Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/327

Rh 17th May, 1753. Three years afterwards, during all which time he continued to reside on and cultivate his farm, he succeeded to the entire living by the death of the incumbent.

In 1757, Mr Wilkie published at Edinburgh "The Epigoniad, a Poem in Nine Books," 12mo, and in 1759, a second edition, corrected and improved, with the addition of "A Dream, in the manner of Spenser." The Epigoniad obtained a temporary and local celebrity of no unenviable kind. It was read and admired by the learned of Scotland, and has been so frequently alluded to in contemporary literature, that even yet, when perhaps there is hardly a living man who has read it, nothing like oblivion can be said to have overtaken it. Mackenzie, in his life of Home, speaks of it as "a poem of great merit, not only as possessing much of the spirit and manner of Homer, but also a manly and vigorous style of poetry, rarely found in modern compositions of the kind." The same critic, after remarking the want of feeling which characterized Wilkie, goes on to say, "Perhaps it is to a want of this poetical sensibility that we may chiefly impute the inferior degree of interest excited by Wilkie's Epigoniad, to that which ita merits in other respects might excite. Perhaps it suffers also from its author having the Homeric imitation constantly in view, in which, however, he must be allowed, I think, to have been very successful, so successful that a person ignorant of Greek, will, I believe, better conceive what Homer is in the original by perusing the Epigoniad, than by reading eveh the excellent translation of Pope."

After his establishment at Ratho, Mr Wilkie became a frequent and welcome visitor at Hatton, the residence of the earl of Lauderdale, the patron of the parish, who highly esteemed him for his worth and talents, and was particularly fond of his society.

In 1759 he became a candidate for the chair of natural philosophy in the university of St Andrews, then vacant by the death of Mr David Young, and was successful. After settling in St Andrews, the poet purchased some acres of land, and resumed his farming occupations, in which he succeeded so well as to leave at his death property to the amount of £3000. Sometime after his appointment to the professorship, the university conferred on him, as a mark of its sense of his merits, the degree of doctor in divinity

In 1768, Dr Wilkie published a series of sixteen Moral tables, in Verse, 8vo- but these, though sufficiently ingenious productions, did not advance him much farther in public favour as a poet. With this circumstance the remarkable occurrences of his life terminate. After a lingering indisposition, he died at St Andrews, on the 10th October, 1772, in the fifty-first year of his age.

Of Dr Wilkie's personal peculiarities some curious anecdotes have been preserved. Amongst the most amusing and extraordinary of his eccentricities was a practice of sleeping with an immoderate quantity of bed-clothes, and a detestation which he entertained of clean sheets. He has been known to sleep with no less than four and twenty pair of blanket, on him; and his abhorrence of clean sheets was so great, that, whenever he met with them in any bed in which he was to lie, he immediately pulled them off, crumpled them together and threw them aside. On one occasion, being pressed by lady Lauderdale, to stay all night at Hatton, he agreed, though with reluctance, and only on condition that her ladyship would indulge him in the luxury of a pair of foul sheets!

He was of extremely parsimonious habits, although in the latter years of his like he was in the habit of giving away £20 annually in charity. His parsimony, however, did not proceed so much from a love of wealth as of independence. On this subject he was wont to say, "I have shaken hands with poverty up to the very elbow, and I wish never to see her face again. He was