Note (return) — PREFACE

Campbell quitted Glasgow to remove into Argyleshire, where a situation in a family of some note was offered and accepted by him. It was in Argyleshire,2 among the romantic mountains of the north, that his poetical spirit increased, and the charms of verse took entire possession of his mind. Many persons now alive remember him wandering there alone by the torrent, or over the rugged heights of that wild country, reciting the strains of other poets aloud, or silently composing his own. Several of his pieces which he has rejected in his collected works, are handed about in manuscript in Scotland. We quote one of these wild compositions which has hitherto appeared only in periodical publications.