Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.")/John Wilson and the "Noctes Ambrosianæ"
JOHN WILSON AND THE NOCTES
AMBROSIANÆ[1]
I
The Noctes Ambrosianæ appeared in Blackwood between 1822 and 1835, arousing an excitement and taking by storm a popularity almost unique in their kinds. Many causes beyond the intrinsic merits and vigour of the dialogues contributed to these results. When the series began, the capital of Scotland was a real literary capital, with the Great Unknown for its half-veiled monarch. Party spirit was high and fierce. The Whigs with the Edinburgh Review, started in the second year of the century, carried all before them in periodical literature; until, fifteen years later, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, came into the field. (The Quarterly, commenced in 1809, being of the modern Babylon, had but slight influence on the modern Athens.) The Review, which had been fractious and turbulent enough in its infancy, had now arrived at years of some discretion, and become comparatively decorous. JOHN WILSON 373 The young Magazine rushed into the battle ramping and raging, bellowing and roaring, full of tropical ardour and savagery, neither taking nor giving quarter ; and in the dust and confusion of the fray, and the bewilderment of manifold mystifications, unscrupulous impersonations, fantastic disguises, interchanges of armour and arms, it was impossible for the spectators clearly and surely to discern who was the captain of the host and who were the warriors. If their own defiant proclamation could be trusted,* there were some strange wild beasts in this deluge of anthropo- phagi suddenly let loose upon Whigs, Radicals, Ben- thamites, Joe-Humists, Cockneys, Heretics, haverers, haverils, gouks, sumphs, e tutti quanti ; for this ram- pageous Apocalyptic menagerie had constituted them- selves the heraldic supporters of the Nobility, the bodyguard of the Throne, the watch-dogs of the quiet sanctities of the Altar — around which they yelped and barked day and night. In the "Ancient Chaldee Manuscript " are specified some of the principal cham- pions of "the man in plain apparel, which had his camp in the place of Princes, whose name was as it had been the colour of ebony, and whose number was the number of a maiden, when the days of the years of her virginity have expired" (Blackwood, 17 Princes Street). " And the first which came was after the likeness of a beautiful leopard, from the valley of the palm-trees, whose going forth was comely
- " Translation from an ancient Chaldee Manuscript," Black-
wood, October 1817 ; quickly suppressed, so that few sets contain it ; but republished as appendix to the " Noctes," in vol. iv. of the twelve- volume edition of the Works of Professor Wilson, edited by his son-in-law, the late Professor J. F. Ferrier. (Blackwood, 1855.) 374 CRITICAL STUDIES as the greyhound, and his eyes like the lightning of fiery flame (Wilson, author of the * Isle of Palms ') . . . There came also from a far country the scorpion, which delighteth to sting the faces of men (Lockhart). . . . Also the great wild boar from the forest of Lebanon, and he roused up his spirit, and I saw him whetting his dreadful tusks for the battle (Hogg, from Ettrick Forest). Also the black eagle of the desert, whose cry is as the sound of an unknown tongue, which flieth over the ruins of the ancient cities, and hath his dwelling among the tombs of the wise men (Sir William Hamilton)." The formidable catalogue included also the lynx, the griflfin, the stork, the hyaena, "and the beagle and the slowhound after their kind, and all the beasts of the field, more than could be numbered, they were so many." Charged with such powerful explosives as political passion and reckless personalities, a paper or series of papers will indeed go up like a rocket, but is apt to come down like the stick. If, then, when the gun- powder has been long burnt out, and the firework blaze long since swallowed up in oblivious darkness, the " Noctes " still float in the upper air, and still shine with a certain pale or ruddy light, it must be because of some inherent buoyancy and brilliance. It is true that of the original series of seventy-one, Professor J. F. Ferrier, in his twelve-volumed edition of the works of his father-in-law, left about thirty to haunt as wan ghosts the sepulchral limbo of old sets of Blackwood ; some because they were mainly occupied with matters of merely local and temporary interest, others because Wilson had but small part in them; but the remainder (forty-one by Preface, JOHN WILSON 375 thirty-nine by Contents), dating from 1825 to 1835, being wholly Wilson's, various songs excepted, he set forth as a permanent galaxy in the starry heavens of our literature ; and who will may study or restudy the same as a systematic whole in the first four volumes of the said works. Ferrier was a subtle thinker, an accomplished scholar, an acute and independent critic ; but the father of his wife had thrown a glamour over him, as over so many others, and to his eyes every star in that constellation was of the first magni- tude. But we, who never came within the scope of Christopher North's personal influence, and whose youth was scarce touched by his written spells, cannot but discern that the cluster is far less splendid than reported, and far from well-defined — that no one of its stars is of the first or even of the second degree ; that their light is provokingly intermittent, and, at the brightest, rather wavering and diffuse than intense. For his personality, beyond doubt, was exceedingly more potent than his literary genius ; and, while fully admitting and admiring the natural fascination which the former exercised on those with whom he came in contact, we must reserve and exercise our right to distinguish and separate this from the legitimate influence of the latter. In order to clearly explain this, it may be necessary to write somewhat about the man, gathering the facts from the " Memoir" by his daughter, Mrs. Mary Gordon (two vols., Edinburgh : Edmonston and Douglas, 1862). John Wilson was born at Paisley on the i8th May 1785, his father being a wealthy gauze manufacturer; his mother, lineally descended by the female side from the great Marquis of Montrose, a stately lady, of 376 CRITICAL STUDIES rare intellect, wit, humour, wisdom, and grace, whose remarkable beauty was transmitted to her children. The father died in 1797, and John entered Glasgow University, where he remained until 1803. In the June of this year he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, as a gentleman-commoner, leaving in 1807, after a very brilliant career as a scholar, and one not less brilliant as an athlete, being a splendid all-round man — rider, swimmer, walker, runner, dancer, jumper, angler, boater, wrestler, boxer. In his essay on Gymnastics ("Works," vol. v.), he gives one instance of his own prowess : " With a run and a leap on a slightly inclined plane, perhaps an inch to a yard, we have seen twenty-three feet done in great style — and measured to a nicety ; but the man who did it (aged twenty-one, height five feet eleven inches, weight eleven stone) was admitted to be (Ireland excepted) the best far leaper of his day in England." As to his boxing, we are told by De Quincey, his junior by a year and contemporary at Oxford, though the two did not get personally acquainted there : " There was no man who had any talents, real or fancied, for thumping or being thumped, but he had experienced some preeing of his merits from Mr. Wilson. All other pretensions in the gymnastic arts he took a pride in humbling or in honouring; but chiefly his examinations fell upon pugilism ; and not a man who could either ' give or take,' but boasted to have punished, or to have been punished by, Wilson of Mallen's." On one occasion a surly rough obstructed his way across a bridge. Wilson lost patience and offered to fight him. The fellow said : " You had better not fight with me ; I am such-a-one " (a wellJOHN WILSON 377 known pugilist). This announcement rather stimu- lated than daunted young Oxford : " In one minute off went his coat, and he set-to upon his antagonist in splendid style. [Mrs. Gordon has evidently a keen spark of her father's fire.] The astonished and punished rival, on recovering from the blows and surprise, accosted him thus : ' You can only be one of the two ; you are either Jack Wilson or the devil.' This encounter no doubt led, for a short time, to fraternity and equality over a pot of porter." His athletic tastes, love of adventure, and high animal spirits led him into all sorts of queer society, such as affords the only opportunity for the study of unsophis- ticated human nature. A fellow-collegian records of him : " One of his great amusements used to be to go to the ' Angel Inn,' about midnight, when many of the up and down London coaches met ; there he used to preside at the passengers' supper-table, carving for them, inquiring all about their respective journeys, why and wherefore they were made, who they were, &c. ; and, in return, astonishing them with his wit and pleasantry, and sending them off wondering who and what he could bel He frequently went from the ' Angel ' to the ' Fox and Goose,' an early ' purl and gill ' house, where he found the coachmen and guards, &c., preparing for the coaches which had left London late at night ; and there he found an audience, and some- times remained till the college gates were opened, rather (I believe) than rouse the old porter, Peter, from his bed to open for him expressly. It must not be supposed that in these strange meetings he in- dulged in intemperance — no such thing ; he went to such places, I am convinced, to study character, in 37^ CRITICAL STUDIES which they abounded. I never saw him show the sHghtest appearance even of drink, notwithstanding our wine-drinking, suppers, punch, and smoking in the common-room to very late hours. I never shall forget his figure, sitting with a long earthen pipe, a great //> wig on ; those wigs had descended, I fancy, from the days of Addison (who had been a member of our College), and were worn by us all (in order, I presume, to preserve our hair and dress from tobacco- smoke) when smoking commenced after supper, and a strange appearance we made in them ! " The same gentleman says : " His pedestrian feats were marvellous. On one occasion, having been absent a day or two, we asked him, on his return to the common-room, where he had been. He said, in London. ' When did you return ? ' — ' This morning.' — 'How did you come?' — 'On foot.' As we all ex- pressed surprise, he said : ' Why, the fact is I dined yesterday with a friend in Grosvenor (I think it was) Square, and as I quitted the house a fellow who was passing was impertinent and insulted me, upon which I knocked him down ; and as I did not choose to have myself called in question for a street row, I at once started as I was, in my dinner dress, and never stopped until I got to the College gate this morning, as it was being opened.' Now this was a walk of fifty-eight miles at least, which he must have got over in eight or nine hours at most, supposing him to have left the dinner-party at nine in the evening." Here is another instance ("Memoir," i. 191, 192), when on a pedestrian tour in the Western Highlands with his wife in 1815 : "In Glenorchy his time was much occupied by fishing, and distance was not considered JOHN WILSON 379 an obstacle. He started one morning at an early hour to fish in a loch which at that time abounded in trout, in the Braes of Glenorchy, called Loch ToilL Its nearest point was thirteen miles distant from his lodgings at the schoolhouse. On reaching it, and unscrewing the butt-end of his fishing-rod to get the top, he found he had it not. Nothing daunted, he walked back, breakfasted, got his fishing- rod made all complete, and off again to Loch Toilk. He could not resist fishing on the river when a pool looked invitingly, but he went always onwards, reached the loch a second time, fished round it, and found that the long summer day had come to an end. He set off for his home again with his fishing-basket full and confessing somewhat to weariness. Passing near a farmhouse whose inmates he knew (for he had formed acquaintance with all), he went to get some food. They were in bed, for it was eleven o'clock at night, and after rousing them, the hostess hastened to supply him ; but he requested her to get him some whisky and milk. She came with a bottle-full and a can of milk, with a tumbler. Instead of a tumbler he requested a bowl, and poured the half of the whisky in along with half the milk. He drank the mixture at a draught; and, while his kind hostess was looking on with amazement, he poured the re- mainder of the whisky and milk into the bowl and drank that also. He then proceeded homeward, performing a journey of not less than seventy miles." In " Anglimania : Cast Second ; Twaddle on Tweed- side" ("Works," vi, 334, 335), he tells this story himself, with some slight variations. He says nothing of the Homeric can of milk and bottle of whisky, 380 CRITICAL STUDIES but avows that on recovering from the stupor at the absence of his rod-pieces, " we put our pocket-pistol to our head and blew out its brains into our mouth — in the liquid character of Glenlivet." He makes the distance to the loch fourteen instead of thirteen miles, and thus summarises the day's proceedings : " At eleven our five flies were on the water. By sunset we had killed twenty dozen — none above a pound, and by far the greater number about a quarter — but the tout-ensemble was imposing, and the weight could not have been short of five stone. We filled both creels (one used for salmon), bag, and pillow-slip, and all the pockets about our person — and at first peep of evening star went our ways again down the glen towards Dalmally. We reached the school- house * ae wee short hour ayont the twal,' having been on our legs almost all the twenty-four hours, and for eight up to the waist in water — distance walked, fifty- six miles ; trouts killed, twenty dozen and odds ; and weight carried — 'At the close of the day when the hamlet was still, And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness proved,' certainly seventy pounds for fourteen miles; and if the tale be not true, may May-day miss Maga." So fatal are " long earthen pipes " and Glenlivet to physical stamina and moral fortitude ! JOHN WILSON 381 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 start- ling 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 EUeray, near Windermere, a charming estate with a charming rustic cottage, which he had purchased some little time before. Here were his headquarters until 181 5. He soon became friendly with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Charles Lloyd, Bishop Watson, and other notables of the district, and especially with his age- fellow, 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 de- lights he had poetry, dancing, and love-making. The Misses Penny, daughters of a Liverpool mer382 CRITICAL STUDIES 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 ad- miration of their appearance." They were married in May 181 1, she bringing some fortune, and he having not cut very deeply into the unencumbered
- ^5o,ooo left him by his father. "The circumstances
which occurred to make it absolutely necessary to leave EUeray were of a most painful nature, inas- much 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 con- trary, 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 181 5, he removed to Edinburgh with his young wife and babes, and was received into the house, 53 Queen Street, of his mother, "a lady JOHN WILSON 383 whose skill in domestic management was the admira- tion 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 Ferdus, 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 18 17, of Black- wood, 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 384 CRITICAL STUDIES end of 1 81 9, 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 per- sonally, 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 pre- paring 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. At the University he was the idol of his class, wielding an enormous influence over many successive student- generations, all in their plastic youth. John Hill Burton, the historian of Scotland and delightful Book JOHN WILSON 385 Hunter, who sat under him in 1830, says: "Much as I had heard of his appearance, it exceeded expecta- tion; and I said to myself that, in the tokens of physi- cal 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 ap- pearances ; 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 some- thing, moreover, not without value or good effect, to be enabled to contemplate, from day to day through- out 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 2 B 386 CRITICAL STUDIES how thoroughly he did his proper work as a Professor of Moral Philosophy. This is not generally known now, and was not even at the time. There was a notion that he was there Christopher North, and nothing else; that you could get scraps of poetry, bits of sentiment, flights of fancy, flashes of genius, and anything but Moral Philosophy. Nothing was further from the truth in that year, 1850. In the very first lecture he cut into the core of the subject, raised the question that has always in this country been held to be the deepest and hardest in the science (the origin of the Moral Faculty), and hammered at it through the great part of the session. Even those who were fresh from Sir William Hamilton's class, and had a morbid appetite for swallowing hard and angular masses of logic, found that the work here was quite stiff enough for any of us. . . . His appearance in his classroom it is far easier to remember than to forget. He strode into it with the professor's gown hanging loosely on his arms, took a comprehensive look over the mob of young faces, laid down his watch so as to be out of the reach of his sledge- hammer fist, glanced at the notes of his lecture (generally written on the most wonderful scraps of paper), and then, to the bewilderment of those who had never heard him before, looked long and ear- nestly out of the north window, towards the spire of the old Tron Kirk; until, having at last got his idea, he faced round and uttered it with eye and hand, and voice, and soul, and spirit, and bore the class along with him." And, finally, Mr. John Skelton bears witness, in his Introduction to the volume which has occasioned the present article : JOHN WILSON 387 " John Wilson had the eagle-beak, the lion-like mane of the Napiers. Mrs. Barrett Browning has said of Homer : — ' Homer, with the broad suspense Of thund'rous brows, and lips intense Of garrulous god-innocence ' — and whenever I read the lines, the mighty presence of Christopher North rises before me. . . . He was such a magnificent man ! No other literary man of our time has had such muscles and sinews, such an ample chest, such perfect lungs, such a stalwart frame, such an expansive and Jove-like brow. Had he lived in the classic ages, they would have made a god of him — not because he wrote good verses, or possessed the Divine gift of eloquence, but because his presence was god-like. There was a ruddy glow of health about him, too, such as the people of no nation have possessed as a nation since the culture of the body as an art of the national life has been neglected. The critic, therefore, who never saw Wilson, cannot rightly estimate the sources of his influence. . . . The picture of the old man eloquent in his college classroom — the old man who had breasted the flooded Awe, and cast his fly across the bleakest tarns of Lochaber — pacing restlessly to and fro like a lion in his confined cage; his grand face working with emotion while he turns to the window, through which are obscurely visible the spires and gables of the ancient city ; his dilated nostril yet ' full of youth ; ' his small grey eye [Mr. Innes terms it " bright blue ; " and probably both are correct] alight with visionary fire, as he discourses (somewhat discursively, it must 388 CRITICAL STUDIES be owned) of truth and beauty and goodness, is not one to be forgotten. Had he talked the merest twaddle, the effect would have been very nearly the same ; he was a living poem where the austere grandeur of the old drama was united with the humour and tender- ness of modern story-tellers ; and some such feeling it was that attracted and fascinated his hearers." So much for Wilson as the Professor : what he did as Christopher North may be judged by a list, appended to the "Memoir," of his contributions to Blackwood, from 1826, it being impossible now to fix the authorship of various articles before that date. In one month we find five articles, making sixty-eight pages, from his pen ; in another, double number, five articles, sixty-five pages ; in another, six, sixty-nine ; in another, double number, seven, one hundred and sixteen ; in another, double, four, one hundred and forty-seven ; in another, double, seven, one hundred and thirty- one. In one year, 1830, he wrote thirty articles, making twelve hundred columns; in the two years, 1833-34, fifty-four, mak- ing two thousand four hundred columns. All this in addition to his university work. "The amazing rapidity with which he wrote caused him too often to delay his work to the very last moment, so that he almost always wrote under compulsion, and every second of time was of consequence. Under such a mode of labour there was no hour left for relaxation. When regularly in for an article for Blacktvood, his whole strength was put forth, and it may be said that he struck into life what he had to do at a blow. He at these times began to write immediately after breakfast. ... He then shut himself into his study. JOHN WILSON 389 with an express command that no one was to disturb him, and he never stirred from his writing-table until perhaps the greater part of a ' Noctes ' was written." After a frugal dinner at nine (boiled fowl, potatoes, and glass of water), he wrote on again till midnight ; and so for the next day or two when necessary. " I do not exaggerate his power of speed, when I say he wrote more in a few hours than most able writers do in a few days ; examples of it I have often seen in the very manuscript before him, which, disposed on the table, was soon transferred to the more roomy space on the floor at his feet, where it lay ' thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa,' only to be piled up again quickly as before." In 1837, after twenty-six years of most happy marriage, he lost his wife. Their five children were all grown up. The three daughters afterwards married : Margaret, the eldest, her cousin, Professor J. F. Ferrier; Mary, Mr. J. T. Gordon, sheriff of Midlothian ; Jane Emily, Professor Aytoun — of whose bashful wooing, and Wilson's presentation of the ladylove " with the author's compliments " (pinned to her back), her sister in the "Memoir" tells us not. In 1840 he was attacked by paralysis of the right hand, which disabled him for nearly a year. He took a zealous part in the Burns festival at Ayr, 6th August, 1844 ; having written the essay for the " Land of Burns," brought out by Messrs. Blackie, of Glasgow. When the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution was established, 1847, he was elected the first president; and was annually re-elected during his life. In the winter of 1850, in his sixty-sixth year, his health was evidently breaking, and he could scarcely manage to 390 CRITICAL STUDIES get through the session. Mr. Taylor Innes says :
- The old lion sat in his arm-chair, yellow-maned
and toothless, prelecting with the old volubility and eloquence, and with occasionally the former flash of his bright blue eye, soon fading into dulness again. I still remember his tremulous ' God bless you ! ' as the door closed for the last time. How different from that fresh and vigorous old age in which he had moved among us so royally the year before ! " In 1 85 1 he was forced to resign his professorship, after thirty years' service ; and Lord John Russell, the old Whig, hastened to secure a pension of ;^3oo a year for the stout old Tory. In the summer of 1852, although very infirm, he had himself driven to Edin- burgh from Woodburn, near Dalkeith, where he was staying with his brother Robert : " His mysterious mission to Edinburgh was to give his vote for Thomas Babington Macaulay. When he entered the com- mittee-room in St. Vincent Street, supported by his servant, a loud and long cheer was given." Macaulay heartily responded to this magnanimity. As Wilson wrote on another occasion : " The animosities are mortal, but the humanities Uye for ever." In his later years, he and Patrick Robertson had many a pleasant evening with Jeffrey, Cockburn, and Ruther- furd. On the ist of April, 1854, he was stricken with paralysis of one side ; and as the clock sounded midnight on the 3rd he breathed his last. He was buried in the Dean Cemetery, " where now repose a goodly company of men whose names will not soon die — Jeffrey, Cockburn, Rutherfurd, Thomas Thom- son, Edward Forbes, David Scott, John Wilson, and his well-loved brother James." It was soon resolved JOHN WILSON 391 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 monu- ment to his memory, the edition of his works, was begun by Professor Ferrier. Comprehensive as it is, in- cluding " 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 mag- netism of his father-in-law into a stupor of admira- tion, 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 392 CRITICAL STUDIES assures us : " In wisdom the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato ; in humour he surpasses the Fal- staff 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 ascen- dency, 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 inspira- tion 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 declama- tory 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, JOHN WILSON 393 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 effec- tive than Ferrier's four. He "suspects that the lacuficz 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 ortho- graphy of these compositions. Glossarial interpreta- tions, however, have been generally subjoined, for the sake of those readers who labour wider 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 under- stand ; while including others with whose meaning he is quite familiar. Thus we find braird, yello7v-yite, flasterin, clegs, soap the floor or ripe the ribs, of each a Thurtn, bate the girdle, partail, stance, rumblede- thumps 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, aim, alane, aneath, auld ; would indeed be as "catawamp394 CRITICAL STUDIES 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 hva neif-fu's d" darts" [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 re- marked that a letter from Carlyle, or anything concern- ing 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 JOHN WILSON 395 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 soli- tude, 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 as ! — a thing in which, if would do himself 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, condens- ing ; 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 396 CRITICAL STUDIES not Stronger but weaker than his headlong " Noctes." His nature and genius were not profound and intense, but exuberant and expansive. His pathos and humour alike, though natural and genuine, are not deep ; are easily stirred and much too frothy. A hearty laugh is echoed and re-echoed again and again, till it be- comes a wearisome, hollow monotony ; page after page is pickled in the diluted brine of a single not very salt tear. The humour, in especial, is composed of the simplest and commonest ingredients — boisterous animal spirits and boundless exaggeration. Turn over the leaves of his works, and you see at a glance, by the mere multitude of the dashes, that you have to do with a prolix and slap-dash rhapsodist, not with a writer working studiously under laws of austere self-restraint. In his precipitant outpourings, the dregs, the foam, and the good liquor gush together in turbid redundance. Yet when criticism and hyper- criticism have said their worst, we feel that this condensed " Comedy of the Noctes " is and will long continue a right wholesome as well as enjoyable book, particularly for the young. Robust animal spirits are catching and inspiring in this weary, moiling world, and we willingly ignore the defaults of their joyous and joy-giving possessors. The book is manly throughout ; full of sympathy with Nature and human nature; contemptuous of all cant and priggishness, reverent to enthusiasm in the presence of lofty genius and virtue; inciting to activity, boldness and en- durance, to the freest bodily as well as mental and moral culture. The Gargantuan eating and drinking (not all unaccompanied by smoking) are most jolly, for there is a hearty natural poetry in much of the fervid festal expatiation; and omnivorous eucrasy is infinitely to be preferred to the sentimental languishment of dyspeptic queasiness. Finally, the rich and racy Doric of the Shepherd adds wonderfully to the effectiveness of the whole; and really, as Ferrier urged, gives it a monumental significance. Nor do we think the less of Wilson because his life was superior to his writings, we who have been pained and disappointed in learning how many very considerable authors were very inconsiderable men.
- ↑ "The Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianæ," by Christopher North. Selected and arranged by John Skelton, advocate (author of "The Impeachment of Mary Stuart," &c.). William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1876.