Thomas Campbell

Thomas Campbell (27 July 177715 June 1844) was a Scottish poet. He was a founder and the first President of the Clarence Club and a co-founder of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland; he was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became University College London. In 1799 he wrote Pleasures of Hope, a traditional 18th-century didactic poem in heroic couplets. He also produced several patriotic war songs— "Ye Mariners of England", "The Soldier's Dream", "Hohenlinden" and, in 1801, The Battle of the Baltic, but was no less at home in delicate lyrics such as "At Love's Beginning". Early life Born on High Street, Glasgow in 1777, he was the youngest of the eleven children of Alexander Campbell (1710–1801), son of the 6th and last Laird of Kirnan, Argyll, descended from the MacIver-Campbells. His mother, Margaret (born 1736), was the daughter of John Campbell of Craignish and Mary, daughter of Robert Simpson, "a celebrated Royal Armourer". In about 1737, his father went to Falmouth, Virginia as a merchant in business with his wife's brother Daniel Campbell, becoming a Tobacco Lord trading between there and Glasgow. They enjoyed a long period of prosperity until he lost his property and their old and respectable firm collapsed in consequence of the American Revolutionary War. Having personally lost nearly £20,000, Campbell's father was nearly ruined. Several of Thomas' brothers remained in Virginia, one of whom married a daughter of Patrick Henry.