(William, D.D.), the author of an heroic poem, intitled the Epigoniad, was born in the parish of Dalmeny, in the county of West-Lothian, on the 5th of October 1721. He was descended of an ancient family in that county, though his father rented only a small farm, and was poor and unfortunate through life. He was able, however, to give his son a liberal education; and that son, it is said, discovered so early a propensity to the study of poetry, that he began to write verses in his tenth year.

As this wonderful prematurity of genius was never heard of during Wilkie's life, it will probably be considered as a story fabricated to raise the Scottish poet to the same eminence with Pope, whose verification he is allowed to have imitated with success. We have no doubt but that Wilkie wrote in early life the description of a storm, which is published in the 9th volume of the Statistical Account of Scotland; but that he wrote it in his tenth year is not proved, and is highly improbable. The poem displays a notion—a confused notion indeed—of the laws of electricity, which a boy in his tenth year, and at a period when electricity was little understood, could not have acquired.

Having learned the rudiments of the Latin tongue at the parish-school of Dalmeny, young Wilkie was, at the age of thirteen, sent to the university of Edinburgh, where he was soon distinguished by his originality of thought, and by his rapid progress in erudition and science. Among his fellow students, he was most closely associated with Dr. Robertson, the historian, Mr. John Home the poet, Dr. MacGillivray, who afterwards obtained

(a) According to Sir John Hawkins, this man bore arms on the side of government at the battle of Falkirk 1745. After which, taking a degree in physic, he went to London in hopes of employment through the inter- tained the friendship of Johnson, and became a member of the Ivy-lang Club; and a Mr Cleghorn, who promised be an ornament to the university, in which he was afterwards a professor, but died before he had time to realize the fond hopes of his friends. During the course of his education, Wilkie became acquainted with the celebrated David Hume and Dr Ferguson, and at a later period with Dr Adam Smith, the far-famed author of "The Wealth of Nations." Of all those men he regarded Dr Ferguson with the greatest affection, and Dr Smith with the greatest admiration. This last writer he considered as equal to Robertson and Hume in erudition, and vastly their superior in originality and invention; and this opinion he cherished to the day of his death.

Before he had completed his education, his father died, leaving him no other inheritance than the flock and unexpired lease of his farm, and the care of his three sisters. Wilkie, therefore, turned much of his attention to agriculture, in which he became eminent, not merely as a theorist, but as a practical farmer. He had too much science to be the slave of ancient prejudice, and too much judgment to be hurried into hazardous experiments by the charms of untired speculation. One of his sisters being married to a useful, though unlettered farmer, he availed himself of his brother's experience; and upon the facts and maxims derived from him built a system of practical farming, which fully answered his own expectations, and obtained the applause of all his neighbours.

He still prosecuted his studies in the university, and without ceasing to be a farmer became a preacher in the church of Scotland. For some years this made no alteration in the mode of his living. He preached occasionally for the ministers in his neighbourhood; cultivated his farm; read the classics; and, enamoured of the simple sublimity of Homer, projected an epic poem on the Homeric model. The subject of his intended poem he drew from the fourth book of the Iliad, where Schelus gives Agamemnon a short account of the taking of Thebes; and as that city was taken by the sons of those who had fallen before it, Wilkie gave to his poem the quaint title of Epigoniad, from the Greek word ἐπιγόνος, which signifies descendants. It is not our business to write a criticism upon this poem. The subject was ill-chosen; for the learned reader has enough of the heroic ages in the immortal poems of Homer and Virgil, and in those ages the unlearned reader can feel no interest. The Epigoniad, therefore, though composed in smooth and elegant verse, with due attention to ancient manners, and constructed on the most regular plan, has fallen into neglect, from which no critic or biographer will ever rescue it.

In the year 1753, Mr Wilkie was ordained minister of Ratho, in consequence of a presentation from the Earl of Lauderdale, who knew his worth and admired his genius. Without neglecting his favourite amusements of husbandry, or the study of the belles lettres, he discharged with fidelity the duties of a Christian pastor, was famed for his original and impressive mode of preaching, and soon came to be loved as well as esteemed by his rural flock.

In the year 1757 the Epigoniad was published, the result of fourteen years study and application, which might surely have been more usefully employed on some other work; and in 1759 a second edition was called for, to which he added A Dream in the manner of Spencer. He was, the same year, chosen professor of natural philosophy in the university of St Andrew's; an office for which it is difficult to conceive how he could have been fitted by the study of epic poetry, and close attention to the cultivation of his farm. He was, however, a man of a vigorous mind, and we never heard that he disgraced his electors.

When he removed to St Andrew's, his whole fortune exceeded not L200 Sterling; a proof that his Epigoniad had not enriched him. With this sum he purchased a few acres of land in the neighbourhood of the city, carried his two unmarried sisters with him, and continued to live in the university exactly as he had lived at Ratho. In his professorial career there was nothing remarkable. He patronised genius, especially poetical genius, in the young men who attended his lectures, and by them was, of course, loved and esteemed: (See Fergusson in this Supplement). In the year 1768 he published a volume of fables of no great value, previous to which the university conferred upon him the degree of D.D.; and he died, after a lingering illness, on the 16th of October 1772.

The manners of Dr Wilkie were singular, and in some respects disagreeable. He has been severely blamed for his pecuniary losses, but, in our opinion, unjustly. His father had left him in debt, with nothing but the profits which he might make of a small farm to discharge that debt, and to support himself and three sisters. In him, therefore, rigid economy was, for many years, a virtue; and he knew little of human nature, who can blame a man for not breaking habits which it had been the duty, as well as the business, of a great part of his life to form. Amidst his most rigid and offensive economy, he was liberal in his donations to the poor.

He had been seized, while minister of Ratho, with an unformedague, of which he never got entirely rid. For this complaint he thought an extraordinary perspiration necessary, and generally slept, in winter, under twenty-four blankets. He had an utter aversion from clean linen, and has been known to bargain, when he fluid a night from home, not only for the proper quantity of blankets to his bed, but also for sheets, which had been used by some other person, and rendered sufficiently dirty to please his feeling. It will easily be conceived that such a man was, to the last degree, slovenly in his dress.

Suspicions have been thrown out by his latest, and we believe his only, biographer, that Dr Wilkie's belief of the Christian religion was neither orthodox nor steady. Not having had the pleasure of his acquaintance, we cannot positively say that these suspicions are groundless; but the writer of this article has conversed much about the author of the Epigoniad with a clergyman

rest of his countrymen, and perhaps in return for his loyalty. He was a learned, ingenious, and modest man; but so little successful in his profession, that he died of a broken heart, and was buried by a contribution of his friends. WIN

man who knew him well, and who would have been glad to accuse him of infidelity, if he could have preferred such an accusation with truth. He was a very absent man, apt to forget what he was about even when discharging the most solemn parts of his clerical duty, and used to say of himself that he never could conduct a sacrament. From this absence of mind, and those confusions of it, may have arisen the suspicion that he was not a firm believer; but no such suspicion was ever thrown out to this writer by the clergyman already referred to.

He had one very extraordinary defect in a poet: He could not read aloud the smoothest verses, so as to preserve either the measure or the tenor of them. Of this Dr Anderson has produced very complete proof in his life of Wilkie, prefixed to his poetical works in the Edinburgh edition of the British Poets. With all his defects, however, and all his foibles, he was unquestionably a genius, and, we are inclined to believe, a good man.