In the mean time, however, he had not been idle. At the age of twenty the poetical instinct is active, and, even though no audience can be found, the muse will force its way. Campbell had already translated two plays of Æschylus and Euripides--an exercise which no doubt developed largely his powers of versification--and, further, had begun to compose original lyric verses. In the foreign edition of his works, there is inserted a poem called the Dirge of Wallace, written about this period, which, with a very little concentration, might have been rendered as perfect as any of his later compositions. In spirit and energy it is assuredly inferior to none of them. "But," says Dr Beattie, "the fastidious author, who thought it too rhapsodical, never bestowed a careful revision upon it, and persisted in excluding it from all the London editions." We hope to see it restored to its proper place in the next: in the mean time we select the following noble stanzas:-- "They lighted the tapers at dead of night, And chaunted their holiest hymn: But her brow and her bosom were damp with affright, Her eye was all sleepless and dim! And the Lady of Ellerslie wept for her lord, When a death-watch beat in her lonely room, When her curtain had shook of its own accord, And the raven had flapped at her window board, To tell of her warrior's doom. "'Now sing ye the death-song, and loudly pray For the soul of my knight so dear! And call me a widow this wretched day, Since the warning of GOD is here. For a nightmare rests on my strangled sleep; The lord of my bosom is doomed to die! His valorous heart they have wounded deep, And the blood-red tears shall his country weep For Wallace of Ellerslie!' "Yet knew not his country, that ominous hour-- Ere the loud matin-bell was rung-- That the trumpet of death, from an English tower, Had the dirge of her champion sung. When his dungeon-light looked dim and red On the highborn blood of a martyr slain, No anthem was sung at his lowly death-bed-- No weeping was there when _his_ bosom bled, And is heart was rent in twain. "Oh! it was not thus when his ashen spear Was true to that knight forlorn, And hosts of a thousand wore scattered like deer At the blast of a hunter's horn; _When he strode o'er the wreck of each well-fought field, With the yellow-haired chiefs of his native land;_ _For his lance was not shivered on helmet or shield, And the sword that was fit for archangel to wield Was light in his terrible hand!_