Born, at Paisley, 18 May 1785. Studied at Glasgow Univ., 1797–1803. Matric. Magdalen Coll., Oxford, 26 May 1803; Newdigate Prize Poem, 1806; B.A., 1807; M.A., 1810. Student of Lincoln’s Inn, 1806. Settled at Ellerlay, Windermere, 1807. Married Jane Penny, 11 May 1811; she died, 1837. Contrib. to “Annual Register,” 1812. Called to Scottish Bar, 1815. In Edinburgh, 1815–17. Contrib. to “Edinburgh Monthly Mag.,” 1817; to “Edinburgh Review,” 1817. Literary editor, and contributor (under pseud. “Christopher North”), to “Blackwood’s Mag.,” Oct. 1817 to Sept. 1852. Prof. of Moral Philosophy, Edinburgh Univ., 1820–51. Pres. of Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, 1847–54. Crown Pension, 1851. Died in Edinburgh, 3 April 1854. Buried in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh. Works: “The Isle of Palms,” 1812; “The Magic Mirror,” 1812; “The City of the Plague,” 1816; “Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life” (under pseud. “Arthur Austin”), 1822; “The Trials of Margaret Lindsay” (anon.), 1823; “The Foresters” (anon.), 1825; “Poetical and Dramatic Works” (2 vols.), 1825; “The Land of Burns” (with R. Chambers; 2 vols.), 1840; “Blind Allan” (anon.) [1840?]; “On the Genius and Character of Burns,” 1841; “Recreations of Christopher North” (from “Blackwood;” 3 vols.), 1842; “Noctes Ambrosianæ” (from “Blackwood;” anon.), 1843; Letter-press to “Scotland Illustrated,” 1845; “Specimens of the British Critics” (from “Blackwood;” pubd. in Philadelphia), 1846. Collected Works: ed. by Prof. Ferrier (12 vols.), 1855–58. Life: by Mrs. Gordon, new edn., 1879.
Personal
He is an eccentric genius, and has fixed himself upon the banks of Windermere, but occasionally resides in Edinburgh, where he now is…. He seems an excellent, warm-hearted, and enthusiastic young man; something too much, perhaps, of the latter quality, places him among the list of originals.
A very robust, athletic man, broad across the back—firm-set upon his limbs—and having altogether very much of that sort of air which is inseparable from the consciousness of great bodily energies. I suppose in leaping, wrestling, or boxing, he might easily beat any of the poets, his contemporaries…. In complexion, he is the best specimen I have ever seen of the genuine or ideal Goth. His hair is of the true Sicambrian yellow; his eyes are of the lightest, and at the same time of the clearest blue…. I had never suspected, before I saw him, that such extreme fairness and freshness of complexion could be compatible with so much variety and tenderness, but, above all, with so much depth of expression…. I have never seen a physiognomy which could pass with so much rapidity from the serious to the most ludicrous of effects. It is more eloquent, both in its gravity and in its levity, than almost any countenance I am acquainted with is in any one cast of expression.
Last night I supped with John Wilson, Professor of Moral Philosophy here, author of the “Isle of Palms,” &c., a man of the most fervid temperament, fond of all stimulating things, from tragic poetry down to whisky punch. He snuffed and smoked cigars and drank liquors, and talked in the most indescribable style. It was at the lodging of one John Gordon, a young very good man from Kirkcudbright, who sometimes comes here. Daylight came on us before we parted; indeed, it was towards three o’clock as the Professor and I walked home, smoking as we went. I had scarcely either eaten or drunk, being a privileged person, but merely enjoyed the strange volcanic eruptions of our poet’s convivial genius. He is a broad sincere man of six feet, with long dishevelled flax-coloured hair, and two blue eyes keen as an eagle’s. Now and then he sank into a brown study, and seemed dead in the eye of law.
I went to hear a lecture on “Moral Philosophy” from Professor Wilson, the celebrated editor of Blackwood’s Magazine. He is what some people would think a fine-looking man; but to my eye there appeared to be something excessively low and gross in his countenance. His lecture was, in parts, pretty good. His appearance was that of a man who had been spending the whole night at the shrine of Bacchus, and had just got himself gathered together to discharge what appeared to him a very irksome duty. His papers were all to regulate when he came to his chair; and four times he had to stop in the lecture till he found the right piece of paper, to enable him to go on with his remarks.
Cock-fighting, wrestling, pugilistic contests, boat-racing, horse-racing, all enjoyed Mr. Wilson’s patronage; all were occasionally honored by his personal participation. I mention this in no unfriendly spirit toward Professor Wilson; on the contrary, these propensities grew out of his ardent temperament and his constitutional endowments—his strength, speed, and agility: and, being confined to the period of youth—for I am speaking of a period removed by five-and-twenty—can do him no dishonour amongst the candid and the judicious…. And, though a man of prudence cannot altogether approve of his throwing himself into the convivial society of gipsies, tinkers, potters, strolling players, &c., nevertheless it tells altogether in favour of Professor Wilson’s generosity of mind, that he was ever ready to forego his advantage of station and birth, and to throw himself fearlessly upon his own native powers, as man opposed to man. Even at Oxford he fought an aspiring shoemaker repeatedly—which is creditable to both sides; for the very prestige of the gown is already overpowering to the artisan from the beginning, and he is half beaten by terror at his own presumption. Elsewhere he sought out, or, at least, did not avoid the most dreaded of the local heroes; and fought his way through his “most verdant years,” taking or giving defiances to the right and to the left in perfect carelessness, as chance or occasion offered. No man could well show more generosity in these struggles, nor more magnanimity in reporting their issue, which naturally went many times against him.
Walking up and down the hall of the courts of law … was a tall, burly, handsome man of eight-and-fifty, with a gait like O’Connell’s, the bluest eye you can imagine, and long hair—longer than mine—falling down in a wild way under the broad brim of his hat. He had on a surtout coat, a blue checked shirt; the collar standing up, and kept in its place with a wisp of black neckerchief; no waistcoat; and a large pocket-handkerchief thrust into his breast, which was all broad and open. At his heels followed a wiry, sharp-eyed, shaggy devil of a terrier, dogging his steps as he went slashing up and down, now with one man beside him, now with another, and now quite alone, but always at a fast, rolling pace, with his head in the air, and his eyes as wide open as he could get them. I guessed it was Wilson, and it was. A bright, clear-complexioned, mountain-looking fellow, he looks as if he had just come down from the Highlands, and had never in his life taken pen in hand.
The cottage of Wilson at Elleray is a simple, but elegant little villa, standing on high ground overlooking Windermere, but at the distance of some miles. As you approach Ambleside from Kendal, you pass, as you begin to descend the hill toward Lowood, a gate leading into a gentleman’s grounds. The gateway is, on either side, hung with masses of the Ayrshire rose. There is a poetical look about the place; and that place is the country retreat of John Wilson. A carriage-road, winding almost in a perfect circle, soon introduces you to a fine lawn, surrounded by plantations, and before you, on a swelling knoll, you discern the cottage. It is hung with ivy and Ayrshire roses; and commands a splendid view over the lake, and all the mountains round. At the back a plantation of larches ascends the hill, screening it from the north. At the foot of these plantations, and sheltered in their friendly bosom, lie the gardens, with bees, and the pleasant nooks for reading or talk.
In the multiform nature of Wilson his mastery over the hearts of ingenuous youth is one of his finest characteristics. It was often won in this peculiar way: An essay is submitted to him as professor, editor, or friend, by some worthy young man. Mr. Wilson does not like it, and says so in general terms. The youth is not satisfied, and, in the tone of one rather injured, begs to know specific faults. The generous Aristarch, never dealing haughtily with a young worth, instantly sits down, and begins by conveying, in the most fearless terms of praise, his sense of that worth; but, this done, woe be to the luckless piece of prose or “numerous verse!” Down goes the scalpel with the most minute savagery of dissection, and the whole tissues and ramifications of fault are laid bare. The young man is astonished; but his nature is of the right sort; he never forgets the lesson; and with bands of filial affection stronger than hooks of steel he is knit for life to the man who has dealt with him thus.
On a bright frosty day in December, 1827, as I was quitting the mathematical class in the University of Edinburgh, of which I had been a member about two months, one of my class fellows said suddenly: “If you want to see Christopher North, he’s yonder!”… A faded, tattered gown, put on carelessly, fluttered in the keen wind, and seemed a ludicrous appendage to as fine, tall, manly a figure, and free, fearless bearing, as I have ever looked upon. As he came nearer, his limbs and their motions gave the idea of combined strength, agility, and grace; and there was a certain sort of frank, buoyant unaffectedness about his demeanour that seemed to indicate light-hearted consciousness of great mental and physical endowments. When he came near enough for his face to be seen with distinctness, in it I forgot everything else about him; and I shall never forget the impression it produced. What a magnificent head! How finely chiselled his features! What compression of the thin but beautifully formed lips! What a bright blue flashing
| “Eye, like Mars, to threaten or command!” |
Such a presence is rarely seen; and more than one person has said that he reminded them of the first man, Adam; so full was that large frame of vitality, force, and sentience. His tread seemed almost to shake the streets, his eye almost saw through stone walls; and as for his voice, there was no heart that could stand before it. He swept away all hearts, whithersoever he would.
He was well known in the houses of the poor. No humble friend was ever cast aside if honest and upright. During the summer, an old servant of my mother’s, who had formerly lived many years in her service, had fallen into bad health, and was ordered change of air. She was at once invited to Roslin,… but the change was of little service…. That she was considerately tended and soothed … was only what was to have been expected, but it was an infrequent sight to see my father, as early dawn streaked the sky, sitting by the bedside of the dying woman, arranging with gentle but awkward hand the pillow beneath her head, or cheering her with encouraging words, and reading, when she desired it, those portions of the Bible most suitable to her need.
His handwriting, curiously enough, reflected the change which occurred in his intellectual temperament when he forsook verse for prose. The manuscript of the “Isles of Palms,” that dreamy and paradisaical tale of the sea, is singularly elegant and clear; but as he advanced in years, and threw himself impetuously into that poetic prose which proved so congenial to him, his manuscript broke the fetters of neatness and precision, and became bounding and leaping, hurrying along in almost illegible haste, and evidently tasked to the uttermost to keep pace with the rapid outpourings of the mental fountains.
Wilson’s eloquence was of a very brilliant kind, but it had not the condensation necessary for the highest flights of oratory. He was enthusiastic, poetical, diffuse, but not weighty. With an unbounded command of language and romantic imagery, he wanted those brief expressions and burning thoughts which strike home to the human heart. Hence his speeches sounded better at the time than they appeared on reflection; and while they delighted all present, left little that could be carried away or stored in the memory.
Christopher North was himself a kind of Thor and Baldur in one, with a touch of the frost-giant in him to boot. Now we find him daring dangerous Windermere in a snow-storm, in darkness too, vainly trying for hours to recover shore, and nearly dying of cold. “Master was well-nigh frozen to death,” reported his man Billy, “and had icicles a finger long hanging from his hair and beard.” Next evening, like as not, he is at Charles Lloyd’s fine mansion dancing with the belle of the Lakes—gracefulest dancer he in the district! And when the first breath of spring has called out the wild flowers, lo! he is amid them, perhaps calling the Greek Meleager to his aid to tell them how lovely they are, and then how perfect must she be who is lovelier—that aforesaid Belle of Brathay!
Mr. Fields was present at some one of his lectures, however, and he always said in after life that Professor Wilson’s method and manner with his students was his ideal of what the relation of a teacher to his scholars should be. The eager way in which he talked to them, his whole heart being in his work, made it impossible for their thoughts to wander. They were fascinated by his living interest in their behalf. “Ah, that is what lecturing to students can be made,” he was accustomed to say.
John Wilson was one of the most interesting figures of a time when learning was at a premium; he was a big man amongst big men, and even in this irreverential time genius uncovers at the mention of his name. His versatility was astounding; with equal facility and felicity he could conduct a literary symposium and a cock-fight, a theological discussion and an angling expedition, a historical or a political inquiry and a fisticuffs. Nature had provided him with a mighty brain in a powerful body; he had a physique equal to the performance of what suggestion so ever his splendid intellectuals made. To him the incredible feat of walking seventy miles within the compass of a day was mere child’s play; then, when the printer became clamorous, he would immure himself in his wonderful den and reel off copy until that printer cried “Hold; enough!” It was no unusual thing for him to write for thirteen hours at a stretch; when he worked he worked, and when he played he played—that is perhaps the reason why he was never a dull boy.
In 1837 he sustained the supreme bereavement by losing his beloved and devoted wife. His grief on this occasion was profound and lasting, and a touching picture of its uncontrollable outbursts in the presence of his class has been preserved. There, if anything occurred to renew the memory of his sorrow, he would pause for a moment or two in his lecture, “fling himself forward on the desk, bury his face in his hands, and while his whole frame heaved with visible emotion, would weep and sob like a very child.” So, in his work and his play, his joy and his sorrow, the whole man was cast in an heroic mould.
He lived to be an old man—one of the landmarks of the faithful city which has a knack of turning its favourites into demigods. A Norse demigod, not a Greek, was Wilson, with his yellow locks hanging about his great shoulders. It is one of the recollections of my early days to have been taken to see him—a young writer, much abashed with so novel a character—when he was near the end of his life. My companion and patron was Dr. Moir, the gentle “Delta” of Blackwood, the well-beloved physician, whom everybody delighted to honour. Professor Wilson came to us, large and loosely clad, with noiseless large footsteps such as some big men have the gift of: his hair thin, which had been so abundant, and dimmed out of its fine colour, but still picturesquely falling about his ears, making a background for his still ruddy countenance.
Wilson was a turbulent personality, with a whimsical strain of romance and poetry, a few stray notions of literary criticism, and an overflowing torrent of animal spirits which he himself and many of his contemporaries accepted as genius. But of any power of concentrated or systematic thought he was absolutely destitute. He might carry on the traditions which made literary criticism one of the subjects of philosophical disquisition, but it was in a method and with aims far different from those of his predecessors. He was open to literary impressions by which they were unstirred, and he caught something of the spirit of a school of poetry which had not arisen in their day; but for philosophical speculation he was incapable either by nature or by training.
Noctes Ambrosianæ
There is not so curious and original a work in the English or Scotch languages. It is a most singular and delightful outpouring of criticism, politics, and descriptions of feeling, character, and scenery, of verse and prose, and maudlin eloquence, and especially of wild fun. It breathes the very essence of the Bacchanalian revel of clever men. And its Scotch is the best Scotch that has been written in modern times.
The Ettrick Shepherd of the “Noctes Ambrosianæ” is one of the finest and most finished creations which dramatic genius ever called into existence…. In wisdom the shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato; in humor he surpasses the Falstaff of Shakspeare.
Verily, they are Walpurgis Nights, these “Noctes Ambrosianæ.” The English language contains nothing so grotesque as some of their ludicrous descriptions, nothing so graphic, so intense, so terrible, as some of their serious pictures; no dialogue more elastic, no criticism more subtle, no gossip more delightful, no such fine diffusion, like the broad eagle wing, and no such vigorous compression, like the keen eagle talon; but when we remember, besides, that the “Noctes” contain all these merits combined into a wild and wondrous whole, our admiration of the powers displayed in them is intensified to astonishment, and, if not to the pitch of saying, “Surely a greater than Shakspeare is here,” certainly to that of admitting a mind of cognate and scarce inferior genius.
It must be confessed that the “Noctes Ambrosianæ” are not easy things to commend to the modern reader, if I may use the word commend in its proper sense and with no air of patronage. Even Scotchmen (perhaps, indeed, Scotchmen most of all) are wont nowadays to praise them rather apologetically, as may be seen in the case of their editor and abridger Mr. Skelton. Like most other very original things they drew after them a flock of imbecile imitations; and up to the present day those who have lived in the remoter parts of Scotland must know or recently remember dreary compositions in corrupt following of the “Noctes” with exaggerated attempts at Christopher’s worst mannerisms, and invariably including a ghastly caricature of the Shepherd.
There is imperishable stuff in the “Noctes.” That famous series has not the even excellence—the close grain—of Holmes’s “Breakfast-Table” papers. There is too much of it, and it should be read with judicious skipping. A large part of the dialogue is concerned with matters of temporary interest. The bacchanalian note in it becomes at time rather forced, and the reader wearies of the incessant consumption of powldoodies, porter, and Welsh rabbits.
Poetry, sport, and revelry were three fountains of inexhaustible inspiration; and it was from an intimate blending of the most vivid joys of all three that his most original and lasting work proceeded. Tavern meetings with good cheer and good society, long tramps among the heathery glens—“glorious guffawing,” as the Wilsonian Hogg put it, “all night, and immeasurable murder all day,”—were the elements which, flung across the rich refracting medium of his imagination, envolved those unique compounds of poetry, wit, humour, drama, high spirits, and balderdash—the “Noctes Ambrosianæ.”
It would not seem that these Symposia were under any regular system at first or subjected to any editorship. When they began it was frequently Lockhart who was the author, sometimes Maginn (after the advent of that still more unruly contributor): occasionally Hogg had, or was allowed to suppose that he had, a large share in them. Finally they fell into the hands of Wilson, and it is chiefly his portion of these admirable exchanges of literary criticism and comment which have been preserved and collected. To produce them required many gifts beyond these of the moralist or critic. A certain amount of creative skill and dramatic instinct, in addition to the flow of wit and power of analysis and analogy, was necessary to one who had to keep up a keen argument single-handed, like a Japanese juggler with his balls, especially when every man who was supposed to speak was a notable man, whose thoughts and diction could both be easily identified; or to carry out all the quibs of a prolonged jest, in which the tempers of some of the interlocutors were naturally roused, and free speaking was the rule; while, on the other hand, the number of subjects which had to be touched upon in a monthly commentary upon the doings of the world was very great.
A poet of little mark, but an essayist and causeur of commanding and singularly varied powers, whose “Noctes Ambrosianæ,” though always somewhat of a stumbling-block to the Southron reader, still preserves for those who have attained the proper “point of view” the original charm of its gaiety, wit, and dramatic humour, its criticism, and its occasional passages of admirably eloquent prose.
Novels
It [“Margaret Lindsay”] is very beautiful and tender; but something cloying, perhaps, in the uniformity of its beauty, and exceedingly oppressive in the unremitting weight of the pity with which it presses on our souls. Nothing was ever imagined more lovely than the beauty, the innocence, and the sweetness of Margaret Lindsay, in the earlier part of her trials; and nothing, we believe, is more true, than the comfortable lesson which her tale is meant to inculcate,—that a gentle and affectionate nature is never inconsolable nor permanently unhappy, but easily proceeds from submission to new enjoyment.
Professor Wilson’s great strength as a prose writer lies in his power of pathetic description; and here he has never been surpassed. As a delineator of Scottish pastoral life—his “Lights and Shadows,” his “Trials of Margaret Lindsay,” and his “Foresters” seem destined to remain unapproached in their peculiar excellencies, and have as fair a chance of becoming immortal as any thing of a similar character in the English language.
Wilson is too Ossianic in his style of narration and description; and had he attempted a novel in three or four volumes, it had been absolutely illegible. Even “Margaret Lindsay,” his longest tale, rather tires before the close, through its sameness of eloquence and monotony of pathos; only very short letters should be all written in tears and blood.
Poetry
Almost the only passions with which his poetry is conversant are the gentler sympathies of our nature,—tender compassion, confiding affection, and guiltless sorrow. From all this there results, along with a most touching and tranquilizing sweetness, a certain monotony and languor, which, to those who read poetry for amusement merely, will be apt to appear like dullness, and must be felt as a defect by all who have been used to the variety, rapidity, and energy of the more popular poetry of the day. The poetry before us, on the other hand, is almost entirely contemplative or descriptive.
His poetical powers are very varied: that is, he can handle any subject in its own peculiar spirit. His “Edith and Nora” is one of those fairy-fictions of which he once promised a volume; there is a wondrous beauty shed over the landscape on which he brings out his spiritual folk to sport and play, and do good deeds to men: nor has he wasted all his sweetness on the not insensible earth; he has endowed his fairies with charms from a hundred traditions, assigned them poetic and moral tasks, and poured inspiration into their speech. Another fine poem of his is “An Address to a Wild Deer:” for bounding elasticity of language, hurrying thoughts, and crowding imagery, it is without a parallel. Indeed, throughout all his smaller poems there is a deep feeling for nature; an intimate knowledge of the workings of the heart, and a liquid fluency of language almost lyrical.
Wilson is most successful as a descriptive poet. His fancy is somewhat too exuberant, his metaphors too profuse: but they are from life and nature, and not from the elder bards. He has great delicacy of sentiment, and some of his delineations of character are not surpassed in English poetry. His morality is never hesitating or questionable. In all his works there is no sentiment of doubtful application.
The grand characteristics of the poetry of Wilson are delicacy of sentiment and ethereal elegance of description. He refines and elevates whatever he touches; and if in his hands common things lose their vulgar attributes, they are exchanged by him for something better…. Wilson makes nearer approach, in tone of thought, to the Lake School, than to any other great class of writers; nor do his ideas of the philosophical principles of composition seem widely different from theirs; but he never offends, like them, by endeavouring to extract sentiment from incongruous subjects…. The great defect in the earlier poetry of Professor Wilson will be found to result from “the fatal facility” with which he found expression for his exuberant riches of thought and imagery.
As to his poetry, I cannot say that it has been underrated,—I only say that it has been eclipsed by his splendid prose. But in the “Isle of Palms” and “The City of the Plague,” to say nothing of his smaller poems, there is much which “the world will not willingly let die.” Scott, Southey, and Wilson are men who, had they never written prose, would have stood higher among Poets than they do…. As for Professor Wilson, his poetry has been almost traditional, full of beauty though it be, since it became overshadowed by the multifarious brilliancy and fecundity of Kit North.
His poetry is the Sabbath of his soul. And there are moods of mind—quiet, peaceful, autumnal moments—in which you enjoy it better than the poetry of any one else.
Wilson’s poetry was not such as we would have looked for from one who was a “varra bad un to lick” at a wrestling bout, and who made the splinters fly when his bludgeon went thwacking into a page of controversial prose. His verse is tender; it is graceful; it is delicate; it is full of langours too; and it is tiresome—a gentle girlish treble of sound it has, that you can hardly associate with this brawny mass of manhood.
Criticism
| You did late review my lays, | |
| Crusty Christopher; | |
| You did mingle blame and praise, | |
| Rusty Christopher. | |
| When I learnt from whom it came, | |
| I forgave you all the blame, | |
| Musty Christopher; | |
| I could not forgive the praise, | |
| Fusty Christopher. |
Though the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, and the Westminster, are the chief of our critical periodicals, we are by no means disposed to consider them as alone influencing our literature. In truth, some of the best disquisitions on poetry ever penned in the island belong not to them, but to Blackwood’s Magazine, and are by a true poet, John Wilson. The imagination which Jeffrey wants, he has to overflowing; the mercury of his genius stands as high as that of any one. He has fancy for the highest and humour for the lowest; and in no flight or vagary can any genius indulge in which he cannot sympathize. Such a singular combination of qualities was perhaps never before known. He will dream with the proudest poet that ever sat on Parnassus, and then leave a heavenly superstructure worthy of the imagination of Martin, to snickle hares and rabbits with some poacher at its base.
A living writer of the most ardent and enthusiastic genius, whose eloquence is as the rush of mighty waters.
His contributions to “Blackwood’s Magazine” raised the whole tone and character of periodical literature. The keenest wit, the most playful fancy, the most genial criticism, the deepest pathos, were lavished, year after year, with a profusion almost miraculous.
The whole literature of England does not contain a more brilliant series of critical essays than those with which he has enriched the pages of Blackwood’s Magazine; and, which is rarer still, the generosity of feeling by which they are distinguished equals their critical acuteness and delicacy of taste…. If his criticisms have any imperfections, it is that they are too indulgent. He is justly alive to faults, and, when obliged to notice, signalizes them with critical justice; but the generosity of his nature leads him rather to seek for excellences, and, when he finds them, none bestows the meed of praise with more heartfelt fervor.
His critical papers on Homer and Spenser have a magnificent breadth and eloquence, rarely, if ever before, found in disquisitions of that class, and his essays on our modern poets—on Thomson, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Crabbe—exhibit profound sympathy with the creations and temperaments of genius and insight into the sources of emotion and passion. A “frater feeling strong” impelled his teeming fancy and his fluent pen…. The collective works of Professor Wilson have not been generally popular. When seen in a mass, they had a character of sameness and repetition. Much of the original freshness was gone; both bloom and odour had perished in the using.
His literary criticism, though interesting as the utterance of a rich personality, is seldom wise or sure.
General
Wilson’s papers, though not perfect have a masterly cast about them: a little custom would make him the best periodical writer of the age,—keep hold of him.
A man of great power and acquirements, well known to the public as the author of the “City of the Plague,” “Isle of Palms,” and other productions.
Wilson had much nobleness of heart, and many traits of noble genius, but the central tie-beam seemed always wanting; very long ago I perceived in him the most irreconcilable contradictions; Toryism with sansculottism; Methodism of a sort with total incredulity; a noble, loyal and religious nature, not strong enough to vanquish the perverse element it is born into. Hence a being all split into precipitous chasms and the wildest volcanic tumults; rocks overgrown indeed with tropical luxuriance of leaf and flower, but knit together at the bottom—that was my old figure of speech—only by an ocean of whisky punch. On these terms nothing can be done. Wilson seemed to me always by far the most gifted of all our literary men either then or still; and yet intrinsically he has written nothing that can endure. The central gift was wanting.
In Wilson’s “Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,” and in his other Scottish stories, we have, unless my impression of them deceives me, a spirit of lyrical pathos, and of poetical Arcadianism, which tinges, without obscuring, the real Scottish colour, and reminds us of the Lake poet and disciple of Wordsworth, as well as of the follower of Scott; while in his “Noctes Ambrosianæ,” he burst away in a riot of Scotticism of which Scott had never ventured—a Scotticism not only real and humorous, but daringly imaginative and poetic, to the verge of Lakism and beyond—displaying withal an originality of manner natural to a new cast of genius, and a command of resources in the Scottish idiom and dialect unfathomed even by Scott.
Was he not a man?—Oh, large, brave heart, yet tender as a child! But no letter-writer! What a pity that the bulk of the work should have been so increased by letters which are little else than so much dead weight,—scarce half a dozen of them worth the paper. Aside from these, there is a fresh air blowing upon us from out the spirit of the man, which seems to breathe over and through us something of his rejoicing health and strength.
As regards Wilson’s style, it has been said by Mr. Hallam that “his eloquence is like the rush of mighty waters.” He greatly admired Jeremy Taylor; and while, from temperament, he does not display the same habitual breathless eagerness in the accumulation of words but pours out his full eloquence with less appearance of excitement, he often reminds us of Taylor’s manner in his way of following out picturesque similitudes. Comparing them upon one point only, and disregarding other characteristics, we should say that of the two Taylor is more rhetorical, and Wilson the more eloquent: Taylor rather accumulates his wealth of expression upon given themes; Wilson flows out spontaneously and often somewhat irrelevantly to the subject in hand, concerning what strongly interested him in real life: Taylor can flexibly bring his powers to bear upon any subject; Wilson, although from the width of his interests the distinction is not glaringly obtrusive, is copious only when he happens to strike a plentiful spring in his own nature. With all Wilson’s Nimrod force and abounding animal spirits, perhaps his richest and most original vein of expression is connected with his love of peaceful beauties in natural scenery.
Notwithstanding the exuberance of his imaginative faculty the ornateness of his English, the purity of his language is well preserved in the easy, clear flowing periods which mark the “Essays;” the style in which he wrote was more specially characteristic of that period in literature than ours.
On the poetic imagination, then, he looms as one heroically proportioned; whilst more practical thinkers will cherish his memory as that of a most brilliant contributor to the periodical literature of his day, a great inspirer of youth, and a standard and pattern to his countrymen of physical and intellectual manhood.
He cannot help his delightfully wanton play with language and sentiment; and into whatever sea of topics he plunged—early or late in life—he always came up glittering with the beads and sparkles of a highly charged rhetoric.
Wilson covers some even pages of quarto in discussing the matter [Thomson’s treatment of Burns]. He goes into it in great detail, and with that tiresome redundancy of diction and “blather” (to use a favourite term of his own) for which he was famous.
It happened the other day, in the library of a remote house, that I lighted upon a shelf of old Blackwoods, from fifty to sixty years old, and, being confined to the house by wet weather, read largely in them. Christopher North was at his glory then, with his flagrant egotism and stupid bellowings.
For rapid, daring, vehement, electrifying bursts of straightforward rushing eloquence, as a matter of course defective in the very best kinds of chiselled or intricate beauty, but full of splendour, he is, where really inspired, unrivalled in his own generation; and the last impressions of him left on a reader’s mind are those of amazing energy and fire.
