16S MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



of the paper referred to in the following '"Notice to a Correspond- 

 ent" was either the Leopard or the Scorpion : — "The paper on Crani- 

 ology by Peter Candid would have appeared in our present number, 

 if it had not contained some improper personal allusions." In the 

 same number (III.), at all events, is a review of "The Craniad," a 

 Poem, which may be given entire.* I have no doubt the cautious 

 editors inserted it with great misgivings as to its containing " im- 

 proper personal allusions ;" very possibly the publisher inserted it 

 without consulting them. It is one of the very few lively things in 

 the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. 



In the new Magazine, relieved from the editorial incubus, and 

 the embarrassments of a divided responsibility, the genius of Wil- 

 son found free scope. Like a strong athlete who never before had 

 room or occasion to display his powers, he now revelled in their ex- 

 ercise in an .arena where the competitors were abundant, and the 

 onlookers eagerly interested. Month after month he poured forth 

 the exuberant current of his ideas on politics, poetry, philosophy, 

 religion, art, books, men, and nature, with a freshness and force 

 that seemed incapable of exhaustion, and regardless of obstacles. 

 It was in fact only a change in the form of his activity. In that 

 new and more exciting field he doubtless dealt many a blow, of 

 which, on calm reflection and in maturer years, he saw reason to 

 repent. But without at all excusing the extravagance of censure 

 and the violence of language which often disfigured these early coi> 

 tributions to the Magazine, I cannot say that I have been able to 

 trace to his hand any instance of unmanly attack, or one shade of 

 real malignity. There did appear in the Magazine wanton and un- 

 justifiable strictures on persons such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, 

 with whom he was on terms of friendship, and for whom, in its own 

 pages and elsewhere, he professed, as he sincerely felt, the highest 

 esteem. But when it is well understood that he was never in any 

 sense the editor, and that in these early days of the Magazine the 

 ruling principle seemed to be that every man fought for his own 



* The Craniad, or Spursheim Illustrated. A Poem in Two Parts. 12mo. Blackwood. 

 Edinburgh, 1817. " The Craniad is the worst poem we have now in Scotland. The author has 

 it in his power at once to decide the great craniological controversy. Let him submit his skull 

 to general inspection, and if it exhibit a single intellectual organ, Spurzheim's theory is over- 

 thrown." The original of this characteristic bit of criticism occurs in a MS. book, described by 

 Mr. Gillies as an " enormous ledger," which, he says, was taken possession of by my father, and 

 filled with "skeletons" of proposed articles. Of these sketches, however, the much mutilated 

 volume contains none, the existing contents being almost entirely poetry. 



