[11] Page 215; vol. ii., Reminiscences. Boston Edition.
[12] John Wilson, b. 1785; d. 1854; better known as Christopher North, his pseudonym in Blackwood. The Isle of Palms, 1811; The City of the Plague, 1816; Recreations of Christopher North, 1842. In 1851 a civil-list pension of £300 was conferred upon him. His younger brother James Wilson was a well-known naturalist, and author of The Rod and the Gun.
[13] “Old North and Young North.” Blackwood, June, 1828.
[14] Dorothy Wordsworth, under date of 1809, writes to her friend, Lady Beaumont—“Surely I have spoken to you of Mr. Wilson, a young man of some fortune, who has built a house in a very fine situation not far from Bowness.… He has from boyhood been a passionate admirer of my brother’s writings. [And again.] We all, including Mr. De Quincey and Coleridge, have been to pay the Bachelor (Wilson) a visit, and we enjoyed ourselves very much in a pleasant mixture of merriment, and thoughtful discourse.… He is now twenty-three years of age.”—Coleorton Letters, vol. ii, p. 91.
[15] John Gibson Lockhart, b. 1794; d. 1854. Connected with Blackwood, 1818; Adam Blair, 1822; with Quarterly Review, 1826-53; Ancient Spanish Ballads, 1823; Memoirs of Walter Scott, 1836-38. Recent Life of Lockhart, by Andrew Lang. 2 vols., 8vo. Nimmo, London.
[16] Mrs. Gordon says, quoting from her mother’s record: Mr. Wilson is as busy studying as possible; indeed, he has little time before him for his great task; he says it will take one month at least to make out a catalogue of the books he has to read and consult. I am perfectly appalled when I go into the dining-room and see all the folios, quartos, and duodecimos, with which it is literally filled; and the poor culprit himself sitting in the midst, with a beard as long and red as an ancient carrot; for he has not shaved for a fortnight. P. 215, Memoir of John Wilson. We are sorry to see that Mr. Lang, in his recent Life of Lockhart (1897), pp. 135-6-7-8, has put some disturbing cross-coloring (perhaps justly) upon the pleasant portrait which Mrs. Gordon has drawn of Christopher North.
[17] Mrs. Gordon’s Memoir of John Wilson, p. 222. The statement is credited to the author of The Two Cosmos. Middleton, New York, 1863.
[18] Thomas Campbell, b. 1777; d. 1844. The Pleasures of Hope, 1799; Gertrude of Wyoming, 1809; Life of Petrarch, 1841; Dr. Beattie’s Life, 1850.
[19] Maclise Portrait Gallery, London, 1883 (which cites in confirmation, Notes and Queries, December 13, 1862).
[20] De Quincey says that he was the only man in all Europe who quoted Wordsworth as early as 1802. Yet, per contra, the Lyrical Ballads had warm praises from Jeffrey (in Monthly Review) and from Southey (in Critical)—showing that the finer ears had caught the new notes from Helicon.