He was, however, not only a national poet in the sense in which Wordsworth was one, but also, from his youth to his death, an enthusiastic lover of liberty. His epic poems and his ballads are not superior to corresponding productions of Wordsworth's; but he had true lyric genius. He is the Tyrtæus or Petöfi of the Naturalistic School. To him the cause of his country and the cause of liberty are one and the same thing, and in his best verse there is a spirit, a swinging march time, and a fire, that entitle him, if only for the sake of half-a-dozen short pieces, to a place among great poets. His poem _The Battle of the Baltic_ is, naturally, little calculated to make a favourable impression on Danes. His pride in the victory Nelson won over a force so much weaker than his own, but which the poem magnifies into the same size as England's, is the very extravagance of patriotism. But, side by side with this poem, and written at the same time, we have _Ye Mariners of England_, a masterpiece, in the rhythm of which we seem to hear the gale rattling among English sails. Here the true son of the Queen of the Sea, singing of the British sailor, celebrates his mother's praises. Notice the rushing, sweeping force and exultation compressed into the last four lines of this stanza:-- "Ye Mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years The battle and the breeze! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe! And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. And observe the expression of pride in England's sovereignty of the sea:-- Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain-waves, Her home is on the deep. With thunders from her native oak, She quells the floods below,-- As they roar on the shore, When the stormy winds do blow; When the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. Campbell's life was a well regulated and tranquil one. Born in Glasgow in 1777, he received an excellent education there and in Edinburgh. At the age of twenty-one he published his _Pleasures of Hope_, which, though now antiquated, created a sensation on its appearance, and with the proceeds undertook a tour in Germany, during the course of which he wrote several poems inspired by the hostilities with Denmark--among them the two above mentioned. In 1803 he married his cousin and settled in London. He wrote, lectured, and from 1820 onwards edited a newspaper. After 1830 his health was precarious and his powers were enfeebled. He lived, a shadow of himself, until 1844.