Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/365

Rh one of Wilson's early frolics; and certainly it was "very tragical mirth;" but thus to hunt a poor domestic bull that from its earliest calf-ship has been snubbed and cudgelled into submission, has almost as little of the romantic in it as the flight of a terrified dog with a pan tied to its tail, and the whole village school in close pursuit. If a man must needs taurize, let it be in the appointed lists, where

There, the chances are pretty fairly balanced between the bull and his bold antagonist, and when the career commences it is difficult to tell whether lance or horn shall have the better of it.

These rural pursuits of Wilson were oddly enough combined with the study of law, for on leaving the university of Oxford he had resolved to betake himself to the Scottish bar. Such was the case with many young gentlemen at this time, who, although of independent fortune, were desirous of passing as advocates, on account of the specific rank and literary standing with which the title was accompanied. Having finished the usual terms, Mr. Wilson was enrolled among the advocates in 1814. It will scarcely be imagined however, that he was either the most anxious or the most industrious of barristers; the "Stove School," if it then existed in the outer court of Parliament House, was more likely to enjoy his presence, than the solemn atmosphere of the inner halls. But already he had commenced his public literary career, and in the character of a poet, by a set of beautiful stanzas entitled the "Magic Mirror," which were published in the Annual Register for 1812. During the same year he also published, but anonymously, an elegy on the death of James Graham, author of the Sabbath, with which Joanna Baillie was so highly pleased, that she applied to Sir Walter Scott for the name of the author. Sir Walter sent the desired information, and added: "He is now engaged in a poem called the Isle of Palms, something in the style of Southey. He is an eccentric genius, and has fixed himself upon the banks of Windermere, but occasionally resides in Edinburgh, where he now is. . . . . He seems an excellent, warm-hearted, and enthusiastic young man; something too much, perhaps, of the latter quality, places him among the list of originals." During the same year "The Isle of Palms, and other Poems" was published, a work that at once stamped their author as one of the poets of the Lake school—a class after which the whole host of critics were at present in full cry. It was much, therefore, that at such a period Wilson should have produced a poem that, according to the Edinburgh reviewers, promised "to raise its name, and advance its interests, even among the tribes of the unbelievers." Much however as the "Isle of Palms" was admired and beloved in its day, and abounding though it unquestionably did in touches of true feeling and passages of great poetical power, it has been unable to endure the test of time, and therefore it was quietly consigned to general forgetfulness long before the author himself had passed away. Such indeed has also been the fate of the "Curse of Kehama," upon which the versification of the "Isle of Palms" was evidently modelled. Still, the approbation which his effort excited was enough to encourage Wilson to a renewed effort in poetry; and accordingly, in 1816, he produced "The City of the Plague," a dramatic poem of a higher as well as more masculine character than his former production. But it too has failed to secure that enduring popularity