volume, which brought him such a profitable return as to relieve him from all his pecuniary embarrassments, as well as his anxieties about the future. This happy deliverance he forthwith proceeded to signalize in a fitting manner, by selecting for himself a permanent home, and a partner to gladden it. He married one who had been the object of his youthful admiration nine years before, and had latterly become the object of his more matured affections. This was Matilda Sinclair, daughter of his mother's cousin, a gentleman who had formerly been a wealthy merchant and provost in Greenock, and was now a trader in London. The prudent father demurred at the thought of bestowing his daughter upon one who, kinsman though he was, and now of high reputation, was still nothing more than a poet. It was indeed a perilous venture; but the ardour of the young couple overpowered the old man's scruples, and wrung from him a reluctant assent. They were married on the 10th September, 1803. It was a poetical union, for Campbell's whole fortune at this time amounted to the sum of fifty pounds; but he had fifty thousand pleasures of hope in perspective, and was therefore rich in his own imagination. At length he became a father; and here we cannot refrain from quoting his own account of feelings, so common to every father, at the arrival of his first-born, but which Campbell, in a letter announcing the event, has described with such beauty and tenderness: "Our first interview was when he lay in his little crib, in the midst of white muslin and dainty lace, prepared by Matilda's hands long before the stranger's arrival. I verily believe, in spite of my partiality, that lovelier babe was never smiled upon by the light of heaven. He was breathing sweetly in his first sleep. I durst not waken him, but ventured to give him one kiss. He gave a faint murmur, and opened his little azure lights. . . . . . Oh, that I were sure he would live to the days when I could take him on my knee, and feel the strong plumpness of childhood waxing into vigorous youth! My poor boy! shall I have the ecstasy of teaching him thoughts, and knowledge, and reciprocity of love to me? It is bold to venture into futurity so far. At present, his lovely little face is a comfort to me; his lips breathe that fragrance which it is one of the loveliest kindnesses of nature that she has given to infants—a sweetness of smell more delightful than all the treasures of Arabia. What adorable beauties of God and nature's bounty we live in without knowing! How few have ever seemed to think an infant beautiful! But to me there seems to be a beauty in the earliest dawn of infancy, which is not inferior to the attractions of childhood—especially when they sleep. Their looks excite a more tender train of emotions. It is like the tremulous anxiety we feel for a candle new lighted, which we dread going out." Such was an event, which, though an important era in the life of every man, is especially so in that of a poet; and such is the description, which none but a poet, and that of the highest order, could have so embodied. To our thinking, the above quotation may take its place in the highest rank of Campbell's poetical productions.
A happiness like this was not to be enjoyed without a due mixture of life's cares and anxieties; and at this period, the income of the poet for the support of such a home and family, consisted of the proceeds of his daily literary toil, which was so severe as seriously to injure his health. He had not, indeed, that slap-dash facility of writing which characterizes most of those who follow literature as a profession; nor could he, when the hours of study had been ended, abandon the subject of his thoughts as lightly as the man of business can leave his shop or counting-house, when he shuts it up for the evening, and repairs
