Decks Gleniffers dewy dell
Blooming like thy bonny sell
My ain my artless deary.”
We would mention another bright name also a native of this same town of Paisley. John Wilson—known better by his pen name of “Christopher North” the author of “Noctes Ambrosianae.” He rose from obscurity to great honor and to the chair of moral philosophy in the University of Ediuburgh. He was a giant in stature as well as in mind, and one of the knightliest of men. No one who ever met Wilson striding along the street, his long yellow hair flowing over his shoulders, his blue eyes gleaming with merriment, and glowing with an intelligence that comprehend every department of knowledge, could ever forget him.
He may be fairly ranked with Scott and Burns in the power he exercised in the later part of his life, in storming the heart of the Scottish people—becoming at last their idol and great literary representative. He was conemporary with Thomas Brown whom he succeeded in the chair of moral philosophy, and with Sir William Hamilton, who was a candidate with him for the chair, but who, up to that time, had not given to the public those proofs of that consumate ability by which he was afterwards distinguished, and which placed him in the foremost rank of the most eminent European scholars.
Wilson once a poet, lecturer, statesman, orator, and novelist. He was the intimate friend of Coleridge, Woodsworth, and Southey. His poems of the “Isle of Palms” and the “City of the Plague” are productions that gave him a worthy place among those bright lights of song shed so brilliant a luster over that age of great minds, and whose genuis has bequeathed to all future time, the priceless legacy if immortal harmonies and wealth of thought. He was with all a very muscular Christian; “for on more than one occasion, the singular spectacle was exhibited of a Scotch professor of moral science taking off his coat in a public market place to inflict personal chastisment on some ruffian whose obnoxious proceedings has done outrage to his nicer sense of the fitness of things.” He was, with Lockheart, one of the original contributors to Blackwood’s Magazine, and helped more than any other author to give that publication a popularity that continues to this day.
It is said of Aytoun, Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Letters in Ediuburgh University, when he was courting Wilson’s daughter that he could not summon up courage to ask her father to give his consent to their marriage, although he knew how exalted a place he occupied in Wilson’s estimation.
Here stood the silver tongued Aytown, week after week, trying to screw up his courage to ask the question that filled his heart, but he could not do it. At length he said: “Jessie, will you go and ask your father for me as I cannot?” Jessie was soon beside her father and acquainted him with how matters stood. “Puir Aytown,” said Wilson, “I maun gie him his answer in writing.”
So saying he wrote a line without Jessie’s knowledge of its purport, and pinning it on the back of her dress, sent her off to Aytoun whom he well knew was just at that moment fully appreciating the significance of the verb “to wait.”
“What did he say, Jessie?” was the impatient interrogatory of the loving professor. Jessie turned her back for once upon her lover, and then he read the precious answer: “With the Author’s compliments.”