native Scotish; and hence it might sometimes be little relished by an Englishman, when it afforded the most exquisite pleasure to his Scotish friends. He was a Scotsman of that genuine old class, which seems now to be nearly extinct; who blended with their characteristic plainness of speech and manners, the taste of the scholar, and the information of the man of the world; a combination rendered only more interesting by the veil of apparent rusticity by which it was concealed. "He was," says Professor Richardson of Glasgow, "a worthy character, of unaffected plainness, but not vulgarity of manners."
Mr. Wilson must be regarded as a man of self-instructed genius. He did not receive a regular education, but he became an excellent classical scholar, in spite of the impediments of fortune, and the disadvantages of situation. He was familiarly acquainted with the Greek, Latin, and French authors; he read German and Italian with facility, and was not unacquainted with Hebrew. The death of almost all his intimate friends has destroyed the sources from which a particular account of his studies and literary habits might have been derived; while the only survivor of his nine children was precluded, by her sex and youth, from acquiring a correct notion of her father's literary pursuits in the more austere departments of learning or science. The poetical wri-
