With Campbell it was the substance or matter,—the ideas, thought, and meanings for the spirit—not the formal elements or manner of poetry, that counted for most. It is the substance of poetry, its meanings for the spirit, that counts always for most with the people. For this reason, though Campbell is not the greatest of the poets of the first Systematic School, he is, and will remain, as he has been called, ‘the poet of the people’s choice.’ A distinct evolution—and advance in vision—from objective nature-painting of the spirit can be observed in the successive volumes of Campbell’s verse. Naturally, until he had reflected on his aims as a poet, he did not announce his poetic creed in his first volume of verse. He did this in his fourth volume, _Collected Poems_ (1905) in his poem _Higher Kinship_:— There is a time at middle summer, when, In weariness of all this saddening world, _The simple nature aspects seem to me_ _As a close kindred_, sweet and kind and true, _Giving me peace and comfort, and a joy_ _Not of the senses, but of the inward soul_. The restful day, the sunny leaf and wind, The path of blue like windows shining down, _Do give to life a beauty and a calm_ _And a sweet sadness, that this mighty world_ _And all its myriad triumphs cannot give_. O let me live with Nature at her door, And taste her home-brewed pleasures, simple, glad,— The beauty of the day, the splendor of the night,— Not in the great palace halls, great cloister domes, The smoke of cities and the thronging din, But out with air and woodlands, shining sun,— These my companions, this my roof, my home! ‘Not of the senses’—Campbell is not a lover of impressionism for its own sake, but he loves the simple, colorful aspects of Nature for the joy, comfort and peace which they give to ‘_the inward soul_.’ He has his equals as an impressionistic colorist, but he is supreme when he paints a phenomenon or aspect of Nature in monotone or in subdued tones as in pastel, or when he etches a scene with a Whistler-like feeling for atmosphere, shadow, and chiaroscuro, and for line. In 1888, when he was in his twenty-seventh year, Campbell published a booklet of twenty lyrics, _Snowflakes and Sunbeams_. In these first lyrics he disclosed the eye of monotonist and etcher for the beauty of Nature. The verse in this rare little volume is marked, too, by a grace and melody which enhance the pictures. What but a ‘symphony in white’ is his _Snow_— Folding the forest. Folding the farms, In a mantle of white, And the river’s great arms, Kissed by the chill night From clamor to rest, Lie all white and shrouded Upon the world’s breast. Thus, through several stanzas, he paints Nature in white, seemingly for the joy of the senses but really for ‘the inward soul.’ For a moment he obtrudes the ‘message’ which the snow conveys to the moral imagination—