The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XII. The Romantic Revival.
§ 2. Campbell
Not thus ungraciously can any critic speak of Campbell; but, anyone who spoke of him with unmixed graciousness would hardly be a critic. To him, the “moment” just mentioned was no stranger; they met, and he made almost or quite the best of it, again and again. He has the glorious distinction of being, in three different pieces, nearer than any other poet among many to being a perfect master of the great note of battle-poetry. Of these, one, Ye Mariners of England, is, to some extent, an adaptation, though an immense improvement on its original; and The Battle of the Baltic has some singular spots on its sun. But Hohenlinden is unique; subject and spirit, words and music make an indivisible quaternity and, except in two or three passages of Homer and Aeschylus, there is nothing anywhere that surpasses the last and culminating stanza in poignant simplicity. Perhaps no other poem of Campbell can be named with these three, as a whole, but most of his earlier and shorter poems give flashes of undoubted poetry. There is no space here for a miniature anthology of these blooms; but some of them are universally known, and no one with an eye and ear for poetry can read, without recognising it in them, Lochiel’s Warning, Lord Ullin’s Daughter (the central jewel of this, however hackneyed, must be excepted for quotation,