250 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



of the Moor as a mere victim of the green-eyed monster was very 

 clearly and convincingly exhibited ; (2.) The Love of Pleasure ; (3.) 

 Hope ; (4.) Fear ; (5.) Happiness or Misery in this Life arising from 

 the lower principles of humanity; (6.) Association, discussed at 

 great length and with very great metaphysical acumen, as well as 

 copious illustration ; (7.) Imagination, treated in nine most interest- 

 ing lectures ; and, (8.) Conscience ; which, with a full and particular 

 consideration of the various moral systems propounded by ancient 

 and modern philosophy, occupied thirty lectures. 



" In the next division of the course the Affections were explained 

 and illustrated in a series of sixteen lectures, in which all the wealth 

 of poetry and pathos that were at his command had ample scope 

 and glorious display in picturing scenes of domestic and social life, 

 and in drawing from the whole field of literature examples of family 

 affection and heroic patriotism. Thus we had the picture of a family 

 — with all its interpenetrating relations, of the elder members 

 towards the younger, and of the elder towards each other ; the 

 strong hold which any absent member retains over the affections of 

 all at home, and the deep reverence and affectionate love with which 

 they all regard the head of the family — set before us in a manner 

 to rivet attention, by connecting with it a very fine disquisition on 

 Burns's 'Cottar's Saturday Night.' We had the beautiful pic- 

 tures of filial affection drawn by Sophocles and Shakspere respec- 

 tively in Antigone and Cordelia, extemporaneously, but most effec- 

 tively and splendidly described. This extempore lecture was imme- 

 diately followed up by another, delivered also without the aid of any 

 notes, and of a very strange and discursive character, as the heads 

 of it will show: — 'Antigone — Electra — Clytemnestra — Agamem- 

 non — iEgisthus — Orestes — Good old Homer who never nods — 

 Ulysses — Achilles — Peleus — The Meeting of Laertes and Achilles — 

 The Lake Poets — Southey and Wordsworth — Apples and Pears — 

 Apple-pie;' but in which the Professor succeeded in demonstrating 

 the vast superiority of the great poets of antiquity, in delineating 

 those simple touches of nature that go to prove the whole world 

 kin. We had then parental affection copiously illustrated in a 

 series of lectures containing highly-wrought pictures of an outcast 

 mother sitting begging by the wayside, of emigrant mothers about 

 to be devoured in a burning ship, and of Virgil's sketches of Evan- 

 der and Pallas, and Mezentius and Lausus, as contrasted with Words- 



