JOHN

See also:

• CAMPBELL, ALEXANDER (1788–1866)
• CAMPBELL, BEATRICE STELLA (Mrs PATRICK CAMPBELL) (1865– )
• CAMPBELL, GEORGE (1719–1796)
• CAMPBELL, JOHN
• CAMPBELL, JOHN (1708-1775)
• CAMPBELL, JOHN CAMPBELL, BARON (1779-1861)
• CAMPBELL, JOHN FRANCIS
• CAMPBELL, LEWIS (1830-1908)
• CAMPBELL, REGINALD JOHN (1867— )
• CAMPBELL, THOMAS (1777—1844)

CAMPBELL

See also:

• JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP (1819-1885)

SHAIRP (1819-1885)  , Scottish critic and man of letters, was born at Houstoun House, Linlithgowshire, on the 3oth of July 1819 . He was the third son of Major Norman Shairp of Houstoun, and was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Glasgow University . He gained the Snell exhibition, and entered at Balliol College, Oxford, in 184o . In 1842 he gained the Newdigate prize for a poem on Charles XII., and took his degree in 1844 . During these years the " Oxford movement " was at its height . Shairp was stirred by Newman's sermons, and he had a great admiration for the poetry of Keble, on whose character and work he wrote an enthusiastic essay; but he remained faithful to his Presbyterian upbringing . After leaving Oxford he took a mastership at Rugby under Tait . In 1857 he became assistant to the professor of humanity in the university of St Andrews, and in 1861 he was appointed to that chair . In 1864 he published Kilmahoe, a Highland Pastoral, and in 1868 he republished some articles under the name of Studies in Poetry and Philosophy . In 1868 he was presented to the principalship of the United College, St Andrews, and lectured from time to time on literary and ethical subjects . A course of the lectures was published in 1870 as Culture and Religion . In 1873 Principal Shairp helped to edit the life of his predecessor J .

D .

Forbes, and in 1874 he edited Dorothy Wordsworth's charming Recollections of a Tour in Scotland . In 1877 he was elected professor of poetry at Oxford in succession to Sir F . H . Doyle . Of his lectures from this chair the best were published in 1881 as Aspects of Poetry . In 1877 he had published The Poetic Interpretation of Nature, in which he enters fully into the " old quarrel," as Plato called it, between science and poetry, and traces with great clearness the ideas of nature in all the chief Hebrew, classical and English poets . In 1879 he contributed a life of Robert Burns to the " English Men of Letters " series . He was re-elected to the chair of poetry in 1882, and discharged his duties there and at St Andrews till the end of 1884 . He died at Ormsary, Argyllshire, on the 18th of September 1885 . In 1888 appeared Glen Desseray, and other Poems, edited by F . T .

Palgrave . See W . A . Knight's Principal Shairp and his Friends (1888) .