in public meeting to raise a memorial to him; and John Steell was commissioned to execute a bronze statue, ten feet in height, with a suitable pedestal, to be placed at the north-west corner of East Princes Street Gardens.

In the year following his death, that other monument to his memory, the edition of his works, was begun by Professor Ferrier. Comprehensive as it is, including "Noctes," essays, critiques, tales, poems, some important series of articles are omitted, as those on Spenser and "Specimens of the British Critics." Of the latter Mrs. Gordon says: "Those papers, along with too many of equal power and greater interest, have found jealous protection within the ceinture of Blackwood's pages, and seem destined to a fate which ought only to belong to the meagre works of mediocrity." It is natural that a loving and revering daughter should wish as much as possible of her father's writing collected in a permanent form; but we may safely assume that Messrs. Blackwood were and are very willing to republish anything in demand, and we are sure that Ferrier was not the man to leave out anything of enduring interest. So we take it that our busy world in general is quite satisfied, if not over satisfied, with the dozen rather closely printed volumes; and we venture to remind Mrs. Gordon that permanent form by no means secures permanent perusal. Ferrier, indeed, as we have already remarked, was fascinated and overpowered by the personal magnetism of his father-in-law into a stupor of admiration, which, with all our hearty respect for both, we cannot help feeling is very comical. Thus, writing of the principal personages of the "Noctes," he calmly

assures us: "In wisdom the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato; in humour he surpasses the Falstaff of Shakespeare. Clear and prompt, he might have stood up against Dr. Johnson in close and peremptory argument; fertile and copious, he might have rivalled Burke in amplitude of declamation." Mr. Skelton, although, as we have seen, he, too, has been mightily influenced by the same personal ascendency, writes far more judicially of the writer: "John Wilson was an immense man, physically and mentally, and yet his nature was essentially incomplete. He needed concentration. Had the tree been thoroughly pruned, the fruit would have been larger and richer. As it was, he seldom contrived to sustain the inspiration unimpaired for any time; it ran away into shallows, and spread fruitlessly over the land. In many respects one of the truest, soundest, honestest men who ever lived, he used to grow merely declamatory at times. Amazingly humorous as the Shepherd of the 'Noctes' is (there are scenes, such as the opening of the haggis, the swimming match with Tickler while the London packet comes up the Forth, which manifest the humour of conception as well as the humour of character in a measure that has seldom been surpassed by the greatest masters), his fun is often awkward, and his enthusiasm is apt to tire. . . And if the Shepherd at his best could be taken out of the 'Noctes' and compressed into a compact duodecimo volume, we should have an original piece of imaginative humour, which might fitly stand for all time by the side of the portly Knight [Falstaff.]" In his "Comedy of the Noctes," Mr. Skelton has attempted the compression thus indicated,

and we think that he has very fairly succeeded in his attempt; for we certainly find in this case that the third is better than the whole-that now, by the lapse of time, his one volume is more interesting and effective than Ferrier's four. He "suspects that the lacunæ are sometimes visible to the naked eye,” and they certainly are, and here and there a few words in parenthesis might well have been inserted to bridge the gaps; but it is also true that in the complete dialogues the transitions were often very abrupt. Ferrier's glossary has been retained; and Ferrier's own words thereanent are too good for omission here (Preface to "Noctes," xix.): "As the last specimen, then, on a large scale, of the national language of Scotland which the world is ever likely to see, I have preserved with scrupulous care the original orthography of these compositions. Glossarial interpretations, however, have been generally subjoined, for the sake of those readers who labour under the disadvantage of having been born on the south side of the Tweed." The glossary is very good as far as it goes, but, like most glossaries we have ever come across, omits some words which the average general reader cannot understand; while including others with whose meaning he is quite familiar. Thus we find braird, yellow-yite, flasterin, clegs, soop the floor or ripe the ribs, of each a Thurm, bate the girdle, partail, stance, rumbledethumps in the text, unexplained by footnote or glossary; yet surely most of those who labour under the disadvantage of having been born on the south side of the Tweed, would be far more puzzled by them than by such glossary terms as a', aboon, ae, airn, alane, aneath, auld; would indeed be as catawamp

tuously chawed up" by them as was the Opium Eater, who had been claiming mastery of the Scottish dialects, by the Shepherd's, "What's a gowpen of glaur?" and the lucid interpretation, "It's just twa neiffu's o' clarts" [two fistfuls of mud]. It would have been well, also, had Mr. Skelton, like Ferrier, noted the dates at which the several dialogues appeared; and we think he had better have given, as did Ferrier, some of the best of the songs, with the airs, even although not by Wilson, merely naming the author. For the rest, we have nothing but praise for the manner in which he has accomplished the task he set himself.

In several recent literary biographies we have remarked that a letter from Carlyle, or anything concerning him personally, is about the most interesting piece in the work. In the "Memoir of Wilson," II. 140-151, Carlyle appears but once, in a letter, not important but characteristic, from Craigenputtock, December, 1829, reminding the Professor of his promise of a Christmas visit: "Come, then, if you would do us a high favour, that warm hearts may welcome in the cold New Year, and the voice of poetry and philosophy, numeris lege solutis, may for once be heard in these deserts, where, since Noah's deluge, little but the whirring of heath-cocks and the lowing of oxen has broken the stillness. You shall have a warm fire, and a warm welcome; and we will talk in all dialects, concerning all things, climb to hill-tops, and see certain of the kingdoms of this world; and at night gather round a clear hearth, and forget that winter and the devil are so busy in our planet. There are seasons when one seems as if emancipated from

the 'prison called life,' as if its bolts were broken, and the Russian ice-palace were changed into an open sunny Tempe, and man might love his brother without fraud or fear! A few such hours are scattered over our existence, otherwise it were too hard, and would make us too hard." Further on he says: "My wife sends you her kindest regards, and still hopes against hope that she shall wear her Goethe brooch this Christmas, a thing only done when there is a man of genius in the company." So much for the lonely scholar nourishing his mighty heart in solitude, and already brooding over "Sartor Resartus" and the "History of the French Revolution." The letter ends with a few words touching Wilson: "I must break off, for there is an Oxonian gigman coming to visit me in an hour, and I have many things to do. I heard him say the other night that in literary Scotland there was not one such other man -!- a thing in which, if would do himself

as

any justice, I cordially agree." We cannot but think that Carlyle was then mistaken in his estimate of Wilson, who in our opinion did himself full justice —that is, all the justice of which his nature was capable. There are men forced by circumstances to hurry their work, or to labour on uncongenial subjects, who could undoubtedly write much better if they had ample time and subjects of their own choice. But the case of Wilson was not as theirs. He always wrote on whatever subjects he preferred, and he had plenty of leisure for writing, rewriting, correcting, condensing; but he was lacking in the artistic impulse and instinct to elaborate and study and perfect. His poems and tales, to which he gave more care, are