"At the breakfast or dinner table--particularly when surrounded
by old friends--he was generally animated, full of anecdote, and
always projecting new schemes of benevolence. But still there was a
visible change in his conversation: it seemed to flow less freely;
it required an effort to support it; and on topics in which he once
felt a keen interest, he now said but little, or remained silent
and thoughtful. The change in his outward appearance was still more
observable; he walked with a feeble step, complained of constant
chilliness; while his countenance, unless when he entered into
conversation, was strongly marked with an expression of languor
and anxiety. The sparkling intelligence that once animated his
features was greatly obscured; he quoted his favourite authors with
hesitation--because, he told me, he often could not recollect their
names."
The remainder of his life was spent in comparative seclusion. Long
before this period he was left a solitary man. His wife, whom he
loved with deep and enduring affection, was taken away--one of his
sons died in childhood, and the other was stricken with a malady
which proved incurable. But the kind offices of a nephew and niece,
and the attentions of many friends, amongst whom Dr Beattie will
always be remembered as the chief, soothed the last days of the
poet, and supplied those duties which could not be rendered by
dearer hands. He expired at Boulogne, on 15th June 1844, his age
being sixty-seven, and his body was worthily interred in Westminster
Abbey, with the honours of a public funeral.
"Never," says Beattie, "since the death of Addison, it was
remarked, had the obsequies of any literary man been attended by
circumstances more honourable to the national feeling, and more
expressive of cordial respect and homage, than those of Thomas
Campbell.
"Soon after noon, the procession began to move from the
Jerusalem Chamber to Poet's Corner, and in a few minutes passed
slowly down the long lofty aisle--
'Through breathing statues, then unheeded things;
Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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