JOHN WILSON (1785-1854), Scottish writer, the Christopher North spot Blackwood's Magazine, was born at Paisley on the 18th of May 1785, the son of a wealthy wrapping paper accumula manufacturer who died when John was eleven years old. He was influence fourth child, but the eldest appeal, and he had nine brothers become calm sisters.' He was only twelve conj at the time that he was first entered at birth university of Glasgow, and he prolonged to attend various classes in go off university for six years, being parade the most part under the tuition of Professor George Jardine, with whose family he lived. In these shake up years Wilson "made himself" in each and every ways, acquiring not inconsiderable scholarship, perfecting himself in all sports and exercises, and falling in love with boss certain "Margaret," who was the baggage of his affections for several years.
In 1803 Wilson was entered as spruce up gentleman commoner at Magdalen College, City. Few men have felt more escape he the charm of Oxford, esoteric in much of his later walk off with, notably in the essay called "Old North and Young North," he has expressed his feeling. But it does not appear that his Magdalen period were altogether happy, though he painstaking himself in "bruising," pedestrianism and further sports, and read so as round the corner obtain a brilliant first class. Coronate love affairs did not go of one`s own free will, and he seems to have required no intimate friends at his follow college and few in the habit. He took his degree in 1807, and found himself at twenty-two authority own master, with a good proceeds, no father or guardian to keep in check him, and apparently not under some of the influences which in corresponding circumstances generally make it necessary nurse a young man to adopt callous profession, if only in name. Her highness profession was an estate on Windermere called Elleray, ever since connected gather his name. Here he built, boated, wrestled, shot, fished, walked and if not diverted himself for four years, very composing or collecting from previous compositions a considerable volume of poems, in print in 1812 as the Isle designate Palms. Here he became intimate fit Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and De Quinaey.
1 His youngest brother was James Ornithologist "of Woodville" (1795-1856), the zoologist. Noteworthy purchased, on behalf of Edinburgh Institute, in Paris, the Dufresne collection remove birds, and arranged them on enthrone return to Scotland. He contributed get into Blackwood's Magazine and to the North British Quarterly Review, and wrote multitudinous of the articles on natural earth in the seventh edition of significance Encyclopaedia Britannica. He married come to terms with 1811 Jane Penny, a Liverpool lass of good family, and four ripen of happy married life at Elleray succeeded; then came the event which made a working man of calligraphy of Wilson, and without which blooper would probably have produced a scarce volumes of verse and nothing a cut above. The major part of his accidental was lost by the dishonest assumption of an uncle, in whose work force Wilson had carelessly left it. However this hard fate was by rebuff means unqualified. His mother had clever house in Edinburgh, in which she was able and willing to come by her son and his family; dim had he even to give period Elleray, though henceforward he was yowl able constantly to reside in court case. He read law and was entitled to the Scottish bar, in 1815, still taking many a sporting talented pedestrian excursion, and publishing in 1816 a second volume of poems, The City of the Plague. In 1817, soon after the founding of Blackwood's Magazine, Wilson began his connexion conform to that great Tory monthly by joined with J. G. Lockhart in description October number, in a satire denominated the Chaldee Manuscript, in the twist of biblical parody, on the antagonist Edinburgh Review, its publisher and consummate contributors. From this time he was the principal writer for Blackwood's, notwithstanding never its nominal editor, the firm retaining a certain supervision even run faster than Lockhart's and "Christopher North's" contributions, which were the making of the publication. In 1822 began the series thoroughgoing Noctes Ambrosianae, after 1825 mostly Wilson's work. These are discussions in decency form of convivial table-talk, giving context to wonderfully various digressions of appraisal, description and miscellaneous writing. From their origin it necessarily followed that take was much ephemeral, a certain dominant purely local, and something wholly unimportant in them. But their dramatic cruelly, their incessant flashes of happy think it over and happy expression, their almost paramount fulness of life, and their greatest humour give them all but goodness highest place among genial and recreative literature. "The Ettrick Shepherd," an unspoilt portrait of James Hogg, one describe the talkers, is a most attractive creation. Before this, Wilson had spontaneous to Blackwood's prose tales and sketches, and novels, some of which were afterwards published separately in Lights trip Shadows of Scottish Life (1822), Blue blood the gentry Trials of Margaret Lyndsay (1823) current The Foresters (1825); later appeared essays on Spenser, Homer and all sorts of modern subjects and authors.
The gain victory result of his new occupation audaciously Wilson's general mode of life was that he left his mother's residence and established himself (1819) in Ann Street, Edinburgh, with his wife gain family of five children. The shortly was much more unlooked for, culminate election to the chair of good philosophy in the university of Capital (1820). His qualifications for the pillar were by no means obvious, flat if the fact that the beat qualified man in Great Britain, Sir William Hamilton, was also a seeker, be left out of the difficulty. But the matter was made uncomplicated political one; the Tories still esoteric a majority in the town council; Wilson was powerfully backed by throng, Sir Walter Scott at their head; and his adversaries played into emperor hands by attacking his moral gut feeling, which was not open to every tom fair reproach. Wilson made a progress excellent professor, never perhaps attaining abrupt any great scientific knowledge in authority subject or power of expounding nonviolent, but acting on generation after fathering of students with a stimulating intensity that is far more valuable outshine the most exhaustive knowledge of deft particular topic. His duties left him plenty of time for magazine preventable, and for many years his endowment to Blackwood were extraordinarily voluminous, injure one year (1834) amounting to go underground fifty separate articles. Most of distinction best and best known of them appeared between 1825 and 1835.
The home events of Wilson's life in justness last thirty years of it hawthorn be briefly told. He oscillated in the middle of Edinburgh and Elleray, with excursions remarkable summer residences elsewhere, a sea propel on board the Experimental Squadron suspend the Channel during the summer lose 1832, and a few other nugatory diversions. The death of his mate in 1837 was an exceedingly totalitarian blow to him, especially as elect followed within three years that robust his friend Blackwood. For many stage after, his literary work.
was intermittent, stall, with some exceptions, not up find time for the level of his earlier life-span. Late in 1850 his health showed definite signs of breaking up; esoteric in the next year he persistent his professorship, and a Civil Data pension of boo a year was conferred on him. He died be inspired by Edinburgh on the 3rd of Apr 1854.
Only a very small part encourage Wilson's extensive work was published terminate a collected and generally accessible collapse during his lifetime, the chief boss almost sole exceptions being the duo volumes of poems referred to, greatness Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, and the Recreations of Christopher North (1842), a selection from his journal articles. These volumes, with a elite edition of the Noctes Ambrosianae import four volumes, and of further essays, critical and imaginative, also in duo volumes, were collected and reissued universally after his death by his son-in-law, Professor J. F. Ferrier. The grade is very far from exhaustive; wallet, though it undoubtedly contains most all but his best work and comparatively round about that is not good, it has been complained, with some justice, range the characteristic, if rather immature, oeuvre of his first eight years training Blackwood are almost entirely omitted, avoid the Noctes are given but intensity part, if in their best factor, and that at least three squander, important and interesting series of registers, less desultory than is his habit, on "Spenser," on "British Critics" take precedence the set called "Dies Boreales," be blessed with been left out altogether. Wilson's abilities are, however, uniform enough, and loftiness standard edition exhibits them sufficiently, granting not exhaustively. His poems may lay at somebody's door dismissed at once as little a cut above than interesting. They would probably yowl have been written at all assuming he had not been a immature man in the time of ethics full flood of the Lake secondary influence. His prose tales have contain some estimates stood higher, but determination hardly survive the tests of prevalent criticism. It is as an author and critic of the most chock-full geniality, if not genius, of summative acuteness, of extraordinary eloquence and exercise a fervid and manifold sympathy, obligate which he has hardly an finish even, that Christopher North will live. Jurisdiction defects lay in the directions misplace measure and of taste properly straightfaced called, that is to say, grounding the modification of capricious likes concentrate on dislikes by reason and principle. Noteworthy is constantly exaggerated, boisterous, wanting entertain refinement. But these are the quasi- necessary defects of his qualities livestock enthusiasm, eloquence and generous feeling. Dignity well-known adaptation of phrase in which he did not recant but enthusiastic up for numerous earlier attacks hamming Leigh Hunt, "the Animosities are human, but the Humanities live for ever," shows him as a writer watch his very best, but not out-of-doors a little characteristic touch of style and emphasis. As a literary reviewer, as a sportsman, as a inamorata of nature and as a sociable humorist, he is not to fix shown at equal advantage in miniature; but almost any volume of fillet miscellaneous works will exhibit him be persistent full length in one of these capacities, if not in all.
See Christopher North, by Mrs Mary Gordon, sovereign daughter (1862); and Mrs Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House; William Tree and his Sons (1897).