A poet of exuberant fancy, revelling in lavish ornament and gorgeous painting, and giving utterance to the most ingenious creations, in language of ineffable, and, occasionally, overpowering sweetness. A writer of inimitable Irish ballads, which are now plaintive, now joyous, now pathetic, now fervid, now tender, now fierce, now melting, now heroic; but always matchless by the graceful flow of the verse, and the prompt springing of the happiest illustration. Also the author of satires, brilliant and cutting, but rather the outpourings of a generous fancy, delighting in its own exquisite self-conscious faculty of mischief, than the malicious and bitter expression of a vexed and disappointed mind. Melody and joyance are careering in almost every syllable that he wrote. He was a passionate lover of music, and when he sang his own ballads, the effect upon his listeners was electrical. His most celebrated poetical composition is “Lalla Rookh,” an Eastern romance, which he wrote “amidst the snows of two or three Derbyshire winters.” His best prose work, “The Epicurean,” is a masterly performance, redolent of the perfume which breathes through his verse, and elevated by a high moral aim. When Thomas Moore died, the impression left of the man upon the public mind was stamped there by his jocund muse—a feeling of tenderness and love was associated with the pleasant memory of “Little Tommy Moore.” Since his death his memoirs and his diary have been published, and the impression has grown dimmer and dimmer in consequence. As a man, Thomas Moore, the poet, appears to have been hardly more heroic than the most prosaic of his kind.
[By Christopher Moore. Executed in 1838, for the late Edward Moore, of Mayfair.]
417. John Wilson. Poet and Professor.
[Born at Paisley, 1785. Died in Edinburgh, 1854. Aged 69.]
The son of a Paisley manufacturer. Educated at Glasgow and Oxford. Like the youth of ancient Greece, he delighted equally in the spoils of the arena, and in the wisdom of the porch. At Oxford, the first wrestler of his time, and the gainer of the Newdegate prize for the best poem. His genius as passionate as his frame was overflowing with the sap of animal life. Endowed with a lofty and glowing imagination, and with great critical powers, improved by knowledge. A lover of learning for the joy it brings, and a hearty sympathizer with the glorious labours of the great makers of prose and verse, whether in ancient or modern time. He himself excelled as a worker in more than one of the paths of literature. His poetry is remarkable for the beauty of its imagery, for its rich fancy, and for the flow of the verse; his criticisms exhibit a profound knowledge of the true principles of taste, are eloquent, and full of generous sentiment; his prose tales of fiction have deep pathos, and reveal intimate acquaintance with the human heart. As an orator, John Wilson might have vied with the most eloquent of his contemporaries had he chosen to compete with them in their own peculiar field; as a writer upon the manly sports which he so ardently loved, he is unequalled. His very corporeal substance seems heaving with joy and physical happiness, as we follow his vigorous, picturesque, and elated pen, amongst the lochs of Scotland, or the lakes of Cumberland. Wilson wrote with the zeal of a strong partizan in politics. He would be one, and could not. His large and universal heart never entertained what are called political antipathies. His Toryism was his strong and hearty nature bubbling up and venting itself in loyalty, chivalry, and affectionate duty. To say that he was opposed to Liberty and Right, is to assert a monstrous paradox. He was the very incarnation of liberty, and his giant soul shrunk from wrong, by natural action. In 1818, Wilson was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. The bust bespeaks the man. It looks like Jupiter. We cannot gaze upon a more magnificent head.
[This striking and characteristic work is by the late James Fillous of Glasgow, a fellow townsman of Professor Wilson. It was executed in marble for the Public Reading Room at Paisley.]
418. George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron. Poet.
[Born in London, 1788. Died at Missolonghi, in Greece, 1824. Aged 36.]
Assuredly, the most popular, if not the greatest poet of our times. But, the popularity by no means proof of the greatness. He was an object of interest on account of his birth, his youth, his misfortunes, his constant practice of associating with poetry his personal and daily history, his strongly imagined injuries, his feverish complaints. A vigorous painter of portraits—that is to say, of two, for he took delight only in the hero of gloomy passion, and in the heroine of soft voluptuous beauty—all his pictures more or less reflecting his own nature, and the nature of woman as it appeared to his refined sensuality. Byron has described with ineffable grandeur natural scenery, and has kindled the spirits of men with enthusiasm for the ancient glory; but we find no solace in his companionship, although he takes us to streams and mountains visited by the gods. His own distempered image is too visibly stamped on every scene. Byron affected to be a misanthrope; yet he cherished the good opinion of men, and shrunk from their adverse criticism. He pretended that he was isolated from the world; yet his name and fame were upon every lip. What will last in the poetry of Byron are the verses uttered in moments of self-oblivion. Keats complained that Byron made solemn things gay, and gay things solemn. This was a great wrong, and is hardly repaired by the tenderness, pathos, sentiment, and passion, that start from his poetry to go straight to the heart. It was the misfortune of Byron to be sent into the world without discipline or training of any kind. Had he been fairly dealt with in his childhood and youth, his life might have been happier—its course more equable. As it was, his genius was enslaved and wronged, his career was violent and erratic, his whole nature warped, and his poetry, instead of being a well-trimmed garden of beauty, had its choicest flowers entangled and half hidden in unwholesome, gaudy weeds.
[By Thorwaldsen, but not from the life.]