Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/366

630 which has been accorded to the productions of the highest and even the second-rate poets of his own period. Perhaps he was unfortunate in the subject of his choice, which was the great plague of London in 1665. But indeed it would require the powers of a Milton, or even of a Shakspeare, to invest such a theme with fresh interest, after the descriptions of De Foe. In the same volume, among other smaller productions, was a dramatic fragment entitled "The Convict," in which Wilson was more successful, perhaps because the subject was less daring, and more within the usual scope of poetry.

Whatever might be his poetical merits, a sufficient proof had now been given that Wilson could scarcely establish a permanent celebrity by these alone. But he was fitted for greater excellence in a different sphere, and that sphere he was now to find. Blackwood's Magazine had been started as the champion of Tory principles in opposition to the Edinburgh Review ; and as Thomas Pringle, its amiable and talented editor, was a Whig, he was obliged to abandon its management after the publication of a few numbers. On the disruption that ensued between the two rival publishers, Constable and Black wood, Wilson, in company with Hogg and Lockhart, took part with the latter ; and soon after the Chaldee Manuscript appeared, a production, the remarkable wit of which was insufficient to redeem it from merited condemnation, on account of its profanity. Its first draught in the rough had been drawn up by the Ettrick Shepherd, in which form it is said to have scarcely amounted to more than a third of its published bulk; but the idea being reckoned a happy one, it was expanded, chiefly, as has been supposed, by Wilson and Lockhart, until it finally grew into an article that raised the public excitement into an absolute uproar. After the storm had been successfully weathered, the character of the Magazine, notwithstanding its manifold trespasses, which on more than one occasion led to cudgelling, and even to bloodshed, continued to grow in reputation, until it reached the highest rank in the world of literature and criticism. And who was the veiled editor under whose remarkable management all this success had been achieved? The question was a universal one, and the answer generally given was—"John Wilson." The high reputation he had already won, and his well known connection with Maga, made the public voice single him out in preference to all the other writers by whom its pages were enriched. It was a natural mistake, but a mistake after all. This important part of the business was retained by Ebony himself, who selected the articles, corresponded with the contributors, and discharged all the business duties of the editorship. But the living soul and literary spirit was Wilson himself, so that in spite of every disclamation he was proclaimed by the public voice the editor of Blackwood's Magazine until within a few years of his death.

While he was thus holding onward in his meteoric course, at one part of the year at Elleray and the other in Edinburgh alternately—running down bulls on the Scottish border, arid bores in the metropolis—and becoming loved, dreaded, or wondered at in his various capacities of hospitable country gentleman, rough-riding sportsman, gay, civic symposiarch, Abbot of Misrule, and Aristarchus of reviewers and magazine writers, his means of settled domestic tranquillity and happiness had been such as seldom fall to the lot either of meditative poets or belligerent journalists. For in 1810, after he had set his beautiful home among the lakes in order, and furnished it with all the comforts that wealth, directed by a classical taste, could devise, he married an English lady of great beauty, accomplishments, and amiable disposition, who further