John Wilson.

353 lake. In 1812 he published his first poem, the "The Isle of Palms," which met with praise fully commensurate to its merit, though by no means answering to the author's sanguine expectations. In 1815 his affairs suffered a sudden and severe reverse. The money bequeathed him by his father had been allowed to remain in the hands of an uncle who carried on the business, and his failure left Wilson almost penniless. From indulging in all sorts of sports and amusements, and from using his pen merely as an amusement when it suited him, he was called upon to work hard for the support of himself and his family. He accepted his altered conditions of life cheerfully and bravely. The establishment at Elleray was broken up, and he betook himself to Edinburgh, where in due course he was called to the Bar. Literature, however, and not law, was to be his profession, and he scarcely attempted to secure a practice. In 1816 he published his second volume, "The City of the Plague," containing some remarkably powerful descriptive passages. It was not, however, till the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine that he found a fit field for the exercise of his erratic and impulsive genius. To that periodical he was a constant contributor from its commencement to within eight or ten months of his death. So close, indeed, was his connection with it, that he was popularly supposed to be its editor-a mistake, that office being in the hands of its able and sagacious publisher. But popular opinion was not so very far wrong after all; for though not actual editor, Wilson's advice regarding contributions was very frequently asked. He himself in a letter thus accurately states the facts of the case :-" Of Blackwood I am not the editor, although I believe I very generally get both the credit and dis credit of being Christopher North. I am one of the chief writers, perhaps the chief writer, but never received one shilling from the proprietor except for my own compositions. Being generally on the spot, I am always willing to give him my advice, and to supply such articles as are most wanted, when I have leisure." In 1820 Wilson, after a hard contest, was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh University. The

rival candidate was Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856), a man of great erudition and profound philosophical genius, who was afterwards appointed Professor of Logic in Edinburgh University, and attained by his writings a European reputation. In all the qualifications for the chair Wilson was infinitely Hamilton's inferior; but Hamilton was a Whig, while Wilson was a Tory, and as most of the Town Councillors, in whose hands the appointment lay, were Tories also, he was the fortunate candidate. Few professors have entered on their duties more slenderly equipped for their task, and fewer still have succeeded as Wilson did in rapidly overcoming their defects. He never became a great philosopher, but he managed to inspire his pupils with admiration for his enthusiastic genius, and not many professors have been so much respected and loved by their pupils as he was. In 1851 he retired from his chair upon a pension of £300.

Wilson's magnificent physique ; the countless anecdotes told of his wonderful feats of strength; his great brilliance in conver sation; the admiration felt by many for his intellectual powers; even his numerous extravagances of conduct, all of which were set down to the eccentricity of genius, made him beyond all doubt the most popular Scotsman of his time. By many he was regarded as one of our very greatest writers. Even a critic usually so cautious as De Quincey declared that from Wilson's contributions to Blackwood, and more especially from his meditative examinations of great poets ancient and modern, a florilegium might be compiled of thoughts more profound and more gorgeously illustrated than exist elsewhere in human composition. Yet the truth is that people are already beginning to wonder on what rested Wilson's great fame as a man of genius. As a poet he does not occupy very high rank. No doubt beautiful passages may be pointed out in his verse, but no one probably would maintain that it bids fair to have a long life. His tales, "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," "The Trials of Margaret Lindsay," &c., are faulty in construction, and are already almost forgotten. Of his criticisms, many are excellent, but they are often extravagant both in praise and blame. His impulsive temperament was constantly

Wilson's "Noctes Ambrosianæ."

355 hurrying him into extremes; he could commend and condemn with great dash and vigour, but he was constitutionally incapable of forming judicious and well-balanced estimates. Of his most famous work, the "Noctes Ambrosianæ," what shall we say? Here is the opinion of an admirer of Wilson, Professor Ferrier, on the principal figure in the "Noctes," "the Ettrick Shepherd: "-" The Ettrick Shepherd of the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ' is one of the finest and most finished creations which dramatic genius ever called into existence. Out of very slender materials, an ideal infinitely greater, more real, and more original than the prototype from which it was drawn has been bodied forth. Bearing in mind that these dialogues are conversations on men and manners, life and literature, we may confidently affirm that nowhere within the compass of that species of composition is there to be found a character at all comparable to this one in richness and readiness of resource. In wisdom the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato; in humour he surpasses the Falstaff of Shakespeare. Clear and prompt, he might have stood up against Dr. Johnson in close and peremptory argument; fertile and copious, he might have rivalled Burke in amplitude of declamation; while his opulent imagination and powers of comical description invest all that he utters either with a picturesque vividness or a graphic quaintness peculiarly his own," &c., &c. The character of the Shepherd has certainly considerable merit, but to say that he surpasses Falstaff in humour is as absurd as it would be to pronounce Wilson a greater man than Shakespeare. The fact of the matter is, that the "Noctes" are now for the most part unreadable. They breathe an atmosphere of whisky-toddy, of rough fun, and of practical jokes, with which the society of to-day has no sympathy. Who now cares a straw for the vast powers of eating and drinking which the heroes possess? A few fine descriptions of scenery, a few profound observations, a few just and eloquent criticisms, are buried beneath mountains of rhapsodical magniloquence and of wit which has lost its savour. Much the same remarks apply to Wilson's other writings

resembling the "Noctes," such as his "Recreations of Christopher North," his "Dies Boreales," &c., &c. All his articles were written currente calamo, dashed off at a white heat, without much previous thought or preparation; and they all bear traces of their hasty composition. Some admirer of Wilson ought to carry out De Quincey's notion and collect an anthology from his various writings. A moderately-sized volume of great interest and value might be thus compiled, and only in some such condensation can Wilson's works hope to escape the ravages of time. Wilson's influence upon the style of the minor writers of his day was bad, inspiring them with a passion for gorgeous colouring and picturesque epithets which led to such strange excesses as we find in many of his imitators.

John Gibson Lockhart, Wilson's friend and fellow-contributor to Blackwood, while lacking Christopher North's luxuriance and fertility of genius, had a much more clear-cut and wellbalanced mind. He was born in 1794, the son of a Lanarkshire minister. Even while a mere child he showed the qualities which distinguished him throughout life, reserved. manners, power of concentration, a keen sense of the ludicrous, which found vent in the many admirable caricatures that fell from his pen, and remarkable quickness of perception. "His reading, like that of clever children in general, was, to be sure, miscellaneous enough, for whatever came in his way he devoured. But whatever he had once devoured he never forgot. This was an advantage over other boys, which he owed in part at least to nature. His memory was retentive in the extreme, and continued so through life. Like Lord Macaulay and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Lockhart, in the maturity of his days, seldom thought it necessary to verify a quotation of which he desired to make use." After leaving the Glasgow High School, where he always managed to keep his place as dux, Lockhart entered the University of Glasgow,

1 From an article in the Quarterly Review for October 1864, containing the fullest account of Lockhart which, so far as we know, has ever been published.

John Gibson Lockhart

357

where, although apparently very idle and employing himself in drawing caricatures of the professors instead of attending to their lectures, he contrived to acquit himself with distinction. At the close of his Glasgow curriculum he was presented to one of the Snell Exhibitions to Oxford, and became a commoner of Balliol College ere he had completed his fifteenth year. He left Oxford in 1813, having obtained a first-class in classics, "notwithstanding that he, with unparalleled audacity, devoted part of his time to caricaturing the examining masters." After a visit to Germany, where he saw Goethe, whom through life he regarded with a reverence second only to Carlyle's, he executed his first avowed piece of literary work, a translation of Schlegel's "Lectures on the History of Literature." In 1816 he was called to the Scottish bar, but he never attained, nor indeed attempted to attain, any success in his profession. In 1817 he began to contribute to Blackwood, to which his pungent and graphic pen lent powerful aid, writing articles on all sorts of subjects, besides many excellent rollicking ballads, conceived in a style of which he alone possessed the secret. In 1819 he published "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk," clever and witty sketches of the more prominent Edinburgh celebrities of the day, which created no small stir, and were bitterly reviled by many on account of their personalities. In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott, who fitted up for the young couple the cottage of Chiefswood on his own estate. During the following five or six years Lockhart produced his "Metrical Translations of Spanish Ballads," which Macaulay thought decidedly superior to the originals; "Valerius, a Roman Story," the first of those novels which endeavour to portray ancient life; and three other fictions, "Adam Blair," "Reginald Dalton," and "Matthew Wald." In 1826 he removed to London, having been appointed editor of the Quarterly Review, at a salary of £1200 a year, and, if he wrote a certain number of articles, £1500.1 While contributing largely to the Quarterly-he wrote altogether over a hun

1 So stated in Moore's Diary (Russell's "Memoirs of Moore," vol. iv.

P. 334).