lection could be found more treasonable than "Ye Mariners of England," which was already prepared for the press, with a few others of its afterwards distinguished brethren. "This comes of trusting a Hamburg spy!" cried the discomfited sheriff; for it seems that a rogue in Hamburg had been manufacturing for the credulity of his employers on this side of the water such treason as he could not find ready-made, and had treasured up Campbell's movements there as a fit groundwork for his ingenuity. The whole inquest ended in a hearty laugh and a bottle of wine.
On returning to Edinburgh, Campbell found that instant action was necessary. His father had died during his absence in Germany; his widowed mother, now old and frail, was in necessitous circumstances; and his three sisters were all invalids under the maternal roof. It was also such a period of scarcity and mercantile depression over the whole island, that the prices of the common necessaries of life were nearly doubled, so that famine-riots, popularly called meal-mobs, became the order of the day among the lower classes. Urged by present emergencies, he betook himself, in the first instance, to the precarious resources of miscellaneous authorship, until something more permanent could be adopted. This latter opportunity seemed to occur from an invitation he received from Lord Minto to visit him in London; and on Campbell's repairing thither in 1802, he was employed by his lordship as private secretary, and afterwards as travelling companion to Scotland. During this temporary absence from Edinburgh, he had composed "Lochiel's Warning," and the "Battle of Hohenlinden." This, in the estimation of modern authorship, will appear to be very slow progress; but even in the most depressed period of his circumstances, his aim was to write for immortality, so that every expression was carefully considered, and every line touched and retouched, before it could satisfy that most severe of all—critics himself. Even that striking line—
"Coming events cast their shadows before,"
had cost him a whole week of study and anxiety. But who will say that the price of such a stanza was too high? Writing of the poet to a friend at this time, Telford, the celebrated engineer, asks, "Have you seen his 'Lochiel?' He will surpass everything ancient or modern—your Pindars, your Drydens, and your Grays." A similar feeling, but in a more poetical fashion, was expressed of its merits by Mrs. Dugald Stewart, wife of the distinguished philosopher. When the poet read it to her in manuscript, she listened in deep silence, and when it was finished, she gravely rose, laid her hand upon his head, and said, "This will bear another wreath of laurel yet," after which she retired to her seat without uttering another word. "This," said Campbell, "made a stronger impression upon my mind than if she had spoken in a strain of the loftiest panegyric. It was one of the principal incidents in my life that gave me confidence in my own powers."
After having laboured for some time in fugitive articles for the newspapers, and the compilation of history for the booksellers of Edinburgh, by which he managed to secure a respectable temporary livelihood, Campbell once more repaired to London. A poet by choice, he was now a prose author from necessity, and the British metropolis he knew to be the best mart in which his literary commodities could find a ready sale. Here, then, he was employed fagging, as he informs us, for ten hours a-day, and purloining the opportunity for calls and recreation from the hours of sleep. At this time, also, he published the seventh edition of the "Pleasures of Hope," and several of his smaller pieces, in a quarto
