William Wilkie, D.D., known among his friends by the title of “The Scottish Homer,” was born at Echlin, County Linlithgow, Scotland, 1721; educated at the University of Edinburgh, and subsequently became a successful farmer; was ordained assistant and successor to Mr. Guthrie, minister of Ratho, 1753; Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of St. Andrews, 1759; died 1772. 1. The “Epigoniad;” a Poem, in Nine Books, Edin., 1757, 8vo; 2d ed., with a “Dream, in the Manner of Spenser,” Lon., 1759, 8vo…. 2. “Fables,” 1768, 8 vo; Plates after S. Wale.
Personal
He is described as a very absent, eccentric person, who wore as many clothes as tradition assigns to the grave digger in “Hamlet” on the stage, and who used to lie in bed with two dozen pair of blankets above him! David Hume gives a humorous description of the circumstances under which Wilkie carried on his Homeric studies. The Scottish farmers near Edinburgh are very much infested, he says with wood-pigeons. “And Wilkie’s father planted him often as a scarecrow (an office for which he is well qualified) in the midst of his fields of wheat. He carried out his Homer with him, together with a table, and pen and ink, and a great rusty gun. He composed and wrote two or three lines, till a flock of pigeons settled in a field, then rose up, ran towards them, and fired at them; returned again to his former station, and added a rhyme or two more, till he met with a fresh interruption.”
Regarded by his college friends as the ablest of the distinguished students of his day, Wilkie continued to impress later contemporaries by his originality, remarkable attainments, and conversational power, and to shock them by his eccentricity and slovenly habits.
Epigoniad, 1757
“The Epigoniad,” seems to be one of those new old performances; a work that would no more have pleased a peripatetic of the academic grove, than it will captivate the unlettered subscriber to one of our circulating libraries.
The execution of the “Epigoniad” is better than the design, the poetry superior to the fable, and the colouring of the particular parts more excellent than the general plan of the whole. Of all the great epic poems which have been the admiration of mankind, the “Jerusalem” of Tasso alone would make a tolerable novel, if reduced to prose, and related without that splendour of versification and imagery by which it is supported; yet, in the opinion of many able judges, the “Jerusalem” is the least perfect of all these productions; chiefly because it has least nature and simplicity in the sentiments, and is most liable to the objection of affectation and conceit. The story of a poem, whatever may be imagined, is the least essential part of it: the force of versification, the vivacity of the images, the justness of the descriptions, the natural play of the passions, are the chief circumstances which distinguish the great poet from the prosaic novelist, and give him so high a rank among the heroes in literature: and I will venture to affirm, that all these advantages are to be found in an eminent degree in the “Epigoniad.”
There is nothing more wonderful in this admirable poem than the intimate acquaintance it displays, not only with human nature, but with the turn of manner of thinking of the ancients, their history, opinions, manners, and customs. There are few books that contain more learning than the “Epigoniad.” To the reader acquainted with remote antiquity it yields high entertainment; and we are so far from thinking that an acquaintance with Homer hinders men from reading this poem, that we are of opinion it is chiefly by such as are conversant in the writings of that poet that the “Epigoniad” is or will be read. And as the manners therein described are not founded on any circumstances that are temporary and fugacious, but arise from the original frame and constitution of human nature, and are consequently the same in all nations and periods of the world, it is probable, if the English language shall not undergo very material and sudden changes, that the epic poem of Wilkie will be read and admired when others that are in greater vogue in the present day shall be overlooked and forgotten.
The “Epigoniad” of Wilkie is the bold attempt of an energetic mind to try its powers in the most arduous path of poetry, the Epic; without that correctness of judgment, and previous discipline in the practice of harmonious numbers, which can alone ensure success in an age of polish and refinement. It has accordingly been measured by that standard of criticism, which the most unqualified judges can easily apply,—a comparison with the most perfect productions of its kind; and its palpable defects have involved in an indiscriminate condemnation its less obvious, but real merits.
A poem … of great merit, not only as possessing much of the spirit and manner of Homer … but also a manly and vigorous style of poetry, rarely found in modern compositions of the kind.
It is now no longer read, and is fast being consigned to oblivion.
“The Epigoniad” is moderately good; but it requires more than moderate merit to induce men to read an epic in nine books…. It was doubtless Pope’s Homer which inspired Wilkie with the ambition to write a classical epic; but a translation of Homer, and a translation by Pope, was a very different thing from an original poem on a subject of ancient legend by William Wilkie. There are numerous faults in Wilkie’s composition—glaring Scotticisms, bad rhymes, incapacity to attain that neatness and point without which the heroic couplet is indefensible. Worse than all is the absence of any great original ideas.
The “Epigoniad,” Wilkie’s chief work, an ambitious epic in nine books descriptive of the siege of Thebes, appeared in 1757. Its inspiration was obviously owed to Pope’s translation of the Iliad and Odyssey, and it has many shortcomings not to be found in its model—Scotticisms, false rhymes and rhythm, and even flaws of language. Many passages, however, are conceived in singularly happy vein, and the story is vigorous and crisp.
Wilkie has no genuine right to be called “the Scottish Homer,” but as a mere achievement in verse his “epic” is creditable; it has a fair measure of fluency, its imagery is apt and strong, and it is brightened by occasional felicities of phrase, descriptive epithet, and antithetical delineation.
