318 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



a very pleasant, witty contribution, from Theodore Hook. I remain, 

 my dear friend, yours faithfully, 



" Allan Cunningham. 



" P. S. — I have got Mr. Bell's letter and Journals, and shall thank 

 him for his good opinion by sending him a trifle some time soon for 

 the paper. If you think my name will do the least good to the 

 good cause, pray insert it at either end of the poem you like. A. C." 



The Anniversary, of which the editor wrote so anxiously, was 

 not the only literary work this year that had requested the Profes- 

 sors' s powerful aid. "Edderline's Dream," unfortunately, a frag- 

 ment, some cantos having been lost in MS., was followed in the 

 month of December by two beautiful little poems, one called " The 

 Vale of Peace," the other " The Hare-Bells," written for T/ie Edin- 

 burgh Literary Gazette, then edited by Mr. Henry Glassford Bell, 

 whose abilities as a student in the Moral Philosophy class had attract- 

 ed Professor Wilson's notice. He frequently visited at his house in 

 Gloucester Place, and very soon evinced qualities more worthy of 

 regard than a cultivated mind and a refined poetical taste. This 

 acquaintanceship ripened into a friendship warm and sincere. Sup- 

 port in affiiirs of literature was not long a binding link ; letters were 

 forsaken for law, and, after a few years' practice in Edinburgh, Mr. 

 Bell removed to Glasgow, having obtained a Sheriffship in that 

 important city, where he has long enjoyed the respect due to an 

 admirable judge, and an accomplished man of letters. 



It has already been mentioned that my lather had prepared 

 sketches for the composition of various poems ; why he did not fol- 

 low further his original impulses in this direction has been matter 

 of surprise. So strong a genius as his can hardly be supposed to 

 have quite missed its proper direction. Yet from the date of the 

 publication of the " City of the Plague," up to 1829, there is no in- 

 dication of his having seriously bent his mind to poetical composi- 

 tion. In the autumn of that year, at Elleray, he was again visited 

 by the muse, and my mother thus mentions the fact to her sister: — 



" Mr. W. has been in rather a poetical vein of late, and I rather 

 think there will be a pretty long poem of his in the next number of 

 Blackwood, entitled, ' An Evening in Furness Abbey,' or some- 

 thing of that kind. It will be too long for you to read, but perhaps 

 Ann will do so, and tell you what it is about." From the publica- 



