PROFESSOR WILSON'S PENSION. (From the " Edinburgh Advertiser.")

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 609, 14 February 1852, Page 4

PROFESSOR WILSON'S PENSION. (From the " Edinburgh Advertiser.")

"^Edinbnigh Advertiier.") Not the least gracious or least memorable of the events connected with her Majesty's recent brief sojourn at Holyrood, is the tribute she there paid

to the mew gified of Scotland's sons since the de.atli of Scott,- Professor Wilson. The «rnnt of J^'MO a-} ear, ju>t conferred on him for his "literary merits," was accompanied with every circumstnnoe thai could enhance it in hNeetimation ; and those who know the man will not think that the date "Holyrood," « without significance. Along: with ft urns and Sent I, Wilson forms one of that Triad of Genius which comprises the brightest names in Scottish litcratme. Each of that trio is distinct in character and achievements from the others. Burns shows the genius of the heart embodied in song. Scott is equally peat in the romance of poetry and of prose. Wilson is stronger in his prose than in his .poetry, but in both exhibits peculiarities which mark him from all other autliort, either living or dead. The erile i spring of his poetic inspiration 13 a kind .of 'apostolic meekness or love.,' wiiich overflows fiom his heart as a centre, and colours all things with its own soft and fairy lustre. lie makes a nearer approach, in tone of thought, to the Lake School, than to any other great clas& of writers, but he never offends, like them, by endeavouring to extract sentiment from incongruous subjects. He never clothes the tiivial in the pomp of majestic words, nor debases the lofty by meanness of expression or puerility of epithet. His pathos is always of the heart, — simple, deep, and touching. There is a splendour, but often a diffuseness in his delineations of the aspects of nature ; and among its beauties he riots and revels, always preferring the bright and gentle to the gloomy or rugged. His prose is more difficult to characterise. It is like the rushing of a strong river,— whose every tone, from its lighest laughing ripple to the thunder of the waterfall, is all melody; whose crystal flood pictures in easy but often startling succession every change of scenery on its way, reflecting in beauty all things in earth and sky ,• now still, and deep, and solemn, like a lake mirroring nothing but heaven and the stars ; now fairy-like in its airy spray and its rainbow-tinted foam; now leaping joyously, exultingly, exuberantly, as if inebriate Tritons urged its course ; and in all, in all times and in all places, strength personified, — Strength and Beauty is a rare union —in a union (why should we not say it ?) like that exhibited in his own person, ere years had replaced by the Venerable the graces of youth. A Professor of Moral Philosophy, he is a master also (as De Quincey observes) in another and a far ampler philosophy — a philosophy of human nature, like the philosophy of Shakspeare, and of Jeremy Taylor, and of Edmund Burke. Such philosophy by its very nature is of a higher and more aspiring kind than any which lingers upon mere scholastic conundrums. It cannot be presented in abstract forms ; but look for it among the critical essays of Professor Wilson, and it will be found, as an incarnation, in voluminous mazes of eloquence and poetic feeling. These essays are absolutely unmatched for continual glimpses and revelations of hidden truth ; and from them, but especially from his meditative examinations of great poets, Greek and English, may be formed a jiorihgbvm of thoughts, the most profound and the most gorgeously illustrated that exist in human composition. " Wilson (says Gilfillan) is a host, — he is a continent in himself, (like Leviathan, he lies floating many a rood.) Whether we view him as the copious and ardent critic, as the pathetic and most eloquent lecturer, as the poet, as tha talewriter, as the fervid politician, as the broad sunny man, we have before us one of the most remarkable, and, next to Brougham, the cleverest man of the nineteenth century. The literature of his country is indebted to him for a scries of the most eloquent criticisms ever penned, from which passages of every variety of merit might be selected, in a style of execution altogether unparalleled, — combining much of Macaulay's point, Hazlitt's gorgeousness, Jeffrey's vivacity, Sydney Smith's broad humour, with a freedom, force, variety, and rush of sounding words, and glow of whirling Images, quite peculiar to himself. How powerful {and fearless his criticisms on Moore's Byron ! With what a trumpet-tongue did he talk of Homer and his translators ! With what a fine tact did he plunge us into the 'witch element' of Spenser ! What morsels, moreover, of rich critical dust did his prodigal genius scatter amid the broad fun, the inextinguishable laughter, the Shaksperian imagination of the Nodes/ He is ready for every tack. At one time he can scorch a poetaster to a cinder, at another, cast illumination into the ' dark deep holds 1 of a moral question by a glance of his genius ; — at one time dash off the picture of a Highland glen with the force of a Salvator, at another lay bare the anatomy of a passion, with the precision and the power of a Michael Angelo, — write, now, the sweetest verse, and now the most energetic prose, — now let slip, from his spirit, a single^ar, like the * Evening Cloud,' and now unfurl a Nodes upon the wondering world,— now paint Avarice till his audience are dying with laughter, and now Emulation and Sympathy till they are choked with tears, — write now l The Elder's Death-bed,' and now the ' Address to a Wild Deer,' — be equally at home in describing the sufferings of an orphan girl, and the undressing of a dead Quaker, by a congregation of ravens, under the brow of Helvellyn." Enough. We feel the inadequacy both of our pen and of our limits to do justice to such a man, even in its literary character. But Britain will acknowledge by acclamation the award of her Queen.