II

In our desire to illustrate the character of Wilson in youth—a character preserved throughout his prime, for his nature was not one of those which have startling late developments or aberrations-we have reserved but scant space for recording the rest of his career. Luckily, the "Memoir" by his daughter is a very accessible as well as very readable book, and to it we refer the reader who wants full details. On leaving Oxford, in 1807, he went to live at Elleray, near Windermere, a charming estate with a charming rustic cottage, which he had purchased some little time before. Here were his headquarters until 1815. He soon became friendly with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Charles Lloyd, Bishop Watson, and other notables of the district, and especially with his agefellow, Thomas De Quincey, about fourteen years afterwards to be famous as the English opium eater. Of Windermere he constituted himself the admiral (Canning made him Lord High Admiral of the Lakes), maintaining a little fleet of seven sailing vessels as well as a fine ten-oared Oxford gig. His time was fully employed, all the days and many of the nights, with rambling, boating, wrestling, riding, bull-hunting (see De Quincey's account of this, "Memoir," i 138-140), and cock-fighting. In the "Memoir" (i. 145-147) is a good story of one of his boating and swimming freaks, extracted from "Rambles in the Lake Country," by Edwin Waugh. For softer delights he had poetry, dancing, and love-making. The Misses Penny, daughters of a Liverpool mer

chant, lived at Ambleside; and Miss Jane and he, being both young and lish, were not long in dancing into each other's hearts. "A spectator at a ball given in Liverpool in those days, relates that when Mr. Wilson entered the room with Miss Penny on his arm, the dancers stopped and cheered in mere admiration of their appearance." They were married in May 1811, she bringing some fortune, and he having not cut very deeply into the unencumbered £50,000 left him by his father. "The circumstances which occurred to make it absolutely necessary to leave Elleray were of a most painful nature, inasmuch as they not only deprived Wilson of his entire fortune, but in that blow revealed the dishonesty of one closely allied to him in relationship, and in whom years of unshaken trust had been reposed. An uncle had acted the part of 'unjust steward,' and, by his treachery, overwhelmed his nephew in irretrievable loss. A sudden fall from affluence to poverty is not a trial easily borne, especially when it comes through the fault of others; but Wilson's nature was too strong and noble to bow beneath the blow. On the contrary, with a virtue rarely exemplified, he silently submitted to the calamity, and generously assisted in contributing to the support of his relative, who, in the ruin of others, had also ruined himself. Here was a practical illustration of Moral Philosophy, more eloquent, I think, than even the Professor's own lectures, when he came to teach what he had practised."

So, in 1815, he removed to Edinburgh with his young wife and babes, and was received into the house, 53 Queen Street, of his mother, "a lady

whose skill in domestic management was the admiration and wonder of all zealous housekeepers. Under one roof she accommodated three distinct families; and, besides the generosity exercised towards her own, she was hospitable to all, while her charities and goodness to the poor were unceasing. . . . She belonged to that old school of Scottish ladies whose refinement and intellect never interfered with duties the most humble." If that fine old school is really now closed, the sooner it opens again the better. This same year he was called to the bar, along with his friend Patrick (afterwards Lord) Robertson, of legal, and yet more convivial and humorous renown; Scorpio Lockhart joining them the next year. Wilson professionally promenaded the Hall of Lost Steps (Salle de Pas Perdus, as our neighbours say) for but a brief while, not wholly briefless; he got a few cases, but owned afterwards that, when he found them on his table, "I did not know what the devil to do with them!" of such stuff are not lawyers made. In the "Memoir" (i. 228) is a capital sketch of Wilson and Robertson in a punt: the former in the stern, standing and pointing with bare extended arm; the latter, almost supine with the oars, a long pull if not a strong pull, puffing big clouds from his cigar.

We now come to the starting, in 1817, of Blackwood, of which Wilson (Lockhart, in 1825, going to London to assume the editorship of the Quarterly) ere long made himself the leading spirit, though the man whose name was as it had been the colour of ebony" always held firmly the real editorship in his own hands. An interesting chapter of the "Memoir" (i. 233-295) is devoted to this subject. Towards the

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end of 1819, Wilson, having then five young children, removed with his family from his mother's house to 20 Ann Street, then quite out of town in the suburb of Stockbridge. In April 1820, the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh became vacant by the death of Dr. Thomas Brown. The two chief competitors for the post were Wilson and Sir William Hamilton, afterwards Professor of Logic and Metaphysics. The contest was exceedingly furious, being fought out by their partisans on purely political grounds; Government influence and Tories for Wilson, Whigs (the Whigs, now effete, were very much alive then) for Hamilton; but the intimate personal friendship of the two rivals was not broken or interrupted. "The patronage lay with the Town Council, whose members had to be canvassed personally, like the voters in a rotten borough." Wilson was elected by twenty-one votes out of thirty, and immediately was hard at work reading-up and preparing his first course of lectures, and asking counsel from competent friends. In his first lecture he triumphed over all ill-will; and thenceforward to his death rejoiced in the title of "The Professor," actually filling the chair for thirty years, and only resigning when quite worn out and broken down. And as he grew more and more prominently the Professor, one of the best-known men in Edinburgh, he grew also more and more prominently Christopher North, one of the best known writers in Britain. the University he was the idol of his class, wielding an enormous influence over many successive studentgenerations, all in their plastic youth. John Hill Burton, the historian of Scotland and delightful Book

At

Hunter, who sat under him in 1830, says: "Much as I had heard of his appearance, it exceeded expectation; and I said to myself that, in the tokens of physical health and strength, intellect, high spirit, and all the elements of masculine beauty, I had not seen his equal." The Rev. William Smith, of North Leith Church, writes of a lecture in the winter session of 1837 "I have heard some of the greatest orators of the day-Lords Derby, Brougham, Lyndhurst; Peel, O'Connell, Sheil, Follett, Chalmers, Caird, Guthrie, M'Neile; I have heard some of these in their very best styles make some of their most celebrated appearances; but for popular eloquence, for resistless force, for the seeming inspiration that swayed the soul, and the glowing sympathy that entranced the hearts of his entire audience, that lecture by Professor Wilson far exceeded the loftiest efforts of the best of these I ever listened to." And again: "It was something, moreover, not without value or good effect, to be enabled to contemplate, from day to day throughout a session, the mere outward aspect of one so evidently every inch a man, nay, a king of men, in whom manly vigour and beauty of person were in such close keeping with all the great qualities of his soul; the sight at once carried back the youthful student's imagination to the age of ancient heroes and demigods, when higher spirits walked with men on earth, and made an impression on the opening mind of the most genial and ennobling tendency." In an account of Wilson's last year of professional work (session 1850-51), Mr. Alexander Taylor Innes, the gold medallist of that year, writes : "The first thing that every one remarked on entering his class, was