inhabitants, revenues, colonies, and commerce, of this island;" which appeared
in 1774, in 2 volumes 4to, having cost him the labour of many years. Though
its value is so far temporary, this is perhaps the work which does its author the
highest credit. It excited the admiration of the world to such a degree as
caused him to be absolutely overwhelmed with new correspondents. He tells a
friend, in a letter, that he had already consumed a ream of paper, (nearly a thousand sheets, ) in answering these friends, and was just breaking upon another,
which perhaps would share the same fate.
Dr Campbell had been married early in life to Elizabeth, daughter of Benjamin Robe, of Leominster, in the county of Hereford, gentleman, by whom he had seven children. Though it does not appear that he had any other resources than his pen, his style of life was very respectable. His time was so exclusively devoted to reading and writing, that he seldom stirred abroad. His chief exerarity of all his habits, preserved his health against the effects of both his sedentary life and original weakness, till his sixty-eighth year, when he died, December 28, 1775, in full possession of his faculties, and without pain.
It would only encumber our pages to recount all the minor productions of Dr Campbell. A minute specification of them is preserved in the second edition of his Biographia Britannica, where his life was written by Dr Kippis. So multitudinous, however, were his fugitive compositions, that he once bought an old pamphlet, with which he was pleased on dipping into it, and which turned out to be one of his own early writings. So completely had he forgot every thing connected with it, that he had read it half through before he had discovered that it was written by himself. On another occasion, a friend brought him a book, in French, which professed to have been translated from the German, and which the owner recommended Dr Campbell to try in an English dress. The Doctor, on looking into it, discovered it to be a neglected work of his own, which had found its way into Germany, and there been published as an original work. Dr Campbell, in his private life, was a gentleman and a Christian: he possessed an acquaintance with the most of modern languages, besides Hebrew, Greek, and various oriental tongues. His best faculty was his memory, which was surprisingly tenacious aud accurate. Dr Johnson spoke of him in the following terms, as recorded by Boswell: "I think highly of Campbell. In the first place, he has very good parts. In the second place, he has very extensive reading; not, perhaps, what is properly called learning, but history, politics, and, in short, that popular knowledge which makes a man very useful. In the third place, he has learnt much by what is called the voce viva. He talks with a great many people." The opportunities which Dr Campbell enjoyed of acquiring information, by the mode described by Dr Johnson, were very great. He enjoyed a universal acquaintance among the clever men of his time, literary and otherwise, whom he regularly saw in conversatones on the Sunday evenings. The advantage which a literary man must enjoy by this means is very great, for conversation, when it becomes in the least excited, strikes out ideas from the minds of all present, which would never arise in solitary study, and often brings to a just equilibrium disputable points which, in the cogitations of a single individual, would be settled all on one side. Smollett, in enumerating the writers who had reflected lustre on the reign of George II., speaks of "the merit conspicuous in the works of Campbell, remarkable for candour, intelligence, and precision." It only remains to be mentioned, that this excellent man Avas honoured, in 1754, with the degree of LL.D. by the university of Glasgow, and that, for some years
