some time
or other have taken to literature, and would probably in any case have
sooner or later written the poems and stories which exist under his
name, but do not in the very least degree constitute its eminence. It
was the chapter of accidents that made him a journalist and a critic. He
was born in 1785, his father being a rich manufacturer of Paisley, was
educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford, came early into a
considerable fortune, married at twenty-six, and having established
himself at Elleray on Windermere, lived there the life of a country
gentleman, with more or less literary tastes. His fortune being lost by
bad luck and dishonest agency, he betook himself to Edinburgh, and
finding it impossible to get on with Jeffrey (which was not surprising),
threw himself heart and soul into the opposition venture of _Blackwood_.
He had, moreover, the extraordinary good luck to obtain, certainly on no
very solid grounds (though he made at least as good a professor as
another), the valuable chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of
Edinburgh, which of itself secured him from any fear of want or narrow
means. But no penniless barrister on his promotion could have flung
himself into militant journalism with more ardour than did Wilson. He
re-created, if he did not invent, the _Noctes Ambrosianae_--a series of
convivial conversations on food, drink, politics, literature, and things
in general, with interlocutors at first rather numerous, and not very
distinct, but latterly narrowed down to "Christopher North" (Wilson
himself), the "Ettrick Shepherd" (Hogg), and a certain "Timothy
Tickler," less distinctly identified with Wilson's mother's brother, an
Edinburgh lawyer of the name of Sym. A few outsiders, sometimes real
(as De Quincey), sometimes imaginary, were, till the last, added now and
then. And besides these conversations, which are his great title to
fame, he contributed, also under the _nom de guerre_ of Christopher
North, an immense number of articles, in part collected as _Christopher
North in his Sporting Jacket_, substantive collections on Homer, on
Spenser, and others, and almost innumerable single papers and essays on
things in general. From the time when Lockhart (see below) went to
London, no influence on _Blackwood_ could match Wilson's for some ten or
twelve years, or nearly till the end of the thirties. Latterly
ill-health, the death of friends and of his wife, and other causes,
lessened hi