John Wilson

“ WILSON, JOHN (1800–1849) , Scottish vocalist, son of John Wilson, coach-driver, was born in Edinburgh on 25 Dec. 1800. At the age of ten he was apprenticed to a printing firm, and was subsequently engaged with the Ballantynes, where he helped to set up the ‘Waverley Novels.’ During the building of Abbotsford he was often chosen as one of the armed messengers who had to ride weekly to Tweedside with money to pay the workmen. ”

“ Mrs. Evans glanced quickly at her and a sudden blazing tenderness came into her weary eyes. “And you, too! You dear child!”
She held out her arms, and Meta swept into them, sobbing, “Yes, yes!”
When they were gone, crying over each other womanlike and softly, Nelson stood up and looked at me.
“Holding master’s papers, I am competent to perform marriages, my son. Shake hands!”
But One Hop, the Chinese cook, bent smiling over his work, silent inscrutable; and up the hill Anerson stood amid the great stalks, alone in the garden he had no share in. ”

“ But suppose such a man as Wilson to have been in better times one of but a few packmen travelling regularly for years over the same country, each with his own district or domain, and there can be no doubt that he would have been an object both of interest and of respect—his opportunities of seeing the very best and the very happiest of humble life, in itself very various, would have been very great; and with his original genius, he would have become, like Wordsworth's Pedlar, a good moral Philosopher. ”

“ Nelson turned up the flickering wick of the bulkhead lantern and we stared at each other—the Evanses, Anerson, Meta Braun, and myself.
While the gale still bellowed overhead and we could hear the swift rush of water past the ship’s side, we all distinctly heard the voice of Nelson saying: “Land! Land! We’re ashore, by all that’s holy—and there’s no land here!”
“Are we dead?” demanded Meta shrilly. ”

“ WILSON, John, professor of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine, and for many years the principal contributor to that periodical, was born at Paisley on the 18th of May, 1785. The house in which he was born, called Prior's Croft, was taken down soon after his birth, when the family removed to a newer tenement on the same property, which was six or eight acres in extent, and laid out in a garden and pleasure grounds. He was the eldest son of John Wilson, a prosperous manufacturer. ”

“ We have left ourselves no space to speak of Dr. Wilson as an author, as an academic and popular lecturer, as a member of learned societies, as a man of exquisite literary powers and fancy, and as a citizen of remarkable public acceptation. This must come from some more careful, and fuller, and more leisurely record of his genius and worth. What he was as a friend it is not for us to say; we only know that when we leave this world we would desire no better memorial than to be remembered by many as George Wilson now is, and always will be. ”

“ God, who crowns the dying ages,
Bids her rule, and us obey,
Bids us cast our lives before her,
Bids us serve the great To-day.
XLIII. THE BAPTISM. (180) John Wilson, 1785-1854, a distinguished Scottish author, was born at Paisley. When fifteen years of age, he entered the University of Glasgow; but, three years later, he became a member of Magdalen College, Oxford. Here he attained eminence both as a student, and as a proficient in gymnastic games and exercises. Soon after graduating, he purchased an estate near Lake Windermere, and became a companion of Wordsworth and Southey ”

“ In spring all one bank of blossoms; but 'tis barish now and sheep-nibbled, though few eyes but our own could have thus detected there the brown back of Maukin. Dominie, your bamboo. Shoot her sitting? Fie fie—no, no. Kick her up, Hamish. There she goes. We are out of practice at single ball—but whizz! she has it between the shoulders. Head-over-heels she has started another—why, that's funny—give us your bow and arrow, you green grocer—twang! within an inch of her fud. ”

“ I may be wrong, and luck may hold against me.”
Jones' vaguely elderly face was lighted by a faint smile. “It's so much better to keep on at full speed and leave the final decision to the event,” he added and he dropped into an easier attitude against the rail. “Captain Ames wore himself and all the others to a bone by slowing up and having to look all around the horizon. We've got nothing to fear except what's directly ahead of us. No submarine can catch us; I doubt very much whether a torpedo could be aimed to strike us except from a very short distance, and then—we have our chance!” ”

“ We played for an hour, and then Captain Jones rose and stared out of the air-port at the sea through which we were steaming at a fair speed.
“Are we sticking to the usual course or going out of the way to avoid trouble?” I inquired.
Jones turned his sallow face to me. His rather dull eyes held a flickering amusement in their depths.
“I was trying to decide that question,” he answered. “It's a rather complicated one. Of course, I've my instructions.”
“Orders?” I suggested.
“Are they orders?” he mused. “I might consider them as such and trust to luck. ”

“ And in order that the skiff might stand a chance of arriving somewhere—on which our own safety also depended—its crew must have bread and whatever else we had that could give them strength for their voyage.
There was a profound stillness. Evans opened his mouth several times, but said nothing. Mrs. Evans merely stared at the shadowed figure of the grim sailor, while Meta Braun seemed lost in thought. Nelson finally spoke abruptly, as a commander to his men:
“Take the skiff and the grub. You ought to make the Hawaiians, with any kind of good weather. Tell ’em we’re here. ”

“ To George Wilson, to all such men—and this is the great lesson of his life—the heavens are forever telling His glory, the firmament is forever showing forth His handiwork; day unto day, every day, is forever uttering speech, and night unto night is showing knowledge concerning Him. ”

“ The proof-reader, gentlest of souls, whose wife in Denver was his sole thought—apart from the mosquitoes—dropped in to inquire when the next steamer with mail from the States might reasonably be expected. The telephone rang to announce that a Japanese on trial for his life at Hilo had been acquitted per wireless. Still the Oldest Journalist wrote on.
“You'd better rush if you’re going to get your last car for Kaimuki,” suggested finally,
He threw down his pencil and bit savagely at the end of a woe-begone cigar. “Did that imbecile librarian find a cut of Simpkins?” he demanded. ”

“ Naturally the officers have a good notion of our daily run and can figure out what course we've made within a narrow margin. But as to exactly where the Cerulean is, I'm the only man who knows.”
“But if—if anything happened to you?”
“It wouldn't take the man who took my place half an hour to know everything he needed to know,” Jones replied. “But I can trust Mr. Edwards not to inquire too closely till there is necessity.” He stared at me as though his eyes were dim. “I can take risks another man would hesitate to take, you see. ”

“ Wilson's second daughter, Lucrece, married Sir George Belgrave of Belgrave, Leicestershire.
Wilson has generally been confused with one or more contemporaries of the same name; a confusion of him with Sir Thomas Wilson (1560?–1629) [q. v.] has led to his being frequently styled a knight. Other contemporaries were Thomas Wilson (d. 1586) , a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who took refuge at Frankfurt during Mary's reign, was elected dean of Worcester in 1571, and died on 20 July 1586 (Cooper, Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 5–6) ”

“ The gudeman, although an elder of the kirk, and with as grave an aspect as suits that solemn office, needs not much persuasion to let the flail rest for one day, anxious though he be to show the first aits in the market; and donning his broad blue bonnet, and the shortest-tailed auld coat he can find, and taking his kent in his hand, he gruffly gives Wully his orders for a' things about the place, and sets off with the younkers for a holiday. Not a man on earth who has not his own pastime, depend on't, austere as he may look ”

“ John Sharp, master of the Elizabeth, in which ship the prisoner was passenger, and fell a second time into the pirates’ hands, deposes that he took the said Wilson off from Sestos, on this coast, paying to the negroes for his ransom the value of three pound five shillings in goods, for which he had taken a note, that he thought he had done a charitable act in this, till, meeting with one Captain Canning, he was asked why he would release such a rogue as Wilson was? ”

“ The career of thought which his chair demanded was that which his own spirit had all along pointed to; the speculations of which the field is the mind itself of man, and which deal with all his dearest and highest interests, were subjects for Wilson irresistibly attractive by their own nature, and which he never approached without a deep feeling of their solemn and measureless import. ”

“ They began to blow on California Freight & Packet Line’s house of cards.
“Stop!” said Ellery hoarsely. “You’ve got it wrong! You’re going to help me out and double your fortunes.”
They did. Thereafter men and newspapers spoke respectfully of “Ellery stocks.”
“A wizard who never fails!” people said.
“Never,” the grizzled Henry muttered to himself, and he sent for Malcolm Griffiths, husband of his daughter and only child.
“Griffiths,” he said, “let’s get down under the paint. You aren’t a success as Isabel’s husband.” ”

“ Wilson has painted many portraits and landscapes, working with equal facility in oils, water-color, [Pg 31] and crayon. He is held in esteem by many competent critics as an artist of ability, but nearly all of his work in any of three mediums indicated, is exceedingly moody and pessimistic; and his water-colors, especially, are "muddy." It is greatly to be regretted that he did not remain the poet he was born to be, instead of drawing his dreams—many use a stronger word—in paints.
As has been said, Mr. Wilson was the presiding genius of the town of Frankfort during his life there ”

“ Some people said that he was supplied by the Jews, others that he had discovered the philosopher's stone, while certain good-natured folk averred that he had robbed the Holland mail of a quantity of jewellery, an exploit for which another man had suffered death.
On 9 April 1694 Wilson and his friend, Captain Wightman, were in the Fountain Inn in the Strand when John Law, afterwards the celebrated financier, came in and fixed a quarrel upon Wilson. They proceeded to Bloomsbury Square, where after one pass the Beau fell wounded in the stomach, and died without speaking a single word. ”

“ A Methodist minister! Why, John Wesley was facete, and Whitfield humorous, and Rowland Hill witty—though he, we believe, was not a Methody; yet were their hearts fountains of tears—and ours is not a rock—if it be, 'tis the rock of Horeb.
Ha, Hamish! Here we are beneath the Merlin Crag. What sport? Why, five brace is not so much amiss—and they are thumpers. Fifteen brace in all. Ducks and flappers. Seven leash. We are getting on. ”

“ Do not let any one, in the light of Henry Wilson's career, be discouraged. Rittenhouse conquered his poverty; John Milton overcame his blindness; Robert Hall overleaped his sickness; and plane and hammer, and adze and pickax, and crowbar and yardstick, and shoe-last have routed many an army of opposition and oppression. Let every disheartened man look at two pictures--Henry Wilson teaching fifteen hours a day at five dollars a week to get [pg 395] his education, and Henry Wilson under the admiring gaze of Christendom at the national capital. ”

“ While the public stood coldly aloof, while his own companions scoffed, and while the potentates of criticism sneered, Wilson, young as he was, had the sagacity to recognize in Wordsworth a great poetical regenerator who, by abandoning all the traditional sentiments and conventionalities of poetry, and by again getting close to nature and reality, was reclothing the earth with a fairer beauty than she had ever worn, and opening up in the human heart fresh springs of tenderness, of grandeur, and of power. ”

“ All the appointments of his home are in the French style, and French is the language of the family. Professor Wilson is a good Kentuckian, nevertheless, and he knows the land and the people well. He is to the University of Virginia what Professor Charles T. Copeland is to Harvard. His first book, The Preposition A, is now out of print. His novel, Mazel (New York, 1902) , takes rather the form of a satire upon life at the University of Virginia. Professor Wilson's next story, The Venus of Cadiz (New York, 1905) , is a rollicking extravaganza of cave and country life at Cadiz, Kentucky. ”

“ A short time before his death, Paul Hamilton Hayne, the famous Southern poet, sent Wilson this greeting: "The old man whose head has grown gray in the service of the Muses, who is about to leave the lists of poetry forever, around whose path the sunset is giving place to twilight, with no hope before him but 'an anchorage among [Pg 32] the stars,' extends his hand to a younger brother of his art with an earnest Te moriturus saluto." These charming words were elicited by June Days, and When Evening Cometh On.
Bibliography. The Recent Movement in Southern Literature, by C. W. Coleman, Jr. ”