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CAMPBELL, JOHN, LL.D., an
eminent miscellaneous writer, was born at Edinburgh, March 8, 1708. He
was the fourth son of Robert Campbell, of Glenlyon, by Elizabeth Smith,
daughter of – Smith, Esq., of Windsor. By his father, Dr. Campbell was
connected with the noble family of Breadalbane, and other distinguished
Highland chiefs; by his mother, he was descended from the poet Waller.
If we are not much mistaken, this distinguished writer and was also
allied to the famous Rob Roy Macgregor, whose children, at the time when
Dr Campbell enjoyed a high literary reputation in the metropolis, must
have been pursuing the lives of outlaws in another part of the country,
hardly yet merged from barbarism. When only five years of age, he was
conveyed from Scotland, which country he never afterwards saw, to
Windsor, where he received his education under the care of a maternal
uncle. It was attempted to make him enter the profession of an attorney;
but his thirst for knowledge rendered that disagreeable to him, and
caused him to prefer the precarious life of an author by profession. It
would be vain to enumerate the many works of Dr Campbell. His first
undertaking of any magnitude, was "The Military History of the Duke
of Marlborough and Prince Eugene," which appears in 1736, in two
volumes, folio, and was well received. He was next concerned in the
preparation of the Ancient Universal History, which appeared in seven
folios, the last being published in 1744. The part relating to the
cosmogony, which is by far the most learned, was written by Dr
Campbell. In 1742, appeared the two first volumes of his Lives of the
Admirals, and, in 1744, the remaining two: this is the only work of Dr
Campbell which has continued popular to the present time, an accident
probably arising, in a great measure, from the nature of the subject.
The activity of Dr Campbell at this period is very surprising. In
the same year in which he completed his last mentioned work, he
published a Collection of Voyages and Travels, in 2 volumes, folio. In
1745, he commenced the publication of the Biographia Britannica, in
weekly numbers. In this, as in all the other works of Dr Campbell, it is
found that he did not content himself with the ordinary duties of his
profession, as exercised at that time. While he wrote to supply the
current necessities of the public, and of his own home, he also
endeavoured to give his works an original and peculiar value. Hence it
is found that the lives composing his Biographia Britannica are compiled
with great care from a vast number of documents, and contain many
striking speculations on literary and political subjects, calculated to
obtain for the work a high and enduring character. The candour and
benevolent feelings of Dr Campbell have also produced the excellent
effect of striking impartiality in the grand questions of religious and
political controversy. Though himself a member of the church of England,
he treated the lives of the great non-conformists, such as Baxter and
Calamy, with such justice as to excite the admiration of their own
party. Dr Campbell’s style is such as would not now, perhaps, be much
admired; but it was considered, by his own contemporaries, to be
superior both in accuracy and in warmth of tone to what was generally
used. He treated the article BOYLE in such terms as to draw the
thanks of John, fifth earl of Orrery, "in the name of all
the Boyles, for the honour he had done to them, and to his own judgment,
by placing the family in such a light as to give a spirit of emulation
to those who were hereafter to inherit the title." A second edition
of the Biographria, with additions, was undertaken, after Dr Campbell’s
death, by Dr Kippis, but only carried to a fifth volume, where it
stopped at the letter F. It is still, in both editions, one of the
greatest works of reference in the language. While engaged in these
heavy undertakings, Dr Campbell occasionally relaxed himself in
lighter works, one of which, entitled, ‘‘Hermippus Redivivus,"
is a curious essay, apparently designed to explain in a serious manner
an ancient medical whim, which assumed that life could be prolonged to a
great extent by inhaling the breath of young women. It is said that some
grave physicians were so far influenced by this mock essay, as to go and
live for a time in female boarding-schools, for the purpose of putting
its doctrine to the proof. In reality, the whole affair was a jest
of Dr Campbell, or rather, perhaps, a sportive exercise of his
mind, being merely an imitation of the manner of Bayle, with whose style
of treating controversial subjects he appears to have been deeply
impressed, as he professedly adopts it in the Biographia Britannica. In
1750, Dr Campbell published his celebrated work, "The
Present State of Europe," which afterwards went through many
editions, and was so much admired abroad, that a son of the duke de
Belleisle studied English in order to be able to read it. The
vast extent of information which Dr Campbekl had acquired during
his active life, by conversation, as well as by books, and the
comprehensive powers of arrangement which his profession had already
given him, are conspicuous in this work. He was afterwards employed in
writing some of the most important articles in the "Modern
Universal History," which extended to Sixteen volumes, folio, and
was reprinted in a smaller form. His last great work was the "Political
Survey of Britain; being a Series of Reflections on the situation,
lands, inhabitants, revenues, colonies, and commerce, of this
island;" which appeared in 1774, in 2 volumes 4to, having cost him
the labour of many years. Though its value is so far temporary, this is
perhaps the work which does its author the highest credit. It excited
the admiration of the world to such a degree as caused him to be
absolutely overwhelmed with new correspondents. He tells a friend, in a
letter, that he had already consumed a ream of paper, (nearly a thousand
sheets,) in answering these friends, and was just breaking upon another,
which perhaps would share the same fate.
Dr Campbell had been
married early in life to Elizabeth, daughter of Benjamin Robe, of
Leominster, in the county of Hereford, gentleman, by whom he had seven
children. Though it does not appear that he had any other resources than
his pen, his style of life was very respectable. His time was so
exclusively devoted to reading and writing, that he seldom stirred
abroad. His chief exercise was an occasional walk in his garden, or in a
room of his house. He was naturally of a delicate frame of body; but
strict temperance, with the regularity of all his habits, preserved his
health against the effects of both his sedentary life and original
weakness, till his sixty-eighth year, when he died, December 25, 1775,
in full possession of his faculties, and without pain.
It would only encumber
our pages to recount all the minor productions of Dr Campbell. A minute
specification of them is preserved in the second edition of his
Biographia Britannica, where his life was written by Dr Kippis. So
multitudinous, however, were his fugitive compositions, that he once
bought an old pamphlet, with which he was pleased on dipping into it,
and which turned out to be one of his own early writings. So completely
had he forgot every thing connected with it, that he had read it half
through before he had discovered that it was written by himself. On
another occasion, a friend brought him a book, in French, which
professed to have been translated from the German, and which the owner
recommended Dr Campbell to try in an English dress. The Doctor, on
looking into it, discovered it to be a neglected work of his own, which
had found its way into Germany, and there been published as an original
work. Dr Campbell, in his private life, was a gentleman and a Christian:
he possessed an acquaintance with the most of modern languages, besides
Hebrew, Greek, and various oriental tongues. His best faculty was his
memory, which was surprisingly tenacious and accurate. Dr Johnson spoke
of him in the following terms, as recorded by Boswell: "I think
highly of Campbell. In the first place, he has very good parts. In the
second place, he has very extensive reading; not, perhaps, what is
properly called learning, but history, politics, and, in short, that
popular knowledge which makes a man very useful. In the third place, he
has learnt much by what is called the voce viva. He talks with a
great many people." The opportunities which Dr Campbell enjoyed of
acquiring information, by the mode described by Dr Johnson, were very
great. He enjoyed a universal acquaintance among the clever men of his
time, literary and otherwise, whom he regularly saw in conversationes
on the Sunday evenings. The advantage which a literary man must
enjoy by this means is very great, for conversation, when it becomes in
the least excited, strikes out ideas from the minds of all present,
which would never arise in solitary study, and often brings to a just
equilibrium disputable points which, in the cogitations of a single
individual, would be settled all on one side. Smollett, in enumerating
the writers who had reflected lustre on the reign of George II., speaks
of "the merit conspicuous in the works of Campbell, remarkable for
candour, intelligence, and precision." It only remains to be
mentioned, that this excellent man was honoured, in 1754, with the
degree of LL.D. by the university of Glasgow, and that, for some years
before his death, having befriended the administration of the earl of
Bute in his writings, he was rewarded by the situation of his majesty’s
agent for the province of Georgia. |
