There is little of interest in Campbell’s personal history; he married a cousin; lived, as I said, mostly in London, or its immediate neighborhood. He had two sons--one dying young, and the other of weak mind--lingering many years--a great grief and source of anxiety to his father, who had the reputation of being exacting and stern in his family. He edited for a long time the _New Monthly Magazine_, and wrote much for it, but is represented to have been, in its conduct, careless, hypercritical, and dilatory. He lectured, too, before the Royal Institute on poetry; read oratorically and showily--his subject matter being semi-philosophical, with a great air of learning and academically dry; there was excellent system in his discourses, and careful thinking on themes remote from most people’s thought. He wrote some historical works which are not printed nowadays; his life of Mrs. Siddons is bad; his life of Petrarch is but little better; some poems he published late in life are quite unworthy of him and are never read. Nevertheless, this prim, captious gentleman wrote many things which have the ring of truest poetry and which will be dear to the heart of England as long as English ships sail forth to battle. _A Minstrel of the Border._ Yet another Scotsman whose name will not be forgotten--whether British ships go to battle, or idle at the docks--is Walter Scott.[21] I scarce know how to begin to speak of him. We all know him so well--thanks to the biography of his son-in-law, Lockhart, which is almost Boswellian in its minuteness, and has dignity besides. We know--as we know about a neighbor’s child--of his first struggles with illness, wrapped in a fresh sheepskin, upon the heathery hills by Smailholme Tower; we know of the strong, alert boyhood that succeeded; he following, with a firm seat and free rein--amongst other game--the old wives’ tales and border ballads which, thrumming in his receptive ears, put the Edinboro law studies into large confusion. Swift after this comes the hurry-scurry of a boyish love-chase--beginning in Grey Friar’s church-yard; she, however, who sprung the race--presently doubles upon him, and is seen no more; and he goes lumbering forward to another fate. It was close upon these experiences that some friends of his printed privately his ballad of _William and Helen_, founded on the German Lenore:-- “Tramp, tramp! along the land they rode! Splash, splash! along the sea! The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, The flashing pebbles flee!”