illustrating the versatile humour of the man,--from this grave and (as
in reality it was) philosophic scene, to another first introduction,
under most different circumstances, to the same Mr. Wilson. Represent
to yourself the earliest dawn of a fine summer morning, time about
half-past two o'clock. A young man, anxious for an introduction to Mr.
Wilson, and as yet pretty nearly a stranger to the country, has taken
up his abode in Grasmere, and has strolled out at this early hour to
that rocky and moorish common (called the White Moss) which overhangs
the Vale of Rydal, dividing it from Grasmere. Looking southwards in
the direction of Rydal, suddenly he becomes aware of a huge beast
advancing at a long trot with the heavy and thundering tread of a
hippopotamus along the public road. The creature is soon arrived
within half a mile of his station; and by the gray light of morning is
at length made out to be a bull apparently flying from some unseen
enemy in his rear. As yet, however, all is mystery; but suddenly three
horsemen double a turn in the road, and come flying into sight with
the speed of a hurricane, manifestly in pursuit of the fugitive bull;
the bull labours to navigate his huge bulk to the moor, which he
reaches, and then pauses, panting and blowing out clouds of smoke from
his nostrils, to look back from his station amongst rocks and slippery
crags upon his hunters. If he had conceited that the rockiness of the
ground had secured his repose, the foolish bull is soon undeceived;
the horsemen, scarcely relaxing their speed, charge up the hill, and
speedily gaining the rear of the bull, drive him at a gallop over the
worst part of that impracticable ground down into the level ground
below. At this point of time the stranger perceives by the increasing
light of the morning that the hunters are armed with immense spears
fourteen feet long. With these the bull is soon dislodged, and
scouring down to the plain below, he and the hunters at his tail take
to the common at the head of the lake, and all, in the madness of the
chase, are soon half engulfed in the swamps of the morass. After
plunging together for ten or fifteen minutes, all suddenly regain the
_terra firma_, and the bull again makes for the rocks. Up to this
moment there had been the silence of ghosts; and the stranger had
doubted whether the spectacle were not a pageant of aërial spectres,
ghostly huntsmen; ghostly lances, and a ghostly bull. But just at this
crisis--a voice (it was the voice of Mr. Wilson) shouted aloud, 'Turn
the villain; turn that villain; or he will take to Cumberland.' The
young stranger did the service required of him; the villain was turned
and fled southwards; the hunters, lance in rest, rushed after him; all
bowed their thanks as they fled past him; the fleet cavalcade again
took the high road; they doubled the cape which shut them out of
sight; and in a moment all had disappeared and left the quiet valley
to its original silence, whilst the young stranger and two grave
Westmoreland statesmen (who by this time had come into sight upon some
accident or other) stood wondering in silence, and saying to
themselves, perhaps,--
'The earth hath bubbles as the water hath;
And these are of them!'
But they were no bubbles; the bull was a substantial bull; and took no
harm at all from being turned out occasionally at midnight for a chase
of fifteen or eighteen miles. The bull, no doubt, used to wonder at
this nightly visitation; and the owner of the bull must sometimes have
pondered a little on the draggled state in which the swamps would now
and then leave his beast; but no other harm came of it. And so it
happened, and in the very hurly burly of such an unheard-of chase,
that my friend was fortunate enough, by a little service, to recommend
himself to the notice of Mr. Wilson; and so passed the scene of his
_first introduction_.
* * * * *
In reading the anecdote of the bull hunt, you must bear in mind the
period of Mr. Wilson's life to which it belongs, else I should here be
unintentionally adding one more to the thousand misrepresentations of
his character, which are already extant in different repositories of
scandal: most of which I presume, unless in the rarer cases where they
have been the pure creations of malice, owe their origin to a little
exaggeration, and a great deal of confusion in dates. Levities and
extravagances, which find a ready excuse at twenty, ten or fifteen
years later are fatal to a man's character for good sense. In such a
case, therefore, to be careless or inaccurate in dates, is a moral
dishonesty. Understand then that the bull-hunting scenes belong to the
time which immediately succeeded my first knowledge of Mr. Wilson.
This particular frolic happened to fall within the earliest period of
my own personal acquaintance with him. Else, and with this one
exception, the era of his wildest (and according to the common
estimate, of his insane) extravagances was already past. All those
stories, therefore, which you question me about with so much
curiosity, of his having joined a company of strolling players, and
himself taken the leading parts both in Tragedy and Comedy--of his
having assumed the garb of a Gipsy, and settled for some time in a
Gipsy encampment, out of admiration for a young Egyptian beauty; with
fifty others of the same class, belong undoubtedly (as many of them as
are not wholly fabulous), to the four years immediately preceding the
time at which my personal knowledge of Mr. Wilson commenced.
From the latter end of 1803 to the spring of 1808, Mr. Wilson had
studied at the University of Oxford; and it was within that period
that most of his _escapades_ were crowded. He had previously studied
as a mere boy, according to the Scotch fashion, at the University of
Glasgow, chiefly under the tuition of the late Mr. Jardine (the
Professor, I believe, of Logic), and Dr. or Mr. Young (the Professor
of Greek). At both Universities he had greatly distinguished himself;
but at Oxford, where the distribution of prizes and honours of every
kind is to the last degree parsimonious and select, naturally it
follows that such academical distinctions are really _significant_
distinctions, and proclaim an unequivocal merit in him who has carried
them off from a crowd of 1600 or 2000 co-rivals, to whom the contest
was open; whereas, in the Scotch Universities, as I am told by
Scotchmen, the multiplication of prizes and medals, and the almost
indiscriminate profusion with which they are showered abroad,
neutralises their whole effect and value. At least this was the case
in Mr. Wilson's time; but lately some conspicuous changes have been
introduced by a Royal Commission (not yet, I believe, dissolved) into
one at least of the Scotch Universities, which have greatly improved
it in this respect, by bringing it much nearer to the English model.
When Mr. Wilson gained a prize of fifty guineas for fifty lines of
English verse, without further inquiry it becomes evident, from the
mere rarity of the distinction which, for a university _now_ nearly of
five thousand members, occurs but once a year, and from the great
over-proportion of that peculiar class (the Undergraduates) to whom
the contest is open,--that such a victory was an indisputable
criterion of very conspicuous merit. In fact, never in any place did
Mr. Wilson play off his Proteus variety of character and talent with
so much brilliant effect as at Oxford. In this great University, the
most ancient, and by many degrees the most magnificent in the world,
he found a stage for display, perfectly congenial with the native
elevation of his own character. Perhaps you are not fully aware of the
characteristic differences which separate our two English Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge from those of Scotland and the Continent: for
I have always observed that the best informed foreigners, even after a
week's personal acquaintance with the Oxford system, still adhere to
the inveterate preconceptions which they had brought with them from
the Continent. For instance, they continue obstinately to speak of the
_Professors_ as the persons to whom the students are indebted for
tuition; whereas the majority of these hold their offices as the most
absolute sinecures, and the task of tuition devolves upon the tutors
appointed in each particular college. These tutors are called public
tutors; meaning that they do not confine their instructions to any one
individual; but distribute them amongst all the Undergraduates of the
college to which they belong; and, in addition to these, _private_
tutors are allowed to any student who chooses to increase his
expenditure in that particular. But the main distinction, which
applies to our immediate subject, is the more than regal provision for
the lodging and accommodation of the students by the system of
_Colleges_. Of these there are in Oxford, neglecting the technical
subdivision of _Halls_, five-and-twenty; and the main use of all, both
colleges and halls, is, not as in Scotland and on the Continent, to
lodge the head of the University with suitable dignity, and to provide
rooms for the library and public business of the University. These
purposes are met by a separate provision, distinct from the colleges;
and the colleges are applied as follows: 1st, and mainly to the
reception of the Fellows, and of the Undergraduate Students; 2ndly, to
the accommodation of the head (known in different colleges by the
several designations of provost, principal, dean, rector, warden,
&c.); 3rdly to the accommodation of the private library attached to
that college, and to the chapel, which is used at least twice every
day for public prayers; 4thly, to the Hall, and the whole
establishment of kitchen, wine vaults, buttery, &c., &c., which may be
supposed necessary for the liberal accommodation, at the public meals
of dinner [and in some colleges supper] of gentlemen and visitors from
the country, or from the Continent; varying (we will suppose) from 25
to 500 heads. Everywhere else the great mass of the students are
lodged in obscure nooks and corners, which may or may not be
respectable, but are at all events withdrawn from the _surveillance_
of the University. I shall state both the ground and the effect (or
tendency rather) of this difference. Out of England, universities are
not meant exclusively for professional men; the sons of great
landholders, and a large proportion of the sons of noblemen, either go
through the same academic course as others--or a shorter course
adapted to their particular circumstances. In England, again, the
church is supplied from the rank of gentry--not exclusively, it is
true, but in a much larger proportion than anywhere else, except in
Ireland. The corresponding ranks in Scotland, from their old
connection with France, have adopted (I believe) much more of the
Continental plan for disposing of their sons at this period. At any
rate, it will not be contended by any man, that Scotland throws
anything like the same proportion with England, of her gentry and her
peerage into her universities. Hence, a higher standard of manners and
of habits presides at Oxford and Cambridge; and, consequently, a
demand for much higher accommodations would even _otherwise_ have
arisen, had not such a demand already been supplied by the munificence
of our English princes and peers, both male and female; and, in one
instance at least, of a _Scottish_ Prince (Baliol). The extent of
these vast Caravanseras enables the governors of the various colleges
to furnish every student with a set of two rooms at the least, often
with a _suite_ of three--[I, who lived at Oxford on no more than my
school allowance, had that number]--or in many cases with far more. In
the superior colleges, indeed (superior, I mean, as to their purse and
landed endowments), all these accommodations keep pace with the
refinements of the age; and thus a connection is maintained between
the University and the landed _Noblesse_--upper and lower--of
England, which must be reciprocally beneficial, and which, under other
circumstances, could scarcely have taken place.
Of these advantages, you may be sure, that Mr. Wilson availed himself
to the utmost extent. Instead of going to _Baliol_ College, he entered
himself at _Magdalen_, in the class of what are called, 'Gentlemen
Commoners.' All of us (you know) in Oxford and Cambridge wear an
Academic dress, which tells at once our Academic rank with all its
modifications. And the term '_Gentlemen Commoner_' implies that he has
more splendid costumes, and more in number; that he is expected to
spend a good deal more money, that he enjoys a few trifling
immunities; and that he has, in particular instances, something like a
King's right of pre-emption, as in the choice of rooms, &c.
Once launched in this orbit, Mr. Wilson continued to blaze away for
the four successive years, 1804, 1805, 1806, 1807, I believe without
any intermission. Possibly I myself was the one sole gownsman who had
not then found my attention fixed by his most heterogeneous
reputation. In a similar case, Cicero tells a man that ignorance so
unaccountable of another man's pretensions argued himself to be a
_homo ignorabilis_; or, in the language of the Miltonic Satan, 'Not to
know me, argues thyself unknown.' And _that_ is true; a _homo
ignorabilis_ most certainly I was. And even with that admission it is
still difficult to account for the extent and the duration of my
ignorance. The fact is, that the case well expresses _both_ our
positions; that _he_ should be so conspicuous as to challenge
knowledge from the most sequestered of anchorites expresses _his_
life; that I should have right to absolute ignorance of him who was
familiar as daylight to all the rest of Oxford--expresses _mine_.
Never indeed before, to judge from what I have since heard upon
inquiry, did a man, by variety of talents and variety of humours,
contrive to place himself as the connecting link between orders of men
so essentially repulsive of each other--as Mr. Wilson in this
instance.
'Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status, et res.'
From the learned president of his college, Dr. Routh, the editor of
parts of _Plato_, and of some _Theological Selections_, with whom
Wilson enjoyed an unlimited favour--from this learned Academic Doctor,
and many others of the same class, Wilson had an infinite gamut of
friends and associates, running through every key; and the diapason
closing full in groom, cobbler, stable-boy, barber's apprentice, with
every shade and hue of blackguard and ruffian. In particular, amongst
this latter kind of worshipful society, there was no man who had any
talents--real or fancied--for thumping or being thumped, but 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 Mallens_.[44]
[Footnote 44: The usual colloquial corruption of _Magdalen_ in Ox. is
_Maudlin_; but amongst the very _lie dupeuple_, it is called
_Mallens_.]
* * * * *
A little before the time at which my acquaintance with Mr. Wilson
commenced, he had purchased a beautiful estate on the lake of
Windermere, which bore the ancient name of _Elleray_--a name which,
with his customary good taste, Mr. Wilson has never disturbed. With
the usual latitude of language in such cases, I say _on_ Windermere;
but in fact this charming estate lies far above the lake; and one of
the most interesting of its domestic features is the foreground of the
rich landscape which connects, by the most gentle scale of
declivities, this almost aërial altitude [as, for _habitable_ ground,
it really is] with the sylvan margin of the deep water which rolls a
mile and a half below. When I say a mile and a half, you will
understand me to compute the descent according to the undulations of
the ground; because else the perpendicular elevation above the level
of the lake cannot be above one half of that extent. Seated on such an
eminence, but yet surrounded by foregrounds of such quiet beauty, and
settling downwards towards the lake by such tranquil steps as to take
away every feeling of precipitous or dangerous elevation, Elleray
possesses a double character of beauty, rarely found in connection;
and yet each, by singular good fortune, in this case absolute and
unrivalled in its kind. Within a bow-shot of each other may be found
stations of the deepest seclusion, fenced in by verdurous walls of
insuperable forest heights, and presenting a limited scene of
beauty--deep, solemn, noiseless, severely sequestered--and other
stations of a magnificence so gorgeous as few estates in this island
can boast, and of those few perhaps none in such close connection with
a dwelling-house. Stepping out from the very windows of the
drawing-room, you find yourself on a terrace which gives you the
feeling of a 'specular height,' such as you might expect on Ararat, or
might appropriately conceive on 'Athos seen from Samothrace.' The
whole course of a noble lake, about eleven miles long, lies subject to
your view, with many of its islands, and its two opposite shores so
different in character--the one stern, precipitous, and gloomy; the
other (and luckily the hither one) by the mere bounty of nature and of
accident--by the happy disposition of the ground originally, and by
the fortunate equilibrium between the sylvan tracts, meandering
irregularly through the whole district, and the proportion left to
verdant fields and meadows,--wearing the character of the richest park
scenery; except indeed that this character is here and there a little
modified by a quiet hedge-row or the stealing smoke which betrays the
embowered cottage of a labourer. But the sublime, peculiar, and
not-to-be-forgotten feature of the scene is the great system of
mountains which unite about five miles off at the head of the lake to
lock in and inclose this noble landscape. The several ranges of
mountains which stand at various distances within six or seven miles
of the little town of Ambleside, all separately various in their forms
and all eminently picturesque, when seen from Elleray appear to blend
and group as parts of one connected whole; and when their usual
drapery of clouds happens to take a fortunate arrangement, and the
sunlights are properly broken and thrown from the most suitable
quarter of the heavens,--I cannot recollect any spectacle in England
or Wales, of the many hundreds I have seen, bearing a local, if not a
national reputation for magnificence of prospect, which so much
dilates the heart with a sense of power and aërial sublimity as this
terrace view from Elleray. It is possible that I may have stood on
other mountain terraces commanding as ample a view and as happily
combined; but the difference of effect must always be immense between
a spectacle to which you ascend by half a day's labour, and that upon
which you are launched in a second of time from the breakfast table.
It is of great importance, for the enjoyment of any natural scene, to
be liberated from the necessity of viewing it under circumstances of
haste and anxiety, to have it in one's power to surrender oneself
passively and tranquilly to the influences of the objects as they
gradually reveal themselves, and to be under no summons to crowd one's
whole visual energy and task of examination within a single quarter of
an hour. Having seen Elleray at all times under these favourable
circumstances, it is certainly not impossible that I may unconsciously
have overrated in some degree its pretensions in comparison with some
rival scenes. I may have committed the common error of attributing to
the _objects_ the whole sum of an impression which in part belonged to
the _subjective_ advantages of the contemplator and the benefits of
his station. But, making every allowance in this direction, I am still
of opinion that Elleray has, in connection with the merits common to
all scenes of its class, others peculiar to itself--and such as are
indispensable conditions for the full effect of all the rest. In
particular, I would instance this: To bring any scene upon a level of
competition with Elleray as to range and majesty of prospect, it is
absolutely essential that it should occupy an equal elevation, or one
not conspicuously inferior. Now, it is seldom indeed that eminences so
commanding are not, by that very circumstance, unfitted to the
picturesque aspects of things: in fact I remember no tract of ground
so elevated as Elleray from which the lowest level of the adjacent
country does not take a petty, dotted, and map-like appearance. But
this effect, which is so heavy a price for the sublimities of the
upper regions, at Elleray is entirely intercepted by the exquisite
gradations of descent by which the contiguous grounds begin their fall
to the level of the lake: the moment that this fall in any quarter
becomes accelerated and precipitous, it is concealed by the brows of
this beautiful hanging foreground; and so happily is this remedy
applied, that in every instance where the lowest grounds would, if
seen at all, from their immediate proximity, be seen by the spectator
looking down perpendicularly as into a well, there they are uniformly
hidden; and these lowest levels first emerge to view at a remote
distance--where, being necessarily viewed obliquely, they suffer no
peculiar disadvantage by being viewed from an eminence. In short, to
sum up the whole in one word, the splendours of Elleray, which could
not have been had but at an unusual elevation, are by a rare bounty of
nature obtained without one of those sacrifices for the learned eye
which are usually entailed upon that one single advantage of unusual
elevation.