Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/631

Rh I L W I L 593 given but in part, if in their best part, and that at least three long, important, and interesting series of papers, less desultory than is his wont, on &quot;Spenser,&quot; on &quot; British Critics,&quot; and the set called &quot; Dies Boreales,&quot; have been left out altogether. Wilson s characteristics are, however, uniform enough, and the standard edition exhibits them sufficiently, if not exhaustively. His poems may be dismissed at once as little more than interesting. They would probably not have been written at all if he had not been a young man in the time of the full flood of influence of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and Scott. His prose tales have in some estimates stood higher, but will hardly survive the tests of universal criticism. It is as an essayist and critic of the most abounding geniality, if not genius, of great acuteness, of extraordinary eloquence, and of a fervid and manifold sympathy, in which he has hardly an equal, that &quot; Christo pher North&quot; lives and will live. The Nodes Ambrosianss, a series of convivial table-talk, giving occasion to wonderfully various digressions of criticism, description, and miscellaneous writing, have been of late years ranked far below their real value. From their origin it necessarily followed that there was much that is ephemeral, a certain amount that is purely local, and something that is purely trivial in them. But their dramatic force, their incessant flashes of happy thought and happy expression, their almost incomparable fulness of life, and their magnificent humour give them all but the highest place among genial and recreative literature. It is often thought, and sometimes said, that no one but a Scotchman can relish them an utter mistake, against which it is desirable most ener getically to testify in the name of lovers of them who have not a drop of Scottish blood in their veins. The same qualities, together with a greater share of purely literary and critical power (to the display of which the form of the Nodes was inimical), and of a sometimes abused but very admirable faculty of word-painting, appear in the miscellaneous essays. Wilson s defects lay in the directions of measure and of taste properly so called, that is to say, of the modification of capricious likes and dislikes by reason and principle. He is constantly exaggerated, boisterous, wanting in refinement. But these are the almost necessary defects of his qualities of enthusiasm, eloquence, and generous feeling. The well- known adaptation of phrase in which he not recanted but made up for numerous earlier attacks on Leigh Hunt, &quot; the Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities live for ever,&quot; shows him as a writer at his very best, but not without a little characteristic touch of grandiosity and emphasis. As a literary critic, as a sportsman, as a lover of nature, and as a convivial humorist, he is not to be shown at equal advantage in miniature ; but almost any volume of his miscellaneous works will exhibit him at full length in either capacity or in all. The chief, if not the sole, authentic source of information for Wilson s life is the memoir by his daughter, Mrs Gordon (Edinburgh, 1802). (G. SA.) WILSON, RICHARD (1714-1782), English landscape painter, was born at Penegoes, Montgomeryshire, where his father was a clergyman, on 1st August 1714. His early taste for art was observed by a relative of his mother, Sir George Wynne, who in 1729 sent him to London to study under Thomas Wright, a little-known portrait painter of the time, by whom he was instructed for six years. He then started on his own account, and was soon in a good practice. Among his commissions was a full-length of the prince of Wales and the duke of York, painted for their tutor, the bishop of Norwich. Examples of his portraits may be studied in Greenwich Hospital, in the Garrick Club, and in various private collections. In 1749 Wilson visited Italy, where he spent six years. He had previously executed some landscapes, but it was now that the advice of Zuccarelli and Joseph Vernet decided him to adopt this department of art exclusively. He studied Claude and Poussin, but retained his own individuality, and produced some admirable views of Rome and the Campagna. In 1755 he returned to England, and became one of the first of English landscape painters. Niobe, one of his most powerful works, was exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1760. On the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1768 he was appointed one of the original members, and he was a regular contributor to its exhibi tions till 1780. He frequently executed replicas of his more important subjects, repeating some of them several times; in the figures which he introduced in his land scapes he was occasionally assisted by Mortimer and Hay- man. During his lifetime his landscapes were never widely popular ; his temper was consequently embittered by neglect, and so impoverished was he that he was obliged to seclude himself in an obscure, half-furnished room in Tottenham Court Road, London. In 1776, however, he obtained the post of librarian to the Academy ; and by the death of a brother he acquired a small property near Llanferras, Denbighshire, to which he retired to spend his last days, and where he died suddenly in May 1782. After his death his fame increased, and in 1814 about seventy of his works were exhibited in the British Institu tion. The National Gallery, London, contains nine of his landscapes. The works of Wilson are skilled and learned compositions rather than direct transcripts from nature. His landscapes are treated with great breadth, and with a power of generalization which occa sionally led to a disregard of detail. They are full of classical feeling and poetic sentiment ; they possess noble qualities of colour, and of delicate silvern tone ; and their handling is vigorous and easy, the work of a painter who was thoroughly master of his materials. See Studies and Designs by Richard Wilson, done at Rome in the year 1752 (Oxford, 1811) ; T. Wright, Some Account of the Life of Richard Wilson (London, 1824) ; Thomas Hastings, Etchings from the Works of Richard Wilson, with some Memoirs of his Life (London, 1825). Many of Wilson s best works were repro duced by Woollett and other engravers of the time. WILTS, a south-western county of England, is bounded Plate N.W. and N. by Gloucestershire, E. by Berks and Hants, X1V - S. by Hants and Dorset, and W. by Somerset. It is of an irregular oval form, its greatest length from north to south being 54 miles and its greatest breadth from east to west 37. The area is 866,677 acres, or about 1354 square miles. About two-thirds of the surface of Wilts is occupied by Geology. a great Chalk upland, embracing the greater part of the wild wooded tract of Cranborne Chase, the undulating elevation of Salisbury Plain, and the hilly district of the Marlborough Downs, with Savernake Forest. In some cases the Chalk rises into steep escarpments ; and the scenery of the north-western region, bordering on the lower ground, is varied and picturesque. A large portion of the Chalk region is over 600 feet above sea-level, and several summits have an elevation of over 900 feet, the highest being Inkpen Beacon (1011 feet) at the junction of Wilts, Hants, and Berks. Scattered over the surface of the northern downs are huge blocks of silicious Tertiary grits, called sarsen stones or grey wethers, which have been used in the formation of the Druidical circles of Stonehenge and Avebury. The underlying Greensand is exposed in the deep valleys of the Chalk, especially in the broad vale of Pewsey, separating the Marlborough Downs from Salisbury Plain. It also appears as a narrow fringe between the Chalk and Oolite formations on the north and west, and in Alfred s Tower near Stourton on the Somersetshire border reaches an elevation of 800 feet. Outliers of the London Clay cap some of the hills in the neighbourhood of Great and Little Bedwin and Savernake Forest ; and the clays and sands of the Woolwich and Reading beds appear in the south-eastern extremity of the county. About a third of the surface of the county, to the north-west of the Chalk, including a portion of the White Horse Vale, consists mainly of Oolite limestones and clays resting chiefly on the Greensand. The Lower, Middle, and Upper varieties are all represented. At one time the fuller s earth of the Lower Oolite was dug for use in the cloth-mills. In the Coral Rag of the Middle Oolite a useful bed of iron is wrought near Westbury, the annual output of ore varying in value from 12,000 to 20,000. The valuable Portland stone of the Upper Oolite is quarried for building purposes at Chilmark, Tisbury, and Swindon, and the famous Bath stone of the Great Oolite is obtained at Corsham and Box on the Somersetshire border. The Oolite yields a variety of interesting fossils : the pear encrinite (Apiocrinites rotunduK) is found in the Bradford clay ; many fine corals are obtained in the Coral Rag ; and Isastrxa oblonga is very plentiful at Tisbury. XXIV. 75