WILSON IN SCOTLAND.

That spends its life in beauty and in bliss ;

Soft on thee fall the breath of time,

And still retain in heavenly clime

The bloom that charms in this."

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He wrote, too, while living there above Windermere, his poem of the Isle of Palms; having a fair success in the early quarter of this century, but which was quickly put out of sight and hearing by the brisker, martial music of Scott, and by the later and more vigorous and resonant verse of Byron.

Indeed, Wilson's poetry was not such as we would have looked for from one who was a

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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 languors too; and it is tiresome - a gentle girlish treble of sound it has, that you can hardly associate with this brawny mass of manhood.

Wilson in Scotland.

But all that delightful life amidst the woods of Elleray with its game-cocks, and boats, and

mountain rambles, and shouted chorus of Prometheus comes to a sharp end. The inherited fortune of the poet, by some criminal carelessness or knavery of a relative, goes in a day; and our fine stalwart wrestler must go to Edinboro' to wrestle with the fates. There he coquets

for a time with law; but presently falls into pleasant affiliation with old Mr. Blackwood (who was a remarkable man in his way) in the conduct of his magazine. And then came the trumpet blasts of mingled wit, bravado, and tenderness, which broke into those pages, and which made young college men in England or Scotland or America, fling up their hats for Christopher North. Not altogether a safe guide, I think, as a rhetorician; too much bounce in him; too little self-restraint; too much of glitter and iridescence; but, on the other hand bating some blackguardism-he is brimful of life and heartiness and merriment - lighted up with scholarly hues of color.

There was associated with Wilson in those days, in work upon Blackwood, a young man whom

we may possibly not have occasion to speak of

again, and yet who is worthy of mention. I mean J. G. Lockhart,* who afterwards became son-inlaw and the biographer of Walter Scott-a slight young fellow in that day, very erect and prim; wearing his hat well forward on his heavy brows, and so shading a face that was thin, clean cut, handsome, and which had almost the darkness of a Spaniard's. He put his rapier-like thrusts into a good many papers which the two wrought at together. All his life he loved literary digs with his stiletto which was very sharp - and when he left Edinboro to edit the Quarterly Review in London (as he did in after days) he took his stiletto with him. There are scenes in that unevenly written Lockhart story of Adam Blair - hardly known now-which for thrilling passion, blazing out of clear sufficiencies of occasion, would compare well with kindred scenes of Scott's own, and which score deeper colorings

Connected

*John Gibson Lockhart, b. 1794; d. 1854. with Blackwood, 1818; Adam Blair, 1822; with Quarterly Review, 1826-53; Ancient Spanish Ballads, 1823; Memoirs Recent Life of Lockhart, by An

of Walter Scott, 1836-38.

drew Lang. 2 vols., 8vo.

Nimmo, London.

of human woe and loves and remorse than belong to most modern stories; not lighted, indeed, with humor; not entertaining with anecdote; not embroidered with archæologic knowledge; not rattling with coruscating social fireworks, butsubtle, psychologic, touching the very marrow of our common manhood with a pen both sharp and fine. We remember him, however, most gratefully as the charming biographer of Scott, and as the accomplished translator of certain Spanish ballads into which he has put under flowing English verse-all the clashing of Cordovan castanets, and all the jingle of the war stirrups of the Moors. We return now to Professor Wilson and propose to tell you how he came by that title. It was after only a few years of work in connection with Blackwood that the Chair of Moral Philosophy in Edinboro' University-which had been held by Dugald Stewart, and later by Dr. Thomas Brown- fell vacant; and at once the name of Wilson was pressed by his friends for the position. It was not a little odd that a man best known by two delicate poems, and by a bold swashbuckler sort of magazine writing should be put forward

PROFESSOR WILSON.

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-in such a staid city as Edinboro', and against such a candidate as Sir William Hamilton - for a Chair which had been held by Dugald Stewart ! But he was so put forward, and successfully; Walter Scott and the Government coming to his aid. Upon this, he went resolutely to study in the new line marked out for him; his rods and guns were, for the time, hung upon the wall; his wrestling frolics and bouts at quarter-staff, and suppers at the Ambrose tavern, were laid under limitations. He put a conscience and a pertinacity into his labor that he had never put to any intellectual work before. But there were very

* Mrs. Gordon says, quoting from her mother's record : Mr. Wilson is as busy studying as possible; indeed, he has little time before him for his great task; he says it will take one month at least to make out a catalogue of the books he has to read and consult. I am perfectly appalled when I go into the dining-room and see all the folios, quartos, and duodecimos, with which it is literally filled; and the poor culprit himself sitting in the midst, with a beard as long and red as an ancient carrot; for he has not shaved for a fortnight. P. 215, Memoir of John Wilson. We are sorry to see that Mr. Lang, in his recent Life of Lockhart (1897), pp. 135-6-7-8, has put some disturbing cross-coloring (perhaps justly) upon the pleasant portrait which Mrs. Gordon has drawn of Christopher North.