Generous Apparition. Being a True Narrative of a Miraculous Cure newly performed upon that famous Deaf and Dumb Gentleman, Mr. Duncan Campbell, by a familiar spirit that appeared to him in a white surplice like a Cathedral Singing Boy.’ It consists of two letters, the first by Duncan Campbell, giving an account of an illness which attacked him in 1717, and continued nearly eight years, until his good genius appeared and revealed that he could be cured by the use of the loadstone; the second on genii or familiar spirits, with an account of a marvellous sympathetic powder which had been brought from the East. A postscript informed the readers that at ‘Dr. Campbell's house, in Buckingham Court, over against Old Man's Coffee House, at Charing Cross, they may be readily furnished with his “Pulvis Miraculosus,” and finest sort of Egyptian loadstones.’ Campbell died after a severe illness in 1730. An account of his life appeared in 1732, under the title ‘Secret Memoirs of the late Mr. Duncan Campbell, the famous Deaf and Dumb Gentleman, written by himself, who ordered they should be published after his decease. To which is added an application by way of vindication of Mr. Duncan Campbell against the groundless aspersion cast upon him that he had pretended to be Deaf and Dumb.’ A striking proof of the superstitious character of the times is afforded by the fact that among the subscribers to the volume were the Duke of Argyll and other members of the nobility.
[The pamphlets mentioned in the text; the Lives of Defoe by Walter Wilson and William Lee.]
CAMPBELL, Lord FREDERICK (1729–1816), lord clerk register, was third son of John, fourth duke of Argyll, by his wife, Mary, daughter of John, second lord Bellenden, and was M.P. for the Glasgow burghs from 1761 to 1780, and for the county of Argyll from 1780 to 1799. In 1765, being very intimate with Mr. Grenville, he was active in the arrangements for transferring the prerogatives and rights of the Duke of Atholl in the Isle of Man, then a nest of smugglers, to the crown, and in fixing the compensation to be given; but he felt and complained that the compensation was inadequate. In the same year he was for a few months lord keeper of the Scotch privy seal, and was succeeded by Lord Breadalbane. He was sworn of the privy council 29 May 1765, made lord clerk register for Scotland in 1768, and confirmed in that office for life in 1771. In 1778 he was colonel of the Argyll fencibles, in 1784 a vice-treasurer for Ireland under Viscount Townshend, the lord-lieutenant, and in 1786 a member of the board of control for India. In 1774 he had laid the foundation-stone for a register house at Edinburgh, and procured a permanent establishment for keeping the records, and received the thanks of the court of session. He was treasurer of the Middle Temple in 1803. As a member of parliament he seems to have been reticent; but it was on his motion in 1796 that Mr. Addington was elected speaker of the new parliament. He married, 28 March 1769, Mary, youngest daughter of Mr. Amos Meredith of Henbury, Cheshire, and widow of Laurence, fourth Earl Ferrars, and she was burnt to death at his house, Comb Bank, Kent, in 1807. He died 8 June 1816 in Queen Street, Mayfair, and was, by his own directions, buried in a private manner in the family vault at Sandridge, Kent.
[Hely Smith's MacCallum Mores; Gent.Mag. lxxxvi. 572, lxxxvii. 214; The Scotch Compendium; The House of Argyll, Anon., Glasgow, 1871, p. 68; Collins's Peerage, iv. 102; Parl. History, xxiv. 297, xxviii.]
CAMPBELL, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1782–1846), genealogist, was a descendant of the Campbells of Barbreck, an ancient branch of the Argyll family, and the eldest son of Donald Campbell (1751–1804) of Barbreck [q. v.] He was born on 4 Jan. 1782, and entering the army became captain in the 1st regiment of guards. Some time after succeeding his father in 1804, he disposed of the estate in Argyllshire, retaining only the superiority to connect him with the county, and took up his residence at Birfield Lodge, near Ipswich, Suffolk. He was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant of the county. In 1830 he printed privately a work entitled ‘A Letter to Mrs. Campbell of Barbreck, containing an Account of the Campbells of Barbreck from their First Ancestors to the Present Time,’ Ipswich. He died in 1846. He married, on 21 Feb. 1820, Sophia, daughter of Sir Edward Warrington, M.P., by whom he had one daughter.
[Burke's Landed Gentry; Cooper's Biog. Dict.]
CAMPBELL, GEORGE (1719–1796), divine, was born on 25 Dec. 1719 in Aberdeen, where his father, Colin Campbell (d. 27 Aug. 1728), was a minister. Campbell was educated at the grammar school, and at Marischal College. He was articled to a writer to the signet, but in 1741 began to study divinity in Edinburgh, and afterwards at Aberdeen. He was licensed to preach in 1746, and on 2 June 1748 was ordained minister of Banchory Ternan in Aberdeenshire.
