The admiration of Dr Beattie for the genius of Campbell has in some respects led him astray. It is easy to see at a glance that his measure of admiration is not of an ordinary kind, but so excessive as to lead him beyond all limit. He seems to have regarded Campbell not merely as a great poet, but as the great poet of the age; and he is unwilling, æsthetically, to admit any material diminution of his powers. He still clings with a certain faith to _Theodric_; and declines to perceive any palpable failure even in the _Pilgrim of Glencoe_. Verses and fragments which, to the casual reader, convey anything but the impression of excellence, are liberally distributed throughout the pages of the third volume, and commented on with evident rapture. He seems to think that, in the case of his author, it may be said, "_Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit_;" and accordingly he is slow to suppress, even where suppression would have been of positive advantage. In short, he is too full of his subject to do it justice. In the hands of a skilful and less biassed artisan, the materials which occupy these three volumes, extending to nearly fourteen hundred pages of print, might have been condensed into one highly interesting and popular volume. We should not then, it is true, have been favoured with specimens of Campbell's college exercises, with the voluminous chronicles of his family, with verses written at the age of eleven, or with correspondence purely domestic; but we firmly believe that the reading public would have been grateful to Dr Beattie, had he omitted a great deal of matter connected with the poet's earlier career, which is of no interest whatever. The Campbells of Kirnan were, we doubt not, a highly respectable sept, and performed their duty as kirk-elders for many generations blamelessly in the parish of Glassary. But it was not necessary on that account to trace their descent from the Black Knight Of Lochawe, or to give the particular history of the family for more than a century and a half. Gillespic-le-Camile may have been a fine fellow in his day; but we utterly deny, in the teeth of all the Campbells and Kembles in the world, that he had a drop of Norman blood in his veins. It is curious to find the poet, at a subsequent period, engaged in a correspondence, as to the common ancestor of these names, with one of the Kembles, who, as Mrs Butler somewhere triumphantly avers, were descended from the lords of Campo-bello. Where that favoured region may be, we know not; but this we know, that in Gaelic _Cambeul_ signifies _wry-mouth_, and hence, as is the custom with primitive nations, the origin of the name. And let not the sons of Diarmid be offended at this, or esteem their glories less, since the gallant Camerons owe their name to a similar conformation of the nose, and the Douglases to their dark complexion. Having put this little matter of family etymology right, let us return to Dr Beattie.