715 



WILMOT, JOHN, EARL OF ROCHESTER. 



WILSON, ALEXANDER. 



746 



could not be found elsewhere. In all his descriptions Willughby was 

 very careful in distinguishing specific characters, and in this way he 

 corrected mauy of the errors of preceding writers. 



Willughby and Ray were early Fellows of the Royal Society of 

 London, and Willughby contributed some papers to the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions' before his death. Two of these were published in the 

 'Transactions' for 1671; one of them 'On a kind of Wasp called 

 Ichcumons,' and another ' On the Hatching of a kind of Bee lodged 

 in old willows.' Ray afterwards contributed many papers on insects, 

 of which the substance had been prepared from Willughby's manu- 

 scripts. 



Ray, in the preface to the ' Ornithologia,' has left behind him a 

 beautiful memorial of the estimation in which he held his friend 

 in the summary he there gives of his character. He seems to 

 have added to habits of excessive industry and a rare philosophical 

 genius, every virtue. The influence of Willughby undoubtedly, under 

 the direction of Ray, has been very great in every department of 

 zoology, and had he lived to have laboured more, and to have 

 developed the great principles of classification in zoology, which Ray 

 did in botany, then might it have been said that the foundation of both 

 sciences was laid at the same period in Great Britain. [RAY.] 



WILMOT, JOHN, EARL OF ROCHESTER, was born at Dichley 

 (Oxfordshire), 10th of April 1647, or, according to Burnet and Wood, 

 in 1648. He was the son of Henry, earl of Rochester, a brave royalist 

 in the civil wars and a faithful adherent of Charles II. in his exile. 

 He was educated in the free school of Burford, and at Wadham College, 

 Oxford, where he showed remarkable talents. At school he acquired 

 an exact knowledge of Latin, and became familiar with the best 

 authors of the Augustan age, in whose writings he ever afterwards 

 delighted. At college he was placed under the charge of Dr. Bland- 

 ford, afterwards bishop of Oxford and Worcester, but he abandoned 

 himself to pleasure rather than to study, and, breaking off his course of 

 reading at an early age, set off upon his travels in France and Italy. 

 He returned to England in the eighteenth year of his age, and pre- 

 sented himself at the gay court of Charles II., where the graces of his 

 person and the liveliness of his wit and fancy made him an acceptable 

 companion. He also sought opportunities of distinction in war. In 

 the winter of 1665 he went to sea with the Earl of Sandwich, in the 

 Revenge, commanded by Sir T. Tiddiman, and displayed great courage 

 in the attack made on the Dutch fleet in the port of Bergen. In the 

 following summer he again went to sea, under Sir Edward Spragge, and 

 in the midst of an engagement volunteered to carry a despatch in an 

 open boat, a service of great peril, which he executed with daring and 

 judgment. These warlike deeds gave him a reputation for courage, 

 which however he did not sustain at court. He was accused of 

 sneaking away in street quarrels, and of evading duels which he had 

 provoked. 



He is said to have entered upon a court life free from habits of 

 intemperance, but his convivial disposition, his extreme youth, and 

 the contagious example of a profligate court soon led him into such 

 excesses that, as he assured Dr. Burnet, for five years together he was 

 continually drunk. His fancy was more luxuriant when inflamed by 

 wine, and his companions encouraged his excesses the better to enjoy 

 his wit. In the midst of drunkenness and debauchery, extravagaut 

 frolics and buffoonery, he occasionally found time for poetry. Its 

 character naturally took the cast of his life and talents : personal 

 satires, or drinking and amatory songs were the least ignoble fruits of 

 his genius ; licentious and obscene verse, the mere reflection of his life, 

 was his ordinary recreation ; and his liveliness and wit, and the grace 

 and spirit of his versification, ooly cause us to regret the misapplication 

 of his abilities. 



The services of his father and his own favour at court obtained for 

 him the offices of gentleman of the bedchamber and comptroller of 

 Woodstock Park. But although his convivial talents rendered him 

 agreeable to the king, his satires often gave offence. On one occasion, 

 while drunk, he put into the king's hand a paper which he supposed 

 to be a libel he had written upon some ladies, but which happened to 

 be a satire upon King Charles himself. At another time he ventured 

 so far as to scribble upon the door of the king's bedroom the well- 

 known mock epitaph 



" Here lies our sovereign lord the king, 



Whose word no man relies on ; 

 He never says a foolish thing, 

 Nor ever does a wise one." 



Among the various accomplishments of Rochester, that of mimicry 

 was conspicuous. At one time ho disguised himself as an Italian 

 mouutebank, and practised the art of medicine in Tower-street : at 

 other times he dressed himself as a porter or a beggar, and in such 

 characters diverted himself with low amours. 



The incessant debauchery in which his youth was spent brought on 

 painful diseases and a broken constitution. And although his habits 

 and the depraved society in which he lived, together with the love of 

 displaying his wit on all occasions, had poisoned his mind with 

 infidelity, he began to feel remorse, and to treat religion with respect. 

 This change in his opinions was mainly caused by the society of 

 Dr. Burnet, who had attended at the death-bed of one of Rochester's 

 friends, and was otherwise slightly known to him, when he received 

 an invitation, to visit the earl, at that time recovering from a severe 



illness. Burnet listened to his infidel arguments, and answered them 

 with earnest kindness. He explained the Scriptures in a tone of philo- 

 sophy that suited the intellectual pride of Rochester, and at length 

 convinced him of the truth of religion and of the necessity of repent- 

 ance. Their interviews are touchingly described by Bishop Burnet 

 himself, in his 'Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester,' a book 

 which, as Dr. Johnson truly says, " the critic ought to read for its 

 elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its 

 piety." 



Early in the summer of 1680 he was seized with his last sickness, 

 which he felt convinced would be fatal. In the midst of the severest 

 agonies of mind and body, he again sent for his fi iend Dr. Burnet, to 

 whom he expressed his sincere repentance. His last days are affect- 

 ingly described by the same admirable biographer, and were such as 

 became a Christian. " I do verily believe," says Dr. Burnet, " he was 

 so entirely changed, that if he had recovered he would have made 

 good all his resolutions." He felt deeply the mischief he had done by 

 his example and by his perverted talents ; and besought Dr. Burnet to 

 publish, for the good of the world, a history of his sins, his sufferings, 

 and repentance. He died on the 26th of July 1680, in the thirty- 

 fourth year of his age, and was buried beside his father in Spelsbury 

 Church, Oxfordshire. He left behind him a son, who died in the 

 following year, and three daughters. 



On his death-bed he had given strict charge that all his licentious 

 and profane writings should be destroyed ; but he was scarcely dead 

 before a volume of poems bearing his name was published. Many of 

 the poems are said not to have been written by him; and that the 

 composition as well as the frolics of others should have been attributed 

 to so notorious a man, is not improbable. Among the best of the 

 pieces known to be genuine may be mentioned the ' Satire against 

 Man,' 'An Allusion to the 10th Satire of the First Book of Horace/ 

 and ' Verses upon Nothing.' 



(Some Passages of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester, by 

 Gilbert Burnet, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Sarum ; Bui-net's Own 

 Time; Wood's Athence Oxonienses ; Dr. Johnson's Life of Rochester, in 

 Lives of the Poets.} 



WILSON, ALEXANDER, was born at Paisley, in Scotland, July 6, 

 1766. His mother died when he was ten years of age, and his father, 

 embarrassed with the charge of a young family, soon married again. 

 In 1779 Alexander was bound apprentice to a weaver for three years, 

 on the expiration of which he worked about four years as a journeyman 

 weaver, and then abandoned the loom, and spent nearly three years as 

 a pedlar. From an early age he had been cultivating a talent for 

 poetry which he imagined himself to possess, and in his excursions for 

 the sale of his wares endeavoured to procure subscriptions for a volume 

 of his poems, but without success. The volume was never published, 

 but verses and single poems were published in newspapers, and sepa- 

 rately. ' The Laurel disputed,' a poem on the respective merits of 

 Ferguson and Ramsay, he recited before a literary society in Edinburgh, 

 and published there in 1791. In 1792 he published auonymously his 

 ' Watty and Meg,' which some at first ascribed to Burns, to the no 

 small gratification of Wilson. His poetry however made no impression 

 on his countrymen in general, and he resolved to emigrate to the 

 United States of North America. 



On the 14th of July 1794, Alexander Wilson landed at Newcastle, 

 in the State of Delaware, with only a few shillings in his pocket, and 

 immediately proceeded to Philadelphia. He was employed for a few 

 weeks by a copper-plate printer; he then resumed successively his 

 former occupations of weaver and pedlar, but afterwards became a 

 land-measurer, and ultimately turned schoolmaster, and pursued his 

 new avocation at different places in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

 At length, in 1802, he made a contract with the trustees of a school at 

 Gray's Ferry, on the river Schuylkill, in the township of Kingsess, 

 about four miles from Philadelphia, and here he became acquainted 

 with Mr. Bartram, the botanist and naturalist, whose gardens were 

 always open to him, and whose conversation stimulated and improved 

 the taste for natural history which his turn for observation and his 

 rambling hfe had developed. Here too he became acquainted with 

 Mr. Lawson, the engraver, who gave him instruction in drawing, pro- 

 viding him with landscapes and sketches of the human figure, but with 

 little promise of his becoming a draftsman, till Mr. Bartram proposed 

 a trial of birds, in which he succeeded beyond the expectation of his 

 friends ; and from that time the ruling passion of his after-life was 

 brought into play. Writing to a friend in Paisley, in June 1803, he 

 says, " Close application to the duties of my profession, which I have 

 followed since November 1795, has deeply injured my constitution ; 

 the more so, that my rambling disposition was the worst calculated of 

 any one's in this world for the austere regularity of a teacher's life. I 

 have had many pursuits since I left Scotland mathematics, the 

 German language, music, drawing, &c. and I am now about to make 

 a collection of our finest birds." In October 1804, Wilson, accompa- 

 nied by two friends, set out on a pedestrian journey to the Falls of 

 Niagara. They reached the Falls, and satisfied their curiosity, but 

 were overtaken by the snows of winter on their return. One of his 

 companions remained with his friends near the Cayuga lake, the other 

 availed himself of a conveyance ; but Wilson walked on with his gun 

 and bundle, through trackless snows and uninhabited forests, over 

 mountains and along dangerous rivers, and reached home at the begin- 



