Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Volume 3/Wilson, John
WILSON, John, professor of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine, and for many years the principal contributor to that periodical, was born at Paisley on the 18th of May, 1785. The house in which he was born, called Prior's Croft, was taken down soon after his birth, when the family removed to a newer tenement on the same property, which was six or eight acres in extent, and laid out in a garden and pleasure grounds. He was the eldest son of John Wilson, a prosperous manufacturer. His mother, Margaret Sym, was closely related to the Dunlops of Garnkirk, an ancient family, said to be descended by the female side from the great marquis of Montrose. Young John showed a very precocious predilection for three things which in later life occupied much of his attention—oratory, angling, and ethics. There is a family tradition that when he was about four years of age he used to harangue the assembled nursery, ex cathedra, on the duties which fishes owed to their offspring, having in his eye one fish in particular by which, to his certain knowledge, the parental relation was shamefully neglected. When he was six or seven years old, he was transferred from Paisley to the manse of the Rev. Dr. George M'Latchie, minister of the neighbouring parish of the Mearns. A presbyterian manse of the olden time, in a rural district, was usually as pleasant and improving a home as a young boy could be placed in. How happily the days at the Mearns went by—what sports and adventures Wilson and his companions engaged in—are glowingly recorded by himself in "Christopher in his Sporting-Jacket," "Our Parish," and "May Day."—(See Recreations of Christopher North.) His father died in 1797; and standing as chief mourner beside his grave, he was so overcome by his emotion that he swooned away as the rattling clods descended on the coffin-lid. In the same year he went to Glasgow college, where he was boarded in the house of Dr. Jardine, the kindly and efficient professor of logic. He came to college well grounded in Greek and Latin, and was soon fired with the ambition of intellectual distinction. He studied hard, his leanings being towards poetry; but that the graver pursuits of science were not neglected is proved by the fact that he carried off the first prize in the logic class, an honour then considered the highest in the whole curriculum, as confirming the promise of a student. Through Dr. Young, the genial and enthusiastic professor of Greek, he improved his acquaintance of Homer, and through Homer he obtained a sympathetic insight into the characters of Achilles and the other heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey, and thus laid the foundation of those eloquent articles on "Homer and his Translators," which are among the most brilliant of his writings. Softer realities mingled with his heroic dreams; for while still a boy at Glasgow college he conceived a passionate attachment to a lady, in every way, it is believed, worthy of his love, but unfortunately a good many years older than himself. His mother, looking to this disparity, was naturally averse to their union. His own good sense, too, may have helped him to overcome his passion; but his letters show that the struggle was severe, and that for a time the event threw over him a blight, amounting almost to despair. Another interesting incident which marked his career at Glasgow was his correspondence with Wordsworth. The Lyrical Ballads were published in 1798-1800. While the public stood coldly aloof, while his own companions scoffed, and while the potentates of criticism sneered, Wilson, young as he was, had the sagacity to recognize in Wordsworth a great poetical regenerator who, by abandoning all the traditional sentiments and conventionalities of poetry, and by again getting close to nature and reality, was reclothing the earth with a fairer beauty than she had ever worn, and opening up in the human heart fresh springs of tenderness, of grandeur, and of power. Wilson's reverence for the genius of Wordsworth clung to him throughout life, and cannot be better expressed than it was in his own graphic words when, conversing in his latter days about the great lake poet, he said—"I fell down on my knees to him, sir, when I was a boy, and I have never risen since." His admiration, however, was far from being indiscriminate. In fact in the letter referred to (of date 1802), in which he modestly introduces himself to Wordsworth's notice, he denounces the Idiot Boy (one of Wordsworth's favourite compositions), as a subject unfit for poetry and as indeed altogether repulsive. Strong from the study of Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments, he declares that "the excessive fondness of the mother disgusts us, and prevents us from sympathizing with her. We are unable to enter into her feelings; we cannot conceive ourselves actuated by the same feelings, and consequently take little or no interest in her situation." The whole letter, indeed, was written in no kneeling, but in a very erect, although respectful attitude. Wordsworth's reply, if not satisfactory as a defence of the Idiot Boy, was kind, and must have been highly gratifying to his youthful correspondent.— (Memoirs of W. Wordsworth, by C. Wordsworth, D.D., vol. i. p. 192.)
In 1803 Wilson proceeded to Oxford. He entered Magdalen college as a gentleman commoner. Here his intellectual renown was equalled by his fame as an athlete. Few could stand up to him as a boxer, or keep pace with him as a runner, and none could come near him as a leaper. Although habitually temperate, he could imbibe, like Socrates, any quantity of wine which the convivial exigencies of the time required, without being affected by it. He read deeply in Plato and Aristotle—Shakspeare and Milton were his continual study. He carried off the Newdigate prize for English poetry. His examination for his degree (1807) was said by those who heard it to have been "the most illustrious within the memory of man." Sotheby, who was present, declared that it was worth coming from London to hear him translate a Greek chorus. And the Rev. R. Dixon, one of the examiners, wrote—"I can never forget the very splendid examination which you passed in this university, an examination which afforded the strongest proofs of very great application and genius and scholarship, and which produced such an impression on the minds of the examiners as to call forth (a distinction very rarely conferred) the public expression of our approbation and thanks." Soon after leaving Oxford Wilson purchased the small estate of Elleray on the banks of the Windermere, attracted thither partly by the beauty of the scenery—for probably no other house in England commands a view of such surpassing loveliness and majesty—and partly by the desire to enjoy the society of Wordsworth, who resided in the neighbourhood. Here he married in 1811 Miss Jane Penny, the daughter of a wealthy Liverpool merchant, a lady adorned with every feminine grace, and thoroughly able to appreciate the genius of her husband. About this time his first poem, "The Isle of Palms," was written; it was published in 1812. This poem, rich in melody and radiant with the softest hues of the imagination, floats before the fancy like a dream. There may be but little substance at the back of its aerial imagery; but it is just such a vision as a young poet might be expected to see, to whom domestic bliss had made the earth a paradise, and who wished, for a time at least, to hold his soul aloof from all the harsh realities of life, and all the sterner passions of his kind. Yet these soft dreams frequently alternated with pastimes of a more active and exciting character. Wilson and two or three wild companions, well mounted, and with spears in rest—after dislodging the bishop of Llandaff's bull, a fine animal and a fierce, from his quiet pastures at Calgarth—might be seen hunting him, not without danger to man and horse, through a whole summer's night across half the county of Westmoreland. To sail on the Windermere during midnight storms was also one of his favourite recreations. This varied life of adventurous activity and domestic quietude, lasted from 1811 to 1815. It was then brought somewhat abruptly and unpleasantly to a close.
When Wilson's father died in 1797, besides providing for his widow he left a clear estate of fifty or sixty thousand pounds, the bulk of which was settled on his eldest son John. But through the mismanagement or misfortunes of the trustee, the money gradually disappeared. So long as Wilson got what he wanted—and he had been liberally though not extravagantly supplied—he made no inquiry as to how his funds were invested. He placed implicit confidence in the trustee, who was his own near relation; and when the truth broke upon him at last, and he found that his whole fortune was lost, he uttered not a murmur, but rather contributed what he could to support the declining years of the man through whose default he had been ruined. This happened in 1815. It then became necessary that he should choose a profession, and accordingly he passed at the Scottish bar, and fixed his residence in Edinburgh.
Briefs, as might have been expected, were few and far between, and at length to his great relief they altogether ceased. Literature seemed to be a surer card. In 1816 he published the "City of the Plague," a poem which contains some sublime passages, and has more substance and vigour than his earlier effusion. But the gem of the volume is "The Address to a Wild Deer:" it presents some fine pictures of Highland scenery—
" What lonely magnificence stretches around,
Each sight how sublime, and how awful each sound!
All hushed and serene as a region of dreams,
The mountains repose 'mid the roar of the streams,
Their glens of black umbrage by cataracts riven.
But calm their blue tops in the beauty of heaven."
But his poetry did not satisfy him, for it failed to reach the heart of the public, and accordingly he determined to try another species of literature, in respect to which his friend Dr. Blair writes thus:—"I think that Wilson, even when at Oxford, had a desire, a fancy—more than a distinct project—working in his mind towards some sort of magazine with which he wanted to associate me. I could make nothing of it, nor understand his desire; the kind of publication then seeming to me frivolous and ephemeral. But I think that the attraction towards this form of literature was begotten in him of the vehement yearning towards immediate and intimate communication of himself to his age, for which this kind of publication offered the shortest and straightest road." It was undoubtedly "this vehement yearning towards immediate and intimate communication of himself to his age" which led him to direct his energies into the channel of periodical writing, and which, after sundry pleasant overtures from Jeffrey, and the composition of one eloquent article on Childe Harold for the Edinburgh Review induced him finally to cement a perpetual treaty with Mr. Blackwood, and to act, for months and years, as the animating soul of his celebrated magazine. It was not, however, by a jump, or even rapidly, that Wilson attained to the full command of his powers, or the magazine to a lucrative circulation. It was established in 1817; but it was not until 1825 that that brilliant succession of articles from Wilson's pen began to appear, which brought fame to him and a shoal of subscribers to the magazine. For the ten following years his industry never flagged. About 1836 it became somewhat intermittent, although until near the close of his life it was still powerfully exerted. "Dies Boreales" were the last contributions from his pen to Blackwood's Magazine.
In 1820 the chair of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh became vacant through the death of Dr. Thomas Brown. Wilson offered himself as a candidate for the appointment, which, after a keen contest, a war in fact of political parties, he gained against a formidable and highly-qualified rival, the late Sir William Hamilton. For thirty years he discharged the duties of the chair with the most conscientious assiduity and the most triumphant success. He had to lecture five days in the week, and consequently the labours of his first session were very arduous, for he had but a small stock on hand to begin with. His friend Dr. Blair writes—"I heard his inaugural lecture; it was very eloquent, and was delivered with courage (many of his fiercest political enemies were present), impressively, and with great success. But the winter was an agony of preparing every day for the next day. The resolute constancy with which he maintained his attendance on his class—having scarcely failed an hour—strikes me as a singular fact in him to whom submission to regularity seemed, all his life through, irksome in the extreme. I have seen him go to the class dissatisfied with all his preparations, and in utter despair as to what he was to say, but never for an instant flinching from the call to go. He had no need to fear, for he had in himself store and creative power sufficient to meet any emergency. He seemed to feel himself bound by a necessity and a responsibility which admitted no questioning. The career of thought which his chair demanded was that which his own spirit had all along pointed to; the speculations of which the field is the mind itself of man, and which deal with all his dearest and highest interests, were subjects for Wilson irresistibly attractive by their own nature, and which he never approached without a deep feeling of their solemn and measureless import."
Wilson's literary and professorial avocations now detained him for the most part in Edinburgh, yet during the summer months he occasionally escaped to Elleray with his family. One such visit took place in 1825, when, as admiral of the regatta on Windermere, he headed in his magnificent ten-oared barge —a relic of his former extensive flotilla—a radiant procession of inferior craft, carrying with him a brilliant party, of which Mr. Canning, Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, and Mr. Lockhart were the chief ornaments. In the summer of 1832 he enjoyed a long cruise with the experimental squadron on board H.M.S. the Vernon, under Captain Sir F. Collier. His wife died in 1837. Years afterwards, in his essay on Burns, he expressed his sense of this bereavement in these touching words:—"Call not the life of Burns unhappy. . . . Burns went to his own grave without having been commanded to look down into another's, where all was buried." The pathos of these words is irresistible when we know the contrast—his own case, namely—to which they point. In 1844 he delivered a very eloquent oration at the Burns festival, which was celebrated in the vicinity of Ayr on the sixth of August, and at which he officiated as croupier, while the late earl of Eglinton occupied the chair. On such occasions his strokes of oratory were often very remarkable, sometimes as remarkable for what he did not say as for what he did. One instance, or what appeared to the present writer to be such, may be mentioned. Presiding at a Waterloo banquet, he was of course under the necessity of saying something in regard to the duke's great battle. Yet with the instinct of genius he felt that this was a theme which even his powers would attempt in vain to describe; so that after expatiating on the state of Europe previous to the decisive crisis, he despatched the battle of the 18th June in these few but effective words:—"The morning rose in clouds and tempest—and the sun set on the regenerated liberties of Europe, and the immortal fame of the victor of Waterloo." Apropos of Waterloo, another anecdote may be mentioned illustrating the readiness of his wit. "Did not," said some one, repeating the hackneyed calumny about Wellington being unprepared, "did not Bonaparte surprise the duke at Waterloo?" "No," answered the professor, "but the duke astonished him."
Professor Wilson's health began to give way in 1851, and it became obvious that his academical chair must be resigned. Through the kindness of the Lord-advocate Moncrieff, and the liberality of the whig government under Earl Russell, a pension of £300 a year was settled on him by her majesty. He continued slowly but perceptibly to decline, suffering, however, no great pain; and although his spirits were frequently dejected, his faculties were never overthrown. He expired placidly in his house, Gloucester Place, at midnight, on 2nd April, 1854. The works of Professor Wilson, collected principally from Blackwood's Magazine, and edited by his son-in-law, Professor Ferrier, have been published in twelve volumes by the Messrs. Blackwood. They contain "Noctes Ambrosianæ," 4 vols.; "Essays, Critical and Imaginative," 4 vols.; "Recreations of Christopher North," 2 vols.; "Tales," 1 vol.; "Poems," 1 vol. His life in two volumes, entitled Christopher North, a memoir of John Wilson, has been written by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon.—J. F. F.