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John Wilson (Scottish writer)
Encyclopedia
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
advocate, literary critic and author, the writer most frequently identified with the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Christopher North of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn...
.
He was professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University (1820-51).
Biography
Paisley
Paisley is the largest town in the historic county of Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland and serves as the administrative centre for the Renfrewshire council area...
, the son of John Wilson, a wealthy gauze manufacturer who died in 1796, when John was eleven years old, and Margaret Syme (1753-1825). He was the fourth child, but the eldest son, and he had nine brothers and sisters. He was only twelve when he entered the University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
, and continued to attend various classes for six years, mostly under Professor George Jardine
George Jardine
George Jardine FRSE was a Scottish minister of religion, philosopher, academic and educator. He was Professor at the University of Glasgow, of Greek from 1774, and then Professor of Logic and Rhetoric 1787 to 1824....
, with whose family he lived. During this period Wilson excelled in sport as well as academic subjects, and fell in love with "Margaret Fletcher", who was the object of his affections for several years.
In 1803 Wilson was entered as a gentleman commoner at Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
. He was inspired by Oxford, and in much of his later work, notably in the essay called "Old North and Young North", he expresses his love for it. But his Magdalen days were not altogether happy, though he obtained a brilliant first class degree. His love affairs did not go happily, his "Margaret" eloped to New York with his younger brother, Charles and he made no close friends at his own college and few in the university. He took his degree in 1807, and at twenty-two was his own master, with a good income, no guardian to control him, and no need to work for a living. His profession was an estate
Estate (house)
An estate comprises the houses and outbuildings and supporting farmland and woods that surround the gardens and grounds of a very large property, such as a country house or mansion. It is the modern term for a manor, but lacks the latter's now abolished jurisdictional authority...
on Windermere
Windermere (lake)
Windermere is the largest natural lake in England. It is a ribbon lake formed in a glacial trough after the retreat of ice at the start of the current interglacial. It has been one of the country’s most popular places for holidays and summer homes since the arrival of the Kendal and Windermere...
called Elleray, ever since connected with his name. Here he built, boated, wrestled, shot, fished, walked and amused himself for four years, besides composing or collecting from previous compositions a considerable volume of poems, published in 1812 as The Isle of Palms. He became intimate with William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
and Thomas de Quincey
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson de Quincey was an English esssayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater .-Child and student:...
.
In 1811 he married Jane Penny, daughter of the Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
merchant and slave trader James Penny
James Penny
James Penny was a merchant, slaveship owner and prominent anti-abolitionist in Liverpool, England. He defended the slave trade to the British Parliament. Penny Lane in Liverpool, later immortalized by The Beatles, was named after him.-Early life:...
, and they were happy for four years, until the event which made a working man of letters of Wilson, and without which he would probably have produced a few volumes of verse and nothing more. Most of his fortune was lost by the dishonest speculation
Speculation
In finance, speculation is a financial action that does not promise safety of the initial investment along with the return on the principal sum...
of an uncle, in whose hands Wilson had carelessly left it. His mother had a house in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, in which she was able and willing to receive her son and his family; he was not forced to give up Elleray, though he was no longer able to live there.
He read law and was elected to the Faculty of Advocates
Faculty of Advocates
The Faculty of Advocates is an independent body of lawyers who have been admitted to practise as advocates before the courts of Scotland, especially the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary...
in 1815, still with many outside interests, and in 1816 produced a second volume of poems, The City of the Plague. In 1817, soon after the founding of Blackwood's Magazine, Wilson began his connection with the Tory
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
monthly and in October 1817 he joined with John Gibson Lockhart
John Gibson Lockhart
John Gibson Lockhart , was a Scottish writer and editor. He is best known as the author of the definitive "Life" of Sir Walter Scott...
in the October number working up James Hogg
James Hogg
James Hogg was a Scottish poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English.-Early life:James Hogg was born in a small farm near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770 and was baptized there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded...
's MS a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
called the Chaldee Manuscript, in the form of biblical parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
, on the rival Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
, its publisher and his contributors. He became the principal writer for Blackwood's, though never its nominal editor, the publisher retaining supervision even over Lockhart
John Gibson Lockhart
John Gibson Lockhart , was a Scottish writer and editor. He is best known as the author of the definitive "Life" of Sir Walter Scott...
's and "Christopher North's" contributions, which were the making of the magazine.
In 1822 began the series of Noctes Ambrosianae
Noctes Ambrosianae
The Noctes Ambrosianae, a series of 71 imaginary colloquies, appeared in Blackwood's Magazine from 1822 to 1835. The earlier ones had several different authors, including John Gibson Lockhart, William Maginn, James Hogg and Professor John Wilson, but from 1825, with the 19th in the series, the...
, after 1825 mostly Wilson's work. These are discussions in the form of convivial table-talk, including wonderfully various digressions of criticism, description and miscellaneous writing. There was much ephemeral, a certain amount purely local, and something occasionally trivial in them. But their dramatic force, their incessant flashes of happy thought and happy expression, their almost incomparable fulness of life, and their magnificent humour give them all but the highest place among genial and recreative literature. "The Ettrick Shepherd," an idealised portrait of James Hogg
James Hogg
James Hogg was a Scottish poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English.-Early life:James Hogg was born in a small farm near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770 and was baptized there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded...
, one of the talkers, is a most delightful creation. Before this, Wilson had contributed to Blackwood's prose tales and sketches, and novels, some of which were afterwards published separately in Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life (1822), The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay (1823) and The Foresters (1825); later appeared essays on Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
, Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
and all sorts of modern subjects and authors.
Wilson left his mother's house and established himself (1819) in Ann Street, Edinburgh, with his wife and five children. His election to the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
(1820) was unexpected, and the best qualified man in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
, Sir William Hamilton, was also a candidate. But the matter was made a political one; the Tories still had a majority in the burgh
Burgh
A burgh was an autonomous corporate entity in Scotland and Northern England, usually a town. This type of administrative division existed from the 12th century, when King David I created the first royal burghs. Burgh status was broadly analogous to borough status, found in the rest of the United...
council; Wilson was powerfully backed by friends, Sir Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
at their head; and his adversaries played into his hands by attacking his moral character, which was not open to any fair reproach. Wilson made a very excellent professor, never perhaps attaining to any great scientific knowledge in his subject or power of expounding it, but acting on generation after generation of students with a stimulating force that is far more valuable than the most exhaustive knowledge of a particular topic. His duties left him plenty of time for magazine work, and for many years his contributions to Blackwood were extraordinarily voluminous, in one year (1834) amounting to over fifty separate articles. Most of the best and best known of them appeared between 1825 and 1835.
In his last thirty years, he oscillated between Edinburgh and Elleray, with excursions and summer residences elsewhere, a sea trip on board the Experimental Squadron
Experimental Squadron (Royal Navy)
The Experimental Squadrons of the Royal Navy were groups of ships sent out in the 1830s and 1840s to test new techniques of ship design, armament, building and propulsion against old ones...
in the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
during the summer of 1832, and a few other unimportant diversions. The death of his wife in 1837 was an exceedingly severe blow to him, especially as it followed within three years that of his friend Blackwood.
Death and legacy
John Wilson died in Edinburgh. In 1865 a statue was erected to his memory in Princes Street GardensPrinces Street Gardens
Princes Street Gardens is a public park in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. The Gardens were created in the 1820s following the long draining of the Nor Loch and the creation of the New Town. The Nor Loch was a large loch in the centre of the city. It was...
. His brother James Wilson (1795–1856), was known as a zoölogist. Publications include the Works of John Wilson, edited by P. J. Ferrier (12 volumes, Edinburgh, 1855–59); the Noctes Ambrosianœ, edited by R. S. Mackenzie (five volumes, New York, 1854); a Memoir by his daughter, M. W. Gordon (two volumes, Edinburgh, 1862); and for a good estimate, G. Saintsbury
George Saintsbury
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury , was an English writer, literary historian, scholar and critic.-Biography:...
, in Essays in English Literature (London, 1890); and C. T. Winchester
Caleb Thomas Winchester
Caleb Thomas Winchester was an American English scholar, born in Montville, Connecticut. He graduated in 1869 from Wesleyan University, where he was librarian until 1873 and thereafter professor of English literature. During 1880-81 he studied in Leipzig, Germany...
, "John Wilson," in Group of English Essayists of the Early Nineteenth Century (New York, 1910).