On this formidable announcement of the critic's intentions, we wish to offer a few remarks.
In the first place, there seems to be implied in the words "comprised, within the modest compass of a single volume, the whole of his poetical works," an insinuation that Mr Campbell's muse has not been very prolific. "Within the modest compass of a single volume," however, are comprised nearly three hundred well-filled pages of poetry—containing, we should suppose, more than double the number of lines written by Gray, Collins, and Thomas Warton. At the side of the multitudinous works of most of the other true poets of this age, Campbell's shrink into small size indeed; but they afford specimens, neither few nor short, of many kinds of poetical composition. It may be true that his taste is too fastidious—but it is not true that his genius is confined, any more than it is true that the authors of The Elegy, and the Ode to the Passions, had not souls formed in "the pomp and prodigality of heaven," though all their immortal compositions are comprised "within the modest compass" of a hundred pages. Compared with the best English poets of his own class—and a noble class it is—Campbell is a voluminous writer.
Secondly, it seems to us that there is something insidious in giving the go-by, so lightly, to the reception of Campbell's poetry "by a contemporaneous public." A little further on, the critic enters into a very ingenious and finely-written explanation of the "many causes which assist in giving celebrity to a living poet, whose name may, nevertheless, be destined to pass away with the generation that praised and delighted in him;" and though such causes cannot be intended to apply in their full force to Mr Campbell—for the critic does not deny him the gift of genius—and genius is deathless—yet either they are intended to apply to him so far, or they are impertinently introduced, with much formality, into an elaborate disquisition on his genius, in which "an honest attempt is made to determine what place will be allotted to them in the abiding literature of the country."
Thirdly, we think that the critic ought, after his array of "causes which assist in giving celebrity to a living poet, whose name may, nevertheless, be destined to pass away with the generation that praised and delighted in him," to have said or shown how many of them have operated—and to what degree—more especially in favour of Campbell's fame. For it kindled at once into a blaze—and has continued to burn with a strong and steady light for forty years—not only uneclipsed, but unobscured, all through one of the most glorious eras of English poetry.
Fourthly, the critic, to prevent misconception on the one hand, and, on the other, to make his estimate more philosophical, ought to have entered far more fully than he has done into an examination of the nature of the power which Campbell's poetry confessedly possesses over "a contemporaneous public"—that it might have been seen whether it was likely to endure, or to pass away with the causes or circumstances of the times that may have contributed to its transient triumph.
But, fifthly, we respect fully submit to the critic's consideration, whether or no it be perfectly fair to select Campbell from the host of living poets—or but lately dead—and subject the claims of his genius to "respect at the hands of posterity," to a test which has not been applied in the same Journal to the reputation of any of his illustrious brethren. Why fix on him to undergo a trial to which neither Crabbe, nor Rogers, nor Southey, nor Wordsworth, nor Coleridge, nor Scott, nor Moore, nor any other "prevailing poet," has yet therein been brought? Nay, of almost all of them, the works have been written of—and well written of—in a style of criticism as different as may be from that on which we are now letting drop a few remarks, currente culamo; yet they have all "received respect from a contemporaneous public." The same causes—independently of, and over and above their own intrinsic merits—must have operated in their favour too, and helped to elevate them to a place in the esteem of this generation far higher than they may occupy in that of the next, or ever again in the hearts of men born ages after they have been laid in the dust. Compare the spirit of the many critiques on Coleridge, so prodigal of praise and lavish of eulogy—and we blame them
