poet pay any individual. At that time he was a reserved man in his opinions and in his society, very different, indeed, in both respects from what he became during the last few years of his life. At this time, too, he was sensitive about his own fame, and was regardful of that of others in a high degree; about literary men and their works he was particularly reserved in giving his sentiments, thinking they might get abroad. Even about persons in general, not literary, he was then very guarded in giving an opinion, though in later years he let out his antipathies in terms sometimes scarcely justifiable under the scanty means he had of forming a judgment.

In the summer of 1823, he visited Cheltenham, where he remained a few weeks. During his absence, a letter was sent to him from town, enclosing some poetry from Mrs. Hemans, in Wales, directed to him personally. He wrote me as if all at once something new had struck him. My custom had been to keep pieces of poetry on hand. Campbell saw every thing in verse that appeared in the Magazine, a rule scrupulously kept, for it was his staple. As time often pressed, and Campbell was not always to be found, it was necessary to have a reserve. If you are not already pressed, I should like the Greek song only to be inserted, and the others to be kept, for though Mrs. H. is a very pretty writer, we must not have too many pieces by the same hand for fear of monotony." This was a sudden thought, neither before nor after did he ever thus express himself about the making up of the Magazine, in which he took no part. The pieces were "The Ancient Song of a Greek Exile," and "The Isle of Founts," both of which I thought it necessary to insert in the September number.

6

poem.

Campbell visited Cheltenham again at the time his Theodoric' was in the press, and nothing could surpass his hurried anxiety about his He expressed it upon every occasion; he wrote me from Cheltenham. "I have a kindness to request of you which I have no doubt you will show, and I shall hope to have a proper opportunity of testifying my sense of it. It is to correct the punctuation, particularly of the sheets which follow Theodoric' in my little forthcoming volume. May I ask you, also, to see that they go quickly to press, for I have not yet received a single sheet beyond Theodoric,' and if I go on this way I know not when I may get out. You will do me the greatest favour by accepting of this trusteeship, and it will save Mr. Bentley waiting for my returning the proofs, &c. I mean to retain only Theodoric' standing in types for a week or so longer. The poems of the other sheets may be compared with the poems printed in the New Monthly, and this you can do with more accuracy than I can myself. I should wish only to revise the sheets which contain any thing printed from MS.: such as the verses on 'John Kemble;' Lines on a Seal,' and on the Princess Charlotte.'

6

"This I am conscious is giving you a deal of trouble, which I have no right to request, but I have no friend to whom I can make the application but yourself.

"When you see Bwhich I suppose will of course be soon-will you implore him to despatch the other sheets besides 'Theodoric,' and that he shall have 'Theodoric' within eight days. I ought to be out as early as possible in November."

He wrote me from Cheltenham that the weather was remarkably fine, and that if there was a promise of its continuance he would urge me to

1

come down and rusticate there for a time. He said he had taken a very pleasant lodging, and had a spare room for me. He had not fixed a day for a temporary return to London, a return which would only occupy him in town for a short time, and in consequence would leave the proposition in referendum. He concluded by observing, that he earnestly wished I was with him in order to ramble together over the "morning hills."

I found it necessary to communicate with him almost directly afterwards, in consequence of receiving a criticism on Medwin's book about Lord Byron, which had just then made its appearance, and I received a communication from him in return. The substance of this was, that he felt very much annoyed at being obliged to mutilate the extract from the critic, but that in very good truth, he could not help it, from being on such terms of friendship with Lady Byron, that he could as soon offer her a direct personal indignity as suffer the extract, from Lord Byron's strictures on her ladyship's character, to pass in a work under his superintendence. That it was impossible it could stand, and that it was the same with regard to the remarks of Byron on Rogers. Then, again, the matter in the passage about Lady Byron, had been already repeatedly before the world. His dislike was, that he should appear to give it circulation.

He then, alluding to my joining him at Cheltenham, said that we must have no difference about the meum and tuum if I came down, upon any score of delicacy, as to the matter of our expenses. That he should be delighted at the prospect of our remaining there for a time. That he had a spare bed, and a parlour quite large enough to eat a fowl in and drink a bottle of sherry. He prayed to fortune that the weather might continue good in order to have walks in the vicinity. The idea he had of coming to town, he said he had abandoned, though he had thought it imperatively necessary, returning again to Cheltenham, and that he feared he might not have been able to meet me there. But things had occurred that determined him to remain pretty far into November, and even over its close. He then requested a knowledge of the time when he might expect my arrival.

The criticism of "Medwin" contained much personal matter, not by the reviewer, but in extracts from the author. I sent it to Campbell in type, and he sent it me back from Cheltenham, very much mutilated, on which account I have preserved the identical copy to this hour, as one of the mementoes of our intercourse. The portions struck out had been before widely circulated in the publication, and could have done no further injury had they been repeated in the Magazine. The omission of them there, in consequence, was a proof of Campbell's delicacy of mind towards his friends, although, in his capacity as editor of the publication, a different proceeding would have been excusable. In every other sense, it is clear, Campbell thought that he could not give currency to well-known passages, if offensive to friends. At that time he could little have dreamed of the attack he was one day to make upon his old friend Moore in connexion with the same subject. So little is it possible for the best to foresee the bias of their own minds in a short perspective. The article which he volunteered in defence of Lady Byron was thus, it is clear, prompted by his previous respect for that lady, and upon no sudden start of fitfulness upon the appearance of the work of Moore. However untrained in the lists for such encounters, and, as some judged, however im

politic the encounter at all, since it is rare that the cause of a wife in conjugal differences can be successfully defended by the pen of the ready writer, there can be no doubt about the sincere zeal of the defence. The warmth of the tone in which Campbell wrote arose from his natural temperament. He was not adapted for a controversialist in the commonest literary warfare. He overlooked weak positions on his own side, for the purpose of defending those which were obviously strong. He had the chivalric ardour of the true knight, but none of the experience in strategy. He was by no means a skilful advocate, arguing, as he did, from the honest impulses of his nature, and being the champion upon that ground rather than upon the solid basis of demonstration. There was in Campbell an absence of that coolness of nature which prevents any man, for example, from being a public speaker. Thus with Campbell when he attempted to address an audience, he lost the thread of his argument, and was sometimes brought to a complete stand-still through rapid nervous excitement, and it was somewhat thus in controversy.

In the notice of " Medwin's Recollections," to which allusion is now made (see vol. ii. of the New Monthly, p. 406), he altered the fourth line, which ran, that the minutest details about Lord Byron were sought after, "by every thinking and feeling person," into, " by every body." He marked for omission altogether the paragraph (see "Medwin," p. 43) beginning, 66 a very full account," and terminating "the MS." He did the same by a long extract from the forty-third to the sixty-third page of " Medwin, terminating with the words, I have the lines somewhere, and will show them to you," and keeping up the connexion of the sense by the introduction of the words, "His account of his situation immediately before leaving England is sufficiently melancholy." In page 315 of " Medwin," beginning, "But what has all this to do with Rogers," as far as to "my immortality," he marked out, and then added the note beginning, "So thinks the writer of this article, &c.," as it now stands. (page 411, vol. ii.)

66

PRESENT STATE AND PROSPECTS OF ITALY.

BY L. MARIOTTI.

WE have, of late, stirring news from Italy. The world has long been startled by the feats of a citizen king. It will now have to witness the sayings and doings of a liberal pope. The "old chimera," as Mr. Thomas Carlyle has it, is rejuvenised. Instead of a shrivelled mummy in pontificalibus, a testy and crusty, wrathful and ruthless dotard, cursing, proscribing, hanging, anathematising, behold! a chubby-faced, simpering, middle-aged philanthropist sits on Peter's chair; dabbles in Habeas Corpus and railway plans, appoints his own ministers, countenances old offenders, and admits opera dancers and founders of institutes to the honour of the apostolical kiss.

John Bull looks on and applauds. John is a lover of peaceful, gentlemanlike revolutions. He asks no better than to befriend freedom all

cver the world. He forgets at what dire a price he had to win it for himself. Rebellions and civil wars were to him necessary evils. They did him a deal of good in the end; but he is by no means satisfied that equal benefit may be derived from them in all instances, or that the same advantages may not be come at without their concomitant inflictions.

Much as he is disposed to favour liberty, he loves peace even better. He is loth to fight; not, by any means, from want of pluck, but because, as a wag sang it,

He has a Mrs. Bull at home, and many little Bulls.

He looks upon himself as the guardian of the tranquillity of Europe. Every nation in the world may be free and welcome, but there must be no squabble about it. Liberty, he reasons, may give birth to trade, but it is peace alone that fosters it. John revolts at oppression, and feels for the oppressed. He looks on all men as brethren, wishes them happy, enlightened, enfranchised; but, over and above all, he must have his chance of a bargain with them.

Moreover, if you come to that, he has not made up his mind whether all nations are equally fit for the blessings of bill of rights and trial by jury. Southerners, especially, he apprehends, are too hot-headed for rational freedom. The French have shown it; they writhed, they tumbled and floundered, till they fell from the frying-pan into the burning coals; from King Log into King Citizen. The Spaniards and Portuguese fared no better, and he, John, would thank his stars, had he never thought of meddling with them. After all the trouble they cost him, see the former serve him with a Montpensier marriage, the latter worry their queen till John soon expects to have to find her in board and lodging in London.

He

Italy, too, since he helped to settle her in 1815, has never ceased to give the honest peace-maker some cause of uneasiness. He has heard of Carbonari till he fancied all the fogs in his native atmosphere must be the consequence of the shaking of their eternal charcoal bags. has heard of Young Italy, and wondered whether its partisans are to be made out by white waistcoats, like their brethren in England, or by green inexpressibles, like their cousins in Ireland. He has even, good easy man, been at the trouble of rummaging their papers and forging their seals, for the sake of quiet living. In short, he has always been on

the look-out for squalls on that quarter, and although the threatened explosion invariably vanished in smoke, still the apprehension alone kept him fretting and fidgetting, just as if every rise in Romagna, every Calabrian riot, might have power to shut up every oil and Italian shop in the three kingdoms.

There is now, praise be to Heaven! an end of all fears. The Italians, lucky dogs! are to have liberty for the mere asking. Pope Pius IX. is at the head of Young Italy, plotting a harmless, bloodless revolution, even such an one as John admires. The Pope conspires from the throne. He may have Austrians and Jesuits, monks and king-citizens, arrayed against him; but he may rely on the best wishes of honest old England. That we may show to what extent we are fain to tender him our sympathy, and that our admiration may be all the more full and unqualified, the better we understand the subject of universal congratulation, we will attempt to give a brief enumeration of the important measures, hitherto achieved, on which the Pope's claims to his subjects' gratitude rest (for not a few of his boldest innovations are merely the contrivance of that father of lies, the Augsburg Gazette), and of the further schemes of improvement which he may yet, as the pontifical phrase goes, have locked up in his breast.

We need not, in the first place, waste many words in celebration of that first act of clemency which signalised his accession to the thronea universal political amnesty. The coronation of a new reigning prince, the birth or majority of an heir-apparent, and the like auspicious events, have constantly been, and are invariably announced to the world together with similar evidences of royal magnanimity. The Italians are used to it. Every new ruler in that distracted country seems aware of the wisdom of clearing the prisons of the late monarch's victims to make room for his own. Those Augean stables, the Roman fortresses of state, never were in greater need of a thorough Herculean cleansing. The indiscriminate severity of Gregory sowed a rich harvest for Pius's mildness. The invariable practice adopted by every infallible pope, of undoing the work of his no less infallible predecessor, could never be followed under circumstances more favourable to the interests of humanity. Six thousand state prisoners, in a state of two millions, are a formidable item for a bankrupt pontifical budget; and, had the game been carried any further, the testy old Gregory himself must have been reduced to the alternative, either of starving his captives or disposing of them by a summary process, analogous to the clearing of the hospitals by Napoleon at Jaffa, or else throwing open the doors and condemning them to go and toil for their bread.

This Indulgenza Plenaria was so much, indeed, a matter of necessity, that a few weeks elapsed before the same pardon was likewise extended to all common criminals sentenced to less than five years' imprisonment; swarms of which were, of course, let loose upon society; with what results upon public security, future experience will determine.

The recall of exiles from abroad could not, however, be conceived in obedience to mere economical views; though as far as these are concerned, the papal amnesty-Pius's admirers, with the letter of the edict staring them in the face, seem not aware of itt-was neither universal nor unconditional, and we were rather amused to hear one of the good Pope's subjects telling us of the trouble he had to answer the congratulations which showered in from all quarters, on his happy restoration to his home