Alexander Campbell (musician and writer)

Campbell was born in 1764 at Tombea, Loch Lubnaig, and first educated at the grammar school, Callander, was the second son of a carpenter who, falling into straitened circumstances, removed to Edinburgh, where he died when Alexander was eleven years old.

The result was that 'our neighbour, Lady Cunningham, sent to beg the boys might not all be flogged precisely at the same hour, as, though she had no doubt the punishment was deserved, the noise of the concord was really dreadful' (Notes to Scott's Autobiography, in chap.

This procured him a place in Kay's 'Portraits,' where he is represented turning a hand organ while asses bray, a dog howls, a bagpipe is blown, and a saw sharpened as an accompaniment (vol.

Thinking that the connection thus formed might be useful in procuring an appointment, he resigned his music teaching and studied medicine at the university of Edinburgh.

A grant was obtained from the Highland Society, and the author travelled between eleven and twelve hundred miles in collecting materials (preface).

In the last years of his life Campbell fell into great poverty, and obtained his living chiefly by copying manuscripts for his old pupil Scott, though 'even from his patron he would take no more than he thought his services as a transcriber fairly earned.'

Scott, however, tells a half-pitiful story of a dinner which Archibald Constable gave to 'his own circle of literary serfs,' when 'poor Allister Campbell and another drudge of the same class' ran a race for a new pair of breeches, which were there displayed 'before the threadbare rivals.'

Scott thought the picture might be highly coloured, and at any rate Constable bestowed on him 'many substantial benefits,' as he gratefully acknowledges in a letter written the year before his death, which took place from an attack of apoplexy 15 May 1824.

Scott, who wrote an obituary notice of him in the 'Edinburgh Weekly Journal,' says that, though his acquirements were considerable, 'they did not reach that point of perfection which the public demand of those who expect to derive bread from the practice of the fine arts.'