Wilson's lite;rary writings 131 



it was after the mechanical smoothness of their 

 verse that Wilson sought. This influence had a 

 very enervating effect upon his measures, and it 

 is only when he escaped from it that his verse rose 

 above the commonplace. 



Grosart in his edition of Wilson's poems gives 

 in all one hundred and twenty-six pieces, of which 

 four are of doubtful authorship, and three are 

 only variant forms of other poems included in the 

 same volume. The work readily falls into two 

 groups, the poems written in Scotland and those 

 composed during his later life in America. For 

 convenience we may again divide the former of 

 these groups by considering first the Scotch dia- 

 lect pieces and secondly those in English. 



Without doubt the finest bit of work that Wil- 

 son ever accomplished in his vernacular is the 

 "Watty and Meg," which he published separately 

 and without his name in 1792. There is a vigor- 

 ous humor and a nice sense of the use of words 

 evident in it as in nothing else that its author ever 

 wrote. As a picture of the life which Wilson 

 knew so well, it is beyond question true, and the 

 very raciness of it adds to its faithfulness without 

 making it actually coarse. It is the story of "the 

 taming of the shrew" in humble Renfrewshire 

 life, but its chief interest rests in the characters 

 sketched and in the freshness of the telling, rather 

 than in the slight incident which forms its plot. 

 We see Watty as "he sat and smoket by liim- 

 sel' " at the jovial hostelry of Mungo Blue, and 

 we hear Meg as she comes in "like a Fury," 

 threatening to throw his "whiskey i' the fire." 



