Descended from the Camp­bells of Kir­nan in Ar­gyll­shire, Tho­mas was the son of a to­bac­co trad­er. He won prize­s at the un­i­ver­si­ty for class­ic­al verse trans­la­tions, and for his es­say On the Or­i­gin of Evil. He worked for a while as a tu­tor in Mull and Loch­gil­phead, then went to Ed­in­burgh to stu­dy law, but lit­er­a­ture seems to have been his first love. In 1799, he pub­lished the long po­em The Plea­sures of Hope. The next year, he vis­it­ed bat­tle sites in Ger­ma­ny and Den­mark which are thought to have in­spired his po­ems Ye Mar­in­ers of Eng­land and The Bat­tle of the Bal­tic. An­o­ther of his not­ed po­ems was Ger­trude of Wy­om­ing, the first long po­em by a Brit­ish au­thor set in Amer­i­ca.

Campbell was al­so in­ter­est­ed in ed­u­ca­tion, and had a hand in the found­ing of Un­i­ver­si­ty Coll­ege. In ad­di­tion, he ed­it­ed The New Month­ly Re­view (1820-31) and served as Rec­tor of Glas­gow Un­i­ver­si­ty (1827-29). His works in­clude:

• Specimens of the Brit­ish Po­ets

• Hatfield, pp. 127-30
• Hustad, p. 217

1. When Jor­dan Hushed His Wa­ters Still

1. Sagina