176 Iktngs of tbe 1Rot>, IRffle, ant) Gun 



Jane Penny, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant, " the 

 Belle of the Lakes," and to her he was married on May 

 nth, 1811. Four happy years they passed at Elleray, 

 and then came the crash which suddenly reduced Wilson 

 from wealth to poverty. The whole of his fortune had 

 been entrusted to an uncle for investment, and was lost 

 in rash speculations. There was nothing for it but to 

 leave Elleray. So John Wilson, with his wife and 

 children, went to live with his mother at Edinburgh. 



By this time John Wilson was known to fame as the 

 author of two poems, " The Isle of Palms " and " The City 

 of the Plague " graceful, eloquent, with some thrills of 

 pathos and passion in them, but with no ring of the 

 genius that makes poetry live. Added, however, to his 

 picturesque personality, they made him a notable figure 

 in Edinburgh. Thomas Carlyle has left us one of his 

 mordant portraits of John Wilson as he was at 

 this time. 



" I knew his figure well ; remember first seeing him in 

 Princes Street on a bright April afternoon [probably 

 1814] exactly forty years ago. A tall ruddy figure, 

 with plenteous blonde hair, with bright blue eyes, fixed, 

 as if in haste towards some distant object, strode rapidly 

 along, clearing the press to the left of us, close by the 

 railings, near where Blackwood's shop now is. Westward 

 he in haste ; we slowly eastward. Campbell whispered 

 me, ' That is Wilson of " The Isle of Palms," ' which poem 

 I had not read, being then quite mathematical, scientific, 

 etc., for extraneous reasons, as I now see them to have 

 been. The broad-shouldered, stately bulk of the man 

 struck me ; his flashing eye, copious, dishevelled head of 



