749 



WILSON, JAMES. 



WILSON, PROFESSOR JOHN. 



760 



ancient coins and monuments in Afghanistan and the Punjdb, he 

 made known to the world in a quarto entitled ' Ariana Antiqua.' He 

 next published a valuable grammar of the Sanskrit language, and 

 aoon after he brought out a new edition of Mill's ' History of British 

 India.' in which he has endeavoured, by means of notes, to correct 

 many of the errors into which Mill had fallen from his prejudices 

 against the Hindus, and his ignorance of their language and literature. 

 To Mill's work he added 3 vols., continuing the history from 1805 to 

 1835. He has since compiled an extensive ' Polyglott Glossary of the 

 Technical. Judicial, and Revenue Terms used in different parts of 

 India/ and is now engaged upon a translation of the ' Rig Veda/ three 

 volumes of which have already appeared. In addition to these inde- 

 pendent labours he has edited several works, including a trauslation 

 of Bopp's ' Comparative Grammar/ and he has contributed a great 

 variety of articles on the religion, literature, coins, inscriptions and 

 antiquities of India to the journals of various learned societies, more 

 especially to that of the Royal Asiatic Society. In 1834 he was elected 

 F.R.S., and is now president of the Royal Asiatic Society. He has 

 also been president of the Numismatic and Philological Societies, and 

 has been chosen an honorary member of the chief learned societies of 

 Europe. Professor Wilson married a daughter of G. I. Siddons, Esq., 

 of the Bengal Civil Service, and grand-daughter of the celebrated Mrs. 

 Siddons, by whom he has several children. 



* WILSON, JAMES, was born in 1805, at Hawick, in Roxburgh- 

 shire, where his father was a tradesman. He was started in business 

 by MB father as a hatter, but was not successful ; nor was he more 

 successful in other attempts as a tradesman. At length, in 1339, he 

 published in London a treatise on the ' Influences of the Corn-Laws as 

 affecting all Classes of the Community, and especially the Lauded 

 Interests/ 8vo. ; and in 1840, ' Fluctuations of Currency, Commerce, 

 and Manufactiires, referable to the Corn-Laws/ 8vo. The agitation for 

 the repeal of the corn-laws commenced about this time, and in 1843 

 the 'Economist' newspaper was established, and became a leading 

 vehicle for disseminating the views and reporting the proceedings of 

 the Anti-Corn-Law League. Mr. Wilson was chief editor. In 1847 

 he was returned to the House of Commons as member for Westbury, 

 and in 1848 was appointed Secretary to the Board of Control, a situa- 

 tion which he held till the breaking up of Lord John Russell's minis- 

 try. In 1852 he was again returned for Westbury, and was appointed 

 Financial Secretary to the Treasury, an office which he still continues 

 to hold. In 1857 he was returned as a member of the House of 

 Commons for the borough of Devonport. He advocates a reform of 

 the representation, but is opposed to the ballot. He married 

 in 1832. 



WILSON, JOHN, Doctor in Music, was born at Faversham in Kent, 

 in the year 1594. He was first a gentleman of the Chapel-Royal to 

 Charles I., and afterwards Servant in Ordinary to the same king. He 

 was esteemed the best lute-player in England, and '* being a constant 

 attendant on the king," Sir John Hawkins says, "he frequently 

 played to him, when the king would usually lean on his shoulder." He 

 was created doctor in music at Oxford in 1644, and in 1656 was 

 elected professor of the same faculty to that university, with the 

 advantage of having apartments in Balliol College, where, assisted by 

 the royalists, he excited " such a love of music as in great measure 

 accounts for that flourishing state in which it has long subsisted 

 there," and of which Antony Wood has, in his life of himself, given an 

 interesting account. After the Restoration he entered into the service 

 of Charles II., succeeding the famous Henry Laws, and died in 1673. 

 He composed much sacred music, and set many of the Odes of Horace, 

 as well as select passages from Ausonius, Claudiau, and Petronius 

 Arbiter; though few of his works are now to be met with, and of 

 these the most pleasing are published in Playford's 'Musical Com- 

 panion/ 1667, an interesting and excellent collection of vocal part- 

 music, which is become very scarce. 



WILSON, PROFESSOR JOHN, was born on the 19th of May 1785, 

 at Paisley in Scotland, where his father was a wealthy manufacturer. 

 He was the eldest son : one of his brothers, James, became distin- 

 guished as a naturalist ; one of his sisters became Mrs. Ferrier, and 

 the mother of Professor Ferrier of St. Andrews ; and another of hid 

 sisters married Sir John Macneil. At an early age, the future poet 

 and essayist was sent to a school at Glenorchy in the Highlands kept 

 by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Mclntyre ; and here he acquired his first en- 

 thusiasm for Highland scenery and his love of open air exercises. At 

 the age of thirteen he went to the University of Glasgow, whence, after 

 five years of study, he removed in 1803 to Magdalen College, Oxford. 

 At Oxford he was distinguished no less for his literary genius and 

 attainments as shown in his carrying off, among other honours, 

 the Newdegate prize in 1806, for an English poem ' On the Study of 

 Greek and Roman Architecture/ than for the exuberance of his 

 animal spirits, his great physical strength and beauty, and his fondness 

 for athletic sports. He was the best boxer, leaper, and runner about 

 the University. He graduated B.A. in 1807, and in 1810 he took the 

 degree of M.A. "A fair-haired Hercules-Apollo," says a writer, 

 sketching his life at this time, " and with plenty of money enabling 

 him to gratify his tastes whatever they might be, he had scarcely left 

 Oxford, when he signalized his double ' character by purchasing, or 

 having purchased for him by his father, the small, but beautiful 

 estate of Elleray on Lake Windermere, where as Hercules, he might 



yacht about at his pleasure, beat the best boatman at the oar, and 

 wrestle or box with the strongest dalesman, and, as Apollo, he might 

 revel in the quiet beauties of the finest of English scenery, indulge 

 undisturbed in poetic dreams of his own, and cultivate with due re- 

 verence the society of Wordsworth." Here, besides Wordsworth, he 

 became acquainted with Coleridge, Southey, and De Quincey, the 

 last of whom describes the extraordinary manliness of his character at 

 this time, dashed with an eccentricity which showed itself in all kinds 

 of freaks and projects and among them that of becoming a traveller 

 in Africa. It was at this time (1810) that he married an English 

 lady of wealth whom he met when she was on a visit to the Lakes 

 with her family, and, falling in love with her at first sight, wooed and 

 won with romantic rapidity. He had by this time published some 

 anonymous writings in Coleridge's ' Friend/ and elsewhere ; and in 

 1811 he published anonymously in Edinburgh, 'Lines sacred to the 

 memory of the Rev. James Grahame/ i.e. the poet Grahame, the 

 author of ' The Sabbath.' Though his summer head-quarters were at 

 Elleray, Wilson spent part of every year in Edinburgh, and the follow- 

 ing extract from a letter of Scott to Miss Joanna Baillie will show the 

 impression which he had begun to make in Edinburgh : " The author 

 of the Elegy upon poor Grahame is John Wilson, a young man of 

 very considerable poetical powers. He is now engaged on a poem 

 called ' The Isle of Palms,' something in the style of Southey. He is 

 an eccentric genius and has fixed himself on the banks of Windermere, 

 but occasionally resides in Edinburgh, where he now is. .... He 

 seems an excellent, warmhearted, and enthusiastic young man ; some- 

 thing too much perhaps of the latter quality places him among the list 

 of originals." The ' Isle of Palms ' here alluded to, was published in 

 1812, and gave Wilson a place among the Lake Poets. In 1815 he was 

 called to the Scottish bar, at which however he never practised ; and 

 from that time forward Edinburgh was his accustomed place of resi- 

 dence. He wrote for the 'Edinburgh Review' a criticism on the 4th 

 canto of ' Childe Harold ' his only contribution to that periodical. 

 "His prepossessions, both political and literary, led him to attach 

 himself to the little band of young Tories, with Scott as a cautious 

 veteran to advise them, who were disposed to break out in rebellion 

 against Jeffrey's Whig supremacy in the northern world of letters ; 

 and, accordingly, when Blackwood (1817) started his magazine to 

 afford an outlet for native Scottish Toryism similar to that which had 

 been already provided in the ' Quarterly Review ' for British Toryism 

 in general, Wilson was one of the first to join him. He had just then 

 added to his laurels, as one of the Lakists, by the publication (1816) of 

 a poem of some length, entitled ' The City of the Plague ;' his magni- 

 ficent physique was the admiration of Edinburgh, so that, as he 

 walked hurriedly along Princes-street in somewhat wild costume, and 

 with his fair hair streaming from under his broad white hat, heads 

 were turned to look at him ; and his reputation in social circles was 

 that of a young Goth of genius with powers undeveloped, which 

 would one day astonish Britain." At first Wilson was associated with 

 Lockhart and others in writing for ' Blackwood/ so that it was not till 

 1824 or 1825, that that publication was identified with him to the full 

 extent. 



The connection with Blackwood was an important event in the life 

 of Wilson; and it was speedily followed (1820) by his appointment 

 to the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, 

 then vacant by the death of Dr. Thomas Brown. The appointment 

 was made rather on the grounds of Wilson's political opinions and his 

 promising genius than on the evidence of any special works already 

 produced on metaphysics or philosophy, and Sir William Hamilton, 

 afterwards Wilson's colleague, was a defeated candidate on the occa- 

 sion. Scott, who used all his influence in behalf of Wilson, wrote to 

 Lockhart expressing his hope that if he obtained the appointment, it 

 would give him " the consistence and steadiness of character which 

 are all he wants to make him the first man of the age." The appoint- 

 ment, together with his connection with Blackwood (both of which 

 came at a time when some pecuniary reverses had obliged him to 

 break up his little establishment at Elleray) had, at all events, the 

 good effect of determining Wilson's genius permanently to prose 

 rather than to verse. He still, indeed, wrote verse in the Lakist style 

 in quantity sufficient, when added to what he had already written, to 

 make two octavo volumes of poetry in all in 1825 ; but this is no proof 

 that in verse he would ever have been more than one of the minor 

 Lake poets. It was in prose, and more especially as a poet in prose, 

 that his genius was to display itself in its full capacity ; and both the 

 magazine and the lecture room gave him the necessary opportunities. 

 "He wrote," says the author of the sketch already quoted, "tales for 

 the magazine, in which, while his imagination had as free scope as it 

 had in verse, his constitutional Scotticism, his shrewd observation of 

 Scottish humours, his sensibility to the woes of real life, and his 

 powers of eloquent description and delineation of character, had a 

 still freer and more minute range. Some of these tales, with others 

 written independently, formed collectively his first professed prose- 

 work, published, in 1822, under the title of 'Lights and Shadows of 

 Scottish Life' and followed in 1823 by a one-volume novel called 'The 

 Trials of Margaret Lyndsay.' He wrote also political articles on the 

 questions of the day in which he blazed out as a Tory in a manner 

 heartily satisfying to his instincts, and yet not possible had he kept 

 to metre. He wrote literary criticisms, in which he advanced and 



