"They who know Mr. Campbell only as the author of _Gertrude of Wyoming_ and the _Pleasures of Hope,_ would not suspect him to be a merry companion, overflowing with humour and anecdote, and any thing but fastidious. These Scotch poets have always something in reserve: it is the only point in which the major part of them resemble their countrymen. The mistaken character which the lady formed of Thomson from his _Seasons_ is well known. He let part of the secret out in his _Castle of Indolence;_ and the more he let out, the more honour he did to the simplicity and cordiality of the poet's nature, though not always to the elegance of it. Allan Ramsay knew his friends Gay and Somerville as well in their writings, as he did when he came to be personally acquainted with them; but Allan, who had bustled up from a barber's shop into a bookseller's, was 'a cunning shaver;' and nobody would have guessed the author of the _Gentle Shepherd_ to be penurious. Let none suppose that any insinuation to that effect is intended against Mr. Campbell: he is one of the few men whom I could at any time walk half-a-dozen miles through the snow to spend an afternoon with; and I could no more do this with a penurious man than I could with a sulky one. I know but of one fault he has, besides an extreme cautiousness in his writings; and that one is national, a matter of words, and amply overpaid by a stream of conversation, lively, piquant, and liberal--not the less interesting for occasionally betraying an intimacy with pain, and for a high and somewhat strained tone of voice, like a man speaking with suspended breath, and in the habit of subduing his feelings. No man, I should guess, feels more kindly towards his fellow-creatures, or takes less credit for it. When he indulges in doubt and sarcasm, and speaks contemptuously of things in general, he does it, partly, no doubt, out of actual dissatisfaction, but more perhaps than he suspects, out of a fear of being thought weak and sensitive--which is a blind that the best men very commonly practise. Mr. Campbell professes to be hopeless and sarcastic, and takes pains all the while to set up an university.