bards, was so well qualified, lie commenced this course on the 24th of April, 1812, and had the gratification not only of numbering among his audience some of the most illustrious in the literary world, but of being crowned with their approbation. There was, indeed, only one dissenting voice that made itself be heard at the third lecture. "At the most interesting part," he says, "a storm of thunder, lightning, and rain came on. The window above me was open, and the rain poured down on my paper as it did on Leander in the Hellespont. The lightning had given me an electrical headache, and the thunder, aided by the pattering rain, being my competitor in my endeavours to gain the public attention, it required all my lungs to obtain a hearing." His lectures were so popular in London, that he resolved to repeat them in Edinburgh, but this purpose he could not at present find time to execute. The peace of 1814, that threw Paris open to the world, enabled Campbell to accomplish the design of visiting that wonderful city, which he had entertained in 1802, but was prevented from executing by the sudden renewal of war. He accordingly crossed the channel, one of many thousands of visitors, and amidst all the marvels of Paris, nothing seems to have delighted him so much as the Louvre. The great master-pieces of ancient art seemed to burst upon him like the creations of another world, and made him shed tears of mingled awe and delight. In describing, immediately afterwards, the effect they produced on him, although he tells us he was no judge in statuary, yet we at once see he was more—he was a poet, feeling the inspiration of a kindred spirit manifested in a different department of their common art. Of the Apollo Belvidere, he says, "Oh how that immortal youth in all his splendour, majesty, divinity, flashed upon us from the end of the gallery! He seems as if he had just, leapt from the sun." His visits, which were made to the Louvre in company with Mrs. Siddons, were of too transporting a character to be exclusively repeated, and therefore he gladly had recourse to the theatres, concerts, and conversaziones, the promenades, and public spectacles, with which the great metropolis of earth's pleasures is pervaded as its living principle. "But still," he adds, "after the Louvre, I know scarcely anything that is quite transcendant." After nearly two months that were spent well and happily in Paris, Campbell returned fresh with new sensations, that continued to animate him for years, and resumed his necessary studies at Sydenham. In 1815, an event also happened to alleviate the necessity of continual toil, and brighten the prospects of his future life. This was a legacy bequeathed to him by his Highland cousin, M'Arthur Stewart of Ascot, which, though nominally not more than ₤500, was increased to nearly ₤5000, through his share in the unappropriated residue bequeathed to the legatees by the testator.
The practice of public lecturing had now become so congenial to the mind of Campbell, and his course had been so popular, that he repeated it in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Edinburgh, to numerous and delighted audiences. The merits of these "Lectures on Poetry" are now familiar to the public, as they were afterwards published, as well as his "Specimens of the British Poets," in which the germs of his prelections were first displayed. In 1820 he was enabled to revisit Germany with his family, and after a trip, in which the romantic scenery of the Rhine, and the distinguished literary societies of Germany, were enjoyed with equal pleasure, he returned with fresh zest to England and his literary engagements. The most important of these was the editorship of the "New Monthly Magazine," which had been offered him on the most liberal
