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 Biographia, 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 Campbell 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,
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JOHN CAMPBELL, LL.D.
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