The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-20 00:00:00

THOMAS CAMPBELL.
ORIGINAL COPY OF THE « PLEASURES
OF POPE."

As the Poet Campbell will doubtless find a bio-
grapher, and at no distant date, it becomes a matter of
importance that everything given to the public con-
cerning him should be correct and consistent with
fact. Of late we have perused several letters now in
the custody of private individuals in Edinburgh, some
of them from the poet himself, written at an early
period ; others from his mother, who seems to have
been a woman of intelligence and strong good sense.
These documents are indispensable to the writer of a
life of Campbell ; but we have no intention to allude
to them further at present, than merely to intimate
the fact of their existence. What we wish to correct
in thus adverting to the subject is a passage in an
article on Campbell in the last number of Fraser's
Magazine, which contains some curious and interest-
ing anecdotes of the poet. At page 344, the writer
of the article observes :
_

" I have often heard it said, and in Campbell's life.
time, that there was a very different copy of The
Pleasures of Hope' in MS., in the hands of Dr. An-
derson's family; and I once heard the question put to
Campbell, who replied, with a smile, 0 dear, no;
nothing of the kind.' The alterations which the poem
underwent by Anderson's advice may have given rise
to a belief that the poem was at first very unlike what
we now see it."
At what period the question was put to the poet
does not appear ; if at a late period of his life, distance
of time might have made the circumstance escape
his memory, for assuredly such a MS. exists, and
has been for several years in the possession of Mr.
Patrick Maxwell, editor of Miss Blamire's poetical
works. It originally belonged to the late Dr. Murray,
Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of
Edinburgh, is in good preservation, and is in the hand-
writing of the poet. The whole poem consists only
of about 40 or 50 paragraphs, and altogether scarcely
amounts to one-half of what it now doe 3 ; it extends
over 20 pages of MS., and may contain about 400
lines. At the end of the poem is " The Irish Harper's
Lament for his Dog," tune—" The Nine Links of
Yellow," word for word as it is now printed under the
title of " The Harper." It is truly stated by the
writer in Fraser, that the introduction to the " Plea-
sures of Hope" underwent many alterations ; and how
much it stood in need of it, and how much it was
beholden to Dr. Anderson's exquisite taste and friendly
advice, may be gathered from the following extract
from the beginning of the poem in the MS. before us,
which we insert with Mr. Maxwell's permission, and
which may be considered as a literary curiosity :

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION TO THE POEM.
Seven lingering moons have cross'd the starry line
Since Beauty's form, or Nature's face divine
Had power the sombre of my soul to turn—
llad power to wake my strings and bid them burn.
The charm dissolves ! What Genius bade me go
To search th' unfathom'd mine of human woe—
The wrongs of man to man, of clime to clime—
Since Nature yoked the fiery steeds of Time—
The tales of death—since cold on Eden's plain
The beauteous mother clasp'd her Abel slain—
Ambitious guilt—since Carthage wept her doom—
The Patric t's fate—since Brutus fell with Rome?
The charm dissolves ! My kindling fancy dreams
Of brighter forms inspired by gentler themes ;
Joy and her rosy flowers attract my view,
And Mirth can please, or Music charm anew ;
And Hope, the harbinger of golden hours,
The light of life, the fire of Fancy's powers
Returns :—Again I lift my trembling gaze,
And bliss the smiling guest of other days.
So when the northern in the lonely gloom,
Where Hecla's fires the polar night illume,
Hails the glad summer to his Lulean shores,
And bow'd to earth his circling suns adores.
So when Cimmerian darkness wakes the dead,
And hideous Nightmare haunts the curtain'd bed,
And scowls her wild eye on the maddening brain,
What speechless horrors thrill the slumbering swain,
When shapeless fiends inhale his tortur'd breath,
Immure him living in the vaults of death ;
Or lead him lonely through the charnell'd aisles,
The roaring floods, the dark and swampy vales,
When rock'd by winds he wanders on the deep,
Climbs the tall spire, or scales the beetling steep,
His life• blood freezing to the central urn,
No voice can call for aid, no limb can turn,
Till eastern shoot the harbinger of Day,
And Night and all her spectres fade away.
If then some wand'ring Huntsman of the morn
Wind from the hill his murm'ring bugle horn,
The shrill sweet music wakes the slumberer's ear,
And melts his blood, and bursts the bands of fear ;
The vision fades—the shepherd lifts his eye—
And views the lark that carols to the sky.
These verses clearly indicate the peculiar genius
and the refined taste of Campbell ; yet they are very
different from the introductory lines which were after-
wards substituted, and with which the printed
poem now begins. Many of the passages in this origi-
nal draught are verbatim, or nearly so, with the pub-
lished work; others have been evidently retouched,
and some (the episode to the Nightmare for example)
have been entirely suppressed. It is unnecessary for
us to give any detail of the way in which the original
MSS. was proeured, or how it came into the hands of
I the present custodier ; this may be done in a different
form, or through another channel. Our object in the
meantime has been gained, by giving proofthat Campbel I
must have forgotten or been unwilling to acknowledge
the fact that " there was (as Fraser s correspondent
says he often heard) a very different copy of the
Pleasure of Hope,' in manuscript, in the hands of
Dr. Anderson's family."—Edinburgh Advertiser.

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