WILSON, John, poet and essayist, and for thirty years professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, was a native of Paisley, born on the 18th of May 1785. His father was a wealthy manufacturer, who gave his son a complete education, and left him a fortune of about £30,000. Some years of the youth of John Wilson were passed in the country, under the charge of a Scottish clergyman in a rural parish—Mearns in Renfrewshire—and this residence was of vast importance to him both as a poet and a man. It rendered him familiar with the face of nature and the simple life of the country, and it fostered that love of athletic sports and invigorating exercise which continued to be one of the most blessed conditions and marked features of his character, personal and literary. From his boyhood, he was an enthusiastic angler and pedestrian, as well as an eager though irregular student. At the age of fifteen, he was entered of Glasgow University. The two most celebrated professors at that time were Young and Jardine—the former occupying the Greek chair, and the latter that of logic; and Wilson, like Campbell and Jeffrey, has borne testimony to their merits and virtues. Four years were agreeably and profitably spent in attendance at college in Glasgow, and in studies and vacation in the country, and Wilson was then sent to Magdalen College, Oxford. He applied himself assiduously to the classics and to English composition, and was no less devoted to boating on the Isis or Thames, cricket-playing, and long pedestrian rambles. In 1806, he carried off the Newdigate prize for the best English poem of fifty lines. His subject was a recommendation of the study of ancient art, as seen in the Greek and Roman remains, and his style was the regular conventional academic pace—the stately, measured, heroic couplet. The verses of Wilson were always flowing and resonant—his ear for time, if not for tune, was faultless.
In 1808, the young poet completed his collegiate career. He had purchased a small but beautiful estate on the banks of Lake Windermere, and there he resided for many years, enjoying the exquisite scenery of that poetical district, the conversation of Wordsworth and Southey, and the pleasures of rowing, yachting, and pedestrian excursions, for which he entertained as keen a relish. As "admiral of the lake," Wilson was famous for his skill and courage, and for his bounteous hospitality. His stout, robust figure, fair Saxon complexion, blue eye, and long clustering yellow hair (of all which he was as proud as of his poetry), rendered him always a conspicuous personage in town or country. His appearance was singular; to casual observers it appeared theatrical, but in point of fact, as was said of Mrs Siddons, "a manner in itself artificial, sprung out of the naiveté of his character." In 1811, Mr Wilson married a very amiable lady, Miss Jane Penny, daughter of a Liverpool merchant; and about this time we find him described by Sir Walter Scott:—"The author of the elegy upon poor Grahame (the poet of the Sabbath) is John Wilson, a young man of very
considerable poetical powers. He is an eccentric genius, and has fixed himself upon the banks of Windermere, but occasionally resides in Edinburgh. . . . 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."—(Letter to Joanna Baillie, Jan. 17, 1812.) Scott's attentions and encouragement were gratefully felt by Wilson, and were acknowledged in a poem entitled The Magic Mirror, in which he portrays the mighty minstrel in the character of a great magician, a title by which he was afterwards frequently designated. In the spring of 1812, Wilson's Isle of Palms, with other Poems, was published. It was something in the style of Southey, as Scott remarked; the rich descriptions of tropical scenery were not unlike the gorgeous scenes in Thalaba or Kehama, but the general tone and diction of the Isle of Palms remind one more of Wordsworth. An intense love of nature approaching to Pantheism, and of all gentle sympathies and affections, is the prevailing characteristic of Wilson's poetry. It wants energy and condensation, the "brief strokes of power" which distinguish the master-hand, but it spreads out into passages of great sweetness and fairy imagery.
The poet now began to think of adopting a profession. The cares of a family and some pecuniary reverses suggested the expediency of such a step, and he commenced the study of the law. In 1815, he passed as an advocate at the Scottish bar. He does not seem, however, to have gone resolutely to work at his new calling, and three years afterwards we find Lockhart describing himself and Wilson as briefless barristers, sweeping the boards of the Parliament House. Literature was to be the vocation of both. Before this time Wilson had put forth a second volume of poetry, The City of the Plague (1816), a dramatic poem superior in literary merit and interest to the Isle of Palms, and which Byron considered as showing that Wilson had "set up for himself," without reliance on the Lakers. Next year Blackwood's Magazine was established, forming a grand era in the history of our author, and in the literary annals of Edinburgh. Wilson became the founder of a new dynasty, the latest dynasty of Edinburgh literati. History and metaphysics had held sway in the previous century under Hume, Robertson, and Smith. The physical sciences were afterwards illustrated by Playfair and Leslie. With Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Brougham, came the Edinburgh Review, and the advent of free thought and independent criticism. To these succeeded Wilson and Lockhart—young, flushed with genius, scholarship, and ambition, and determined to ostracise whiggism and the Review by means of Blackwood's Magazine. Their success was great. Over the whole of Scotland there was a spring-tide of Toryism breaking down the old Edinburgh embankments, sweeping through college halls and the Parliament House, and animating with a wild excitement a large portion of the educated youth of the country. This, in time passed away, but the flood of Wilson's essays and criticism had irrigated and improved our periodical literature. There was originality, with fervour and boldness, in all he wrote. It was mixed with baser matter in the shape of invitations to coarse jollity and fierce political and personal satire, but the frank, genial, literary spirit predominated. There was abundance of illustration, humour, fancy, and mirth. The poetry of Wilson had only displayed delicacy of feeling and purity of sentiment. It was graceful and picturesque. But it was as an essayist, a critic, and humorist, that he made known his various and high powers, and the chivalrous gallantry of his nature. He poured out the whole man in his prose. 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 temperament of genius and insight into the sources of emotion and passion. A "frater feeling strong," impelled his teeming fancy and his fluent pen. There was another class of papers in which Wilson was unique—descriptions of the Lake Country and of Highland scenery. These often became in his hands a sort of poetical dithyrambs or idylls, full of true poetry and fine discrimination, yet crossed and streaked with all manner of grotesque images and fancies; the real mingling with the ideal, the high with the low, the beautiful with the gross and extravagant. His glowing imagination seemed to fuse together these incongruous materials, much of which a purer taste would have rejected, yet which none of his contemporaries perhaps could have produced in equal abundance. In The City of the Plague Wilson had essayed the grave dramatic style. In Blackwood he struck into the walk of the comic drama. The Noctes Ambrosianæ contributed to the magazine between the years 1822 and 1835, consist of familiar dialogues among a few interlocutors on the principal topics of the day, men and books, morals and social life. They contain passages of "admirable fooling," shrewd observation, description, and criticism. The style is much the same as that of the essays, but with greater abandon of manner, and a larger admixture of poetical exaggeration and farcical humour. Three volumes of serious prose tales were also published by our author.—The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, 1822; The Trials of Margaret Lindsay, 1823; and The Foresters, 1824. These are all stories of a domestic character, in which the painting, both light and shade, is generally in extreme, and the incidents, though often strikingly pathetic and sweetly told, are too Arcadian or improbable. They are the works of a poet idealizing whatever he touches—not transcripts of actual life from the hand of a keen and searching novelist. To be relished they must be read with the fresh romantic feelings of youth.
In 1820 the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh became vacant by the death of Dr Thomas Brown. Wilson was a candidate, and he succeeded, though not without strong opposition, in obtaining the appointment. It could not be said that his previous studies had fitted him for such an office, and the careless freedom of his life and anonymous writings was urged against him. All the "Tory mischief" in Blackwood was laid at his door, although, in reality, the chief part was concocted by Lockhart (whom James Hogg in the Chaldee Manuscript had named the scorpion), and Wilson never possessed editorial control over the magazine. It was well known, however, that his strength did not lie in reasoning or mental analysis, or in regard for order and method, and hence part at least of the opposition and its justification. But genius has a faculty of rapid perception, as well as a kindling and creative power. The new professor made his lectures attractive and suggestive; his enthusiasm was contagious; his cordiality and kindness won the hearts of the students; and his literary and social eminence made them proud of him as a chief. As the "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine, he became known to all the world, and as "The Professor" he was the great lion of the Scottish capital. After the death of Scott he had no rival in literary popularity, for Jeffrey had then withdrawn from the arena, and devoted himself wholly to law. Lockhart was in London, and the Ettrick Shepherd, who had at one time loomed largely in the view of Edinburgh society, was subsidized by the Professor, and drawn at his chariot wheels in the Magazine.
In 1837 Professor Wilson sustained an irreparable loss in the death of his wife—the accomplished companion of his summer rambles and winter's fireside, and the careful tender mother of his children. For a season books and lectures were neglected: "How could I see them," he
said, "in the valley and shadow of death?" Literature, however, again became the solace. He resumed work for the Magazine, and in 1841 he wrote, or rather compiled from his previous magazine writings, a copious Essay on the Genius and Character of Burns, which accompanied an illustrated work, the "Land of Burns," published for the Messrs Blackie of Glasgow. In 1842 he collected and revised part of his contributions to Blackwood, and published them in three volumes under the title of The Recreations of Christopher North. In 1844 a poetical jubilee brought him joyously and prominently before the public. A great festival was held at Ayr in honour of Burns, and in recognition of Burns's three sons, two of whom, retired Indian officers, had, after a long absence, returned to their native country. A "demonstration" took place in the open air, near the poet's monument on the banks of Doon, at which, it was calculated, about 80,000 persons were present, and in the afternoon 2000 dined together in a pavilion erected for the purpose. The Earl of Eglinton presided over this assembly, and Professor Wilson officiated as croupier or vice-chairman. To the Professor was assigned the chief toast and speech of the day, a welcome to the sons of Burns, and with characteristic force and impulsive fervour, he delivered a long oration, in which he expatiated on those topics so dear to his heart and imagination, the people of Scotland and their great peasant poet. "The people," he said, "were not lightly moved, but when moved, their meaning was not to be mistaken: tenacious their living grasp as the clutch of death!" And their poet had "reconciled poverty to its lot, toil to its task-work, care to its burden—nay, even grief to its grave: and by one immortal song, has sanctified for ever the poor man's cot—by such a picture as only genius in the inspiring power of poetry could have painted; has given enduring life to the image—how tender and how true!—of the happy night passing by sweet transition from this working world into the hallowed day, by God's appointment, breathing a heavenly calm over all Christian regions in their rest—nowhere else so profoundly—and may it never be broken—as over the hills and valleys of our beloved and yet religious land." This fragment may convey some idea of the style and phraseology of the Professor's "large utterances," which were delivered in a deep powerful voice, his broad chest heaving, his eye glancing, and his whole manner indicating the poetical affatus that possessed him. His nationality was always a fountain of inspiration.
The collected 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. And this is by no means a singular case. The most successful articles in the Edinburgh Review, for above twenty years, were those of Jeffrey. Professor Wilson's contributions to Blackwood may be said to have sustained the Magazine for a still longer period; and Mr Fonblanque's witty and sparkling "leaders" made the Examiner the delight of literary and political circles. Selections were made and published from all the three, yet not one of the reprints can be pronounced a success, or is likely to occupy a permanent place in our literature. Essays on the current events, books, and characters of the day, when not of great historical value or concise and complete (like Macaulay's Clive and Hastings), soon lose their interest. When brilliant, high-coloured, and piquant, they serve admirably for perusal in their periodical form; but when presented in three or more volumes, they cloy or repel readers. Their very excellence for immediate use unfits them in a great measure for preservation. "What a waste," exclaimed Coleridge, "what a reckless spending of talent—ay, and of genius too, in Wilson's, I know not how many years' management of Blackwood!" Yet the
sage of Highgate Grove admitted that Wilson's writings soothed and suspended his bodily miseries and mental conflicts. The world was all the better for the Professor's genial criticism, his broad mirth, and unrestrained revelry. Even yet he can charm. It is delightful to lose oneself with such a companion among Highland lochs and glens—to ramble with him over the milder beauties of the lake country of England—or to hold high converse with him in his graver moments on poetry, philosophy, and religion; when pausing to collect his strength, he dismisses the motley train of images that throng his fancy, and reviewing the issues of life and death, breathes forth "thoughts that wander through eternity." On these occasions his very mannerism, like a well known voice, has a certain fascination. Overflowing with animal spirits, at the same time that his finer sensibilities and intellectual tastes are called into play, he throws his whole soul into such monologues and reveries, and astonishes alternately by the wildness of his imagination, and by the depth of his feeling, humour, and pathos. His faults appear all to spring from the exuberance of his intellectual resources. As was said of his favourite Spenser, "the clouds of his allegory and description may seem to spread into shapeless masses, but still they are the clouds of a glowing atmosphere."
About the year 1850 the health of Professor Wilson, mental and physical, gave way. In 1851 a pension of £300 a year was settled upon him by the Crown, and in 1852 he was compelled, from increasing infirmity, to resign his professorship. He was no longer seen by the public, and his absence was felt as a sad blank—a void that has not yet been filled up in the city where he dwelt, for he was the last of the old race of strong men. He lingered on for two more years, and died in his house in Gloucester Place, Edinburgh, on the 3d of April 1854. An edition of his works has been published in twelve volumes, edited by his son-in-law, Professor Ferrier of St Andrews. (n.c.—g.)