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WIL he married in 1811 Miss Jane Penny, the daughter of a wealthy Liverpool merchant, a lady adorned with every feminine grace, and thoroughly able to appreciate the genius of her husband. About this time his first poem, "The Isle of Palms," was written; it was published in 1812. This poem, rich in melody and radiant with the softest hues of the imagination, floats before the fancy like a dream. There may be but little substance at the back of its aerial imagery; but it is just such a vision as a young poet might be expected to see, to whom domestic bliss had made the earth a paradise, and who wished, for a time at least, to hold his soul aloof from all the harsh realities of life, and all the sterner passions of his kind. Yet these soft dreams frequently alternated with pastimes of a more active and exciting character. Wilson and two or three wild companions, well mounted, and with spears in rest—after dislodging the bishop of Llandaff's bull, a fine animal and a fierce, from his quiet pastures at Calgarth—might be seen hunting him, not without danger to man and horse, through a whole summer's night across half the county of Westmoreland. To sail on the Windermere during midnight storms was also one of his favourite recreations. This varied life of adventurous activity and domestic quietude, lasted from 1811 to 1815. It was then brought somewhat abruptly and unpleasantly to a close.

When Wilson's father died in 1797, besides providing for his widow he left a clear estate of fifty or sixty thousand pounds, the bulk of which was settled on his eldest son John. But through the mismanagement or misfortunes of the trustee, the money gradually disappeared. So long as Wilson got what he wanted—and he had been liberally though not extravagantly supplied—he made no inquiry as to how his funds were invested. He placed implicit confidence in the trustee, who was his own near relation; and when the truth broke upon him at last, and he found that his whole fortune was lost, he uttered not a murmur, but rather contributed what he could to support the declining years of the man through whose default he had been ruined. This happened in 1815. It then became necessary that he should choose a profession, and accordingly he passed at the Scottish bar, and fixed his residence in Edinburgh.

Briefs, as might have been expected, were few and far between, and at length to his great relief they altogether ceased. Literature seemed to be a surer card. In 1816 he published the "City of the Plague," a poem which contains some sublime passages, and has more substance and vigour than his earlier effusion. But the gem of the volume is "The Address to a Wild Deer:" it presents some fine pictures of Highland scenery—

But his poetry did not satisfy him, for it failed to reach the heart of the public, and accordingly he determined to try another species of literature, in respect to which his friend Dr. Blair writes thus:—"I think that Wilson, even when at Oxford, had a desire, a fancy—more than a distinct project—working in his mind towards some sort of magazine with which he wanted to associate me. I could make nothing of it, nor understand his desire; the kind of publication then seeming to me frivolous and ephemeral. But I think that the attraction towards this form of literature was begotten in him of the vehement yearning towards immediate and intimate communication of himself to his age, for which this kind of publication offered the shortest and straightest road." It was undoubtedly "this vehement yearning towards immediate and intimate communication of himself to his age" which led him to direct his energies into the channel of periodical writing, and which, after sundry pleasant overtures from Jeffrey, and the composition of one eloquent article on Childe Harold for the Edinburgh Review induced him finally to cement a perpetual treaty with Mr. Blackwood, and to act, for months and years, as the animating soul of his celebrated magazine. It was not, however, by a jump, or even rapidly, that Wilson attained to the full command of his powers, or the magazine to a lucrative circulation. It was established in 1817; but it was not until 1825 that that brilliant succession of articles from Wilson's pen began to appear, which brought fame to him and a shoal of subscribers to the magazine. For the ten following years his industry never flagged. About 1836 it became somewhat intermittent, although until near the close of his life it was still powerfully exerted. "Dies Boreales" were the last contributions from his pen to Blackwood's Magazine.

In 1820 the chair of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh became vacant through the death of Dr. Thomas Brown. Wilson offered himself as a candidate for the appointment, which, after a keen contest, a war in fact of political parties, he gained against a formidable and highly-qualified rival, the late Sir William Hamilton. For thirty years he discharged the duties of the chair with the most conscientious assiduity and the most triumphant success. He had to lecture five days in the week, and consequently the labours of his first session were very arduous, for he had but a small stock on hand to begin with. His friend Dr. Blair writes—"I heard his inaugural lecture; it was very eloquent, and was delivered with courage (many of his fiercest political enemies were present), impressively, and with great success. But the winter was an agony of preparing every day for the next day. The resolute constancy with which he maintained his attendance on his class—having scarcely failed an hour—strikes me as a singular fact in him to whom submission to regularity seemed, all his life through, irksome in the extreme. I have seen him go to the class dissatisfied with all his preparations, and in utter despair as to what he was to say, but never for an instant flinching from the call to go. He had no need to fear, for he had in himself store and creative power sufficient to meet any emergency. He seemed to feel himself bound by a necessity and a responsibility which admitted no questioning. The career of thought which his chair demanded was that which his own spirit had all along pointed to; the speculations of which the field is the mind itself of man, and which deal with all his dearest and highest interests, were subjects for Wilson irresistibly attractive by their own nature, and which he never approached without a deep feeling of their solemn and measureless import."

Wilson's literary and professorial avocations now detained him for the most part in Edinburgh, yet during the summer months he occasionally escaped to Elleray with his family. One such visit took place in 1825, when, as admiral of the regatta on Windermere, he headed in his magnificent ten-oared barge —a relic of his former extensive flotilla—a radiant procession of inferior craft, carrying with him a brilliant party, of which Mr. Canning, Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, and Mr. Lockhart were the chief ornaments. In the summer of 1832 he enjoyed a long cruise with the experimental squadron on board H.M.S. the Vernon, under Captain Sir F. Collier. His wife died in 1837. Years afterwards, in his essay on Burns, he expressed his sense of this bereavement in these touching words:—"Call not the life of Burns unhappy. . . . Burns went to his own grave without having been commanded to look down into another's, where all was buried." The pathos of these words is irresistible when we know the contrast—his own case, namely—to which they point. In 1844 he delivered a very eloquent oration at the Burns festival, which was celebrated in the vicinity of Ayr on the sixth of August, and at which he officiated as croupier, while the late earl of Eglinton occupied the chair. On such occasions his strokes of oratory were often very remarkable, sometimes as remarkable for what he did not say as for what he did. One instance, or what appeared to the present writer to be such, may be mentioned. Presiding at a Waterloo banquet, he was of course under the necessity of saying something in regard to the duke's great battle. Yet with the instinct of genius he felt that this was a theme which even his powers would attempt in vain to describe; so that after expatiating on the state of Europe previous to the decisive crisis, he despatched the battle of the 18th June in these few but effective words:—"The morning rose in clouds and tempest—and the sun set on the regenerated liberties of Europe, and the immortal fame of the victor of Waterloo." Apropos of Waterloo, another anecdote may be mentioned illustrating the readiness of his wit. "Did not," said some one, repeating the hackneyed calumny about Wellington being unprepared, "did not Bonaparte surprise the duke at Waterloo?" "No," answered the professor, "but the duke astonished him."

Professor Wilson's health began to give way in 1851, and it became obvious that his academical chair must be resigned. Through the kindness of the Lord-advocate Moncrieff, and the liberality of the whig government under Earl Russell, a pension of £300 a year was settled on him by her majesty. He continued slowly but perceptibly to decline, suffering, however, no