognate subjects; but it was not until 1776 that his Philosophy of Rhetoric appeared,—a work that at once took a high place among books on the subject, which it can hardly be said even now to have lost. The most interesting portion is perhaps that which treats of evidence; certainly the least satisfactory is that on the syllogism. In 1778 his last and in some respects his greatest work appeared, A New Translation of the Gospels. The translation is a good one, but it is the critical and explanatory notes which accompany it that give the book its high value. Several of his sermons were published, notably one in 1777 On the Success of the first publishers of the Gospel, considered as a proof of its truth. It was preached before the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, and is one of the happiest specimens of his style and method of argument.

Campbell, who had never enjoyed robust health, was in 1795 compelled by increasing weakness to resign the offices he held in Marischal College, and on his retirement he received a pension of £300 from the king. He did not long enjoy the royal bounty, for he died on the 31st of March 1796 of a stroke of palsy. Principal Campbell had married Miss Grace Farquharson, daughter of Mr Farquharson of Whitehouse. They had no children. In church politics he belonged to the moderate side, but his independence of judgment and strength of conviction were too great to permit him to be confined by the trammels of party. It is as a theologian and as a scholar, the acutest and most cultivated that the Church of Scotland has produced, that he will be best remembered.

His Lectures on Ecclesiastical History and some smaller writings were published after his death; and there is a uniform edition of his works in six vols. 8vo. A short account of his life, by the Kev. Mr Keith, is prefixed to his Lectures on Church History.

CAMPBELL, John, LL.D. (1708-1775), a miscellaneous author, was born at Edinburgh, March 8, 1708. Being designed for the legal profession, he was sent to Windsor, and apprenticed to an attorney; but his tastes soon led him to abandon the study of law, and to devoto himself entirely to literature. In 1736 he published the Military History of Prince Eugens and ths Duke of Marlborough, and soon after contributed several important articles to the Ancient Universal History. In 1742 and 1744 appeared the Lives of the British Admirals, in 4 vols., a popular work which has been continued by other authors. Besides contributing to the Biographia Britannica and Dodsley’s Preceptor, he published a work on The Present State of Europe, consisting of a series of papers which had appeared in the Museum. He also wrote the histories of the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, French,Swedish, Danish, and Ostend settlements in the East Indies, and the histories of Spain, Portugal, Algarve, Navarre, and France, from the time of Clovis till 1656, for the Modern Universal History. At the request of Lord Bute, he published a vindication of the Peace of Paris concluded in 1763, embodying in it a descriptive and historical account of the New Sugar Islands in the West Indies. By the king he was appointed agent for the provinces of Georgia in 1755. His last and most elaborate work, Political Survey of Britain, 2 vols. 4to, was published in 1744, and greatly increased the author’s reputation. Campbell died December 28, 1775. He received the honorary degree of LL.D, from the University of Glasgow in 1745.

CAMPBELL, Thomas (1777-1844). This distinguished poet was a cadet of the respectable family of Campbell of Kirnan, in Argyllshire. Owing to the straitened circumstances of his father, who had settled in Glasgow and been unfortunate in business, young Campbell was obliged, while attending college, to have recourse to private teaching as a tutor. Notwithstanding the amount of additional labour thus entailed, he made rapid progress in his studies, and attained considerable distinction at the university over which it was his fortune, in after years, to preside. He very early gave proofs of his aptitude for literary composition, especially in the department of poetry; and so strong was his addiction to these pursuits, that he could not bring himself seriously to adopt the choice of a profession. From private tuition, which is at best an irksome drudgery, he recoiled after a short trial. Neither law, physic, nor divinity had any attractions for him; nor is it probable that he ever would have risen to eminence in a regular profession, owing to a constitutional sensitiveness almost morbid, and a want of resolute energy. We are told by his friend and biographer Dr Beattie that “the imaginative faculty had been so unremittingly cultivated that circumstances, trifling in themselves, had acquired undue influence over his mind, and been rendered formidable by an exaggeration of which he was at the moment unconscious. Hence various difficulties, which industry might have overcome, assumed to his eye the appearance of insurmountable obstacles. Without resolution to persevere, or philosophy to submit to the force of necessity, he drew from everything around him, with morbid ingenuity, some melancholy presage of the future. He was dissatisfied with himself, chilled by the world’s neglect, and greatly hurt by the apathy of friends who had extolled his merits, but left him to pine in obscurity.” Campbell was not a man who could have successfully struggled with the world. Fortunately for him, his genius was such as to ensure an early recognition.

We find him at the age of twenty in Edinburgh, attending lectures at the university, soliciting employment from the booksellers, and not unknown to a circle of young men then resident in the Scottish metropolis, whose names have become historical. Among those were Walter Scott, Henry Brougham, Francis Jeffrey, Dr Thomas Brown, John Leyden, and James Grahame, the author of the Sabbath. He also became acquainted with Dr Robert Anderson, editor of a collection of the British poets, a man of extreme enthusiasm and kindliness of disposition, who early appreciated the remarkable powers of Campbell, and encouraged him to proceed in his literary career. In 1799 his poem, The Pleasures of Hope, was published.

Probably there is no parallel instance of literary success so instantaneously achieved by a first effort; nor was that owing to novelty of design on the part of the auth∙r, or the caprice of the public. For considerably more than half a century the poem has maintained, nay, increased its popularity. During that time the public has adopted and abandoned many favourites—names once famous and in every mouth have gradually become forgotten and unregarded—poetical works of greater pretension, which were once considered as masterpieces of genius and inspiration, have fallen into neglect; but this poem by the boy Campbell remains a universal favourite. It is not much to say that it is, without any exception, the finest didactic poem in the English language. Even those who are not admirers of didactic poetry are forced to admit its charm; and the uttermost objection that criticism can make appears to be a certain vagueness, which, after all, is inseparable from the nature of the subject and the necessary plan of the composition. The delicacy of the thoughts, the beauty of the imagery, the occasional power of pathos, the extraordinary felicity of the language, and the wonderful harmony of the versification, distinguish the Pleasures of Hope from any poem which has been written before or since, and entitle it to a very high place as an original work of genius. It is as original and characteristic of its author as is the Deserted Village of Goldsmith, with which it has been frequently, but surely improperly compared. Goldsmith’s poem affects us by its simplicity and truth. Campbell’s, it must be owned, is much more florid and ornamented; but how exquisite is the taste of the ornament!

The literary and the private histories of an author are inseparable. In order to comprehend the one we must have recourse to the other. The first success of Campbell brought him fame, but not fortune. He had disposed of the copyright of the Pleasures of Hope, by his original bargain with the publishers, for a sum certainly moderate, which, however, probably exceeded his expectations at the time. He was, moreover, very kindly treated, for he received a considerable unstipulated allowance for each new edition, which circumstance ought to have deterred him from uttering certain diatribes against “the trade,” in which he was afterwards rather prone to indulge. The fact is that he did not know how to make use of his success. Instead of availing himself of the reputation which he had so worthily and decisively won, and applying himself to a new effort, he went abroad without any determinate aim; was perfectly. wretched on the Continent, where he had no friends, and was sorely embarrassed for want of means; and began to write fugitive poetry for the London journals. On his return to Britain he had ample opportunity of bettering his condition. With a name such as his, a moderate amount of exertion would have secured him not only a competence but comparative affluence; but indolence, perhaps the result of timidity, had grown upon him. Campbell never could adapt himself even to the profession of literature, which, precarious though it be, is not without its prizes. In that profession, as in all others, the requisites for success are steadiness, punctuality, and perseverance; but Campbell possessed none of them. The publishers were ready, and offered to give him lucrative employment, nor was he at all backward in accepting their offers; but when the period for performance arrived he had literally done nothing. In extraordinary contrast to him stands Scott, who seemed simply to will in order to conceive and execute. Campbell had many bright conceptions, but he could not apply himself to the work. Of course he lost repute with the men who alone can intervene between an author and the public, and “the fathers of the Row” became chary of offering him engagements. Some idea of the extent of his habitual indolence may be formed from the fact, that the publication of his Specimens of the British Poets did not take place until thirteen years after the work was undertaken!

In the meantime Campbell married; and his prospects were of the darkest, when, in 1805, he received a Government pension of £200. He was then in great distress, and even that aid, material as it was, failed to extricate him. It was probably fortunate for his fame that such was the case, for in 1809 he published his poem of Gertrude of Wyoming, to which were attached the most celebrated of his grand and powerful lyrics.

Among Campbell’s lengthier poems Gertrude of Wyoming must hold the second place. He designed it for a poem of action, but he has failed to give it that interest and vivacity which a poem of action requires. There is in it too decided a predominance of the sentimental vein, and an extreme degree of elaboration, which, in poetry as in painting, is hurtful to the general effect. There is great truth in the following criticism, which occurs in a letter from Jeffrey to the author:—“Your timidity or fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give your conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as they present themselves; but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth, till half their nature and grandeur is chiselled away from them. Believe me, the world will never know how truly you are a great and original poet till you venture to cast before it some of the rough pearls of your fancy.” In spite of these defects, Gertrude was considered at the time as a work in every way worthy of the poet’s previous reputation; and it will ever be admired by that numerous class of readers who are more fascinated by the beauties of expression than by high inventive power and vigorous execution.

The soundness of the above criticism, proceeding from an eminent literary authority whose whole leanings were rather towards than against fastidiousness in composition, is demonstrated by the universal admiration accorded to Campbell’s lyrical pieces. One or two of these, in particular Lochicl ’ s Warning and Hohenlinden, are to be referred to an earlier period than the composition of Gertrude ; but there are others of a later date which show how much power remained in the man when he chose to exert it freely. There are few lyrics in the English language to be placed in comparison with the Mariners of England or The Battle of the Baltic ; and his exquisite poem of O’Connor’s Child, which has not unaptly been termed the diamond of his casket of gems, is greatly superior in pathos and passion to his more elaborate compositions. All these, and others scarcely inferior to them, seem to have been struck off at a heat, and to have escaped that chiselling process to which Jeffrey so pointedly referred.

Campbell was now settled at Sydenham in England, and his circumstances were materially improved. His home was a happy one; the society in which he moved was of the most refined and intellectual character; and he enjoyed the personal friendship of many of his distinguished contemporaries. Ample leisure was afforded him to carry into effect any of the cherished schemes of his literary ambition; but his indolence and inherent want of resolution again interfered. His most noteworthy exertion for years appears to have been the preparation of a short course of lectures on poetry, which he delivered with great éclat at the Royal Institution in London and elsewhere. It appears that at one time it was proposed by his friends, and especially by Sir Walter Scott, that he should become a candidate for the occupancy of a literary chair in the University of Edinburgh; but he shrank from the idea of undertaking so serious a labour as is involved in the preparation of a thorough academical course. In 1820 he accepted the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine, and acted in that capacity for a considerable period, until he resigned it to take charge of the Metropolitan. His connection with periodical literature may have been advantageous in a pecuniary point of view, but did not tend materially to enhance his reputation. His was not the pen of the ready writer; and it must ever be regretted that he was induced to bestow so much attention upon merely ephemeral literature, to the sacrifice of the nobler aims which were expected from his acknowledged genius. In 1824 he published his Thxodric, a poem which, in spite of some fine passages, was generally considered as a failure. With Theodric his poetical career may be said to have closed. At times he put forth short poems of various degrees of merit, but none of them were equal to the grand lyrics already treasured in the memory of his countrymen. It seemed as if a large portion of the old virtue had departed from him; and his last published poem, the Pilgrim of Glencoe, showed hardly any marks of his former accomplishment and power.

In fact it appeared that the rich mine of poetry had been worked out. Without actually adopting that conclusion, we may observe that Campbell had latterly occupied himself most zealously with matters which were apart from his earlier pursuits. In the first place, he took an active share in the Institution of the London University, and it was mainly through his exertions that it was saved from becoming a mere sectarian college. Shortly afterwards, in 1826, he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, an event which he considered as the crowning honour of his life, and which certainly was a mark of distinction of which any man might have been proud. He did not accept the office as a mere sinecure, but applied himself to discharge the actual duties (which, through the negligence of former rectors, had been allowed to fall into abeyance) with a zeal and energy which made entire conquest of the hearts of his youthful constituents. In 1831, the year in which the gallant struggle of the Poles for their independence was terminated by entire defeat, Campbell, who in his earliest poem had referred in such beautiful language to the shameful partition of Poland, more than revived his youthful enthusiasm for her cause. He had watched with an anxiety almost bordering on fanaticism the progress of the patriotic movement; and the news of the capture of Warsaw by the Russians affected him as if it had been the deepest of personal calamities. “His heart,” says his biographer, “was in the subject of Poland; he could neither write nor speak upon any other with common patience; and if a word was dropt in company that did not harmonize with his feelings, he was very apt to consider it as a personal offence.” In one of his own letters he says, “I know that my zeal for Poland has put me half mad.” And again, “It is still all that I can do to support a tolerable cheerfulness before these kind hospitable people, for Poland preys on my heart night and day. It is sometimes a relief to me to weep in secret, and I do weep long and bitterly.” Nor did he show his sympathy by words alone, but by resolute and continued action. He was the founder of the association in London of the Friends of Poland, which not only served to maintain the strong interest felt by the British people for the Polish cause, but was the means of providing assistance and giving employment to large numbers of the unfortunate exiles who were driven to seek refuge in this country. Never, till his dying day, did he relax his exertions in their behalf; and many an unhappy wanderer, who, but for unexpected aid, might have perished in the streets of a foreign city, had reason to bless the name of Thomas Campbell.

The remainder of his life presents few features of interest. Domestic calamity had overtaken him. His wife, whom he loved affectionately, had been taken from him—of his two sons, one died in infancy, and the other was afflicted by an incurable malady. His own health became impaired. He gradually withdrew from public life, and died at Boulogne on 15th July 1844, at the age of sixty-seven. His last hours were soothed by the affectionate care of his relatives and friends; nor did his countrymen forget the poet in his death, for his remains were solemnly interred in Westminster Abbey, with the honours of a public funeral.

Few poets of reputation, whose span has been extended nearly to the threescore and ten allotted years, have written so little as Campbell: at the same time it must be confessed that there are fewer still whose works are likely to be prized by posterity in the like proportion with his. If we throw out of consideration altogether Thsodric, — though some might demur to such an excision,—if we overlook the Pilgrim of Glencoe, and weed from his lyrical garden such plants as have little charm either from their colour or their fragrance, there will still remain a mass of poetry familiar to the ear and the heart, such as hardly any other writer of this century has been able to produce. We may regret that Campbell was not more diligent in the cultivation of his poetical genius, that he did not apply himself more sedulously in his earlier years to some serious effort, and that he allowed other pursuits and designs to interfere with his peculiar calling. But who can venture to say what success might have attended his efforts had he acted otherwise than he did? We blame the poet for apparent indolence, not reflecting that inspiration is not to be commanded at will. It is not only possible but easy for the man who is practised in versification to write a certain given number of lines within a certain specified time; but genuine poetry never was and never will be the product of Egyptian taskwork. It cannot be produced to order—it must be spontaneous; and its quality must depend entirely upon the mood of mind under which it is com posed. The greater part of the poetry or rather the verse of Southey, a considerable portion of that of Scott, and a vast deal of that of Wordsworth, was not conceived or written under the poetic impulse. On such occasions these celebrated men were writing verse, as they might have written prose, without enthusiasm or anything like the feeling of passion; and although their ordinary thoughts were far higher, bolder, and more subtle than those of the million, they still were not attempting to rise beyond their ordinary intellectual level. One can see at a glance when they were inspired, and when they were merely versifying. Of the poets who adorned the first half of the present century, Coleridge and Campbell were conspicuous for their abstinence in writing except under the influence of real emotion. Of the former it may be said that he has hardly penned a line of mere mechanical verse; the latter did not do so until his inspiration seemed to have abandoned him. Undoubtedly, however,—to have recourse to a hackneyed, though by no means an unmeaning phrase,—it is the duty of the poet to woo the muse, not to wait for her courtship. He must seek for the waters of Castaly, not tarry till they are conveyed to him; and it is in this respect probably that Campbell principally erred. He did not sufficiently endeavour to awake his genius; he was too much a dreamer, and may at times have lost his opportunity from the sheer weight of indolence. And yet, considering the value of the legacy he has left, we have no reason to complain. Critics may dispute regarding the comparative merits of his longer works; and, as they incline towards didactic or narrative poetry, may prefer the one composition to the other. Both are entitled to high praise and honour, but it is on his lyrics that the future reputation of Campbell must principally rest. They have taken their place, never to be disturbed, in the popular heart; and, until the language in which they are written perishes, they are certain to endure. (w. e. a.)

CAMPBELL, John, Baron (1779-1861), the second son of the Rev. George Campbell, D.D., by Magdalene, the only daughter of John Hallyburton, Esq. of Fodderance, was born at Cupar, Fife, on 17th September 1779. His father was for fifty years the parish minister of Cupar. For a few years young Campbell studied at the United College, St Andrews, where he met Thomas Chalmers. In 1800 he was entered as a student at Lincoln’s Inn, and became a pupil of the well-known special pleader Mr Warren, the master of Lyndhurst, Denman, and Cottenham. A few days after his entrance, as he records in his Lives of the Chancellors, he saw and heard Lord Thurlow speak in the House of Lords. After a short connection with the Morning Chronicle he was called to the bar in 1826, and at once began to report cases decided at Nisi Prius (i.e,, on Jury Trial), in the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas, and on the home circuit. Of these Reports he published altogether four volumes, with learned notes; they extend from Michaelmas 1807 to Hilary 1816. Campbell also devoted himself a good deal to criminal business, but in spite of his unceasing industry he failed to attract much attention behind the bar; briefs came in slowly, and it was not till 1827 that he obtained a silk gown and found himself in that “front rank” who are permitted to have political aspirations. When George IV. died (26th June 1830) and Parliament was dissolved (24th July), Campbell, like all the new Whig men of the day, resolved to enter Lord Grey’s Parliament. With the help of his relative Major Scarlett he contested the borough of Stafford, which he represented in 1830 and 1831. In the House he showed an extraordinary, sometimes an excessive zeal for public business, speaking on all subjects with practical sense, but on none with eloquence or spirit. His main object, however, like that of Brougham, was the amelioration of the law, more by the abolition of cumbrous technicalities than by the assertion of new and striking principles. Thus his name is associated with the Fines and Recoveries Abolition Act (3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 74); the Law of Descent Act (3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 106); the Law of Dower Act (3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 105); the Statute of Limitations (3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 27); the Execution of Wills of Real or Personal Property Act (1 Vict. c. 26); one of the Copyhold Tenure Acts (4 and 5 Vict. c. 25); and the Imprisonment for Debt Act (1 and 2 Vict. c. 110). All these measures were important and were carefully drawn; but their merits cannot be explained in a biographical notice. The second was called for by the preference which the common law gave to a distant collateral over the brother of the half-blood of the first purchaser; the fourth conferred an indefeasible title on adverse possession for twenty years (a term shortened by Lord Cairns in 1875 to twelve years); the fifth reduced the number of witnesses required by law to attest wills, and removed the vexatious distinction which existed in this respect between freeholds and copyholds; the last freed an innocent debtor from imprisonment only before final judgment (or on what was termed mesne process), but the principle stated by Campbell that only fraudulent debtors should be imprisoned was ultimately given effect to for England and Wales in 1869. In one of his most cherished objects, however, which formed the theme of his maiden speech in Parliament, Campbell was doomed to disappointment. This was the establishment of a general Register of Deeds or Titles to Land for England and Wales, which would diminish the number of unmarketable and unsafe titles, and thus simplify and cheapen the transfer of land. As head of the Real Property Commission of 1827, he had ample opportunity of observing the evils caused by the absurd system of outstanding terms, and he was able to quote the example of most European countries, where compulsory publication had been found neither to hurt commercial credit nor to wound family pride. The measure of 1830 was defeated by the country attorneys, led by Sir Chas. Wetherell, but the principle has rapidly gained ground and has been partially embodied in the Land Transfer Bills of subsequent reformers. Campbell’s most important appearance as member for Stafford was in defence of Lord John Russell’s first Reform Bill (1831). In a temperate and learned speech, based on Fox’s declaration against constitution-mongering, he supported both the enfranchising and the disfranchising clauses, and easily disposed of the cries of “corporation robbery,” “nabob representation,” “opening for young men of talent,” &c. The following year (1832) found Campbell solicitor-general, a knight, and member for Dudley, which he represented till 1834. In that year he became attorney-general and was returned by Edinburgh, for which he sat till 1841.

His political creed declared upon the hustings there was that of a moderate Whig. He maintained the connection of church and state, opposed triennial parliaments and the ballot, and railed against the dictatorship of the great duke (see Speech at Edinburgh, 3d January 1835, 8vo, London, 1835), Although in his relations with his constituents in both England and Scotland there was traceable an unpleasant spirit of accommodation and cajolery, in Parliament his position, both political and religious, was always well defined and independent. There he continued to lend the most effective help to the Liberal party. His speech in 1835 in support of the motion for inquiry into the Irish Church Temporalities with a view to their partial appropriation for national purposes (for disestablishment was not then dreamed of as possible) contains much terse argument, and no doubt contributed to the fall of Peel and the formation of the Melbourne cabinet. The next year Campbell had a fierce encounter with Lord Stanley in the debate which followed the motion of Mr Spring Rice on the repair and maintenance of parochial churches and chapels. The legal point in the dispute (which Campbell afterwards made the subject of a separate pamphlet) was whether the churchwardens of the parish, in the absence of the vestry, had any means of enforcing a rate except the antiquated interdict or ecclesiastical censure It was not on legal technicalities, however, but on the broad principle of religious equality, that Campbell supported the abolition of Church Rates, in which he included the Edinburgh Annuity-Tax. In the same year he spoke for Lord Melbourne in the action (thought by some to be a political conspiracy) which was brought by Mr Norton against the Whig premier for criminal conversation with the beautiful and accomplished grand-daughter of Sheridan. At this time also he exerted himself for the reform of justice in the ecclesiastical courts, for the uniformity of the law of marriage (which he held should be a purely civil contract), and for giving prisoners charged with felony the benefit of counsel. His defence of the Times newspaper, which had accused Sir John Conroy, equerry to the duchess of Kent, of misappropriation of money (1838), is chiefly remarkable for the confession—“I despair of any definition of libel which shall exclude no publications which ought to be suppressed, and include none which ought to be permitted.” His own definition of blasphemous libel was enforced in the prosecution which, as attorney-general, he raised against the bookseller Hetherington, and which he justified on the singular ground that “the vast bulk of the population believe that morality depends entirely on revelation; and if a doubt could be raised among them that the Tθn Commandments were given by God from Mount Sinai, men would think they were at liberty to steal, and women would consider themselves absolved from the restraints of chastity.” But his most distinguished effort at the bar was undoubtedly the speech for the House of Commons in the famous case of Stockdale υ. Hansard. The Commons had ordered to be printed, among other papers, a Report of the Inspectors of Prisons on Newgate, which stated that an obscene book, published by Stockdale, was given to the prisoners to read. Stockdale sued the Commons’ publisher, and was met by the plea of parliamentary privilege, to which, however, the judges did not give effect, on the ground that they were entitled to define the privileges of the Commons, and that publication of papers was not essential to the functions of Parliament. The matter was settled by the Act 3 Vict. c. 9.

In 1840 Campbell conducted the prosecution against John Frost, one of the three Chartist leaders who attacked the town of Newport, all of whom were found guilty of high treason. We may also mention, as matter of historical interest, the case before the High Steward and the House of Lords which arose out of the duel fought on Wimbledon Common between the earl of Cardigan and Captain Harvey Tuckett. The law of course was clear that the “punctilio which swordsmen falsely do call honour” was no excuse for wilful murder. To the astonishment of everybody Lord Cardigan escaped from a capital charge of felony because the full name of his antagonist (Harvey Garnett Phipps Tuckett) was not legally proved. It is difficult to suppose that such a blunder was not preconcerted. Campbell himself made the extraordinary declaration that to engage in a duel which could not be declined without infamy (i.e., social disgrace) was “an act free from moral turpitude,” although the law properly held it to be wilful murder. Next year, as the Melbourne administration was near its close, Plunkett, the venerable chancellor of Ireland, was forced by discreditable pressure to resign, and the Whig attorney-general, who had never practised in Equity, became chancellor of Ireland, and was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Campbell of St Andrews, in the county of Fife. His wife, Mary Elizabeth Campbell, the eldest daughter of the first Baron Abinger by one of the Campbells of Kilmorey, Argyllshire, whom he had married in 1821, had in 1836 been created Baroness Stratheden. The post of chancellor Campbell held for only sixteen days, and then resigned it to his successor Sir Edward Sugden (Lord St Leonards). It was during the period 1841-49, when he had no legal duty, except the self-imposed one of occasionally hearing Scotch appeals in the House of Lords, that the unlucky dream of literary fame troubled Lord Campbell’s leisure. By two days’ court work in Dublin ho had received a pension of <£4000 per annum from an ungrateful country, and he suddenly remembered what Lords Coke and Bacon had said about the debt due from every successful lawyer.

Following in the path struck out by Miss Strickland in her Lives of the Queens of England, and by Lord Brougham’s Lives of Eminent Statesmen, he at last produced, in 1849, The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, from the earliest times till the reign of King George IV., 7 vols. 8vo. The conception of this work is magnificent; its execution wretched. Intended to evolve a history of jurisprudence from the truthful portraits of England’s greatest lawyers, it merely exhibits the ill-digested results of desultory learning, without a trace of scientific symmetry or literary taste, without a spark of that divine imaginative sympathy which alone can give flesh and spirit to the dead bones of the past, and without which the present becomes an unintelligible maze of mean and selfish ideas. A charming style, a vivid fancy, exhaustive research, were not to be expected from a hard-worked barrister; but he must certainly be held responsible for the frequent plagiarisms, the still more frequent inaccuracies of detail, the colossal vanity which obtrudes on almost every page, the hasty insinuations against the memory of the great departed who were to him as giants, and the petty sneers which he condescends to print against his own contemporaries, with whom he was living from day to day on terms of apparently sincere friendship. These faults are not so glaring in the lives of such men as Somers and Hardwicke, whom distance in time makes safe from personal jealousy; they are painfully apparent in the lives of Eldon, Lyndhurst, and Brougham, and they have been pointed out by the biographers of Eldon and by Lord St Leonards. And yet the book is an invaluable repertory of facts, and must endure until it is superseded by something better. It was followed by the Lives of the Chief Justices.of England, from the Norman Conquest till the death of Lord Mansfield, 8vo, 2 vols., a book of similar construction but inferior merit.

It must not be supposed that during this period the literary lawyer was silent in the House of Lords. He spoke frequently. The 3d volume of the Protests of the Lords, lately edited by Mr Thorold Rogers, contains no less than ten protests by Campbell, entered in the years 1842-45. He protests against Peel’s Income Tax Bill of 1842; against the Aberdeen Act (6 and 7 Vict. c. 61) as conferring undue power on church courts; against the perpetuation of diocesan courts for probate and administration; against Lord Stanley’s absurd bill providing compensation for the destruction of fences to dispossessed Irish tenants; and against the Parliamentary Proceedings Bill, which proposed that all "bills, except money bills, having reached a certain stage, or having passed one House, should be continued to next session. The last he opposed because the proper remedy lay in resolutions and orders of the House. He protests in favour of Lord Monteagle’s (Mr Spring Rice) motion for inquiry into the sliding scale of corn duties under 5 Vict. c. 14; of Lord Normanby’s motion on the Queen’s speech in 1834, for inquiry into the state of Ireland (then wholly under military occupation); of Lord Radnor’s bill to define the constitutional powers of the home secretary, when Sir James Graham opened Mazzini’s letters. In 1844 he records a solitary protest against the judgment of the House of Lords in Reg. υ. Millis, which affirmed that a man regularly married according to the rites of the Irish Presbyterian Church, and afterwards regularly married to another woman by an Episcopálly ordained clergyman, could not be convicted of bigamy, because the English law required for the validity of a marriage that it should be performed by an ordained priest

On the resignation of Lord Denman in 1850, Campbell was appointed Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench. For this post he was well fitted by his knowledge of common law, his habitual attention to the pleadings in court, and his power of clear statement. On the other hand, at Nisi Prius and on the criminal circuit, he was accused of frequently attempting unduly to influence juries in their estimate of the credibility of evidence. It is also certain that he liked to excite applause in the galleries by some platitude about the “glorious Revolution” or the “Protestant succession.” He assisted in the reforms of special pleading at Westminster, and had a recognized place with Brougham and Lyndhurst in legal discussions in the House of Lords. But he had neither the generous temperament nor the breadth of view which is required in the composition of even a mediocre statesman. In 1859 he was made Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, probably on the understanding that Bethell should succeed as soon as he could be spared from the House of Commons. His short tenure of this office calls for no remark. In the same year he published in the form of a letter to Mr Payne Collier an amusing and extremely‘inconclusive essay on Shakespeare’s legal acquirements. One passage will show the conjectural process which runs through the book: “If Shakespeare was really articled to a Stratford attorney, in all probability, during the five years of his clerkship, he visited London several times on his master’s business, and he may then have been introduced to the green-room at Blackfriars by one of his countrymen connected with that theatre.” The only positive piece of evidence produced is the passage from Thomas Nash’s “Epistle to the Gentlemen of the Two Universities,” prefixed to Greene’s Arcadia, 1859, in which he upbraids somebody (not known to be Shakespeare) with having left the “trade of Noverint” and busied himself with “whole Hamlets” and “handfuls of tragical speeches.” The knowledge of law shown in the plays is very much what a universal observer must have picked up. Lawyers always underestimate the legal knowledge of an intelligent layman. Campbell died on the 23d June 1861. It has been well said of him in explanation of his success, that he lived eighty years and preserved his digestion unimpaired. He had a hard head, a splendid constitution, tireless industry, a generally judicious temper. He was a learned, though not a scientific lawyer, a faithful political adherent, thoroughly honest as a judge, dutiful and happy as a husband. But there was nothing admirable or heroic in his nature. On no great subject did his principles rise above the commonplace of party, nor had he the magnanimity which excuses rather than aggravates the faults of others. His life is the triumph of steady determination unaided by a single brilliant or attractive quality. (w. ç. s.)