Thomas Campbell (writer)

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Thomas Campbell (1733–1795) was an Irish Protestant clergyman, best known as a travel writer and for his accounts of the circle of Samuel Johnson.

Life

Campbell was born at

Trinity College, Dublin (B.A. 1756, M.A. 1761), and took orders in 1761. He was curate of Clogher until 1772, when he was collated to the prebend of Tyholland, and in 1773 he was made chancellor of St Macartan's Cathedral, Clogher. He was a preacher.[1]

He died on 20 June 1795 in London.[1]

Works

In 1777 he published (anonymously in London)[2] A Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland in a series of letters to John Watkinson, M.D. (a second edition was published in Dublin in 1778).[2] It is supposed to record the tour of an Englishman in the south of Ireland, and gives a description of the major towns. Remarks on the trade of the country are thrown in, and Campbell advocates a political and commercial union with England. In the Survey Johnson's epitaph on Oliver Goldsmith appeared for the first time in print. Campbell is mentioned by James Boswell.[1]

In 1789 Campbell published ‘Strictures on the Ecclesiastical and Literary History of Ireland till the Introduction of the Roman Ritual, and the Establishment of Papal Supremacy by Henry II.’ To this was added a ‘Sketch of the Constitution and Government of Ireland down to 1783.’ The book is controversial in tone, and is directed against O'Conor, Colonel Vallancey, and other antiquaries. Regarding the early history of Ireland, Campbell displayed a certain amount of scepticism. He considered the book as a fragment of a large work he meditated, and for which he obtained help from Edmund Burke, whom he visited at Beaconsfield. Burke, he says, lent him four volumes of manuscripts, and advised him to be ‘as brief as possible upon everything antecedent to Henry II.’[1]

Campbell also wrote a portion of the memoir of Goldsmith which appeared in Bishop

Thomas Percy
's edition of the poet published in 1801.

Diary

He kept a little diary during his visits to London. It was discovered behind an old press in the offices of the supreme court at

William Dodd and other pulpit orators of the day: his remarks are uncomplimentary. Campbell was in London again in 1795, where he died on 20 June. Campbell's diary was printed at Sydney, in 1854, and reprinted, with some omissions, by Robina Napier in her Johnsoniana.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e MacColl 1886.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-821744-2
    .
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: MacColl, Norman (1886). "Campbell, Thomas (1733-1795)". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 8. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 392.

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