John Wilson, the eldest son, but fourth child of his parents, was born in Paisley on the 18th of May, 1785. His father, a gauzemanufacturer, had sprung from the people. He was the founder of his own fortunes, an honest man, and a good citizen. His mother claimed descent through the female line from the great Marquis of Montrose. To this circumstance Mrs. Gordon attributes the old lady's stately manner and peculiar personal beauty. We are really not competent to offer an opinion on so delicate a point, having encountered in our day a great deal of loveliness among the lower classes of society, as well as a great deal of the reverse among the higher. But be the causes what they might, the fact itself is undeniable that John Wilson's mother was a very striking person, and that she transmitted to her children, originally ten in number, no small share of her own remarkably Saxon dignity and beauty.

It

Modern Athens, and then a contributor to | had been so ill-advised as to impale itself upon 'Blackwood's Magazine.' his crooked pin. At eight, he knew every pool and linn in the stream which runs through the parish of Mearns, and could tell exactly where the best trout lay in the black loch over the brow of the hill which looks down upon the manse. This passion for angling, as it early showed itself, so it never left him to the end of his days. It recurs perpetually in those exquisite rhapsodies with which as Christopher North he long delighted the world; and among which there is none more touching than those which seem to have been inspired by the remembrance of his schoolboy days at Mearns, and of the companions with whom they were spent. We scarcely feel while we read that what is set before us may, after all, be but the poet's dream. Who can doubt that the boy lost on the hill-side saw and felt all that the author describes? We are close beside him when the mist becomes a shower, and the shower a flood, and the flood a storm, and the storm a tempest, and the tempest thunder and lightning, and the thunder and lightning heavenquake and earthquake, till the heart of poor wee Kit quakes and almost dies within him.' We see distinctly the small brown moorland bird, as dry as a toast, hopping out of his heather-hole, and cheerfully cheeping comfort;' and then 'with crest just a thought lowered by the rain, the greenbacked white-breasted peaseweep walks close by us in the mist, and-sight of wonder! that makes, even that quandary by the quagmire, our heart, beat with joy-lo! never seen before, and seldom since, three wee peaseweeps, not three days old, little bigger than shrewmice, all covered with blackish down interspersed with long white hair, running after their mother. But the large hazel eye of the she peaseweep, restless even in the most utter solitude, soon spies us glowering at her and her young ones through our tears, and not for a moment doubting-Heaven forgive her for the shrewd but cruel suspicion that we were Lord Eglintoun's gamekeeper, with a sudden shrill cry that thrills to the marrow in our cold backbone, flaps and flutters herself away into the mist; while the little black bits of down disappear, like devils, into the moss.'

The house in which Wilson was born retains the name of Wilson's Hall, and is shown with becoming pride to strangers by the good people of his native town. It is a dingy tenement in a dingy court or close, which runs off, after the usual manner of Scotch closes or courts, from the top of the High Street. was, however, abandoned by the family soon after the future poet came among them, and is now used as a Mechanics' Institute by the operatives of the place. Wilson's earliest associations were thus connected with a mansion on the outskirts of the town, which, besides being surrounded with extensive gardens, commands a fine view over a country undulating and rich, and here and there diversified with patches of woodland. His first lessons were learnt in a day school kept by Mr. James Peddie. By and bye he was removed to the manse of Mearns, of which Dr. M'Latchie was the incumbent; and finally, at twelve years of age, he became a student at Glasgow College, and a boarder in the house of one of the best men and ablest teachers of whom Scotland could then boast -the late Professor Jardine.

Wilson, as a child, was remarkable even in his father's house for the exceeding beauty of his form and face and the sprightliness of his movements. He learnt easily what he Was set to learn, and never forgot it. Athletic, too, and enterprising, he evinced a keen relish for sports, and especially for sports which tested both his strength and his couTage. At three years of age, we are told, he set off one day to fish in a burn three miles distant from his home, and returned brimfull of delight, bearing in his hands a minnow which

All this we not only feel, but see; indeed, if the man who wrote it had never written another line of the same sort, he would have taken his place among the foremost of the word-painters who have adorned the literature of England, or of any other country under the sun.

From his twelfth to his eighteenth year Wilson continued to reside, during term-time, in Professor Jardine's family, and was an

mer, small in

indefatigable student in his class. He attended likewise the prelections of John Young, the Professor of Greek, of whom, as well as of Professor Jardine, he often speaks in terms of the warmest commendation. Nor were these commendations undeserved, whether Young or Jardine chanced to be the subject of them. They were both men of extraordinary power as teachers. The forperson, with a keen black eye, seemed to catch the very spirit of each separate author as he spread out the page before him; and, himself laughing or weeping, he threw his pupils into fits, or brought tears from their eyes, according as he read aloud some passage from the Clouds' of Aristophanes or lingered over the parting scene between Hector and Andromache. Jardine, on the other hand, possessed, above all the teachers whom we have known or of whom we have read, the art of fostering and bringing into play the peculiar talent, whatever it might be, which belonged to his scholars individually. It is not surprising that such a man should have made an enduring place for himself in Wilson's affections; for many besides Wilson learned to look up to Jardine as their intellectual father, and still retain though their numbers are diminishing fasta deep sense of the benefits which they derived from that good man's instructions.

of his Margaret Lindsay. We have not the slightest doubt as to the falling in love. It was exactly what an imaginative lad of seventeen or eighteen would be apt to do; and we dare say that for many a day afterwards the image of Margaret Lindsay retained its place in his memory, when other calls upon his time and attention left him free to think about her. But to build up upon so slight a foundation a romantic story of despair, and of irregularities of conduct arising out of despair, is a mistake into which only a woman could fall. There is no reason, as far as we can discover, why Wilson should not have plighted his faith to Miss Lindsay at Glasgow, and married her afterwards, had he been so disposed. His father was dead, and had left him master, when he came of age, of a fortune estimated at 50,000l.; and, potent as we all know the principle of filial obedience to be in Scotland, it can scarcely be credited that, in deference to his mother's prejudices, Wilson would have given up a maiden to whom he was greatly attached, and who, according to Mrs. Gordon's showing, was every way worthy of a poet's love.

From Glasgow Wilson proceeded, in 1803, to Oxford, where he became a Gentleman Commoner of Magdalen College. He soon began to make a stir among the groves of Acadæme. A hard reader by fits and starts, Wilson seems to have attained to marked he shot ahead of his contemporaries as a success at Glasgow, especially in the Logic scholar, and still more so in the eagerness class. He carried off many prizes, and amus- with which he threw himself into practices ed himself besides by writing essays and which were better thought of in those days poems. Some of the latter still survive in than they are now. We speak of times MS. His personal habits, all the while, when cock-fighting was still fashionable were methodical and neat, contrasting strong- among fast men, and bull-baiting practised ly with those into which he fell a few years 'on the sly. There is nothing to show that later in life. There is a portrait by Raeburn Wilson patronised the bullring, but he frein the Edinburgh National Gallery, which quented the cockpit regularly, kept his represents him as a well-grown youth, and a gamecocks and fought them. He was one dandy of the first water. He is dressed in a of the stoutest oars on the Isis; in running blue coat with bright brass buttons, buck- and jumping no one could approach him; skins, and top-boots, just as if he were pre- and he was a firstrate pugilist. Many a paring to mount the horse which is seen in bargee guilty of insolence to himself or to the background. Nor was that with him an others, received condign punishment from infrequent occupation in those days. He him on the spot. He tells of himself, and rode well, and took great delight in the ex- the tradition still survives about him in Oxercise. He was likewise a good runner, a ford, that for a slight wager he leaped across capital jumper, and a bold swimmer. In the Charwell, at a point where the stream fact, he diversified his student life with all measures twenty-three feet from bank to the amusements to which youth is prone, not bank. Unless our memory play us false, a forgetting balls, concerts, tea-parties, and jump not far inferior to this was taken morning calls. He seems, however, to have over the same river a few years subseenjoyed himself most on the banks of the quently, by the late Sir William Hamilton. Clyde, in that lovely valley over which the These exploits, with his magnificent appearwoods of Bothwell wave, and on which the ance-for he walked the High Street six ruined towers of the grim old castle look feet high, with the chest and shoulders of down. And here, according to Mrs. Gordon, an Atlas, and the limbs of an Apollohe fell desperately in love with an orphan-gained for him at least as much of favour maid, who afterwards stood for the original among gown and town, as his brilliant ex

amination when he went up for his Bache- | suddenly shut himself up in his rooms, readlor's degree gratified the heads of his col- ing and writing, and denying himself to lege. everybody, and as suddenly break away again, A considerable change had, however, come like one whom the impulse to strong physi over him in many respects. Ceasing to be a cal exertion carried headlong before it. He dandy, he degenerated into something not far often disappeared from Oxford for days toremoved from a sloven. It was impossible to gether, no one knowing whither he had render either a face or figure like his unat- gone. On these occasions he travelled on tractive; but he did his best to mar the foot, and the marches which he made would effect of both by the mal-arrangements of have astonished even the Duke of Wellinghis toilet. His hair, which he wore in huge ton's famous Light Division. One morning masses over his shoulders, looked as if it sel- he arrived at Magdalen to breakfast, having dom came in contact with a comb. Contrary walked all the way from London, which he to the recognised customs of the age, he quitted after dinner on the previous evening allowed his whiskers to grow to an enormous en grand tenue. He accounted for the cir size, and his outer habiliments seemed to cumstance by saying that a fellow had inimply that his tailor's and shoemaker's bills sulted him in Grosvenor Square, that he could bring him very little discomfort at the thrashed him, and, not wishing to get into end of the year. Dr. Southwell, one of the trouble with the police, that he walked on few of his surviving contemporaries at Mag- and on till he found himself at the College' dalen, gives the following ludicrous account gate. His vacations he seems to have deof his habits in these respects :voted almost entirely to pedestrian tours. One of these carried him through Wales, another to the Lake country, a third all over Ireland-indeed, a yearning for wild adventure seems to have been at this time the master passion of his nature, which he seriously thought of indulging by accompanying Mungo Park in his second journey into the

'The established rule of our Common-room

was that no one should appear there without being in full evening dress: non-compliance involved a fine of one guinea, which Wilson had more than once incurred and paid. Having one day come in in his morning garb, and paid down the fine, he asked, "What, then, do you consider dress?" "Silk stockings, &c., &c.," was the answer. The next day came Wilson, looking very well satisfied with himself and with us all.

interior of Africa.

Another of Wilson's practices, for which "Now," he cried, "all is right. I hope to have Mrs. Gordon accounts in her own way, was no more fines to pay. You see, I have complied this: he would sally forth at midnight, and with the rules," pointing to his silk stockings, go to the Angel Inn, where many of the up which he had very carefully drawn over the and down coaches met. "There he used to coarse woollen walking stockings which he preside at the passengers' supper table, carvwore usually his strong shoes he still re-ing for them, inquiring all about their

tained.'

It was the fashion in Oxford half a century ago to drink deep, and Magdalen was assuredly not behind other colleges in that respect. Wilson is admitted on all hands to have been no flincher at his cups; yet Mrs. Gordon assures us, on the testimony of Dr. Southwell, that they never got the better of him. We are not at all surprised to hear it. Wilson's head was as strong as his arm; and there was no amount of liquor which, when the fit came on, he could not carry away with impunity. Witness his swallowing on a certain occasion when weary and foot-sore he called, after a long day's fast, at a farm-house on the banks of the Orchie-a quart of whiskey, diluted with milk, at two draughts. The

truth we

respec

tive journeys, why and wherefore they were made, who they were, &c., and in return astonishing them with his wit and pleasantry, and sending them off wondering who and what he could be.' He frequently went from the Angel to the Fox and Goose, an early-purl and gill house, where he found the coachmen and guards preparing for the coaches which had left London at night, and there he found an audience, and sometimes remained till the College gates were opened.' Does the reader suppose that these were mere escapades-the acts of a young man carried away by exuberant animal spirits! They were nothing of that sort. Wilson went to such places in cold blood, to study character, in which they abounded.'

suspect to be, that during the last Strange to say, the man who thus rioted year of his undergraduate course, and subse- in the wildest realities of outer life, was at quently till he quitted the University, Wil- heart an idealist of the most sensitive kind. son's manner of life was such as must have He had early sworn allegiance to the Lake broken down any constitution less adaman-school of poetry, and aspired to become in tine than his own. He was the severest stu- due time one of its leading members. Indent, the most joyous companion, the most deed, while yet an inmate of Professor Jardaring athlete in his own circle. He would

dine's house, he wrote to Wordsworth a let

ter which breathes strongly of the discipline | advancing at a long trot, with the heavy and to which the pupils of the good Professor were subjected. Mrs. Gordon has printed this letter at length, and Wordsworth replied to it promptly and kindly. The consequence was, that the Lyrical Ballads became to a great extent the models of Wilson's minor pieces, and that the Isle of Palms' and the City of the Plague' took their inspiration from the Excursion' and the 'Brothers.'