PROFESSOR WILSON.
ANOTHER—we might almost say the last—of the celebrities of Edinburgh has been gathered to his fathers. John Wilson is a
name that has been spoken of with much exaggeration both by friends and opponents—foes we believe he had none. The former have eulogized his genius in language borrowed from the some- what inflated style in which his sense of the humorous led him fre- quently to disport ; and both have been too much accustomed to attribute to John Wilson all the peculiarities of " Christopher North,"—an imaginary being, compounded of the author's personal propensities, playfully exaggerated, and traits derived from some older Edinburgh humorists. Yet was John Wilson, after every allowance is made, one of those despisers of mere conventionalism, and endowed with one of those impetuous temperaments, which often give occasion to less excitable members of society to wonder at them, in a mood curiously blended of liking and disapprobation. His earlier contributions to Blackwood were denounced by the Edinburgh Whigs with all the acerbity natural to an intelligent, well-informed, decorous, and rather priggish coterie, who for the first time encountered a presumptuous young man who laughed at them, in a town of which they had long been the oracles. Even the canny Tories, of whom Sir Walter Scott may be taken as an ex- emplar, while they enjoyed the waspish mortification of their ad- versaries, were most decorously careful to eschew identifying themselves with the conventionality-defying humorist. So, what with the malicious gossip of one party, and the selfish prudery of the other, a most exaggerated notion of Wilson's "eccentricities" was allowed to prevail, of which the public has never since been entirely disabused. The truth is, that a singularly vigorous and healthy physique, animated by an impulsive and restless spirit, drew him on in youth to undertake feats—generally displays of athletic strength—out of the ordinary course ; and the alternations of indolence, so often remarked in temperaments like his, led him m more advanced life to indulge in an unusual disregard of external appearances ; and upon those slight grounds the most adventurous tales of his eccentricity were circulated : but even at the most extravagant period of his youth, John Wilson was always restrained by a high and pure sense of morality. The drinking feats attributed to him are either gross inventions, or literal aoceptations of the humorous caricatures of the "lstoctes Ambrosiante": they who were intimate with Wilson knew that he nbither required nor used to excess the stimulus of stroag drink. He enjoyed the most extravagant hilarity of the social board, but could work himself up to the highest pitch by the sheer effort of talk- ing. His literary genius was so entirely akin to his physical tempera- ment, as to appear simply an emanation from it. Looking at his
productions with the cool critical eye with which one is accustomed- to examine the works of a past time, we cannot but pereeive that they are characterized by a want of condensation—by an absence of exact, subtile, or deep analytical or critical power—that their style is sometimes inflated, and verging on the tawdry ; and yet, with all these defects, they are informed with a vitality which en- titles them to be numbered in the class of works which men will not willingly let die. There is a bewitching combination of vague, dreamy wildness, pathos, and ethereal fancy, in his "Isle of Palms" and "Unimore "; while in his "City of the Plague" there is an irregular splendour and vigour that sometimes reminds one of the old English dramatists. His prose writings are the out- pourings of an improvvisatore ; unequal, but fascinating, full of Rower and variety—ranging from pictures of ideal beauty to de- limit humour, now throwing out suggestions pregnant with mate- tennis for thought, and again dashing off graphic descriptions that place their subjects visibly before the eye. Wilson, however, is to be viewed not only as an author, but as a politician, as a teacher of youth, and in his social relations. His political position was in a manner accidental, and may be lightly passed over. His genius reflected a light on the party to which he had attached himself, and he thus came to be put forward as its mouthpiece on public occasions, without possessing—or caring to acquire—much weight in its private councils. As Professor of Moral Philosophy, he possessed a rare power of winning the affec- tions and confidence of his pupils, and instigating them by a cer- tain contagion of eloquence to self-exertion. Properly speaking, he founded no school; for his discursive turn of mind was un- favourable to the maturing of systematic, precise opinions: but he set his hearers to think, and inspired them with ambition to dis- tinguish themselves as thinkers, and not a few able and successful inquirers were thus launched upon their philosophical career. He also imparted a new character to the Moral Philosophy chair of Edinburgh. Stewart and Brown had each confined his instruc- tions almost exclusively to intellectual analysis—had made his class as it were a double of the Logic class : the genial and imagi- native Wilson naturally applied himself more to the analysis of the fancy and the passions, and the illustration of their influ- ence on the will—the most essential branch of ethical inquiry. But it was in his own family, and among the wide and varied circle of friends and acquaintances he loved to bring around him, that Wilson was seen in all the most engaging features of his character. His domestic affections were intense : we believe he never entirely recovered from the blow inflicted by the death of Mrs. Wilson,—and if ever there was a woman to be sorrowed for throughout a widowed life, it was she ; so opposite to the dazzling impetuous spirit of her mate, in the beautiful gentle- ness and equanimity of her temper, yet adapting herself so en- tirely to his tastes, and repaid by such a deep and lasting affec- tion. As for friends and others not belonging to his own family circle, there perhaps never was a man gifted with such an universality of sympathy with all that is intellectual. He had points in common with all—with the elegant fastidiousness of Lockhart, the broad humour and inspired idiotcy of the Ettrick Shepherd, the polished coterieism of Moore, the masculine benevo- lence of Chalmers, the disputatious logic of De Quincey, the playful humour of Lamb, the enjoue and often felicitous criticism of Hunt, and the honest aspirations of less gifted individuals. In private he knew no antipathies—no sectarian distinctions : art- ist or litterateur, politician or mere man of the world, Whig, Tory, or Radical—all were welcome who could talk well; or listen intelligently, and were good men and true. He gave full vent to his love of conversational discussion, alternately jubilant in expression of common tastes, and impetuous in con- troversial debate—always suggestive, always impressing his hearers with the feeling that they were listening to a man of genius. Two seemingly discordant features were united in Wil- son; he was essentially provincial, racy of the sail in which he grew, and at the same time entirely superior to the besetting sin of literary men—the clique or coterie spirit. His influence over the minds of others was so intimately associated with his personal characteristics, that he can scarcely retain, by his writings, the same amount of admiration he enjoyed in his lifetime ; but many will own in their hearts that they have been roused and instructed by coming in contact with him, and many will long mourn the pre- mature decay and death of a friend as generous and warm-hearted as he was brilliant and fascinating.
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