The 'Blackwood' Group

The first symptom of the alteration in his character of which we hear is his sense of loneliness. There was no occasion for him to be lonely, for he was rich in affectionate children and grand-children, yet in spite of these his habits insensibly became solitary, he grew to dislike being intruded upon, and at last was seldom seen in public. Still for a time his broad-brimmed hat with its deep crape band, his flowing locks, and his stately figure buttoned in its black coat, continued to be welcome sights in the streets of Edinburgh, and still he continued, without intermission, his labours among his class, until, in the winter of 1850, an alarming seizure which occurred in his retiring-room at the University compelled him to absent himself from his duties. In the following year he finally retired from the Professorship, which he had held for thirty years, his services being recognized by Government with a pension of £300 a year.

He now felt that his usefulness in life was over, and from henceforth his despondency deepened. We read that 'something of a settled melancholy rested on his spirit, and for days he would scarcely utter a word or allow a smile to lighten up his face;' and, again, that 'long and mournful meditation took possession of him; days of silence revealed the depth of his suffering, and it was only by fits and starts that anything like composure visited his heart.' He himself speaks of his 'hopeless misery.' 'Nothing,' he said to his daughter, 'can give you an idea of how utterly wretched I am; my mind is going, I feel it.' And, indeed, it seems that a gradual mental decline had set in. But he was spared its progress. On the 1st April 1854, at his house in Gloucester Place, he was attacked by paralysis, and there two days later, mourned by an almost patriarchal family of descendants, he breathed his last.

In the details of his daily life, Wilson was accustomed to follow his own inclinations more than 'tis given to most men to do, his robust individuality disdaining the minor fashions and conventions of the day, whilst his native independence, and still more his love of home, made him completely indifferent to what is known as social success. It is not in the 'great world,' therefore, that we must seek for the traits which characterize him. But a man is what he is at home, and within his own sphere Wilson's sympathies were of the widest and deepest. He was adored by every member of his large family, whilst his own large-hearted affection embraced all, down to – or, as perhaps I should say, remembering his special love for young children, up to the youngest babe in the household. Such anecdotes, too, as those told by his daughter of his generous treatment of his defaulting uncle, of his relations with his superannuated henchman, Billy Balmer, or of his sitting up all night at the bedside of an old female servant who was dying, 'arranging with gentle but awkward hand the pillow beneath her head,' or cheering her with encouraging words, – these speak more for the genuine humanity of the man than a thousand triumphs gained in an artificial world.

He also shared with Sir Walter Scott the love of birds and animals of all kinds, from the dog, Rover – one of many dogs – who, crawling upstairs in its last moments, died with its paw in its master's hand, to the sparrow which inhabited his study for eleven years, and which, boldly perching on his shoulder, would sometimes carry off a hair from his shaggy head to build its nest. In these matters animals have an instinct which rarely misleads them, and that they had good grounds for recognizing a friend in the Professor is proved by the following incident. One afternoon Wilson, then far advanced in life, was observed remonstrating with a carter who was driving an overladen horse through the streets of Edinburgh —

'The carter, exasperated at this interference, took up his whip in a threatening way, as if with intent to strike the Professor. In an instant that well-nerved hand twisted it from the coarse fist of the man, as if it had been a straw, and walking quietly up to the cart he unfastened its trams, and hurled the whole weight of coals into the street. The rapidity with which this was done left the driver of the cart speechless. Meanwhile, poor Rosinante, freed from his burden, crept slowly away, and the Professor, still clutching the whip in one hand, and leading the horse in the other, proceeded through Moray Place to deposit the wretched animal in better keeping than that of his driver.'

'This little episode,' adds the writer, 'is delightfully characteristic of his impulsive nature, and the benevolence of his heart.'

Whilst human nature remains what it is, traits of such broad and genial humanity as this are never out of date; but when we turn from the writer to the writings, it is to find the case altered, and ourselves brought face to face with the devastations of time. In the sense of great and immediate effect produced by his work, Wilson was unquestionably the most brilliant, as – excepting the too-fertile Galt – he was the most prolific, of the group of distinguished authors who are here associated with the publishing-house of Blackwood; yet in vitality, in enduring freshness, such a novel as The Inheritance, such a sea-piece as Tom Cringle's Log, not to speak of such a character-study as The Provost, to-day leaves his work far behind. Of course this is in large measure due to the nature, not to the defects, of that work. North's most distinctive writings were not creative, and in general it is only creative work that lives. The critic's reputation is transitory; Time's revenge deals swiftly, hardly by it; it has none of the phœnix-property of the creator's. Of all our distinguished critical reputations of the last hundred years or so, how many now survive? To-day the critic Johnson is remembered chiefly for blindness, the critic Jeffrey for overweening self-confidence when he was wrong, the critic Macaulay for idle rhetoric and for consistent failure to strike the mark. The appreciator Lamb is almost alone in holding his own. And there is not one reader in a thousand who has time, or cares, for the purely historical task of looking closer, of studying these eminent writers in relation to the age in which they lived, and of estimating accordingly the services which they performed. Christopher North, in so far as he was a critic, has not escaped the common doom. Scattered over the pages of the Noctes, there are no doubt some shrewd and pregnant observations upon writers and upon literature. But these sparse grains of salt are not enough to preserve the general fabric from decay; whilst the more numerous errors of judgment in which his work abounds require no pointing out. As a reviewer North was not lacking in discrimination, as may be seen in the historical though generally misconceived essay on Tennyson; and, granted a really good opportunity – as in the case of that completion of Christabel which was to Martin Tupper the pastime of some idle days – no man knew better how to avail himself of it. The pages signed by him also afford abundant evidence of the gentleness, generosity, and enthusiasm of his spirit. But when so much has been said, what remains to be added? Of stimulus to the reader, of conspicuous insight into the subject discussed, we find but little.

Turning to the essays, collected under the title of 'Recreations of Christopher North,' we sometimes see the author to better advantage, as, for instance, when he dons his 'Sporting Jacket,' and recounts in mock-heroic style the Sportsman's Progress. The subject was one which keenly appealed to him, rousing all the enthusiasm of his perfervid nature, and some very bright and characteristic pages are the result.

His hero is fishing, and has hooked a fish.

'But the salmon has grown sulky, and must be made to spring to the plunging stone. There, suddenly, instinct with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver bullion; and, relapsing into the flood, is in another moment at the very head of the waterfall! Give her the butt – give her the butt – or she is gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep! – Now comes the trial of your tackle – and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards – right up the middle of the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very source where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and deep – and the line goes steady, boys, steady – stiff and steady as a Tory in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal fin – danger in the flap of her tail – and yet may her silver shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. Why, the river was yesterday in spate, and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or obstruction – the coast is clear – no tree-roots here – no floating branches – for during the night they have all been swept down to the salt loch. In medio tutissimus ibis– ay, now you feel she begins to fail – the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What! another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea-cook! – you in the tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds? – Ha! Watty Ritchie, my man, is that you? God bless your honest laughing phiz! What, Watty, would you think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tam Grieve never gruppit sae heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council. – Curse that collie! Ay! well done, Watty! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks – if that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straight-up tail, come bellowing by between us and the river, then "Madam! all is lost, except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at seven. Our will is made – ten thousand to the Foundling – ditto to the Thames Tunnel – ha – ha – my Beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss thy silver side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if all further resistance now were vain, and gracefully thou wert surrendering thyself to death! No faith in female – she trusts to the last trial of her tail – sweetly workest thou, O Reel of Reels! and on thy smooth axle spinning sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our own worthy planet. Scrope – Bainbridge – Maule – princes among Anglers – oh! that you were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphrey? At his retort? By mysterious sympathy – far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing the noblest Fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, entranced in glorious vision, beside turreted Abbotsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! Poor Sandy – why on thy pale face that melancholy smile! – Peter! The Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and almost with a swirl – whitening as she nears the sand – there she has it – struck right into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or Venus – and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before the Flood!'

Nor are his pictures of Coursing and of Fox-Hunting less good. But anon his overladen style crops out again, as in this passage, where he has just discharged his gun into the midst of a flock of wild-duck afloat upon a loch: —

'Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro – who with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick breath ever and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged by a catapulta, and first with immense and enormous high-and-far leaps, and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down the brae, to dash, all-fours, like a flying squirrel fearlessly from his tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water-line, to mouth first that murdered mawsey of a mallard, lying as still as if she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards heaven – then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale grey, and his back delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky lines – precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling art – next – nobly done, glorious Fro – that cream-colour-crowned widgeon, with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the indescribable and changeable green beauty-spot of his wings – and now, if we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name – finally, that exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means and appliances to boot, carved finely – most finely – by razor-like knife, in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide – tasted by a tongue and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning rose – swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its intense delight – and received into a stomach yawning with greed and gratitude, – Oh! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the apex of Apician luxury; and able, were anything on the face of this feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium!'

In point of style could anything well be much worse? Even the far-famed Noctes Ambrosianæ, by much the most celebrated of Wilson's writings, though they may still be dipped into with pleasure, will scarcely stand critical examination nowadays. Of course, from their very nature, they have come to labour under the disadvantage of being largely concerned with topics and persons of long since exhausted interest. And, again, their convivial setting, which pleased in its own day, is now probably by many looked upon askance, and that, it must be confessed, not without some show of excuse. If this were all, it would be well. As we have seen, Wilson wrote his dialogues hastily and presumably wrote them for the moment, so that to judge them as permanent contributions to literature is to judge them by a standard contemplated not by the author, but by his injudicious critics. Amongst these, Professor Ferrier, in his introductory critique to the authoritative edition of the Noctes, published forty years ago, most confidently claims that they possess solid and lasting qualities, and in the front rank of these qualities he places humour and dramatic power. Now to us, except in outward form, the Noctes appear almost anything rather than dramatic; they are even less dramatic than the conversation-pieces of Thomas Love Peacock. It is true that of the two principal talkers one speaks Scotch and the other English; but in every other respect they might exchange almost any of their longest and most important speeches without the smallest loss to characterisation. The same authority (I use the word in a purely empirical sense) enthusiastically lauds the creation of The Shepherd; and upon him it is true that, by dint of insistence on two or three superficial mannerisms, a certain shadowy individuality has been conferred. But surely it is needless to point out that a label is not a personality, and that this sort of thing is something quite apart from dramatic creation. The critic then goes on to say that 'in wisdom the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato; in humour he surpasses the Falstaff of Shakespeare.' The last part of the sentence strikes us as even more surprising than the first, for had our opinion of the imaginary revellers at Ambrose's been asked we should have had to confess that, though they possess high spirits in abundance and a certain sense of the ludicrous, of humour in the true sense – of the humour, I won't say of a Sterne, but of a Michael Scott – all are alike entirely destitute. And one may even add that with persons of equally high spirits such is almost always the case. Well then, it may be asked, if they lack both humour and dramatic power, in what qualities, pray, do these world-famed dialogues excel? The answer is, of course, that in brilliant intellectual and rhetorical display the Noctes are supreme. Yet here, also, there is often about them something too much of deliberate and self-conscious fine-writing. And yet, even to-day, when tastes have changed and fashions altered, the exuberance of their eloquence is hard to withstand, and in reading them we sometimes almost believe that we are touched when in reality we are merely dazzled. This dazzling quality is not one of the highest in literature: with the single possible exception of Victor Hugo, the greatest writers have always been without it. But it pervades, floods, overwhelms the Noctes. It is a somewhat barren, and unendearing quality at best; yet, after all, it is an undoubted manifestation of intellectual power; and whatever it may be worth, let us give Wilson full credit for having excelled in it.

One last word. The literary workman has no more unpleasing task to perform than that of so-called destructive criticism; but if Wilson himself, as apart from his writings, be indeed, as we believe him to be, an immortal figure, by releasing him from the burden of ill-judged praise which like a mill-stone hangs about his neck, and by setting him in his true light, we shall have done him no disservice. On the poetic imagination, then, he looms as one heroically proportioned; whilst more practical thinkers will cherish his memory as that of a most brilliant contributor to the periodical literature of his day, a great inspirer of youth, and a standard and pattern to his countrymen of physical and intellectual manhood.