son, being one of a family of ten. His youngest brother, James Wilson (1795–1856) [q. v.], is noticed separately. John received his first education in the grammar school of Paisley and in the manse of Mearns, and in 1797 proceeded to Glasgow University, where he was especially influenced by Jardine, the professor of logic, and Young, the professor of Greek. He obtained several prizes in logic, and his career as a student was in general highly creditable to him, though he was still more distinguished as an athlete. ‘I consider Glasgow College as my mother,’ he wrote, ‘and I have almost a son's affection for her.’ From Glasgow he migrated to Oxford, where he became a gentleman commoner at Magdalen College, and matriculated on 26 May 1803. He had previously, in May 1802, afforded an indication of the direction which his thoughts were taking by addressing a long letter, partly reverential, partly expostulatory, to Wordsworth, who returned the boy an elaborate answer, inserted in his own memoir, and reprinted, with Wilson's letter, in Professor Knight's editions of his works. At Oxford ‘he was considered the strongest, the most athletic and most active man of those days, and created more interest among the gownsmen than any of his contemporaries.’ He also studied methodically, and obtained considerable distinction in the schools, besides winning the Newdigate prize in 1806 (with a poem on ‘The Study of Greek and Roman Architecture’). He made many university friends (among them Reginald Heber and Henry Phillpotts), but none whose acquaintance appears to have been especially influential upon his life. During the vacations he wandered over Great Britain and Ireland, associating with characters of all descriptions; but the story related by the Howitts of his having actually married a gipsy is entirely devoid of foundation. In fact his deepest concern during the whole of his Oxford residence was his tender attachment to the lady he celebrates as ‘Margaret,’ ‘an orphan maid of high talent and mental graces,’ which came to nothing from the violent opposition of his mother. Heartbroken from sorrow and disappointment, Wilson went up for his B.A. examination in the Easter term of 1807, under the full conviction that he should be plucked, but on the contrary passed ‘the most illustrious examination within the memory of man.’ He graduated M.A. in 1810. He had already purchased a cottage and land at Elleray on Windermere, and thither he betook himself to lead the life of a country gentleman, not at the time contemplating the pursuit of any profession.
The first four years of Wilson's life at Elleray were divided between improvements to his estate, outdoor recreation, and the composition of poetry. ‘The Isle of Palms’ and other pieces were written by 1810, and published at the beginning of 1812. He also contributed letters to Coleridge's ‘Friend’ under the signature of ‘Mathetes.’ On 11 May 1811 he had married Jane Penny, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant and ‘the leading belle of the lake country,’ who had removed to Ambleside to be near her married sister. The union was most fortunate; but four years afterwards a calamity overtook Wilson by the loss of his property (estimated at 50,000l.) through the dishonesty of an uncle who had acted as steward of the estate. Wilson, so fearfully excitable when the affections were in question, bore the loss of fortune with magnanimity, and even contributed to the support of the delinquent uncle. The blow was indeed in great measure broken by the hospitality of his mother, who received him and his family into her house; nor was he even obliged to relinquish Elleray, though he removed from it for a time. He was called to the bar at Edinburgh in 1815, but made little progress in a profession in which neither taste nor ability qualified him to excel; of the few briefs which came to him he afterwards said, ‘I did not know what the devil to do with them.’ He cultivated literature to better purpose, following up ‘The Isle of Palms’ with ‘The City of the Plague’ and other poems (1816). In 1815 he made a pedestrian highland tour in company with his wife, in those days an almost unparalleled undertaking for a lady. Encouraged by Jeffrey, who had reviewed ‘The City of the Plague’ very kindly, Wilson contributed an article on the fourth canto of ‘Childe Harold’ to the ‘Edinburgh,’ but was almost immediately afterwards caught in the vortex which swept the literary talent of Scottish toryism into the new tory organ, ‘Blackwood's Magazine,’ established in April 1817. Up to this time periodical literature in Scotland had been a whig monopoly: all the loaves and fishes had been on one side, and all the pen and ink on the other. This was now to be altered, and although Wilson was not in reality a fierce, much less a bitter or intolerant, partisan, the vehemence of his temperament and the unwonted strength of his language sometimes made him appear the very incarnation of political ferocity.
The early management of ‘Blackwood’ was designedly involved in mystery, but Mrs. Oliphant's ‘Annals of the Publishing House of Blackwood’ has recently made it clear that the sole editor was William Black-
