Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/403

JOHN WILSON 387 " John Wilson had the eagle-beak, the lion-like mane of the Napiers. Mrs. Barrett Browning has said of Homer : — ' Homer, with the broad suspense Of thund'rous brows, and lips intense Of garrulous god-innocence ' — and whenever I read the lines, the mighty presence of Christopher North rises before me. . . . He was such a magnificent man ! No other literary man of our time has had such muscles and sinews, such an ample chest, such perfect lungs, such a stalwart frame, such an expansive and Jove-like brow. Had he lived in the classic ages, they would have made a god of him — not because he wrote good verses, or possessed the Divine gift of eloquence, but because his presence was god-like. There was a ruddy glow of health about him, too, such as the people of no nation have possessed as a nation since the culture of the body as an art of the national life has been neglected. The critic, therefore, who never saw Wilson, cannot rightly estimate the sources of his influence. . . . The picture of the old man eloquent in his college classroom — the old man who had breasted the flooded Awe, and cast his fly across the bleakest tarns of Lochaber — pacing restlessly to and fro like a lion in his confined cage; his grand face working with emotion while he turns to the window, through which are obscurely visible the spires and gables of the ancient city ; his dilated nostril yet ' full of youth ; ' his small grey eye [Mr. Innes terms it " bright blue ; " and probably both are correct] alight with visionary fire, as he discourses (somewhat discursively, it must