701 



WILKIE, SIR DAVID. 



WILKINS, SIR CHARLES. 



702 



Majesty. He was also a candidate for the office of president of the 

 Academy ; but there was only one vote in his favour, Sir M. A. Shee 

 being the successful candidate. 



In the same year he exhibited his full-length portrait of George IV. 

 in a Highland dress, and the king's entrance into Holyrood. In 1831 

 his ouly works in the exhibition were portraits of Lady Lyndhurst aud 

 Lord Melville. In 1832 he exhibited his celebrated picture of 'John 

 Knox preaching the Reformation in St. Andrews,' painted for Sir R. 

 Peel for 1200 guineas; and a full-length of William IV. In 1833 he 

 exhibited a, portrait of the Duke of Sussex in a Highland dress. In 

 1834 he exhibited six pictures, of which four were portraits, among 

 them the Duke of Wellington and Queen Adelaide. In 1835 he again 

 exhibited six pictures, the great attraction of which was his picture of 

 ' Christopher Columbus submitting the chart of his Voyage for the 

 discovery of the New World to the Spanish authorities : ' three of the 

 others were portraits. His next principal works were, ' Peep-o'-Day 

 Boy,' painted after a visit to Ireland ; and ' Napoleon and the Pope in 

 conference at Fontainebleau,' exhibited in ] 836. In this year he was 

 knighted by William IV. ; and he removed to a more spacious house, 

 in Vicarage-place, Kensington. In 1837 appeared hia 'Mary, Queen of 

 Scots, escaping from Loch Leven ; ' ' the Empress Josephine and the 

 Fortune-teller;' and the 'Cotter's Saturday Night.' In 1838, the 

 Queen's First Council and a portrait of O'Connell. In 1839, hia large 

 picture of ' Sir David Baird discovering the body of Sultan Tippoo Saib 

 after storming Seringapatam/ painted for Lady Baird for 1500 guineas. 

 In 1840 Wilkie exhibited eight pieces: the most striking was that of 

 ' Benvenuto Cellini presenting for the approval of Pope Paul III. a silver 

 Vase of his own workmanship.' His portrait of Queen Victoria, exhi- 

 bited at the same time, was generally considered a complete failure. 



In the autumn of 1840 Sir David set out suddenly with his friend 

 Mr. Woodburu upon his tour to the East : various rumours were cir- 

 culated as the cause of his journey, but probably none quite correct. 

 He went by Holland and the Rhine to the south of Germany, thence 

 to Constantinople by the Danube. At Constantinople he painted a 

 portrait of the young Sultan, who gave him four sittings. On January 

 the 12th, Wilkie and his friend left Constantinople by steam for 

 Smyrna, where they arrived on the 14th. They left Smyrna on the 

 1st of February, arrived at Rhodes on the 2nd, and at Beyrout on the 

 9th. At this time, says Wilkie, the weather was " remarkably fine, 

 mild, and beautiful, like the summer in England." They arrived at 

 Jaffa on the 25th, and at Jerusalem on the 27th of the same month, 

 after a journey from England of six months and twelve days. Wilkie 

 describes as follows the impression made upon him by the sight of 

 Jerusalem. after ascending an eminence on the road from Jaffa, he 

 says, " We saw and, oh, what a sight ! the splendid walled city of 

 Jerusalem. This struck me as unlike all other cities : it recalled the 

 imaginations of Nicolas Poussiri a city not for every day, not for the 

 present, but for all time." While in the Holy Land he visited the 

 Dead Sea, and tested its level by the barometer of Mr. J. Harvey, who 

 had lent it to Sir David for that purpose. On the 17th of April they 

 left Jerusalem for Jaffa, and that place on the 8th for Damietta in 

 Egypt, whence they started on the 22ud for Alexandria. At Alex- 

 andria Wilkie complained of illness ; he had felt slightly unwell for 

 the last three months. He commenced a portrait of Mehemet Ali at 

 Alexandria, who wished the portrait for himself, and sat very patiently 

 two hours and a half the first sitting. On the 21st of May he embarked 

 on board the Oriental for England ; on the 26th he arrived off Malta ; 

 on the 1st of June he expired off Gibraltar, and at half-past eight in 

 the evening of the same day hia body was committed to the deep, in 

 lafc. 36 20' and long. 6 42' : the burial service was performed by the 

 Rev. James Vaugban, rector of Wroxall, near Bath. His death appears 

 to have been hastened by imprudently indulging in fruit and iced 

 lemonade at Malta. On the 28th of August 1841, a meeting of the 

 friends of Sir David Wilkie took place at the Thatched House Tavern, 

 St. James's-street, at which Sir Robert Peel presided. The result oi 

 the meeting was a subscription for the purpose of erecting a suitable 

 monument to the painter; and a statue of Sir David Wilkie was 

 accordingly executed by Mr. Joseph, and placed in the inner hall oi 

 the National Gallery. 



Wilki.o was tall and of sandy complexion, with sharp eyes, was 

 polite and mild in his manners, was a staunch lover of everything 

 Scotch, appears to have been of no party in politics, but shows in his 

 letters an undue respect for the high in place and the wealthy. As a 

 painter, he was slow, and required models upon all occasions. In the 

 fragments of a journal printed in his Life by Allan Cunningham, 3 

 vols., 8vo, 1843, there are many details relating to his studies, which 

 are interesting to the artist ; in the same work there are a series o 

 remarks ^ upon painting by Wilkie, which contain many sound views 

 aud are in parts well written. 



Wilkie's works are well known by the excellent engravings of Raim 

 bach, Buruet, Cousins, Doo, and C. Fox. A set of coloured prints in 

 imitation of Sir David's oriental sketches was published after hi? 

 death. To the ' Life of Wilkie ' already referred to there is an appen 

 dix containing a list of all his works, with the proprietors' names, and 

 the prices received for them by the painter. At the sale of his eflects 

 which realised several thousand pounds, there were many unfinishec 

 works, some of which were sold at very high prices : an unfinishe< 

 picture of ' The School ' sold for 750J. 



WILKIE, WILLIAM, D.D., who enjoyed among hia literary friends 

 he title of ' the Scottish Homer,' was born at Echlin in Liulithgow- 

 hire, N. B., on the 5th of October 1721. His inclination for poetry 

 vas early developed, and in the ninth volume of Sir John Sinclair's 

 Statistical Account of Scotland ' there are some verses which he is said 

 o have written at the age of ten. He entered the University of Edin- 

 )urgh at the age of thirteen. Before he had completed his academical 

 studies, his father, a farmer near Edinburgh, died, leaving him the 

 urrent lease of his farm, and the duty of providing for three sisters. 

 Ie thus became a practical farmer, and bringing his mind to bear on 

 ,hat pursuit, he astonished his neighbourhood by the variety and the 

 theoretical character of his operations, and still more by the success 

 with which many of them were rewarded. In the meantime he par- 

 ially continued his studies ; and having taken orders in the Church of 

 Scotland, his clerical profession and his zeal for the cultivation of 

 potatoes procured him the title of ' the potato minister.' At this tine 

 10 conducted three distinct occupations : he was an active farmer, 

 'requently labouring with his own hand ; he wrote epic poetry ; and 

 ic occasionally preached in the parish church. ' In 1757 he published 

 The Epigoniad, a Poem, in nine books.' The name was unfortunate, 

 "or it carried no associations to render the subject recognisable. The 

 main incident was the sacking of Thebes by the Epigonoi, or descend- 

 ants of those who had been slain at the first siege of the city. It was 

 an attempt to produce an epic poem, and, though it showed much 

 nergy and imagination, the attempt failed. The work is now very 

 ittle known, though it has been published in some of the collections 

 of the British Poets. At the time when the ' Epigoniad ' appeared, 

 there was an intense anxiety among Scotsmen to produce rivals of all 

 the great names in every department of literature ; and as Home was 

 to be the Shakspere, Wilkie was to be the Homer of Scotland. The 

 English critics found much food for ridicule in the Scotticisms of the 



Epigoniad, ' and Hume wrote a vindication of it, at great length, in 

 the ' Critical Review.' A second edition of this poem was published 

 in 1759, accompanied by ' A Dream, in the manner of Spenser." In 

 1753 Wilkie was ordained assistant and successor to the clergyman of 

 Ratho, a parish near Edinburgh. In 1759 he was chosen Professor of 

 Natural Philosophy at St. Andrews. In 1768 he published a volume 

 of ' Moral Fables,' in verse, which suffered the fate of his epic. He 

 died on the 10th of October 1772. He was a man of great learning. 

 His eccentricities are the subject of many curious literary anecdotes. 

 His manners were rude, and his habits filthy ; and the contrast between 

 these peculiarities and the stores of learning and genius which he 

 exhibited in conversation drew from Charles Townsend the remark, 



that he had never met with a man who approached BO near to the 

 two extremes of a god and a brute as Dr. Wilkie." 



WILKINS, SIR CHA1JLES, Knight and K.C.H., was born in the 

 year 1749, at Frorne in Somersetshire. His father, Walter, derived 

 his descent from an ancestor of the celebrated John Wilkins, Bishop of 

 Chester. An uncle, Mr. Charles Wray, from whom Mr. Wilkins derived 

 his baptismal name, was a partner of Messrs. Hoares, the bankers, in 

 Fleet-street. This gentleman, having received the offer of a writer- 

 ship on the Bengal establishment, accepted it for his nephew. Mr. 

 Wilkins arrived at Calcutta in 1770, and in the course of a few years 

 found means amidst his duties as a writer to make considerable 

 progress in the knowledge of Arabic and Persian, as well as of some of 

 the spoken languages of India. He effected this at a time when such 

 studies were generally neglected, and when no part of them had yet 

 been made compulsory. In 1778 he aided the efforts of the Governor- 

 general Hastings for improving the education of the Company's servants 

 by printing the Bengalee grammar of Halhed, who, in his preface, 

 informs us that after having failed to obtain types of the Bengalee 

 character from the ablest artists in London, he had had recourse to Mr. 

 Wilkins, whose success was complete. " This book," Mr. Halhed 

 observes, " will always bear an intrinsic value from its containing as 

 extraordinary an instance of mechanic abilities as has perhaps ever 

 appeared. In a country so remote from all connection with European 

 artists, Mr. Wilkins was obliged to charge himself with the various 

 occupations of metallurgist, engraver, founder, and printer." Mr. 

 Hastings, in a letter to the chairman of the Court of Directors, re- 

 marks, that " to the ingenuity of Mr. Wilkins, unaided by models for 

 imitation or by artists for his direction, the government was indebted 

 for its printing-office, and for the many official purposes to which it 

 had been applied." Lord Teignmouth also, in his ' Life of Sir 

 William Jones,' attests, that " the art of printing had been introduced 

 into Bengal by the untaught skill of Mr. Wilkins, and had advanced to 

 great perfection, and that many publications equally useful and 

 interesting had issued from the press which he had established." 



In the sr.me manner Mr. Wilkins formed a set of Persian types, 

 which, as well as the Bengalee, continued to be employed for the 

 service of the Company. As his proficiency in the native languages 

 advanced, he became more convinced of the importance of endeavour- 

 ing to make himself master of that parent dialect which he found 

 diffused over them all, and which is the depository of the learning and 

 science of India. He continued therefore during the remainder of his 

 residence in that country to follow this hitherto untrodden path of 

 science, and thus has justly obtained the title of ' the Father of Sans- 

 krit Literature.' He was fortunate in having been the contemporary 

 in India of Mr. Hastings and Sir William Jones, and of enjoying the 



