SKETCHES OF BRITISH POETS. No. I.-PROFESSOR WILSON. BY JOHN MACKAY WILSON. POETS have sprung up in the present century like mushrooms, all tolerably pleasant to the palate, but most of them as devoid of stamina, when subjected to the grasp, as the feeblest of the fungus tribe. They were beautiful and delicate creatures, hovering about like summer birds, displaying every variety of elegant plumage; and their notes not being disagreeable, people in the absence of music became charmed with their twittering. The force, the majesty, the fire, and the living soul of poetry, appeared buried in the graves of departed ages. Wordsworth disguised half of his godlike imagination in the beggarly garb of silliness; and suffered simplicity to dwindle into conceit. Coleridge enveloped his angelic fancy in a mist, and obscured his head among the clouds of metaphysics. He groped about, like a blind man in the halls of eternity, clutching to feel light in an infinitude of darkness! In Madoc and Roderic, Southey exhibited great genius, but showed himself a reader rather than a poet. Campbell wrote the Pleasures of Hope-and the Pleasures of Hope will live with the English language-they called up the hopes of a hundred years, but more than thirty years are past, and those hopes have not been realized.-Moore is a clever man, and a witty man, but he never wrote a line which indicates the man of MIND and of GENIUS. For popularity, he is solely indebted to his subject, an exuberant fancy, and the redolent melody of his numbers. For a time, Sir Walter Scott bounded onward smoothly and rapidly as an Arabian pony bearing a lady over a velvet lawn, and from all competitors bore the palm alone! Still, it was only beautiful,-easy,-running,-monotonous-versification. It had scarce a higher claim to the name of POETRY, than colours have to beauty in the absence of light. I speak, however, only of his metrical works; for in so far as regards the Poetry in his Prose, it would be difficult to place any name this country has produced by his side, except that of Shakspeare. Few of them felt, or were capable of feeling, poetry burning and bursting from their bosoms; stealing out their very soul in ecstacy, as it longed to mingle in breathless sympathy with the glorious universe, that glowed and rolled around them-a mass of breathing beautya panorama of Poetry! Nine-tenths of them were merely poets of reading and memory; and they thought themselves wonderful clever fellows, when they did violence to what they miscalled a song, or committed murder upon a harmless sonnet! I would scarcely give him credit for being a merely clever man, who could not in a week produce a larger and better volume of rhyme, than two-thirds of those published within the last twenty years, and falsely called poetry. With a few exceptions, versification was running through the land, like gentle rivulets, and murmuring rivers; with here and there, a motionless lake, adding its dull sameness as variety to the scene, when the Third Canto of Childe Harold burst like the thunders of Niagara in the midst of them; sweeping away the soul upon the bosom of its torrent, astounding with the thunders of its massy foam,-and blinding with the splendour of its eternal rainbows. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Professor Wilson, and perhaps Southey, are the only British Authors of general celebrity living, who are endowed by Nature with powers capable of bearing them, if put forth, down to posterity as GREAT POETS. Of these, Wilson has infinitely the greater portion of pure poetry within himself. He is almost the only writer I have met with, who thoroughly understands and feels what poetry is. It appears like an unfathomable fountain springing up in his heart, welling and gushing forth from his every word and his every action; and the greater the waste, the deeper the reservoir, and the sweeter the waters! Whether we view him in the Isle of Palms, bridling his luxuriant imagination into the most chaste poem of which the English language has to boast, or scattering it monthly in prodigal profusion as Christopher North, in his inimitable Noctes,-the greatest of our modern poets dwindle in the contrast. The Professor is a native of Paisley, where his father, who was a respectable soap-boiler in that town, died, I believe, before our poet had completed his sixth year. Here he was for some time a pupil of a venerable old man, named Mr. Peddie, who then was, and still is, teacher of the parochial school; and who also, if I remember rightly, was connected with the early formation of the attainments of his gifted townsman and namesake, Alexander Wilson, the poet and ornithologist. How long he remained in the place of his nativity, I am uncertain; but I know that he still retains all the frankness and kindliness of soul for which the Paisley bodies are deservedly conspicuous. The qualities of his heart, indeed, can only be equalled by those of his head. While a very young man, he purchased the estate which he still holds, called Ellerly, in Westmoreland. In 1812 or 13 he went to Edinburgh, where one of his earliest acquaintances was Sir Walter Scott, then basking in the full blaze of poetical favour. Shortly afterwards, appeared his "Isle of Palms" and "City of the Plague," claiming for their Author the highest meed of exalted genius! And if his fame did not like Byron's burst as a rocket upon the world, blazing,-expanding, and echoing as it flew,-it arose from its being, like his own beautiful visions, too splendid for the noise of the multitude! The establishment of Blackwood's Magazine formed a new field for the exercise of his varied talents. And of the Chaldee manuscript, which first gave celebrity to that publication, he was somewhat more than the Editor. This popular article was first written by Hogg, and, falling into the hands of Wilson, was published without the consent of the Shepherd; who was justly unable to distinguish it, in its present garb, as the jeu d' esprit written by himself; for, without in any way detracting from Hogg's exquisite genius, I may say, that it abounds with passages, equally impossible for him to write, as it would be for him to utter the glowing and glorious poetry put into his lips in the Noctes. Although the Professor is the Christopher North of Blackwood,-he is to be regarded rather as its sheet anchor and principal contributor, than its conductor; for although the publisher may occasionally consult the poet upon the in VOL. I. R sertion of a strange Article, yet conscious of his own shrewdness, he is virtual and ostensible Editor himself. In person, Professor Wilson is the very antipodes of the muling and milliner-made tribe of poets, whose bedizened exterior is slender and fragile as their own sonnets-the reverse of every thing that looks like an Album poetling or a lady's verse spinner! Were you to endeavour to embody the free-masculine-unfettered--and nervous poetry of his Noctes, it would form an idea of Wilson's character and appearance. In stature, he is about six feet, strong, sinewy, robust, and athletic:-gentlemanly, but negligent in his dress; with light hair, a fair and once florid complexion, and a quick restless eye, which, although not generally vivid, gives you an idea of the gorgeous visions for ever flitting before it in its own "chambers of imagery." He is now about forty years of age, As an Author, in his earliest productions, his faults were the faults of the Lake School; and in aiming at simplicity in his blank verse, it sometimes gave the appearance of carelessness and want of harmony; and from the same reason, in his metrical compositions, there was a multiplying of undefined ideas in a sentence, that made simplicity become mystified. Wilson is a poet in his writings,-in his actions, in every thing; we have no Author whose imagination is so rich, chaste, and varied; less than a tithe of the gems which he scatters monthly, has purchased immortality for some who rank among the poets of Britain. Of living poets he is indisputably at the head; and such is the situation posterity will award him among the Authors of the present century. As an example of the quiet and lovely tone of beauty, which steals through Wilson's verses, I shall give an extract of a single sonnet teeming with poetical thoughts; and sonnets are generally things that a thought would shiver to pieces:— THE EVENING CLOUD. A CLOUD lay cradled near the setting sun, PART II. Oh! the past was unco bricht, Willie, To think thae gladsom days, Willie, Sax years we've been acquent, Willie, That we should e'er hae met, Willie, Wi' sic a destinie. I'm wearin' aff my feet, Willie,--- An' it costs me bitter tears, I've ne'er luved ane but thee, Willie, I feel the leal o' faith, Willie, I grieve to find my thouchts, Willie, For still they're tied to earth, Willie, I'm selfish to the last, Willie, The lockit roun' my neck in death An' when aneath the elm, Willie, Oh! mind that it was there, Willie, Where our first tryst was set An' gin ye fauld anither's heart Oh! think on her wha then sall lie |