Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/383

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Campbell
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Campbell

ment. From 1831 to 1837 Campbell acted as aide-de-camp to his father when lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, and in the latter year he purchased the majority of his regiment. In 1840 he purchased the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 38th, and commanded it continuously in the Mediterranean, the West Indies, and Nova Scotia, until he was selected, as an ardent and successful regimental officer, for the command of a brigade in the expeditionary force intended for the East in 1854. In 1843 he had succeeded to the baronetcy, on 11 Nov. 1851 he had been promoted colonel by brevet, and on 24 March 1854 he was posted to the command of the 2nd brigade of the 3rd division under Major-general Sir Richard England, with the rank of brigadier-general. With that command he was present at the battles of the Alma and Inkerman, and on 12 Dec. 1854 he was promoted major-general. After the battle of Inkerman as the senior brigadier-general with the army, he was posted to the temporary command of the 4th division. On 7 June 1855 he was superseded by Lieutenant-general Bentinck, and on hearing of the intended assault upon the Great Redan he volunteered to lead the detachments of the 4th division to the attack. On 18 June he displayed 'a courage amounting to rashness,' and after sending away his aides-de-camp, Captain Hume and Captain Snodgrass, the latter the son of the historian of his father's war, he rushed out of the trenches with a few followers, and fell at once in the act of cheering on his men. Had he survived, Campbell would have been rewarded for his services in the winter, for in the 'Gazette' of 5 July it was announced that he would have been made a K.C.B. He was buried on Cathcart's Hill. He married, 21 July 1841, Helen Margaret, daughter of Colonel John Crowe. His eldest son, Archibald Ava, became third baronet.

[See Gent. Mag. and Colburn's United Service Journal for August 1855; Nolan's Illustrated History of the War in the East, 2 vols. 1855-7; and W. H. Kussell's British Expedition to the Crimea.]

H. M. S.


CAMPBELL, JOHN, first Baron Campbell (1779–1861), legal biographer, lord chief justice, and lord chancellor, traced his descent on his father's side from Archibald, the second earl of Argyll [q. v.], who fell at Flodden, and through his mother, who was a Hallyburton, from Robert, duke of Albany, the regent of Scotland. As a Hallyburton he could thus claim a remote kinship with Sir Walter Scott. His father was the Rev. George Campbell, for more than fifty years parish minister of Cupar in Fifeshire, a friend of Robertson and Blair, a popular preacher, and the writer of the article on Cupar in the old 'Statistical Account of Scotland.' There John Campbell was born on 15 Sept. 1779. With his elder brother, George, afterwards Sir George Campbell of Edenwood, he was educated at the Cupar grammar school, and in 1790, when he was only eleven years old, they went together to St. Andrews University. It was an early age even for a Scotch university, but the case was not unique, Dr. Chalmers, for instance, becoming a student at St. Andrews in 1791 before he was twelve years old (Hanna, Life of Chalmers, i. 9). At fifteen Campbell had finished the arts curriculum, though he did not take the degree of M.A. until some years afterwards, when he discovered that it would be of use to him in England. As a boy his health was weak, and he grew up an eager and miscellaneous reader with little love of games. Golf, of course, he played occasionally, but without any enthusiasm, though he considered it 'superior to the English cricket, which is too violent and gives no opportunity for conversation.' Being destined for the ministry, he entered St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, where he remained for three years, studying theology and Hebrew, writing exercise sermons, and looking forward to life in a parish kirk. Gradually, however, he became convinced that he would never be famous as a divine, and he eagerly accepted a tutorship in London. Thither he went in 1798, not yet abandoning thoughts of the church, but with the possibility of some more brilliant career dimly present to his mind. He held the post for nearly two years, employing his leisure time in casual literary work, writing a few of the historical passages in the 'Annual Register,' and reviewing books and translating French newspapers for the 'Oracle.' Towards the end of 1799 he wrung from his father an unwilling consent that he should exchange the church for the bar. 'I have little doubt,' he wrote to his sister before the final decision, 'that I myself should pass my days much more happily as a parish parson than as an eminent lawyer; but I think that when the path to wealth and fame is open for any man he is bound for his own sake, but much more for the sake of his friends, to enter it without hesitation, although it should be steep, rugged, and strewn with thorns. I declare to you most seriously that I have scarcely a doubt that I should rise at the English bar'–even to the chancellorship, he added with equal seriousness. He entered Lincoln's Inn on