430 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



jovial. If he had become a hermit, it was evident that solitude 

 had not visited him." 



My other correspondent met the Professor at a dinner-party at 

 Lord Robertson's, the last party of the kind, I think, he ever was 

 induced to be present at. " The party was especially joyous and 

 genial. After the ladies had left the room, the host, in a short 

 mock-heroic speech,* moved that I should ' take the chair of the 

 meeting,' which was duly seconded by the Honorable Lauderdale 

 Maule, of the 79th Highlanders. Upon modestly declining to accept 

 of the honor, I was informed that, if I persisted in my refusal, I 

 should be removed from the room by a policeman for contempt of 

 court ! I then at once moved up to the head of the table and seated 

 myself, having on my right hand the gallant and accomplished offi- 

 cer above mentioned, and on my left the grand-looking old Profes- 

 sor, with his eye of fire, and his noble countenance full of geniality 

 and kindness. Lord Robertson, as was his wont several years 

 before his death, sat on the left-hand side, two or three seats from 

 the top. Of that goodly company, those three I have just mentioned 

 have passed away. One incident I remember of that dinner-party. 

 Robertson, with affectionate earnestness, but from which he could 



* Of Lord Robertson's mock-heroic speeches, Mr. Lockhart gives a vivid description in his 

 account of the Burns dinner of 1818: — "The last of these presidents (Mr. Patrick Robertson), a 

 young counsellor, of very rising reputation and most pleasant manner, made his approach to the 

 chair amidst such a thunder of acclamation, as seems to be issuing from the cheeks of the Bac- 

 chantes, when Silenus gets astride on his ass, in the famous picture of Rubens. Once in the 

 chair, there was no fear of his quitting it while any remained to pay homage due to his authority. 

 He made speeches, one chief merit of which consisted (unlike Epic Poems) in their having neither 

 beginning, middle, nor end. He sang songs in which music was not. He proposed toasts in 

 which meaning was not. But over every thing that he said there was flung such a radiance of 

 sheer mother-wit, that there was no difficulty in seeing the want of meaning was no involuntary 

 want. By the perpetual dazzle of nis wit, by the cordial flow of his good humor, but, above all, 

 by the cheering influence of his broad, happy face, seen through its halo of punch steam (for even 

 the chair had by this time got enough of the juice of the grape), he contrived to diffuse over us 

 all, for a long time, one genial atmosphere of unmingled mirth." The remarks I have already 

 made, as to the difficulty of adequately recording the expressions of original humor, where the 

 felicity consists in the expression and accessories as much as in the mere words, apply equally to 

 the wit or humor of Robertson. I venture, however, to give one example that occurs to me, out 

 of perhaps hundreds that might be remembered, of his peculiar and invincible power of closing 

 all controversy by the broadest form of redncUo ad absurdum. At a dinner party, a learned 

 and pedantic Oxonian was becoming very tiresome with his Greek erudition, which he insisted 

 on pouring forth on a variety of topics more or less recondite. At length, at a certain stage of 

 the discussion of some historical point, Robertson turned round, and fixing his large eyes on the 

 Don, said, with a solemnly judicial air, "I rather think, sir, Dionysius of Halicarnassus is 

 against you there." " I beg your pardon," said the Dou, quickly, "Dionysius did not flourish for 

 ninety years after that period." "Oh," rejoined Patrick, with an expression of face that must 

 be imagined, " I made a mistake. I meant Thaddeus of Warsaw." After that the discussion 

 went no farther in the Greek channel. 



