Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 101.djvu/188

174 Marriage Day" has brought tears to eyes height with youth and dim with age; and many hearts have burned within them at the tale of "The Family Tryst," and the blood in them run cold at the sweep of "The Snow-storm,"

But it was with his connexion with Blackwood's Magazine that Wilson's true fame was to arise and culminate. As a poet, by comparison, he is almost unrecognised; as a novelist, little read out of his own country, and not very largely even there. But as Christopher North his renown is world-wide. No such influence as his has been exercised on our popular periodical literature. In "Maga" were displayed those versatile talents, that manifold invention, for which none but his closest intimates had hitherto given him credit. As yet he had seemed to play on one string: now he showed himself a proficient on cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music. Hitherto his voice had been a subdued monstone—now, it swelled and rolled through broad champaigns with the sound of many waters. Hitherto, as bard and story-teller, his audiences had been scant and somewhat listless. Now, as critic, essayist, rhapsodist, his audiences counted by tens of thousands, from Cornwall to Caithness, all eager for the first of the month to meet their old friend with a new face. If sameness had once, prodigious variety now characterised him. Into a single article he would crowd a profusion of changeful styles, discursive thoughts, sudden transitions of fancy,—wit, humour, imagination, philosophy, logic, rhetoric,—reflections grave as Seneca, badinage light as Plautus. Such an article is that intituled "Old North and Young North" (1828), wherein he discourses on his own personnel, on youth and age, on his sauntering down Princes-street, his visits to the Edinburgh theatre, his nights at Ambrose's,—on Fashion, nationality, Auld Reekie, Cockaigne, Oxford, the House of Commons, the French Revolution, the Sabbath-day, the Church of England, the Kirk of Scotland, the poetry and philosophy of Life. Such too the famous papers on "Cottages" and "Streams"—studded with wild conceits, and bright images, and touching illusions, and unbridled fun, and descriptive beauties. Such too that strange mingle-mangle of multifarious topics, "A Glance over Selby's Ornithology" (1826),—with its story of "that foolish Quaker" whom the ravens devoured on Helvellyn: who but the writer would have indited the imaginary details of that supper—the birds "all in glossy black feather coats and dark grey breeches, with waistcoasts