The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 65, March, 1863. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ of partisans. It was all pure fun with him, though it was death to the victims. He dearly loved to have a cut at the Cockneys, and was never happier than when running a tilt à l'outrance with what seemed to be a sham. Still, he felt no ill-will, and could see nothing wrong in the matter. We are entirely disposed, even in reference to this period of his life, to accept the honest estimate which he made of himself, as "free from jealousy, spite, envy, and uncharitableness." When the fever of his youth had been somewhat cooled by time, his feelings and opinions naturally became more moderate, and his expression of them less violent. In his early days, when his mother heard of his having written an article for the "Edinburgh Review," she said, "John, if you turn Whig, this house is no longer big enough for us both." But his Toryism then was quite as good as hers. By-and-by, as party became less, and friendship more, he entertained at his house the leading Whigs, and admitted them to terms of intimacy. Even his daughter was allowed to marry a Whig. And in 1852 the old man hobbled out to give his vote for Macaulay the Whig, as representative in Parliament of the good town of Edinburgh. Conceive of such a thing in 1820! All this was but the gradual toning-down of a strong character by time and experience. "Blackwood" naturally exhibited some of the results of the change.

      Much allowance must be made for the altered spirit of the times. A generation or two ago, there was everywhere far more of rancor and less of decorum in the treatment of politics and criticism than would now be tolerated. All the world permitted and expected strong partisanship, bitter personality, and downright abuse. They would have called our more sober reticence by the name of feebleness: their truculence we stigmatize as slander and Billingsgate. Wilson was an extremist in everything; yet he strained but a point or two beyond his fellows. When the tide of party began gradually to subside, he fell with it. Mrs. Gordon has given a very correct picture of the state of things in those days:—

      "It is impossible for us, at this time, to realize fully the state of feeling that prevailed in the literature and politics of the years between 1810 and 1830. We can hardly imagine why men who at heart respected and liked each other should have found it necessary to hold no communion, but, on the contrary, to wage bitter war, because the one was an admirer of the Prince Regent and Lord Castlereagh, the other a supporter of Queen Caroline and Mr. Brougham. We cannot conceive why a poet should be stigmatized as a base and detestable character, merely because he was a Cockney and a Radical; nor can we comprehend how gentlemen, aggrieved by articles in newspapers and magazines, should have thought it necessary to the vindication of their honor to horsewhip or shoot the printers or editors of the publications. Yet in 1817 and the following years such was the state of things in the capital of Scotland…. You were either a Tory and a good man, or a Whig and a rascal, and vice versa. If you were a Tory and wanted a place, it was the duty of all good Tories to stand by you; if you were a Whig, your chance was small; but its feebleness was all the more a reason why you should be proclaimed a martyr, and all your opponents profligate mercenaries." But parties changed, and men changed with them. It was a Whig ministry which gave Wilson, in 1852, a pension of two hundred pounds.

      Mrs. Gordon has praised her father as "the beau-ideal of what a critic should be, whose judgments will live as parts of literature, and not merely talk about it." That these so-called judgments are worthy to live, and will live, we fully believe; yet we could never think him a model critic, or even a great one. Though not deficient in analytic power, he wanted the judicial faculty. He could create, but he could not weigh coolly and impartially what was created. His whole make forbade it. He was impatient, passionate, reckless, furious in his likes and dislikes. His fervid enthusiasm for one author dictated a splendid tribute to a friend; while an irrational prejudice against another called out a terrific diatribe against a foe. In either case, there might be "thoughts that breathe and words that burn"; still, there was but little of true criticism. The matchless papers on Spenser and Homer represent one class, and the articles on Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt the other. While the former exhibit the tender sympathy of a poet and the enthusiasm of a scholar, the latter reveal the uncompromising partisan, swinging the hangman's cord, and brandishing the scourge of scorpions. Of the novelist's three kinds of criticism—"the slash, the tickle, and the plaster"—he recognized and employed only the two extremes. Neither in criticism nor in the conduct of life was Ovid's "Medio tutissimus ibis" ever a rule for him. In the "Noctes" for June, 1823, some of his characteristics are wittily set forth, with some spice of caricature, in a mock defiance given to Francis Jeffrey, "King of Blue and Yellow," by the facetious Maginn, under his pseudonym of Morgan Odoherty: —"Christopher, by the grace of Brass, Editor of Blackwood's and the Methodist Magazines; Duke of Humbug, of Quiz, Puffery, Cutup, and Slashandhackaway; Prince Paramount of the Gentlemen of the Press, Lord of the Magaziners, and Regent of the Reviewers; Mallet of Whiggery, and Castigator of Cockaigne; Count Palatine of the Periodicals; Marquis of the Holy Poker; Baron of Balaam and Blarney; and Knight of the most stinging Order of the Nettle."

      In 1820 Wilson was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh,—an office which he held for more than thirty years. The rival candidate was his friend, Sir William Hamilton, a firm Whig; and the canvass, which was purely a political one, was more fiery than philosophic. Wilson's character was the grand object of attack and defence, and round it all the hard fighting was done. Though it was pure and blameless, it offered some points which an unscrupulous adversary might readily misconstrue, with some show of plausibility. His free, erratic life, his little imprudences, his unguarded expressions, and the reckless "Chaldee MS.," might, with a little twisting, be turned to handles of offence, and wrested to his disadvantage. But the fanatic zeal of his opponents could not rest till their accusations had run through nearly the whole gamut of immoralities. He was not only a blasphemer towards God, but corrupt to wife and children. It seems comical enough at this day that he was obliged to bolster up his cause by sending round to his respectable acquaintances for certificates of good moral character. When at last he triumphed by a greater than two-thirds vote, an attempt was made to reconsider; but the new Professor held his own, and the factious were drowned in hisses.

      His personal relations to his pupils were singularly happy. A strange charm went out from his presence at all times, which fascinated all, and drew them to him. Their enthusiasm and love for him have been spoken of as "something more to be thought of than the proudest literary fame." "As he spoke, the bright blue eye looked with a strange gaze into vacancy, sometimes darkening before a rush of indignant eloquence; the tremulous upper lip curving with every wave of thought or hint of passion; and the golden gray hair floating on the old man's mighty shoulders,—if, indeed, that could be called age which seemed but the immortality of a more majestic youth." In his lecture-room utterances, there was an undue preponderance of rhetoric, declamation, and sentiment over logic, analysis, and philosophy. Yet he once said of himself, that he was "thoroughly logical and argumentative; not a rhetorician, as fools aver." Whether this estimate was right or wrong in the main may be a matter of question: we think it wrong. His genius, in our view, lay rather in pictorial passion than in ratiocination. At all events, as a teacher of philosophy, it appears to us that his conception of the duties of his office, and his style of teaching, were far inferior to those of his competitor and subsequent associate, Sir William Hamilton. The one taught like a trumpet-tongued poet, and the other like an encyclopaedic philosopher. The personal magnetism of the former led captive the feelings, while the sober arguments of the latter laid siege to the understanding. The great fact which impressed Wilson's students was his overpowering oratory, and not his particular theory, or his train of reasoning. One of them compares the nature of his eloquence with that of the leading orators of his day, and thinks that in absolute power over the hearers it was greater than that of any other. The matter, too, as well as the manner of the lectures, receives commendation at the hands of this enthusiastic disciple. He says,—"It was something to have seen Professor Wilson,—this all confessed; but it was something also, and more than is generally understood, to have studied under him. Nothing now remains of the Professor's long series of lectures save a brief fragment or two. Here and there some pupil may be found, who has treasured up these Orphic sayings in his memory or his note-book; but to the world at large these utterances will be always unknown."

      We have been considerably disappointed in Wilson's "Letters." We looked for something racy, having the full flavor of the author's best spirits. We found them plain СКАЧАТЬ