CAMPBELL, THOMAS

born July 27, 1777, Glasgow, Scot. died June 15, 1844, Boulogne, France Scottish poet, remembered chiefly for his sentimental and martial lyrics; he was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became the University of London. Campbell went to Mull, an island of the Inner Hebrides, as a tutor in 1795 and two years later settled in Edinburgh to study law. In 1799 he wrote The Pleasures of Hope, a traditional 18th-century survey in heroic couplets of human affairs. It went through four editions within a year. He also produced several stirring patriotic war songsYe Mariners of England, The Soldier's Dream, Hohenlinden, and, in 1801, The Battle of the Baltic. With others he launched a movement in 1825 to found the University of London, for students excluded from Oxford or Cambridge by religious tests or lack of funds.