INTRODUCTION 



sweetest, mildest mannered man that ever 

 murdered a literary reputation, — not at all 

 the "musty," "rusty," "fusty," "crusty" Chris- 

 topher that Tennyson called him, — Wilson 

 suffered from the reactionary effects upon his 

 own spirit of his ferocity, and is said to have 

 stood aghast at the unforeseen effects of the 

 storms he helped to stir in the literary atmos- 

 phere of the Scotch capital, and of all the 

 United Kingdom for the matter of that. He 

 was one of those whom earlier generations 

 were wont to arraign for the murder of Keats, 

 but whom later critics more candid and dis- 

 passionate have acquitted of the crime. It 

 is certain that he attacked Keats virulently, 

 even scurrilously, but his method was less 

 personal than peculiar to his time. Wilson 

 lived to pass out of the storm and stress 

 period of critical writing, and found no dif- 

 ficulty in accommodating his nature to less 

 strenuous ways of life and literature. In the 

 Nodes Amhrosiance, contemporary criticism 



[XV] 



