Page:Scotish Descriptive Poems - Leyden (1803).djvu/20

 riod had been favourable to the exertions of poetical fancy, and which spent the last efforts of its virulence on the Douglas of Home. Induced by this religious spirit, and by a cool mercantile attention to prudence, the Magistrates and Minister of Greenock, before they admitted Mr. Wilson to the superintendance of the grammar school, stipulated that he should abandon "the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making." Mr. Wilson had a beloved wife and a numerous family; the situation for which he was a candidate promised them a comfortable subsistence; and the illusions of fancy vanished before the mild light of affection. To avoid the temptation of violating this promise, which he esteemed sacred, he took an early opportunity of committing to the flames the greater part of his unfinished manuscripts. After this, he never ventured to touch his forbidden lyre, though he often regarded it with that mournful solemnity, which the harshness of dependence, and the memory of its departed sounds, could not fail to inspire. Sometimes, indeed, when the conversation of former friends restored the vivacity of these recollections, he would carelessly pour out some extemporaneous rhymes; but the fit passed away, and its fleeting nature palliated the momentary transgression.

He seems during life to have considered this as the crisis of his fate, which condemned him to ob-