He was of the kind which always falls on its
feet even if flung out of garret windows.

Another time, he hurt his heel somewhat
severely, while indulging in a " game of romps"
with a band of tinkers fallen in with on his way
to Achlian. And then, instead of nursing the
wound, as any other person would have done,
he must needs go fishing just as usual, though
hardly able to limp; and because he could not
safely land a monster trout that came upon his
hook and its own doom in Loch Awe, he cast
himself into the water, and swam about with
his victim, bending to his whims, and letting his
slender line yield to the motions of the fish,
until it was faint and exhausted; and so swam
back to shore with his prize in his hand. But
he made his heel worse, and had some trouble
with it afterwards. Fishing was a passion with
him, and he has been known to take a hundred
and thirty, and more, out of Loch Awe in one
day. The Noctes and the Christopher papers are
full of enthusiastic descriptions of the delights
of an angler's life; as they are, indeed, of all
manner of out-of-door sports, and the glorious
liberties granted to the lovers of nature, and the
sons of the fresh free soil. It was a sore blow
to him when he had to put off something of this
freedom and leave Elleray, where he had been
so supremely happy, and which he had fashioned
and planned in every way according to his own
desires; and go into harness in Edinburgh, no
longer the wealthy independent gentleman, but
a day-labourer in literature for his children's
bread. He was ruined. A relative—those
things always come from close friends or blood
relations—had ruined him, and poor Mr. Wilson
was obliged to leave beautiful Windermere and
glorious Langdale Pikes, his boat races and his
bull-hunts, his wrestlings with the
Westmoreland " statesmen," and his cock-fights, and
all the loud, noisy, manly, healthful pleasures
in which he had indulged there, and go into
town and to daily work, like any other hodman
of the press. But he soon made himself a
career; and, as the mainstay and chief girder
of 'Blackwood's Magazine, and then as Professor
of Moral Philosophy, managed to right his
lifeboat from the shallows on which he had run
aground, and set sail once more with a fair
wind in his favour.

His connexion with the Tory party gave him
a definite centre at once, and the world must
needs count it fortunate, however much the
individual may have suffered, that John Wilson of
Elleray had a dishonest uncle, and was brought
from affluence to the necessity of constant literary
labour. In 1817 he connected himself
definitively with Blackwood's Magazine, or
"Maga." He was then thirty-two years of
age, having been born in 1785, and in the very
prime of his power and genius. Previously he
had written poetry, and once had sent a
contribution to the Edinburgh Review, staunch
Tory as he was, which made his mother, the
clever, stern, old Jacobite lady, say to him
significantly, when she heard of it, " John, if you
turn Whig this house is no longer big enough
for us both:" for he had gone to her house in
George-street on his quitting Elleray, and the
laws of political partisanship were rigid there.
He did not turn Whig, and he never wrote for
Jeffrey and the old buff and blue again, but took
up his cudgel with Lockhart, and used it as
none but he and Lockhart and Wilson Croker
could. What was sacred to them which had
the taint of liberalism in its blood? Coleridge
was a " miserable compound of egotism and
malignity;" Leigh Hunt a " profligate creature,
without reverence for God or man;" old
Professor Playfair was accused of being a
turncoat, and of having allied himself with
"unprincipled wits and insidious infidels;"
Moore and Bowles were held up to supremest
ridicule; Lady Blessiugton was coarsely abused,
and her writings spoken of as "not to be
touched save by a pair of tongs." No one was
spared, and strength became oppression and
liberty licence; but through all this savagery
of onslaught shone forth the evidences of a
grand and commanding genius—a genius far
too noble to be wasted on personalities. And
then came out the Noctes Ambrosianae, the most
masterly papers of the kind ever written, and
those wherein Wilson put all the best of himself.

As a teacher and lecturer, Wilson was
enthusiastically loved and honoured. He used to
take his students out for holiday excursions,
and one day is specially remembered yet, when
he took them to St. Mary's Loch, " to enjoy
the first gentle embrace of spring in some solitary
spot," and filled their young heads and
hearts with such glowing images, such
passionate love of nature, and aspirings after beauty,
as none of them would ever forget again. And
then, " before evening laid its westering
shadows into gloaming, he called his students
around him, and rising up, he shook his wild
locks among them, blessed them, and called
them his children, and bade them adieu;" having
been of more real value to them in that one
bright and joyous spring day's pleasure, than
many another teacher has been at the end of a
long life of work and labour.

He was a most eloquent speaker; and one of
those strong-natured electric men, whose
personal influence is always so great. When he
spoke it was with a very tumult of emotion in
look, voice, word, and manner; his frame
quivered, his voice took every shade of intonation,
from rolling thunder to sweetest, saddest
tenderness; his utterance was rapid, his features
full of meaning and expression; he held his
class enthralled, so that you could hear a pin
drop; and the applause that followed some of
his most magnificent periods was literally
overwhelming. And yet, with all this, he maintained
a sternness of discipline that kept master and
students in their due relations, and prevented
enthusiasm from becoming unruly, and love
from degenerating into familiarity.

De Quincey was one of Mr. Wilson's great
friends; and in such good sort, that once, when
he went to spend an hour or so one stormy
evening at Mr. Wilson's house in Edinburgh,