more warmth and nature than those executed by the generality of his contemporaries. He etched with great ability, and is said to have produced a landscape in imitation of Rembrandt's ‘Companion to the Coach’ which deceived Thomas Hudson and several other connoisseurs. Early in 1766, to please Rockingham, who had made him some promises of patronage, he etched the caricature entitled the ‘Tomb-Stone’ on the occasion of the death of the Duke of Cumberland, in which he represented Bute, George Grenville, and Bedford dancing ‘the Haze’ on Cumberland's tomb, and held several other members of their party up to ridicule. The print met with much applause, and Edmund Burke and Grey Cooper besought him for another. The result was the famous caricature etched in 1766 at the time of the repeal of the American Stamp Act, in ridicule of the same political party, called ‘The Repeal; or, the Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp.’ It was sold at a shilling, and brought him 100l. in four days. On the fifth day it was pirated, and two inferior versions produced at sixpence. Copies of several versions of these prints are in the British Museum (Cat. of Satirical Prints, iv. 356–7, 368–73).
Wilson from the hardships of his early days acquired habits of parsimony. He was also fond of speculation, and in 1766 was declared a defaulter on the Stock Exchange. Some years before his death he found himself compelled to resign the post of painter to the board of ordnance on refusing to allow a dependent of the Duke of Richmond to share his salary. After these reverses he was accustomed to bewail his poverty, but to the surprise of his friends he left a good fortune at his death. He died at 56 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, on 6 June 1788, and was buried in St. George the Martyr's burying-ground. He was a member of several foreign learned societies, among them of the Instituto delle Scienze ed Arti Liberali at Bologna, of which he was the first English member. His portrait, painted by himself, in the possession of Earl Spencer. He made more than one engraving from it. One of them is prefixed to the edition of his ‘Treatise on Electricity’ which appeared in 1752. About 1771 he married Miss Hetherington, whom he devotedly admired, and whose excellences he characteristically summed up in the statement that ‘he saved more money from the time he first knew her than he had ever done in the same space of time.’ By her he had seven children. His third son, General Sir Robert Thomas Wilson, is separately noticed.
Besides the works already mentioned, Wilson was the author of: 1. ‘A Letter to Mr. Æpinus,’ on the electricity of the Tourmalin, London, 1764, 4to. 2. ‘A Letter to the Marquess of Rockingham, with some Observations on the Effects of Lightning,’ London, 1765, 4to. 3. ‘Observations upon Lightning and the Method of securing Buildings from its Effects,’ London, 1773, 4to. 4. ‘Further Observations upon Lightning,’ London, 1774, 4to. 5. ‘A Series of Experiments relating to Phosphori,’ London, 1775, 4to; 2nd edit. 1776, 4to. This work was communicated to several foreign learned bodies, and was the subject of a memoir by Leonhard Euler, read at the Academia Scientiarum Imperialis at St. Petersburg (Hagen, Index Operum L. Euler, 1896, p. 48), and of a ‘Letter’ from Giovanni Battista Beccaria of Bologna, to both of which Wilson replied. 6. ‘An Account of Experiments made at the Pantheon on the Nature and Use of Conductors,’ London, 1778, 4to; new edit. 1788, 4to. 7. ‘A Short View of Electricity,’ London, 1780, 4to. Wilson also published fifteen communications on electricity in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ between 1753 and 1769. A manuscript volume of letters to Wilson from leading men of science and others, including John Smeaton [q. v.], William Mason (1724–1797) [q. v.], the poet, the Abbé Guillaume Mazéas, Hugh Hamilton (1729–1805) [q. v.], and Tobern Bergman, professor of chemistry at Upsala, is preserved in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 30094), as well as a letter to Hogarth (Addit. MS. 27995, f. 14). Wilson left a manuscript autobiography, which he had carried down to 1783, but he strictly enjoined that it should not be published. This injunction was disobeyed in the spirit by his son-in-law, Herbert Randolph, who gave an abridgment in ‘The Life of Sir Robert Wilson,’ 1862.
[Life of Sir Robert Wilson, 1862; Thoresby's Ducatus Leod, ed. Whitaker, 1816, pp. 2–3; Smith's Cat. of Mezzotinto Portraits; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists, 1878; Gent. Mag. 1788 i. 564, ii. 656, 1791 ii. 819; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. i. 468, ii. 239, 6th ser. xii. 407, 433; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Thomson's Hist. of the Royal Soc., App. p. xlvi; Edwards's Anecdotes of Painters, 1808, pp. 145–50; Athenæum, 1863, i. 150; Wheatley and Cunningham's London Past and Present, iii. 193.]
WILSON, BERNARD or BARNARD (1689–1772), divine and author, born in 1689, was the son of Barnard Wilson, a mercer of Newark-on-Trent. His mother was descended from Sir William Sutton, bart., of Averham, Nottinghamshire (B. Wilson, Vindication). The father failed in
