Search -
The complete poetical works of Thomas Campbell (1854)
The complete poetical works of Thomas Campbell - 1854 Author:Thomas Campbell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and altered ; and the poet was aided in the process of revision by the severe and judicious criticism of Dr. Anderson, to whom ho was indebted for many kind offi... more »ces, which he recognized by dedicating to him the first volume of his poems. " The rapture of April, 1799," says a writer in the Quarterly Re- ticw, " on the first appearance of The Pleasures of Hope, was very natural. Burns had lately died. Cowper was sunk in hopeless insanity, soon to bo released. Their vivid examples had not sufficed to abolish the drowsy prestige of Hayley. Of the great constellation that has since illuminated us, but few of the more potent stars had ascended above the horizon. Crabbe, under a domestic sorrow of which Campbell was destined to participate, had fallen into a dejected inactivity, and was all but forgotten. Rogers had some years earlier published The Pleasures of Memory, to which The Pleasures of Hope owed more than the suggestion of a title ; but that genial effusion only promised the consummate graces since displayed, though too parsimoniously, by its now venerable author. Wordsworth and Coleridge had sent forth Lyrical Ballads, some of them exquisitely beautiful, and in the aggregate most deeply influential; but these were as yet, and for a long while after, appreciated only within a narrow circle; no one misunderstood and undervalued them moro than did Campbell himself. Southey had produced nothing that survives in much vitality. Moore was at college, or at Anacreon. Byron had not yet lain dreaming under the ohn of Harrow, nor Wilson listened to 'the sweet bells of Magdalen tower.' The moment was fortunate, and the applause moro creditable to the public than advantageous (in the upshot) to the new poet." CHAPTER III. The sale of his poem had improved Campbell's finances; and w...« less