The stanzas addressed to John Kemble I have never heard admired to the fulness of my feeling. Can any thing be finer than this?
“A majesty possessed
His transport’s most impetuous tone;
And to each passion of his breast
The graces gave their zone.”
or,
“Who forgets that white discrowned head,
Those bursts of reason’s half-extinguished glare,
Those tears upon Cordelia’s bosom shed
In doubt more touching than despair,
If ’twas reality he felt?”
or,
“Fair as some classic dome,
Robust and richly graced,
Your Kemble’s spirit was the home
Of genius and of taste.—
Taste like the silent dial’s power,
That, when supernal light is given,
Can measure inspiration’s hour
And tell its height in Heaven.
At once ennobled and correct,
His mind surveyed the tragic page;
And what the actor could effect,
The scholar could presage.”
These stanzas are in Campbell’s best style. Had he possessed as much lyric flow as force, his odes might have vied with those of Collins. But, though soaring upward on a strong pinion, his flights are never prolonged, and in this province, which earnestness and justness of sentiment, simplicity of imagery, and a picturesque turn in expression, seem to have marked out as his own, he is surpassed by Shelley, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, from their greater power of continuous self-impulse.
