LIFE OF WILSON. clxxvii 



of the vulgar and ignorant; a state, compared with which the 

 lot of the hewer of wood, and drawer of water, is truly enviable. 



The account of daddy Squares, the settler, and that of Pat 

 Dougherty, the shopkeeper and publican, contain some humour. 

 The latter is a disgusting exhibition of one of those barbarians, 

 whom the traveller often meets with in the interior of our coun- 

 try; and whose ignorance, bestiality and vice, have the tenden- 

 cy to disabuse one on the subject of the virtue and happiness 

 usually attributed to the inhabitants remote from our large cities, 

 which, instead of being the only nurseries of corruption, as is 

 believed and affirmed, are the great schools wherein science, li- 

 terature, piety and manners, are most effectively taught, and 

 most beneficially practised. 



The sketch of the Indian hunter is entitled to praise, as being 

 vigorous and picturesque; and the description of the Bald or 

 Gray Eagles, sailing amid the mist of the Cataract of Niagara, 

 is a picture drawn with fidelity it is poetical and sublime. 



After this superficial review of the poems of Wilson, the 

 question will naturally arise, ought we to consider him as one 

 endued with those requisites, which entitle his productions to 

 rank with the works of the poets, properly so called? To write 

 smooth and agreeable verses is an art of no very difficult pur- 

 chase; we see it daily exemplified by persons of education, 

 whose leisure permits them to beguile a lonely hour with an 

 employment at once delightful and instructive. But when one 

 considers the temporary nature of the great mass of these fugitive 

 essays, that they are read and remembered just so long as is 

 the ephemeral sheet, or magazine, the columns of which they 

 adorn; one can form no high expectations of the long life of that 

 poetry which seldom rises beyond mediocrity, which some- 

 times sinks greatly below it; and which is indebted, in no small 

 degree, to the adventitious aid of a name, resplendent in anoth- 

 er walk of literature, for that countenance and support, which 

 its own intrinsic merits, singly, could never claim. 



I am aware that these brief observations on the poetry of 

 Wilson, are not calculated to give pleasure to those of his 



VOL. i. z 



