ornamented by no suitable dwelling-house at the time when it was
purchased by Mr. Wilson: there was indeed a rustic cottage, most
picturesquely situated, which, with the addition of a drawing-room
thrown out at one end, was made for the present (and, as it turned
out, for many a year to come) capable of meeting the hospitable system
of life adopted by its owner. But, with a view to more ample and
luxurious accommodations, even at that early period of his possession
(1808), Mr. Wilson began to build a mansion of larger and more elegant
proportions. The shell, and perhaps the greater part of the internal
work, was soon finished; but for some reason, which I never remember
to have inquired into, was not rendered thoroughly habitable (and
consequently not inhabited) till the year 1825. I think it worth while
to mention this house particularly, because it has always appeared to
me a silent commentary on its master's state of mind, and an
exemplification of his character both as it was and as it appeared. At
first sight there was an air of adventurousness, or even of
extravagance about the plan and situation of the building; and yet
upon a considerate examination (and latterly upon a practical trial)
of it, I cannot see that within the same dimensions it would have been
possible to have contrived a more judicious or commodious house. Thus,
for instance, the house is planted upon the boldest and most exposed
point of ground that can be found on the whole estate, consequently
upon that which might have presumed (and I believe was really reputed)
to be the very stormiest: yet, whether from counteracting screens of
wood that have since been reared in fortunate situations, or from what
other cause I know not, but undoubtedly at this day no practical
inconvenience is suffered; though it is true, I believe, that in the
earlier years of its history, the house bore witness occasionally, by
dismal wrecks of roof and windows, to the strength and fury of the
wind on one particular quarter. Again, in the internal arrangements
one room was constructed of such ample proportions, with a view to
dancing, that the length (as I remember) was about seventy feet; the
other dimensions I have forgotten. Now, in this instance most people
saw an evidence of nothing but youthful extravagance, and a most
disproportionate attention directed to one single purpose, which upon
that scale could not probably be of very frequent occurrence in _any_
family. This by the way was at any rate a sensible extravagance in my
judgment; for our English mode of building tends violently to the
opposite and most unwholesome extravagance of giving to the very
principal room of a house the beggarly proportions of closets.
However, the sequel showed that in providing for one end, Mr. Wilson
had not lost sight of others: for the seventy-feet room was so divided
by strong folding-doors, or temporary partitions, as in its customary
state to exhibit three rooms of ordinary proportions, and unfolded its
full extent only by special and extraordinary mechanism. Other
instances I might give in which the plan seemed to be extravagant or
inconsiderate, and yet really turned out to have been calculated with
the coolest judgment and the nicest foresight of domestic needs. It is
sufficient to say that I do not know a house apparently more
commodiously arranged than this, which was planned and built with
utmost precipitation, and in the very heyday of a most tempestuous
youth. In one thing only, upon a retrospect at this day of the whole
case, there may appear to have been some imprudence, viz. that timber
being then at a most unprecedented high price, it is probable that the
building cost seven or eight hundred pounds more than it would have
done a few years later. Allowing for this one oversight, the principal
house on the Elleray estate, which at the time was looked upon as an
evidence of Mr. Wilson's flightiness of mind, remains at this day a
lasting monument of his good sense and judgment.
Whilst I justify him, however, on this head, I am obliged to admit
that on another field, at that very time, Mr. Wilson was displaying
the most reckless profusion. A sailing club had been established on
Windermere, by whom I never heard; very probably by Mr. Wilson
himself; at all events, he was the leader and the soul of the
confederation; and he applied annually nothing less than a little
fortune to the maintenance of the many expenses which arose out of it.
Amongst the members of the club there were more than one who had far
larger fortunes than Mr. Wilson could ever have possessed; but he
would permit no one to outshine him on this arena. The number of his
boats was so great as to compose a little fleet; and some of them, of
unusually large dimensions for this lake, had been built at an
enormous expense by regular builders brought over expressly from the
port of Whitehaven (distant from Elleray about forty-five miles), and
kept during the whole progress of their labour at a most expensive
Lakers' hotel. One of these boats in particular, a ten-oared barge,
which you will find specially introduced by name in Professor Wilson's
tale of _The Foresters_ (_vide_ p. 215), was generally believed at
the time to have cost him at the least five hundred pounds. And as the
number of sailors which it required to man these boats was necessarily
very great at particular seasons, and as the majority of these sailors
lived, during the period of their services, with little or no
restraint upon their expenses at the most costly inn in the
neighbourhood,--it may be supposed very readily that about this time
Mr. Wilson's lavish expenditure, added to the demands of architects
and builders, and the recent purchase of Elleray, must have seriously
injured his patrimonial property,--though generally believed to have
been originally considerably more than thirty thousand (many asserted
forty thousand) pounds. In fact, he had never less than three
establishments going on concurrently for some years; one at the town
or village of Bowness (the little port of the lake of Windermere), for
his boatmen; one at the Ambleside Hotel, about five miles distant, for
himself; and a third at Elleray, for his servants, and the occasional
resort of himself and his friends. It is the opinion of some people
that about this time, and during the succeeding two years, Mr. Wilson
dissipated the main bulk of his patrimony in profuse expenditure. But
more considerate people see no ground for that opinion: his expenses,
though great, were never adequate to the dilapidation of so large an
estate as he was reputed to have inherited: and the prevailing opinion
is that some great loss of £20,000 at a blow, by the failure of some
trustee or other, was the true cause of that diminution in his
property which, within a year or two from this time, he is generally
supposed to have suffered. However, as Mr. Wilson himself has always
maintained an obstinate silence on the subject, and as the mere fact
of the loss (however probable) is not more accurately known to me than
its extent, or its particular mode, or its cause,--I shall not allow
myself to make any conjectural speculations on the subject. It can be
interesting to you and me only from one of its consequences, viz. its
leading him afterwards to seek a professorship: for most certain it
is, that, if the splendour of Mr. Wilson's youthful condition as to
pecuniary matters had not been in some remarkable degree overcast, and
suffered some signal eclipse, he would never have surrendered any part
of that perfect liberty which was so dear to him, for all the honours
and rewards that could have been offered by the foremost universities
of Europe.
You will have heard, no doubt, from some of those with whom you
conversed about Professor Wilson when you were in Europe, or you may
have read it in Peter's Letters, that in very early life (probably
about the age of eighteen) he had formed a scheme for penetrating into
central Africa, visiting the city of Tombuctoo, and solving (if it
were possible) the great outstanding problem of the course of the
Niger. To this scheme he was attracted probably not so much by any
particular interest in the improvement of geographical knowledge, as
by the youthful spirit of romantic adventure, and a very uncommon
craving for whatever was grand--indefinite--and gigantic in
conception, supposing that it required at the same time great physical
powers in the execution. There cannot be a doubt for us at this day,
who look back upon the melancholy list of victims in this perilous
field of discovery which has been furnished by the two or three and
twenty years elapsed since Mr. Wilson's plan was in agitation, that in
that enterprise--had he ever irretrievably embarked himself upon
it--he would infallibly have perished; for, though reasonably strong,
he was not strong upon that heroic scale which an expedition so
Titanic demands; and what was perhaps still more important, if strong
enough--he was not _hardy_ enough, as a gentleman rarely is, more
especially where he has literary habits; because the exposure to open
air, which is the indispensable condition of hardiness, is at any rate
interrupted--even if it were not counteracted--by the luxurious habits
and the relaxing atmosphere of the library and the drawing-room.
Moreover, Mr. Wilson's constitution was irritable and disposed to
fever; his temperament was too much that of a man of genius not to
have furnished a mine of inflammable materials for any tropical
climate; his prudence, as regarded his health, was not remarkable; and
if to all these internal and personal grounds of danger you add the
incalculable hazards of the road itself, every friend of Mr. Wilson's
must have rejoiced on hearing that in 1808, when I first met him, this
Tim-(or Tom-) buctoo scheme was already laid aside.
Yet, as the stimulus of danger, in one shape or other, was at that
time of life perhaps essential to his comfort, he soon substituted
another scheme, which at this day might be accomplished with ease and
safety enough, but in the year 1809 (under the rancorous system of
Bonaparte) was full of hazard. In this scheme he was so good as to
associate myself as one of his travelling companions, together with an
earlier friend of his own--an Englishman, of a philosophical turn of
mind, with whom he had been a fellow-student at Glasgow; and we were
certainly all three of an age and character to have enjoyed the
expedition in the very highest degree, had the events of the war
allowed us to realise our plan. The plan was as follows: from
Falmouth, by one of the regular packets, we were to have sailed to the
Tagus; and, landing wherever accident should allow us, to purchase
mules--hire Spanish servants--and travel extensively in Spain and
Portugal for eight or nine months; thence, by such of the islands in
the Mediterranean as particularly interested us, we were gradually to
have passed into Greece, and thence to Constantinople. Finally, we
were to have visited the Troad, Syria, Egypt, and perhaps Nubia. I
feel it almost ludicrous to sketch the outline of so extensive a tour,
no part of which was ever executed; such a Barmacide feast is
laughable in the very rehearsal. Yet it is bare justice to ourselves
to say that on our parts there was no slackness or _make-believe_:
what put an extinguisher upon our project was the entrance of Napoleon
into Spain, his immediate advance upon Madrid, and the wretched
catastrophe of the expedition so miserably misconducted under Sir John
Moore. The _prestige_ of French generalship was at that time a
nightmare upon the courage and spirit of hopeful exertion throughout
Europe; and the earliest dawn was only then beginning to arise of that
glorious experience which was for ever to dissolve it. Sir J. Moore,
and through him his gallant but unfortunate army, was the last
conspicuous victim to the mere sound and _humbug_ (if you will excuse
a coarse expression) of the words _Napoleon Bonaparte_. What he fled
from was precisely those two words. And the timid policy, adopted by
Sir John on that memorable occasion, would--among other greater and
national consequences--have had this little collateral interest to us
unfortunate travellers, had our movements been as speedy as we had
anticipated, that it would have cost us our heads. A certain bulletin,
issued by Bonaparte at that time, sufficiently apprised us of that
little truth. In this bulletin Bonaparte proclaimed with a careless
air, but making at the same time somewhat of a boast of it, that
having happened to meet a party of sixteen British travellers--persons
of whom he had ascertained nothing at all but that they did not bear a
military character--he had issued a summary order that they should all
be strung up without loss of time by the neck. In this little
facetious anecdote, as Bonaparte seemed to think it, we read the fate
that we had escaped. Had nothing occurred to retard our departure from
this country, we calculated that the route we had laid down for our
daily motions would have brought us to Guadarama (or what was the name
of the pass?) just in time to be hanged. Having a British general at
our backs with an army of more than thirty thousand effective men, we
should certainly have roamed in advance with perfect reliance upon the
old British policy of fighting, for which we could never have allowed
ourselves to dream of such a substitute as a flight through all the
passes of Gallicia on the principle of '_the D---- take the
hindmost_.' Infallibly also we should have been surprised by the
extraordinary rapidity at that time of the French movements; our
miserable shambling mules, with their accursed tempers, would have
made but a shabby attempt at flight before a squadron of light
cavalry; and in short, as I said before, we should have come just in
time to be hanged. And hanged we should all have been: though _why_,
and upon what principle, it would be difficult to say; and probably
that question would have been left to after consideration in some more
philosophical age. You will suppose naturally that we rejoiced at our
escape; and so undoubtedly we did. Yet for my part I had, among
nineteen-twentieths of joy, just one-twentieth of a lingering regret
that we had missed the picturesque fate that awaited us. The reason
was this: it has been through life an infirmity of Mr. Wilson's (at
least in my judgment an infirmity) to think too indulgently of
Bonaparte, not merely in an intellectual point of view, but even with
reference to his pretensions--hollower, one would think, than the
wind--to moral elevation and magnanimity. Such a mistake, about a man
who could never in any one instance bring himself to speak generously,
or even forbearingly of an enemy, rouses my indignation as often as I
recur to it; and in Professor Wilson, I have long satisfied myself
that it takes its rise from a more comprehensive weakness, the
greatest in fact which besets his mind, viz. a general tendency to
bend to the prevailing opinion of the world, and a constitutional
predisposition, to sympathise with power and whatsoever is triumphant.
Hence, I could not but regret most poignantly the capital opportunity
I had forfeited of throwing in a deep and stinging sarcasm at his
idol, just at the moment when we should have been waiting to be
turned off. I know Professor Wilson well: though a brave man, at
twenty-two he enjoyed life with a rapture that few men have ever
known, and he would have clung to it with awful tenacity. Horribly he
would have abominated the sight of the rope, and ruefully he would
have sighed if I had suggested to him on the gallows any thoughts of
that beautiful and quiet Elleray which he had left behind in England.
Just at that moment I acknowledge that it would have been fiendish,
but yet what a heaven of a luxury it would have been in the way of
revenge--to have stung him with some neat epigram, that I might have
composed in our walk to the gallows, or while the ropes were getting
into tune, on the generosity and magnanimity of Bonaparte! Perhaps, in
a sober estimate, hanging might be too heavy a price for the
refutation of a single error; yet still, at times, when my moral sense
is roused and provoked by the obstinate blindness of Professor Wilson
to the meanness and _parvanimity_[45] of Bonaparte (a blindness which
in him, as in all other worshippers of false idols, is connected at
the moment with intense hatred for those who refuse to partake in it),
a wandering regret comes over me that we should have missed so fine an
opportunity for gathering in our own persons some of those redundant
bounties which the Corsican's 'magnanimity' at that time scattered
from his cornucopia of malice to the English name upon all his
unfortunate prisoners of that nation.
[Footnote 45: I coin this word _parvanimity_ as an adequate antithesis
to _magnanimity_; for the word _pusillanimity_ has received from usage
such a confined determination to one single idea, viz. the defect of
spirit and courage, that it is wholly unfitted to tie the antipode to
the complex idea of magnanimity.]
But enough of this; an event soon occurred in Mr. Wilson's life which
made it a duty to dismiss for ever all travelling schemes that were
connected with so much hazard as this. The fierce _acharnement_ of
Bonaparte so pointedly directed to everything English, and the
prostration of the Continent, which had enabled him absolutely to seal
every port of Europe against an Englishman, who could now no longer
venture to stray a mile beyond the range of the ship's guns, which had
brought him to the shore, without the certainty of being arrested as a
spy,--this unheard-of condition of things had at length compelled all
English gentlemen to reconcile themselves for the present to the
bounds of their own island; and, accordingly, in the spring of 1809,
we three unhanged friends had entirely weaned our minds from the
travelling scheme which had so completely occupied our thoughts in
1808. Mr. Wilson in particular gave himself up to the pleasures and
occupations furnished by the neighbourhood of Windermere, which at
that time were many and various; living myself at a distance of nine
miles from Elleray, I did not see much of him through this year 1809;
in 1810 he married a young English lady, greatly admired for her
beauty and the elegance of her manners, who was generally supposed to
have brought him a fortune of about ten thousand pounds. In saying
_that_, I violate no confidence at any time reposed in me, for I rely
only on the public voice--which, in this instance, I have been told by
well-informed persons, was tolerably correct. Be that as it may,
however, in other respects I have the best reasons for believing that
this marriage connection has proved the happiest event of Mr.
Wilson's life; and that the delightful temper and disposition of his
wife have continued to shed a sunshine of peace and quiet happiness
over his domestic establishment, which were well worth all the
fortunes in the world. This lady has brought him a family of two sons
and three daughters, all interesting by their personal appearance and
their manners, and at this time rapidly growing up into young men and
women.
Here I should close all further notice of Mr. Wilson's life, and
confine myself, through what remains of the space which I have allowed
myself, to a short critical notice (such as it may be proper for a
friend to write) of his literary character and merits; but one single
event remains of a magnitude too conspicuous in any man's life to be
dismissed wholly without mention. I should add, therefore, that, about
eight or nine years after his marriage (for I forget the precise
year[46]), Mr. Wilson offered himself a candidate for the chair of
Moral Philosophy in the University in Edinburgh, which had recently
become vacant by the death of Dr. Thomas Brown, the immediate
successor of Mr. Dugald Stewart. The Scotch, who know just as much
about what they call 'Moral[47] Philosophy' and Metaphysics as the
English do, viz. exactly nothing at all, pride themselves
prodigiously upon these two names of Dugald Stewart and Dr. Brown, and
imagine that they filled the chair with some peculiar brilliance. Upon
that subject a word or two farther on. Meantime this notion made the
contest peculiarly painful and invidious, amongst ungenerous enemies,
for any untried man--no matter though his real merits had been a
thousand times greater than those of his predecessors. This Mr. Wilson
found; he had made himself enemies; whether by any unjustifiable
violences, and wanton provocations on his own part, I have no means of
knowing. In whatever way created, however, these enemies now used the
advantages of the occasion with rancorous malignity, and persecuted
him at every step with unrelenting fury. Very different was the
treatment he met with from his competitor in the contest; in that one
circumstance of the case, the person of his competitor, he had reason
to think himself equally fortunate and unfortunate; fortunate, that he
should be met by the opposition of a man whose opposition was
honour--a man of birth, talents, and high breeding, a good scholar,
and for extensive reading and universal knowledge of books (and
especially of philosophic literature) the Magliabecchi of Scotland;
unfortunate on the other hand that this accomplished opponent, adorned
by so many brilliant gifts that recommended him to the contested
office, should happen to be his early and highly valued friend. The
particular progress of the contest, and its circumstances, I am not
able to state; in general I have heard in Edinburgh that, from
political influences which chiefly governed the course of the
election, the conduct of the partisans (perhaps on both sides) was
intemperate, personal, and unjust; whilst that of the principals and
their immediate friends was full of forbearance and generosity. The
issue was, that Mr. Wilson carried the Professorship,--by what
majority of votes, I am unable to say; and you will be pleased to hear
that any little coolness, which must naturally have succeeded to so
warm a contest, has long since passed away; and the two rival
candidates have been for many years restored to their early feelings
of mutual esteem and regard.
[Footnote 46: [In July, 1820.]]
[Footnote 47: Everywhere in the world, except in Scotland, by _moral_
philosophy is meant the philosophy of the will, as opposed to the
philosophy of the intellect; in Scotland only the word _moral_ is
used, by the strongest abuse, as a comprehensive designation of
whatsoever is not _physical_; so that in the cycle of knowledge,
undertaken by the Edinburgh Professor of Moral Philosophy, are
included logic, metaphysics, ethics, psychology, anthropology,--and,
in one word, almost all human knowledge, with the exception of physics
and mathematics.]
Here I pause for everything that concerns in the remotest way the
incidents of Professor Wilson's life; one letter I mean to add, as I
have already promised, on the particular position which he occupies in
relation to modern literature; and then I have done. Meantime, let me
hope that you have not so far miscalculated my purpose as to have been
looking out for anecdotes (_i. e._ scandal) about Professor Wilson
throughout the course of this letter; since, if in any case I could
descend to cater for tastes of that description (which I am persuaded,
are naturally no tastes of _your_ family),--you must feel, on
reflection, how peculiarly impossible it is to take that course in
sketching the character of a friend, because the very means, by which
in almost every case one becomes possessed of such private anecdotes,
are the opportunities thrown in one's way by the confiding negligence
of affectionate friendship; opportunities therefore which must be for
ever sacred to every man of honour.
Yours most faithfully,
PARMENIDES.
THE LAKE DIALECT.
_To the Editor of 'Titan.'_
My Dear Sir,--I send you a few hasty notes upon Mr. Robert Ferguson's
little work (relating to the dialect current at the English
Lakes).[48] Mr. Ferguson's book is learned and seasonable, adapted to
the stage at which such studies have now arrived among us, and adapted
also to a popular use. I am sure that Mr. Ferguson knows a great deal
more about his very interesting theme than _I_ do. Nevertheless, I
presume to sit in judgment upon him; or so it will be inferred from my
assuming the office of his reviewer. But in reality I pretend to no
such ambitious and invidious functions. What I propose to do, in this
hasty and _extempore_ fashion, is--simply to take a seat in Mr.
Ferguson's court as an _amicus curiæ_, and occasionally to suggest a
doubt, by possibility an amendment; but more often to lead astray
judge, jury, and docile audience into matter growing out of the
subject, but very seldom leading back into it, too often, perhaps,
having little to do with it; pleasant by possibility, according to
Foote's judgment in a parallel case, 'pleasant, but wrong.' No great
matter if it should be so. It will be read within the privileged term
of Christmas;[49] during which licensed saturnalia it can be no blame
to any paper, that it is 'pleasant, but wrong.'
[Footnote 48: _The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland._ By Robert
Ferguson. Carlisle: Steel & Brother. London: Longmans & Co.]
[Footnote 49: Writing at the moment in Scotland, where Christmas is as
little heard of, or popularly understood or regarded, as the Mahometan
festival of Beyram or the fast of Ramadan, I ought to explain that, as
Christmas Day, by adjournment from Lady Day--namely, March 25--falls
uniformly on December 25, it happens necessarily that _Twelfth_ Day
(the adoration of the Magi at Bethlehem), which is the ceremonial
close of Christmas, falls upon the 5th day of January; seven days in
the old, five in the new, year.]