an ample store of forays, anecdotes of bards, drinking, fighting, and Lochinvaring, &c.’ These collections seem to have been lost, and many of Callanan's own poems have perished, having never been committed to paper, though retained in his powerful memory and frequently recited by himself. At length his health failed, and he accepted a tutorship at Lisbon, where he spent the last two years of his life, dying of consumption on 19 Sept. 1829, after an ineffectual endeavour to return to Ireland.
Like most Irish poets, Callanan was a pure lyrist, with no reach or depth of thought, no creative imagination, and no proper originality, but endowed with abundance of fancy, melody, and feeling. His only sustained effort, ‘The Recluse of Inchidony,’ is as good an imitation of ‘Childe Harold’ as could well be written, but little more. His lyrical poems leave no doubt of the genuine quality of his inspiration, but only one, ‘Gougane Barra,’ a fine example of musical and impassioned description, the alliance of the eye and the heart, has produced a deep impression or attained general celebrity. His versions of Irish ballads are very stirring, and his rendering of Luis de Leon's ‘Vida del Cielo’ is exceedingly beautiful. Some of his pieces are marked by an aversion to England, which he recanted on the passing of the Emancipation Act. His private character was amiable; he was refined and susceptible to an uncommon degree, but to no less a degree indolent, irresolute, and unpractical. His poems were collected after his death (London, 1830; reprinted at Cork, 1847 and 1861).
[Bolster's Irish Magazine, vol. iii.; memoir in Callanan's poems, 1861.]
CALLANDER, JAMES. [See Campbell, Sir James.]
CALLANDER, JOHN (d. 1789), of Craigforth, Stirlingshire, Scottish antiquary, was descended from James VI's master-smith in Scotland, John Callander, who purchased Craigforth of the earls of Livingston and Callander about 1603. His father was also John Callander; his mother, Catherine Mackenzie of Cromarty. He passed advocate at the Scottish bar, but never obtained a practice, and seems to have devoted his leisure chiefly to classical pursuits. He presented five volumes of manuscripts entitled ‘Spicilegia Antiquitatis Græcæ, sive ex veteribus Poetis deperdita Fragmenta,’ to the Society of Scottish Antiquaries in 1781, shortly after he was elected a fellow. He also presented at the same time nine volumes of manuscript annotations on Milton's ‘Paradise Lost,’ of which he had published those on Book I. in 1750. In 1766–8 he brought out in three volumes ‘Terra Australis Cognita, or Voyages to the Southern Hemisphere during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries,’ partly translated from the French of M. de Brosses, from which, however, he merely confesses to ‘have drawn many helps.’ In 1779 he published ‘An Essay towards a Literal English Version of the New Testament in the Epistle of Paul directed to the Ephesians,’ in which he gave a complete representation in English of the Greek idiom, even to the order of the words. His edition of ‘Two ancient Scottish Poems, the Gaberlunzie Man, and Christ's Kirk on the Green, with Notes and Observations,’ published at Edinburgh in 1782, displays research; but, although the notes are valuable to those unfamiliar with the Scottish language, many of his etymological remarks are unsound. Callander projected a variety of other works, including ‘Bibliotheca Septentrionalis,’ of which he printed a specimen in 1778, and a ‘History of the Ancient Music of Scotland from the age of the venerable Ossian to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century,’ in regard to which he printed ‘Proposals’ in 1781. From the preface to ‘Letters from Thomas Percy, D.D., afterwards Bishop of Dromore, John Callander of Craigforth, Esq., and others, to George Paton,’ which appeared at Edinburgh in 1830, we learn that Callander had a taste for music, and was an excellent performer on the violin, and that in his latter years he became very retired in his habits, and saw little company, his mind being deeply affected by a religious melancholy which unfitted him for society. He died, ‘at a good old age,’ at Craigforth on 14 Sept. 1789. By his wife, Mary, daughter of Sir James Livingstone, he had seventeen children. His eldest son, James, assumed the name of Campbell [see Campbell, Sir James].
In March 1818 an article on Callander's edition of Book I. of Milton's ‘Paradise Lost’ appeared in ‘Blackwood's Magazine,’ in which it was shown by parallel lines that much of his notes had been borrowed without acknowledgment from the annotations of Patrick Hume in the sixth edition of ‘Paradise Lost’ published by Jacob Tonson in 1695. On account of this article a committee of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was appointed to examine his manuscript notes of Milton in their possession, who reported that, though only a comparatively small proportion of Callander's notes were borrowed from Patrick Hume, his obligations to him were not sufficiently acknowledged.
