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THE 'BLACKWOOD' GROUP
by
SIR GEORGE DOUGLAS
Famous.Scots.Series
Published by Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier . Edinburgh and London
* * * * *
FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES
_The following Volumes are now ready:_--
THOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson.
ALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton.
HUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask.
JOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes.
ROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun.
THE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie.
RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless.
SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson.
THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garden Blaikie.
JAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask.
TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By Oliphant Smeaton.
FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. Omond.
THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir George Douglas.
* * * * *
The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr Joseph Brown, and
the printing from the press of Messrs Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh.
_April 1897._
* * * * *
To
Major-General Sir WILLIAM CROSSMAN, K.C.M.G.,
IN REMEMBRANCE OF HOURS IN TWO LIBRARIES.
* * * * *
THE BLACKWOOD GROUP.
JOHN WILSON.
JOHN GALT.
D. M. MOIR ('DELTA').
MISS FERRIER.
MICHAEL SCOTT.
THOMAS HAMILTON.
_Note_--The Ettrick Shepherd and John Gibson Lockhart, conspicuous by
their absence from the above list of writers associated with the early
days of the publishing-house of Blackwood, will receive attention in
forthcoming volumes of the series.
JOHN WILSON
Is it too bold a thing to say that the reputation of 'Christopher
North,' the man, has survived that of his works? Third in the great
dynasty of Scottish literary sovereigns, he ascended the throne upon the
death of Scott, reigned gloriously and held high state in the Northern
Capital--whence in earlier days he had waged direst war--and at his
death passed on the sceptre to Carlyle, from whom in turn it descended
to Stevenson. To us of to-day, he looms on the horizon of the past, the
representative of a vanished race of physical and intellectual
giants,--the historic legend revealing him as before all things a good
man of his inches, a prince of boon-companions and good-fellows, a wit,
a hard hitter, the soul and centre of a brilliant circle, and the author
of the _Noctes Ambrosianae_. Many other works he wrote--important in
their own day--but now not unjustly forgotten, or all but forgotten. But
the man himself was greater than his works; he, more than they, is our
enduring possession; his memory it behoves us to preserve.
* * * * *
The story of his life has been told, in terms of affectionate
appreciation, by his daughter, Mrs Gordon. Born at Paisley--in a
neighbourhood where that natural beauty to which he was so susceptible
was still at that time almost unsullied--on the 18th May 1785, he was
the eldest of his parents' sons and their fourth child. His father, a
gauze-manufacturer by trade, was possessed of considerable wealth;
whilst through his mother, whose maiden name was Sym, and who claimed
descent from the great Marquis of Montrose, he had inherited a strain of
'gentle' blood. From the first he was a robust and lively boy, and his
childhood, being passed under the most favourable of conditions, was an
entirely happy one. His taste for field-sport first declared itself at
the early age of three years, when equipped with willow-wand, thread,
and crooked pin, he set off, unattended, on an adventurous angling
expedition. Meantime the parallel mental activity, which was to be
through life his characteristic, was manifested in quaint infantine
pulpit-oratory at home. After receiving the rudiments of instruction at
Paisley, he was placed as a boarder with the minister of the
neighbouring parish of Mearns, with whom he remained until his twelfth
year. Here he was not less happy than at home. Without doors--and one
thinks of him as a boy whose life was spent chiefly in the open air--he
had a wide and beautiful country to range; whilst within, his education
proceeded merrily--he was foremost among his young companions at the
task as well as in the playground--and he was carefully trained in the
paths of wisdom and virtue. In later life his memory reverted fondly to
these days, to which his writings contain various references--as when he
tells of boyish shooting experiences, with an antiquated musket,
traditionally supposed to have been 'out' in both the Fifteen and the
Forty-five, of an adventure in a storm when lost upon the moors, and so
forth. In his twelfth year he lost his father, and soon afterwards he
was placed at the University of Glasgow, where he continued to attend
classes until the year 1803. Here he resided in the house of the
Professor of Logic, Professor Jardine, to whom and to the Greek
Professor, Young, he in later life gratefully acknowledged his debt.
Meantime his mother with her young family had gone to live in Edinburgh.
There and at Glasgow, from January to October 1801, young Wilson kept a
diary, which was preserved, and from which his biographer prints some
extracts. These are disappointing; but the document itself is remarkable
for orderliness and precision, exhibiting the writer as the very pattern
of a well-brought-up youth. More interesting, however, as a
manifestation of character is the impulse which, in the year following,
led the seventeen-year-old young man to address a letter of generous
admiration, not, however, untempered with criticism, to the author of
the _Lyrical Ballads_. Wordsworth replied, and thus was begun an
intercourse which was afterwards destined to ripen into friendship.
In June 1803, Wilson was transferred from Glasgow to Oxford, where he
was entered as a gentleman-commoner of Magdalen College. He began his
career there with ambitious views, his course of study, as shown by his
commonplace books, being designed to embrace not only the prescribed
curriculum in the Ancient Classics, but studies in Law, History,
Philosophy, and Poetry as well. But, if he read hard--as, with
occasional intermissions, he undoubtedly did--he also entered with zest
into the athletics and other amusements of the place, testing his
prowess in wrestling, leaping, boating, and running, and, at the same
time, indulging in what to a later age may appear the more questionable
sports of pugilism and cock-fighting. Some traditions of the feats then
performed by him survive. Among these are stories of his triumphant
encounter with a certain redoubtable pugilist who had insulted him; of
his coming out one night from a dinner-party in Grosvenor Square, and
proceeding then and there to walk back to Oxford--accomplishing the
distance of fifty-eight miles in some eight or nine hours; or, of his
clearing the river Cherwell at a flying leap--twenty-three feet in
breadth on the dead level. Yet, these distractions notwithstanding, he
succeeded in passing the examination for his Bachelor's Degree, in a
manner which his tutor characterised as 'glorious,' and in producing
such an impression of scholarship on the minds of the Examiners as to
call forth the rare testimony of a public expression of their thanks. He
also carried off the Newdigate Prize, awarded for English verse. In
commenting on the amiability of his disposition, his biographer observes
that he harboured not an envious thought. But surely to have done so
were a very superfluity of naughtiness; for, gifted as he was, by
fortune as well as nature, whom was it possible for this admirable youth
to envy?
After taking his degree, he still continued for a time to frequent
Oxford, astonishing the younger members of the common-room of his
college by his extraordinary conversational powers and by occasional
quaint freaks, but at the same time delighting them by his good-humour.
It is told of him at this time that he would sometimes indulge his fancy
by resorting to the coaching-inns at the hour of the arrival of the
mails, presiding at the travellers' supper-table, and hob-nobbing with
all and sundry, whom his wit and pleasantry seldom failed to impress. At
this era his personal appearance is described as especially striking.
It was that of a man of great muscular strength, but lightly built;
about five feet ten inches in height, with uncommon breadth of chest;
florid, and wearing a profusion of hair, and enormous whiskers--the
latter being in those days very unusual. De Quincey says he was not
handsome, but against such testimony we may surely set off that of
Raeburn's portrait, painted a few years earlier.
These ought to have been golden days, indeed, but much of their
happiness was marred by an unlucky love-affair. At Glasgow, some years
before, Wilson had made the acquaintance of a young lady of great charm
of person and character, who in the biography figures as 'Margaret,' or
The Orphan Maid. The impression which she produced upon him was profound
and lasting, and at parting he had inscribed to her a small volume of
manuscript poems of his own. From this point the biographer is rather
vague in her account of the progress of the attachment; yet we have
abundant evidence that its course was a most troubled one. For instance,
in August 1803, we find our hero writing to a friend in the following
desperate strain:--'By heavens! I will, perhaps, some day blow my brains
out, and there is an end of the matter.' Later he says: 'The word happy
will never again be joined to the name of John Wilson.' And again he
speaks of summoning two friends to support him and pass with him the
night on which Margaret was to be married to another. This dreaded
marriage did not take place, but it is quite evident that the lover long
continued in a most unsettled state of mind. Thus we hear of his having
swallowed laudanum, lost his powers of study, indulged in 'unbridled
dissipation'; of sudden aimless journeys, undertaken on the spur of the
moment, and landing him at nightfall at such unlikely places as Coventry
or Nottingham; of solitary rambles in Ireland and in Wales. 'Whilst I
keep moving,' he writes, in October 1805, 'life goes on well enough; but
whenever I pause the fever of the soul begins.' He even entertained an
idea of joining the expedition of Mungo Park to Timbuctoo. No doubt in
all this he believed himself sincere enough at the time, but it is not
necessary for us to take his utterances quite seriously. The blowing out
of brains has been alluded to, and it seems more than probable that a
point of Wertherism entered into his distemper. At any rate, in giving
an order for the works of Rousseau at the time, he is careful to
emphasize his desire to have them complete. In dismissing the episode it
may be mentioned that, though the various obstacles to a union between
himself and Margaret are not detailed, in his case filial obedience
would seem to have been the final deterrent.
During a tour in the English lake country in 1805, Wilson had fallen in
love with and purchased the property of Elleray, consisting of a
delightful cottage-residence, standing in grounds of its own, and
commanding lovely views of mountain, lawn, and forest scenery, rising
above the waters of Lake Windermere; and it was there that, on leaving
Oxford in 1807, he took up his abode. He was now in the fullest sense
his own master, and at this point it may be worth while briefly to take
note of his attitude towards life.
The ideal of the sound mind in the sound body has been universally
recognised as a good one; but, whether deliberately or instinctively,
Wilson seems to have aimed higher still. He aspired to the mind of a
philosopher in the body of an athlete; and the word philosopher must
here be taken in its highest sense--to signify not the thinker only, but
the lover of wisdom for its own sake. A saner or loftier ideal could
scarcely be conceived; and Nature, who too often unites the soaring mind
with the body which does it previous wrong, had in this case given the
means of attaining, or at least approaching it. Thus the Christopher
North of this period remains a possession and a standard of manhood to
his countrymen. He brings home to them the Hellenic ideal, pure and
unvitiated by any taint of Keatsian sensuality, as Goethe had brought it
home to Germany. In the process of naturalization that ideal underwent
some modification; but the fact that the poetry which North wrote at
this time was of perishable quality does not in reality detract from the
service which he rendered to his country.
For poetical composition seems to have been now the serious business of
his life. As for his diversions, they remained of the same healthy type
as in his Oxford days. The sailing of a fleet of boats on Windermere,
and the rearing of game birds were perhaps his special hobbies; but
wherever manly exercises were to the fore, there was he to be found. The
country in which he was now located being a wrestling country, he became
an enthusiastic patron of that excellent exercise, and effected much for
its encouragement. And at the same time he was free of the society of
Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, and the other able and gifted men
whose presence made the district at that era a centre of intellectual
light.
Amid these varied interests, two or three years were passed contentedly
enough; but at the end of that time we find Wilson writing to a friend
of his need of an anchor in life. 'I do not, I hope, want either
ballast, or cargo, or sail,' he writes, 'but I do want an anchor most
confoundedly, and, without it, shall keep beating about the great sea of
life to very little purpose.' This 'anchor' he was fated to find in the
person of Miss Jane Penny, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant, a
favourite partner of his own at the local dances, and at that time the
'leading belle of the Lake Country,' to whom he was happily married on
the 11th May 1811.
His marriage had the effect of somewhat delaying the publication of a
volume of poetry which he had previously been preparing for the press,
and it was not until February of the following year that _The Isle of
Palms, and Other Poems_ made its appearance--having been shortly
preceded by an anonymously-published elegy on the death of James
Grahame, author of _The Sabbath_.
_The Isle of Palms_ tells in mellifluous numbers the story of a pair of
lovers, shipwrecked on an island paradise in tropic seas, who espouse
each other in the sight of Nature and Heaven. Of course the idyll
irresistibly recalls Bernardin's masterpiece, and, judging between the
two, it must be acknowledged that in originality and artistic perfection
the Frenchman's prose has greatly the advantage. But it is noticeable
and must be counted to Wilson's credit that, whilst profoundly
influenced by pre-Revolutionary thought, he never, even at this early
period of his life, allows himself to be led away from the paths
prescribed by virtue and religion. His healthy instinct, fortified by
excellent training, sufficed to show him that anarchy in the moral world
is no more a part of nature's scheme than is habitual excess; and thus
the worship of Liberty and the State of Nature, which afterwards led to
such questionable results in the cases of Byron and of Shelley, left him
entirely unharmed. It is true that rigid formalists have been found to
object to the 'natural marriage' of the lovers in the poem, deploring
the absence of a clergyman on the island. But with these we need not
concern ourselves.
The success of the poems was but moderate; yet it sufficed to bring the
author into notice in Edinburgh, where he and his wife were spending the
season with his mother and sisters, and whence Sir Walter Scott wrote of
him, in a letter to Joanna Baillie, as 'an excellent, warm-hearted, and
enthusiastic young man,' adding that, 'Something too much, perhaps, of
the latter quality' placed him upon the list of originals.
Dividing his time between Edinburgh and Elleray, the young poet now
continued to vary his active open-air life by the plotting and
composition of new poems, and in these pursuits, had his affairs
continued prosperous, it is quite possible that the remainder of his
life might have been spent. For it is a truism that any large measure of
happiness is unfavourable to enterprise, and what young Wilson now
really stood in need of was some stimulus to exertion from without. Such
stimulus duly arrived, taking the form of what in a worldly sense is
known as ruin. To speak more circumstantially, in the fourth year after
his marriage, the unencumbered fortune of L50,000 which he had enjoyed
from the time of his father's death, was, through the dishonesty of an
uncle who had acted as steward of the estate, entirely lost to him.[1]
But, severe as this blow was, his biographers are agreed in pronouncing
it to have been a blessing in disguise, and the means of bringing out
much that was in the man, which would otherwise in all probability have
been lost to the world.
It was now, of course, necessary for him to put his shoulder to the
wheel, and, with the exception of Sir Walter Scott, perhaps no man ever
rose more manfully or uncomplainingly to the occasion. But between these
parallel cases there was one great difference; for Scott's misfortunes
fell upon him when he was advanced in years and worn with toil, whilst
Wilson was able to bring the prime of youth and strength to bear upon
his troubles. He now took up his abode altogether in Edinburgh, being
gladly received into the house of his mother,--a lady who to a fine
presence and strong and amiable character added notable house-keeping
talents, which enabled her during several successive years to accomplish
the somewhat difficult and delicate task of making three separate
families comfortable and happy under one roof. In the same year, 1815,
Wilson was called to the Scots Bar. But, though for a year or two to
come he seems to have made a point of staying in Edinburgh whilst the
Courts were sitting, a short experience sufficed to convince him that
his vocation did not lie in that direction. It was some time before he
succeeded in settling down to congenial work, and, indeed, what we hear
most of during the next year or so are pedestrian and fishing excursions
to the Highlands. Whilst on these expeditions great would be the
distances which he compassed on foot, immense the baskets of fish which
he brought home. On one of them, he had his wife as his companion, when
the happy Bohemianism of the young couple--or, as some would have it,
the poet's eccentricity of conduct--led them into some queer
experiences. Among his adventures we may specify a contest in the four
manly arts of running, leaping, wrestling, and drinking, with a local
champion nicknamed King of the Drovers, in which Wilson came off
victorious.
In March 1816 appeared his second volume of verse, entitled _The City of
the Plague_. This poem forms a startling contrast to the _Isle of
Palms_, for, in place of nature at its softest and sentiment sweet to
the point of cloying, we are now presented with the gloomiest and
ghastliest of studies in the charnel-house style. Several of the scenes
depicting the madness of the London streets at the period of the great
pestilential visitation are by no means without a certain power, which,
however, inclines to degenerate into violence. Two young
sailors--certainly most unlike to all preconceived notions of the seamen
of the age of Blake--help to supply the necessary relief and
'sentiment,' of which there is no lack. But, from beginning to end,
there is little or nothing truly poetical in the tragedy. The movement
of its blank verse is most frequently harsh and jolting, and serves to
confirm one in the opinion that the author was well-inspired when he
abandoned poetry, as he was now to do. Nor do the minor poems which make
up the remainder of the volume show cause for altering this judgment.
Certainly they abound, even to excess, in evidence of the love of
nature; but that alone never yet made a poet.
The transition which now lay before the author was an abrupt and violent
one. From the world of nature and sentiment in which he had hitherto
dwelt undisturbed, he found himself summoned to pass into the arena of
periodical literature, and that in an age when not only was it the
misfortune of such literature to be before all things political, but
when political feeling ran to a pitch of which at the present day it is
difficult even to form a conception,--when the mere designations Whig
and Tory, as mutually applied, were regarded less as party distinctions
than as terms of abuse or reproach. And, to add to the contrast which
lay before Wilson, the place in which he was called to take this step
was precisely that in which the war of periodicals was destined to be
waged most keenly. In order properly to understand the circumstances
which led to this warfare, it is necessary to go back some years.
The horrors of the French Revolution had been followed in Edinburgh by a
strong Tory reaction--a reaction of the excesses of which Henry
Cockburn, in his Memorials, has left a highly-coloured and perhaps not
unprejudiced account. In 1802, as a counterpoise to overwhelming Tory
supremacy, and a rallying-point for those thereto opposed, the
_Edinburgh Review_ had been established. It was supported by a group of
remarkably able young men, whose talents soon raised it to a position of
unexampled influence in the world of letters. That it performed
excellent service in the cause of enlightenment is undeniable; yet it
failed to bear itself with all the moderation proper to success, and in
time showed signs of becoming in its turn a tyranny. Those who were
opposed to it, whilst regarding as dangerous its opinions in politics
and religion, also grew tired (in their own words) of its flippancy and
conceit. Now it happened that about this time a certain new magazine,
recently founded by a very shrewd and enterprising Edinburgh publisher,
after languishing for some months under incompetent editorship, had
reached the very point of dissolution. In this periodical the Tory
malcontents saw an instrument ready to their hands. New spirit was
infused into its nerveless frame, and in October 1817 appeared the first
number of Blackwood's remodelled Edinburgh Magazine. And among those who
gave the hot fresh blood of youth to revive its languishing existence,
one of the foremost was John Wilson. It may be mentioned that before
this he had contributed a literary article to the rival organ, with the
presiding genius of which he was on terms of friendship. His new
departure led to a rupture of that friendship, but to hold that his acts
had committed him to the support of the _Edinburgh Review_ would be to
put an altogether strained construction upon them.
A detailed history of the stormy first years of the new publication,
however piquant and racy it might be made, forms no part of our present
scheme. Suffice it to remind the reader that the 'success of scandal'
which the magazine at once obtained is matter of notoriety; nor can that
success be pronounced undeserved. Indeed the very first number of the
new issue, besides scathing articles on Coleridge and Leigh Hunt,
contained the celebrated 'Translation from an Ancient Chaldee
Manuscript'--afterwards suppressed--consisting of a thinly-veiled attack
upon a rival magazine, and abounding in gross personalities to the
address of leading citizens of Edinburgh. These excesses, though the
cause of much heart-burning at the time, can scarcely be pronounced of
enduring interest; and it is more profitable, as well as more pleasing,
to turn to the other side of the picture. For it must not by any means
be supposed that the new venture relied solely upon objectionable
personalities for attracting and holding its readers. 'These,' as
Wilson's biographer observes, 'would have excited but a slight and
temporary notice, had the bulk of the articles not displayed a rare
combination of much higher qualities;' and she goes on to say that
whatever subjects were discussed were handled with a masterly vigour and
freshness, and developed with a fulness of knowledge and variety of
talent that could not fail to command respect even from the least
approving critic. Still it is undeniable that for many months to come
the series of onslaughts was kept up almost without intermission, whilst
even persons locally as highly and as justly respected as Chalmers and
Playfair were made to feel the sting of the lash. Consisting as it did
of a recrudescence of the discountenanced literary methods of the age of
Smollett, all this is regrettable enough, and of much of it there can be
little doubt that 'The Leopard'--to give Wilson the name which he bore
in the magazine--was art and part. His exact share in productions which
were not merely anonymous but of which mystification was an essential
feature is impossible to trace; but we are glad at least to have the
assurance of his daughter that, amid all the violence of language and
extravagance of censure which disfigured his early contributions to the
magazine, she has been unable to bring home to his hand 'any instance of
unmanly attack, or one shade of real malignity.' Our knowledge of the
man's character makes us ready enough to believe that he did not mean to
give pain; whilst there is always this excuse--whatever it may be
worth--for Maga's early indiscretions: that they were the work of
inexperienced men, carried away by the exuberance of their spirits, and
genuinely--if indefensibly--ignorant of the laws of literary good
manners, or, as one of themselves has expressed it, of the 'structure
and practice of literature' as it existed at that day in Britain. With
which reflection, an unthankful subject may be dismissed. For ourselves
the real significance of the magazine in its early days consists, not in
stories of challenges sent or damages paid, but in the fact that it
afforded to John Wilson a first opportunity of giving full and free play
to his talents. The characteristic of his genius was not so much
_fineness_ as abundance, and thus we may believe that his gain from the
new stimulus to constant and rapid production more than balanced his
loss from absence of opportunities of polishing his work. Certainly from
the time of his active and regular employment, he began to throw off
those tendencies to affectation and philandering which had characterised
his early efforts in the 'Lake' school, and though he never quite lost
the habit of as the French say 'caressing his phrase,' he became from
henceforth more virile, more himself.
Standing now to all appearance committed to literature as his vocation,
in the year 1819 he left his mother's hospitable roof, and removed with
his wife and family to a small house of his own, situated in Ann Street,
on the outskirts of the town, where, besides having Watson Gordon, the
portrait-painter, for his immediate neighbour, he enjoyed the society of
Raeburn and Allan among artists, and of Lockhart, Galt, Hogg, and the
Hamiltons among literary men.
In April of the year following, by the death of Dr Thomas Brown, the
Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh became vacant.
Wilson thereupon resolved to present himself as a candidate for it, as
did Sir William Hamilton, and though the names of other aspirants are
mentioned, from the first the real contest lay between these two. They
had both been brilliant students at Oxford, but in almost every other
respect their qualifications for the coveted post were about as
different as could be; for since his college days Hamilton had devoted
himself exclusively to the study of philosophy, and had now substantial
results of his labours to exhibit, whilst Wilson--though we are
expressly told that the study in question had always had a powerful
attraction for him--was yet known to the world only as a daring and
brilliant litterateur, and a genial and somewhat Bohemian personality.
There is no need to say with which of the two, in such a competition,
the advantage at first sight seemed to lie. But it is necessary to
explain that the election was fought on political grounds, that Hamilton
was a Whig, and that the electing body was the Town Council of
Edinburgh. It is gratifying to be able to record that the candidates
themselves remained upon friendly terms. But never had party-feeling
been known to run so high as between their respective adherents,--so
that, before the election was over, Wilson had been called on to face
charges of being a 'reveller,' which he probably was, a blasphemer,
which we cannot think him ever to have been, and a bad husband and
father, which he certainly was not. In the end he secured a majority of
twelve out of thirty votes; whilst an attempt to set aside his election,
which was made at a subsequent meeting of the Council, ignominiously
collapsed.
Keenly alive to the responsibilities of a position which he cannot long
have looked forward to occupying, the newly-made Professor at once
devoted himself to preparation for the discharge of his duties. Whilst
thus engaged, his application was intense,--as well it might be, for it
was stipulated that he was to deliver some hundred-and-fifty lectures
during the forthcoming Session, and he had but four months in which to
prepare them. Native genius, pluck and perseverance, however, carried
him triumphantly over every obstacle. His first lecture has thus been
described by one who was present on the occasion.[2]
'There was a furious bitterness of feeling against him among the
classes of which probably most of his pupils would consist, and
although I had no prospect of being among them, I went to his first
lecture prepared to join in a cabal, which I understood was formed
to put him down. The lecture-room was crowded to the ceiling. Such a
collection of hard-browed, scowling Scotsmen, muttering over their
knobsticks, I never saw. The Professor entered with a bold step,
amid profound silence. Everyone expected some deprecatory or
propitiatory introduction of himself, and his subject, upon which
the mass was to decide against him, reason or no reason; but he
began in a voice of thunder right into the _matter_ of his lecture,
kept up unflinchingly and unhesitatingly, without a pause, a flow of
rhetoric such as Dugald Stewart or Thomas Brown, his predecessors,
never delivered in the same place. Not a word, not a murmur escaped
his captivated, I ought to say his conquered, audience, and at the
end they gave him a right-down unanimous burst of applause. Those
who came to scoff remained to praise.'
And from henceforth the Professor's enemies were silenced.
It can scarcely fail to strike the reader that into Wilson's election to
the professorship there had entered not a little of what was casual, or
the result of impulse; still his lucky star must have ruled at the
moment, for the sequel far more than justified his rashness. As poet he
had been mediocre, and as lawyer 'out of his element,' but there exists
abundant testimony to prove that as lecturer and instructor of youth he
was the right man in the right place. As was the way of his spirited and
generous nature, he threw himself heart and soul into his new work; but
though we are assured that his attainments in that department left
nothing to be desired, it was far less to these than to character and
personality that he owed the success which he undoubtedly won. Certainly
philosophers more profound, and probably men of greater general
attainments have occupied his Chair, but assuredly never one who united
his happy powers of breathing life into the instruction which he
imparted and inspiring his scholars with a keen and quickening
enthusiasm for himself. And that he succeeded so well in this was
perhaps due to the fact that, in addition to his wide and general
humanity, there was about him a certain boyishness, which, when joined
with the dignity and character of manhood, seldom fails in its appeal to
youth.
From among the multitude of pupils who cherished grateful and happy
recollections of his class, his biographer has presented us with the
testimony of three. The first of these is Hill Burton, the historian of
Scotland, who warmly acknowledges his kindness, and whose future
eminence the Professor would seem to have divined; for, though at all
times accessible to his pupils and conscientious in the discharge of his
duties, he appears to have made a friend of Burton almost at the first
meeting. Another of his students, Mr Alexander Taylor Innes, has left a
picture of North in his lecture-room, from which, though it belongs by
rights to a later date, I make no apology for quoting here.
'His appearance in his class-room,' says that gentleman, '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, and then, to the bewilderment of those who had never
heard him before, looked long and earnestly 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. As he spoke
the bright blue eye looked with a strange gaze into vacancy,
sometimes sparkling with a coming joke, sometimes darkening before a
rush of indignant eloquence; the tremulous upper lip curving with
every wave of thought or hint of passion, and the golden-grey hair
floating on the old man's mighty shoulders--if, indeed, that could
be called age which seemed but the immortality of a more majestic
youth. And occasionally, in the finer frenzy of his more imaginative
passages--as when he spoke of Alexander, clay-cold at Babylon, with
the world lying conquered around his tomb, or of the Highland hills,
that pour the rage of cataracts adown their riven cliffs, or even of
the human mind, with its "primeval granitic truths," the grand old
face flushed with the proud thought, and the eyes grew dim with
tears and the magnificent frame quivered with a universal emotion.'
Yet another pupil, the Reverend Dr William Smith, of North Leith, has
thus recorded his impressions:--
'Of Professor Wilson as a lecturer on Moral Philosophy, it is not
easy to convey any adequate idea to strangers,--to those who never
saw his grand and noble form excited into bold and passionate action
behind that strange, old-fashioned desk, nor heard his manly and
eloquent voice sounding forth its stirring utterances with all the
strange and fitful cadence of a music quite peculiar to itself. The
many-sidedness of the man, and the unconventional character of his
prelections, combine to make it exceedingly difficult to define the
nature and grounds of his wonderful power as a lecturer. I am
certain that if every student who ever attended his class were to
place on record his impressions of these, the impressions of each
student would be widely different, and yet they would not, taken
all together, exhaust the subject, or supply a complete
representation either of his matter or his manner.... The roll of
papers on which each lecture was written, which he carried into the
class-room firmly grasped in his hand, and suddenly unrolled and
spread out on the desk before him, commencing to read the same
moment, could not fail to attract the notice of any stranger in his
class-room. It was composed in large measure of portions of old
letters--the addresses and postage-marks on which could be easily
seen as he turned the leaf, yet it was equally evident that the
writing was neat, careful and distinct; and, except in a more than
usually dark and murk day, it was read with perfect ease and
fluency.'
And, in reference to a certain specific lecture, the same gentleman
adds, 'The whole soul of the man seemed infused into his subject, and to
be rushing forth with resistless force in the torrent of his
rapidly-rolling words. As he spoke, his whole frame quivered with
emotion. He evidently saw the scene he described, and such was the
sympathetic force of his strong poetic imagination, that he made us,
whether we would or not, see it too. Now dead silence held the class
captive. In the interval of his words you would have heard a pin fall.
Again, at some point, the applause could not be restrained, and was
vociferous.' The writer concludes by stating that he has heard some of
the greatest orators of the day, naming Lords Derby, Brougham,
Lyndhurst; Peel, O'Connell, Sheil, Follett, Chalmers, Caird, Guthrie,
M'Neile; and has heard them 'in their very best styles make some of
their most celebrated appearances; but for popular eloquence, for
resistless force, for the seeming inspiration that swayed the soul, and
the glowing sympathy that entranced the hearts of his entire audience,
that lecture by Professor Wilson far excelled the best of these I ever
listened to.'
This, within its proper limits, is the strongest praise. And, on the
other hand, we must guard against the supposition that these
lectures--highly-coloured and emotional as they undoubtedly
were--consisted solely, or even mainly, of oratorical, or conscious or
unconscious dramatic display. We are assured that this was by no means
the case; that the Professor scorned to sacrifice the serviceable to the
ornamental, never for a moment hesitating to grapple with the central
difficulties of his subject, or shirking the irksome duty of 'hammering'
at them during the greater part of a Session.
Increased financial resources now enabled him to resume occupation of
his beloved Elleray, where a new and larger dwelling-house, suitable to
the accommodation of a family, had by this time been built. There, many
of the intervals of his busy University life were spent in happy
domesticity, and there, in 1825, he was visited by Sir Walter Scott,
whom he feted with a brilliant regatta on Windermere. It is to these
years of professional duties varied by vacations in the country that his
novels and tales belong. They comprise three volumes, and, as their
characteristics are identical, may be considered side by side. They
consist uniformly of tales of pastoral or humble life, and the author
has recorded that his object in writing them was to speak of the
'elementary feelings of the human soul in isolation, under the light of
a veil of poetry.' The impression which they produce upon a reader of
the present day is that this programme has been but too systematically
adhered to. The stories themselves do not lack interest, and their
motives are at all times human; but they are deliberately localized in
some other world than ours, and if there thence ensues a certain
aesthetic gain, it is accompanied by a more than proportionate loss in
vraisemblance and in moral force. To speak more plainly, if the world of
Wilson's tales is a better world than ours, it yet remains an artificial
one, his stories develope in accordance with the rules of a preconceived
ideal, and a weakening of their interest is the result. For though many
a writer has seen life in a way of his own, Wilson seems to have
deliberately set himself to see it in a way belonging to somebody else.
In fact, throughout this series of little books, he aspires to appear in
the character of a prose Wordsworth; but he is a Wordsworth who has lost
the noble plainness of his original, and though his actual style is less
marred by floridness and redundancy here than elsewhere, still the vices
of prettiness, self-consciousness, artificiality, and sentiment suffice
to stamp his work as an imitation, decadent from the lofty source of its
inspiration.
Of the _Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life_, a volume of short tales
published in 1822, the not impartial author of the biography, writing in
the early sixties, remarks that it has acquired a popularity of the most
enduring kind--a statement which to-day one would hesitate to endorse.
She adds that the stories are 'poems in prose, in which, amid fanciful
scenes and characters, the struggles of humanity are depicted with
pathetic fidelity, and the noblest lessons of virtue and religion are
interwoven, in no imaginary harmony, with the homely realities of
Scottish peasant life.' And subject to the not inconsiderable abatements
noted above, this may no doubt be accepted.
_The Foresters_ (1825) is the history of the family of one Michael
Forester, who is exhibited in turn in his relation as a dutiful son, a
kind self-sacrificing brother, a loving and faithful husband, and a
wise affectionate father; whilst from time to time we are also enabled
to trace his beneficent influence in the affairs of other members of the
small community in which he lives. The tone of the book is peaceful and
soothing; it inculcates cheerfulness and resignation, and holds up for
our edification a picture of that contentment which springs from the
practice of virtue. A group of faultless creatures--for none but the
subordinate characters have any faults--pursue the tenor of their lives
amid fair scenes of nature, and, when sorrow or misfortune falls to
their lot, meet it with an inspiring fortitude. To scoff at such a book
were to supply proof of incompetence in criticism--of which the very
soul consists in sympathy with all that is sincere in spirit and not
inadequate in execution. Yet equally uncritical were it to fail to mark
how far short this story falls of the exquisite spontaneity of such work
as Goldsmith's immortal essay in the same style.
Possibly, however, of the three volumes, the _Trials of Margaret
Lyndsay_ (1823) is that which most forcibly conveys the lessons common
to all--the teaching of Wordsworth, that is to say, as made plain by a
sympathetic disciple. It is the story of a beautiful and virtuous
maiden, the daughter of a printer who, having become imbued with the
doctrines of Tom Paine, falls into evil courses and is imprisoned on a
charge of sedition. His family--consisting of Margaret, her ailing
mother, aged grandmother, and two sisters, one of whom is mentally
afflicted and the other blind--are in consequence reduced to great
poverty, which, supported by their piety, they endure without complaint.
Removing from their country home to a dark and narrow street in
Edinburgh, they open a small school, and for a time with fair success
make head against their troubles. But misfortune follows relentlessly
upon their traces. Lyndsay dies in disgrace, Margaret's sailor
sweetheart perishes by drowning, and one after the other she sees the
members of the little group which surrounds her removed by death. Still
she does not lose heart. Left alone in the world, she is received into
the house of a benevolent young lady, and, there, is happy enough, until
the undesired attentions of the young lady's brother compel her to seek
another home. Journeying alone and on foot, she seeks a refuge with a
distant and estranged relation; by whom she is coldly received, but upon
whose withered heart her gentle influence in time works the most happy
change. And now, at length, it seems that her hardly-won happiness is to
be crowned by marriage to the man of her choice. But what has seemed her
good fortune turns out to be in reality the worst of all her woes; for
the brave but dissolute soldier who has won her heart is discovered to
possess a wife already. Thus from trial to trial do we follow her, until
at last she is left in possession of a very modest share of felicity,
whilst from her story we learn the lesson of the duties of courage and
cheerfulness, the consolations of virtue, and the healing power of
nature.
But of course it is not to the department of fiction that Wilson's most
conspicuous literary achievements belong. When once he had settled down
into the swing of his professorial duties, his connexion with
Blackwood's Magazine was resumed, and his biographer truly remarks that
probably no periodical was ever more indebted to one individual than was
'Maga' to Christopher North. And, in passing, it may be stated that
this name, which had at first been assumed by various of the
contributors, was soon exclusively associated with himself. As to the
number, variety, and extent of his contributions, Mrs Gordon has
furnished some curious information. During many years these were never
fewer than on an average two to each number; whilst on more than one
occasion he produced, within the month, almost the entire contents of an
issue. In the year 1830, he contributed in the month of January two
articles; in February four; three in March; one each in April and May;
four in June; three in July; seven (or 116 pages) in August; one in
September; two in October; and one each in November and December--being
thirty articles, or one thousand two hundred columns in the year.
(Against this, however, there must be set off his extremely liberal
quotations from books under review.) The subjects dealt with in the
month of August were the following:--'The Great Moray Floods'; 'The Lay
of the Desert'; 'The Wild Garland, and Sacred Melodies'; 'Wild Fowl
Shooting'; 'Colman's Random Records'; 'Clark on Climate'; 'Noctes, No.
51.' In the year following, by the month of September he had already
contributed twenty articles, five of which were in the August number.
And, finally, in 1833, he wrote no fewer than fifty-four articles, or
upwards of two thousand four hundred closely-printed columns, on
politics, and general literature! Nor, when the extraordinary influence
and popularity enjoyed by Blackwood's Magazine at that period, and the
fact that these were mainly due to Christopher North are borne in mind,
will these labours run any risk of being confounded with those of the
ordinary literary hack. At the same time it may be necessary to caution
the reader against the oft-repeated error that Wilson was at any time
editor of the Magazine.
Of his habits of composition at this the most brilliant and prolific
period of his career, his daughter furnishes the following account, from
which it will be seen that his literary procedure was ordered with
complete disregard to comfort. He was now living in a house which he had
built for himself in Gloucester Place, which was to be his home for the
remainder of his life.
'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 Blackwood, his whole strength
was put forth, and it may be said he struck into life what he had to
do at a blow. He at these times began to write immediately after
breakfast, that meal being despatched with a swiftness commensurate
with the necessity of the case before him. He then shut himself into
his study, 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, or some paper of equal
brilliancy and interest completed. The idea of breaking his labour
by taking a constitutional walk never entered his thoughts for a
moment. Whatever he had to write, even though a day or two were to
keep him close at work, he never interrupted his pen, saving to take
his night's rest, and a late dinner served to him in his study. The
hour for that meal was on these occasions nine o'clock; his dinner
then consisted invariably of a boiled fowl, potatoes, and a glass of
water--he allowed himself no wine. After dinner he resumed his pen
till midnight, when he retired to bed, not unfrequently to be
disturbed by an early printer's boy.'
His rapidly turned-out 'copy' would soon cover the table at which he
wrote, after which the floor about his feet would be strewn with pages
of his MS. 'thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.' Nor did he, even
in the depth of winter, indulge in a fire in his study, or in any other
illumination than that afforded by a tallow candle set in a kitchen
candlestick.