178 Ifcfnas of tbe 1Rofc, IRifle, anb Gun 



and I walked home, smoking as we went. I had 

 scarcely either eaten or drunk, being a privileged 

 person, but merely enjoyed the strange volcanic 

 eruptions of our poet's convivial genius. He is a 

 broad sincere man of six feet, with long dishevelled 

 flax-coloured hair, and two blue eyes keen as an 

 eagle's. Now and then he sank into a brown study, 

 and seemed dead in the eye of law. About two 

 o'clock he was sitting in this state, smoking languidly, 

 his nose begrimed with snuff, his face hazy and inert ; 

 when all at once flashing into existence, he inquired 

 of John Gordon, with an irresistible air, 'I hope, Mr. 

 Gordon, you don't believe in universal damnation ? * 

 It was wicked, but all hands burst into inextinguishable 

 laughter. But I expect to see Wilson in a more 

 philosophic key ere long ; he has promised to call on 

 me, and is, on the whole, a man I should like to know 

 better. Geniuses of any sort, especially of so kindly 

 a sort, are so very rare in this world." 



That expectation was never realised : Wilson and 

 Carlyle never became intimate. Indeed, there seemed 

 to be a mutual antipathy which kept them apart ; 

 though, in the first instance, Wilson no doubt was to 

 blame, for he never paid that promised call, and his 

 excuses for not doing so were so palpably insincere, 

 not to say mendacious, that Carlyle resented them. 



In 1817 Blackwood's Magazine was started, in which 

 adventure he and John Gibson Lockhart were the two 

 leading spirits, and it was just about this time that 

 Wilson started on his romantic fishing tour in the 

 Highlands, accompanied by his wife. Mr. William 



